Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity

Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), ISBN 9780300118841, (hc) $35.00.

Robert Wilken’s survey of the first thousand years of Christianity is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the field. Its greatest value and greatest challenge is that this survey beginning with the life of Christ and ending just before the great schism is only 359 pages. Wilken’s characteristic style of being both concise yet clear in exposition is the books greatest strength and its greatest weakness. This book is valuable to review for two reasons. The first is that it provides an illustration of the challenge of writing a survey of Christianity (the genre of surveys of church history is a much larger project I am studying) and how Wilken plays with the genre to do something different. The second is the very good data in the book that Wilken brings about and creates for an accessible and interesting read for students and laymen (scholars would also find this interesting, but due to some of the constraints discussed below, would find it too brief to be complete). Therefore, this review will stray from my usual format of showing the merits and then the critiques of the book. This book’s merits and critiques are really two sides of the same coin. Therefore, this review will first illustrate the strength and weakness of Wilken’s writing style by analyzing what is in my view his best and worst chapters. Then, a discussion will move into the genre of church history surveys and show how he falls into the problem of modern surveys of church histories and how he attempts to solve them (in some ways successfully and in other ways not so successfully). 

To illustrate how this book was written, an example can be taken from the first chapter. To begin the book, he wants to describe Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels (not only as a beginning ground of any survey of later Christianity but also due to his view that all theology is exegetical and therefore the Bible is quite relevant. In writing this chapter, he has all of 11 pages to describe the entire message, goal, and purposes of the four gospels. This is of course, ridiculous. To accomplish the task, rather than illustrating the gospels, he summarizes them to the point that the end of the chapter he can talk about the single character of the gospels.[1] This summary position is done in every chapter without long quotations of primary sources to show what the sources suggest. To consider the difference of this approach to other academic writing, it might be helpful to consider two of Wilken’s other very good books. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them goes to significant lengths to display what Romans felt about Christians. It even goes to the extreme of reconstructing the vast majority of Celsus’s argument against the Christians and presenting it for the reader.[2] In a mediating position to this is Wilken’s Spirit of Early Christian Thought where the long quotations have been mostly abandoned to save space, but the book is filled with example after example of quotations being put together to create a narrative.[3] The First Thousand Years book, however, to save even more space has cut down on even direct quotation in exchange for summary. Wilken’s summaries are often well done, but it is a distinct style that has distinct advantages and disadvantages. The greatest advantage is that when the texts can be summarized well, it allows him to move into higher order thinking quickly and he can do rather interesting things to gain interesting conclusions. When it is not done well, the summaries might not suffice and any higher order thinking is abandoned because a reader struggles to understand the summary.

To illustrate the strength of this format, consider his discussion of Ignatius of Antioch.  In the chapter, he only cites Ignatius 10 times. Of those ten, only one is longer than three lines. Instead of quoting large portions of Ignatius, he summarizes Ignatius enough to create an argument about the innovation that Ignatius represents – the spiritual unity of a variety of independent bodies as a single body of believers. He points out that Ignatius’s letters are a window into the inner-life of the church after the death of the apostles.[4] Ignatius not only considers a new type of church unity through the use of the bishop – but the transition is due to the lack of itinerate missionaries who stopped by these variety of places (such as Paul) to one where each church had their own identity, yet still found identity in the larger collective.[5] This type of simultaneous independent and communal identity is expressed through the development of a worship service and the practice of common sacraments – baptism and the Eucharist.[6] The usual discussion had about Ignatius – the role of the bishop (and subsequent church order) is quickly and efficiently discussed.[7] Here, Wilken has made a fascinating argument using Ignatius less as “the important development which must be illustrated” as much as he has described Ignatius enough in order to make a fascinating point about the nature of second century Christianity. This depiction is more profound than most depictions of Ignatius’s letters which usually describe a basic idea of the bishop, authority, and shift in thinking. Here, Wilken uses this in a way that makes the whole of Ignatius far greater than the sum of his parts.

In contrast to the way it works so well for Ignatius, one might consider his chapter on the Christological controversies at the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon (yes, indeed, it is only one chapter) that he entitles, “The Great Controversy over Christ.” First, this period in church history is very confusing. The discussion between Cyril, Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Leo, the Tall Brothers, John, and even Shenoute shifts wildly over precise language. It is in fact confusing enough that part of the conflict was over a translation problem – the terms “ousia” and “physis” did not translate well into Syriac and it is quite probable that Nestorius and Cyril did not disagree as much as they thought they did. In essence, it is a confusing enough period, that even during the conflict they were confused. However, it is a watershed moment for the rest of Christianity with monophysites and diphysites continuing to disagree for centuries to come. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that this be a clear chapter that explains what is happening. Unfortunately, Wilken provides it only 10 pages and has the thankless task of trying to explain a doctrine in such a short space that will be referred to in nearly every chapter of the text after this one. However, in so doing, his “summarization” approach fails because the summary is too confusing to be understood and thus the subsequent arguments he presents based upon that summary get incredibly confused. For example, he argues that part of the issue was the political struggle the Bishop of Alexandria had with the Episcopal see of Constantinople exerting new influence. However, he notes that the primary debate between them was more theological than it was political.[8] After stating this – that it was not a political goal, the “argument” of the chapter, if there is one, is the initial triumph of the authority of Alexandria followed by the subsequent victory of Constantinople in its own political strength.[9] Therefore, precisely what he states is not the point, is what he suggests was the result (granted in a fascinating way by citing the fathers and other innovation in authority).[10] Further, his summary style gets compromised from the first line when he makes a blatant value judgment of Nestorius as being foolish: “Eloquence without wisdom is hazardous…Though fluent of speech, [Nestorius] lacked prudence and soon found himself at odds with the imperial family and monks in the city. The misstep that sparked trouble…”[11] One can observe that he seems to see Nestorius as making a poor judgment. It might be true he made one as far as political savvy, but the way he presents what comes next has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the doctrine of the theotokos. Therefore, the summaries that he presents are already compromised. This then gets egregiously confusing with new people introduced with new ideas and new ecclesiastical councils. This causes confusion and the clipped style of Wilken has obfuscated the data.

The probably difference between these two chapters is the simplicity of the content. In the discussion of Ignatius, he describes the theology of Ignatius relatively quickly and in a straightforward manner. The only other factor he discusses is evidence of Ignatius’s action in the New Testament. This works well because the point he wants to make about Ignatius’s role as a case study function very well with relatively brief discussion of Ignatius the man. The same cannot be said of the Christological controversies of the fifth century. When there are two church councils, at least 4 principle players, the addition of Rome for the first time attempting to get involved, the concept of an ecclesiastical council without the oversight of an emperor, and the subsequent failed councils which caused more harm than good, the content is simply too diverse to be quickly summarized and then leading to a single point. There is in fact no single one point that ought to be learned about the Christological controversies in the fifth century – there are at least half a dozen.

These analyses of these paragraphs are meant to show how and when the approach works and when it struggles. I am happy to admit that Wilken presents one of the best discussion of Ignatius (or the early second century for that matter) that I have seen in any survey textbook of Christian history. The chapter on the Christological controversies is not the worst (as this period of history is notorious for being difficult), but it is fair to say it is below average. A more standard approach would have been several chapters and would have described each figure deliberately and not tried to make such aggressive claims. It would not have had as many potential positive results, but it would have had more actual positive results.

Rather than looking at particular aspects of this survey of the history of Christianity as far as technical details which are a bit unfair (of course it won’t be as precise as it should be – it is a survey), here the conversation will turn to the challenge of what a survey is and how it functions – thereby Wilken’s book can be fairly criticized or praised within its own construct.

Genre of a Survey of Church History

The problem with a study of the genre of church history surveys is that it is not officially a genre. One will not find a course in “textbook surveys” in any literature conference. Rather, these are built as heuristic devices for different ends. In the English speaking world, church histories are all dependent (either in reproducing or opposing) on Philip Schaff’s 10 volume History of the Christian Church originally published in 1858. This history, following Hegelian philosophy of History, was interested in how Christianity developed (in a positive way) from the early origins to the height of understanding (of course with this ending in Schaff’s own day). It has a clear sense of progress behind it and it goes even farther by suggesting that God was behind the heresies and other events so that the church could “discover” what was already there all along – namely the divine truth. In this way, it is fair to judge Schaff’s interpretative method as a basic Heilsgeschichte (which is usually reserved for the interpretation of history in the Old Testament) to the church. Adolf von Harnack’s influential work did not use this idea of Heilsgeschichte, but it did employ a development of doctrine in a rather similar light. Heresies were the counterpoint to the single development of doctrine that led them to the next step. It was a very linear model which held the idea that “orthodoxy” was a continuous channel that responded to heresy along the way. Walter Bauer’s influential Orthodoxy and Heresy was a helpful corrective in the sequence of heresy or orthodoxy. Rather than the idea found in figures such as Schaff that there was an orthodoxy that was then corrupted by these heresies, Bauer observed that often the “heresy” came first and it was not known as heresy until well after the fact (and was happy to admit the power dynamic and fluidity of what was orthodox and heretical – the orthodox is always that which is in the interest of the stronger party). However, Bauer did not fundamentally challenge the idea of a linear history developed in a Hegelian fashion.

Current historians appreciate the contributions of this earlier generation of scholarship, but recognize that such a linear view of orthodoxy is simply inaccurate. The interest in the social world has shown a tremendous amount of diversity – not only in the heretical groups – as Bauer pointed out, but also in the orthodox groups. It is now the proper trope that there really was not a single orthodoxy (and more and more scholars are disgusted by the idea of a “proto-orthodoxy” as it implies it was a single group who had been there the whole time). There were not only a variety of groups competing with each other, but there were even more unaware of each other as competing groups implies that the groups were trying to “one up” the other. In most cases, the groups were so far from one another that communication was limited at best. A good example of this from my own research is that the larger people in Coptic Egypt were not overly concerned with the Christological controversies in Alexandria and went about their Christian lives centered around monastic ideals (in fact, according to David Brakke, it was Athanasius’s recognition of this gap and his ability to bring in the monastic movement into his theology which was his true genius).[12]

Scholarship for the most part, does not have a problem with this and one won’t find advanced studies on aspects of Christianity depending upon the old model of development of doctrine (though there are always exceptions as lazy scholarship finds the development of doctrine easier to deal with). The problem, however, is in church history textbooks. When one wants an overview of Christianity (a bit of a ridiculous venture in its own right), there is one central issue – there is no need to repeat where people agree with each other. Difference is highlighted in all surveys. The question then is different from what. Some books have attempted a type of “diversity collection” which simply has a collection of essays all independent of one another, because after all, that is what truly happened in the early church. A good example of this motif is found in The Cambridge History of Christianity volume 1 edited by Margaret Mitchell and Frances M. Young. This book has 32 chapters over 590 pages and over 100 pages of bibliography and indices. However, the chapters (as they are written by varieties of experts) do not directly relate with one another and reading it through cover-to-cover is a tiring enterprise. The book becomes more of an “advanced reference tool” rather than a survey for heuristic reasons.

The opposite end of the spectrum is those books that simply replicate the progress idea of Schaff without admitting it. While putting the quotation marks around orthodox, they tend to discuss all of the same issues that were discussed by Schaff in the same manner (heresy leading to a new idea) such as can be found in Justo L. Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity (2 vols.). While being far more entertaining than Mitchell and Young’s work through the establishment of a master narrative which students can easily follow, the challenge lies in its relatively poor scholarship. It only provides discussion about types of Christianity that disagree with one another leading to the one type that “won out.”

Wilken’s book tries to bridge these two extremes ends. On the one hand, he does go through a type of development of doctrine for the first 20 chapters of the book. In fact when discussing Augustine, he explains his lack of discussing Augustine’s Manichaean debates because, “Augustine’s writing against them are important for understanding the development of his thinking, but for the history of Christian doctrine Augustine’s treatises and letters on the Donatists and the Pelagians are more consequential.”[13] He clearly is interested in the master narrative here about the development of doctrine. In that master narrative, he seems to focus on the red thread of authority and how it is meted out throughout the narrative (such as through monks, bishops, emperors, popes, etc.).

While Wilken seems to be presenting this master narrative, he then takes almost half of the book to present alternate Christianities as he is trying to present a global history. He has chapters on “Architecture and Art,” “Music and Worship,” “Egypt and Copts; Nubia,” “Syrac-Speaking Christians,” “Ethiopia,” “Armenia and Georgia,” “Central Asia, China, and India,” “Egypt and North Africa,” “Spain,” “the Slavs” and “Britain.” These chapters are basically asides and then he moves back to the master narrative for the rise and conflict with Islam. It creates an odd compromise between the extremes. These chapters do not have a single red thread that go through them (and often do not have any central argument of any kind), instead they tend to be just general descriptions reminding the reader that the master narrative is not the only thing in play.

My goal in this conversation is not to lampoon Wilken for trying to manage this compromised position – given the constraints of a general history of Christianity, he is doing what has probably been heuristically successful. The old “master narrative” technique is appealing to students. It is easier to remember a development of one key group rather than near chaos as implied (but not argued) by a works such as Mitchell and Young.

Wilken’s innovation is in the compromise – he realizes the value of a master narrative while reminding students that this is not everything that there is. This works very well during the Islamic invasions. He begins with the master narrative of Islam and what that means for both the Byzantine empire and Christianity. However, he then considers different regions and how those regions dealt with the issue, which regions acculturated to the Muslim rule and which maintained their Christianity and which did not. It is a helpful discussion that is well placed in the structure of the book (after the discussion of the invasion, then the discussion of regions is discussed to tell students that this is not the whole story). His compromise does not succeed as well, however, for the period before this. For 20 chapters he goes through the master narrative for the development of doctrine and then he circles back to discuss Syria, the far East, the North, etc. The problem is that in those discussions, one has to begin (as Wilken does) when those narratives began – often rather early – with Syria, for instance, there is no reason to think it is any later than 200 C.E. (and possibly earlier). This is difficult to imagine when one just finished a chapter about the council of Chalcedon.

There are some other cosmetic issues with the book which are not serious but do frustrate a reader. It is likely that these were decisions made at the publishing house and Wilken is not to blame. First, there are beautiful plates of Christian art in the center of the book. However, in the narrative when those images are discussed, there is no reference that the image is in the book. As such, most readers will attempt to find the image somewhere else (such as I did online) not realizing that they had it in front of them the whole time. Second, the lack of “for further reading” is a problem for a survey of Christian history. A survey is to bring into the forefront a concept that then can be explored more deeply. By not presenting a very helpful bibliography for each chapter (he does have a general one at the end of the book but it is unwieldy), this is much harder for the reader. 

As a whole Wilken’s book, while being idiosyncratic to his style of writing, is a very valuable resource. It would be an excellent textbook to use alongside a collection of primary texts (such as might be found by the Bettenson and Mauer collection of primary sources). On its own, it is a bit too clipped to be sufficient for the completely unaware, but to a general student who knows a little about the church history, the book is a perfect fit. It is accessible enough that anyone (either a layperson in a church or an undergraduate student) can understand it and keep from being too discouraged by thousands of pages of texts.

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[1] Wilken, The First Thousand Years, 9.

[2] Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 2^nd Ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) 94-125.

[3] Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

[4] The First Thousand Years, 29.

[5] Ibid., 31.

[6] Ibid., 34.

[7] Ibid., 32.

[8] Ibid., 197.

[9] Ibid., 204.

[10] Ibid., 202.

[11] Ibid., 195.

[12] Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism.

[13] Wilken, The First Thousand Years, 186.