The Story of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, by Justo L. González (HarperOne, revised and updated edition, 2010). My rating: 5 of 5.
You say the Creed every Sunday. You light candles, keep Lent and walk into something called a chapel. Most of us never ask where any of it came from. This is the book that answers, and it reads like a story rather than a textbook.
What the book covers
González, a Cuban American historian and Methodist, covers the first fifteen centuries of the church. He starts with the Jewish world Jesus was born into, moves through the persecutions, Constantine, the councils and the creeds, and follows the monks, the popes and the scholastics up to the eve of the Reformation. The chapters are short, and each one stands on its own.
The book is a standard seminary text, and it earns that place. It is also written for a general reader. González is fair to people Christian histories often paint as villains. He describes the emperor Decius, for example, as an old style Roman trying to restore his city by restoring its gods, rather than as a monster. That fairness makes the martyrs more believable. He is also good on ordinary life: how the early church kept time, how it worshiped, and how monks prayed while they worked.
What stayed with me
The first Christians were Jews. “The earliest Christians did not consider themselves followers of a new religion,” González writes. And the friction with the Pharisees, he notes, “was due to the similarity of their views, rather than to their difference.”
Sunday as a little Easter. The earliest calendar was weekly. Every Sunday was a feast of the Resurrection, and Wednesday and Friday were fast days. Lent’s rhythm is older than Lent.
Martin’s cloak. Martin of Tours cut his soldier’s cloak in half for a beggar. A piece said to be that cloak was later kept in a small church, which gave us the words chapel and chaplain. It is a perfect story for Martinmas on November 11.
Constantine changed worship. Court ceremony shaped Christian worship after the empire embraced the faith. Processions grew, trained choirs appeared, and the congregation’s part shrank.
Philosophy and the Incarnation. González explains how the apologists used the idea of the Logos to speak to educated pagans, and how a philosophical picture of an unchanging God made the Incarnation harder to explain. His image for the problem is a request for hot ice cream. It explains why the councils argued so long over a few words.
Wealth and the poor. He includes John Chrysostom’s sharp words to rich Christians who piled up loans and land while their neighbors went hungry. It is good reading for stewardship season.
A few notes
González says incense, vestments and the words priest and altar came from imperial court protocol. That overstates it. Ignatius of Antioch spoke of one altar around 107, and Tertullian and Cyprian used priestly language. Imperial ceremony enlarged worship. It did not invent that language.
He also says that after Constantine Christians always knelt to pray. The Council of Nicaea in 325 forbade kneeling on Sundays and in the Easter season. Standing on Sunday is the older posture. Finally, the story that Thomas Aquinas called his work straw comes from his companion Reginald of Piperno. It is testimony, not his own writing.
Who should read it
Seminarians, Sunday school teachers, preachers, and anyone in the pews who wants to know why we do what we do. Read it with Volume 2 if you want the Reformation and the modern church.
Quotes are short excerpts credited to the author. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The price you pay does not change. I read this book on my own, and no one asked me or paid me to review it. My faith writing reflects my own views, not those of my parish or diocese. See Disclosures.