It is nothing groundbreaking, but it’s a nice study. I was impressed with the clarity of thought when discussing figures such as Aquinas or William of Occam (amongst others) – Gonzalez does well in laying out the essentials of their thought while fitting it into the overall narrative of church history.Īll in all I would say that Gonzalez text is a worthwhile read, and many chapters which the reader may not be interested could be safely skipped without much harm. Also of note is that the text spends fair portions discussing Eastern Christianity as well as Christianity as it was spread to the New World during colonial expansion. This is followed by the period of the Imperial Church (once it had become official under Rome), discussion of various great minds in the early church, the effects of Rome’s fall, monasticism and medieval Christianity. Gonzalez’s history might also be described as fairly ecumenical, as he doesn’t (at least as far as I noticed) bring the bias of any particular theological affiliation one aspect which might be noteworthy is that Gonzalez does fall into what one may call the contemporary method of doing history, perhaps best exemplified in lines such as “ History is not the pure past history is a past interpreted from the present of the historian.”Īs is common with most texts following the history of Christianity, fair portions of the text are spent discussing the early apologists, persecutions, heresies and councils. Dean Peterson in his book A Concise History of Christianity, but such is to be expected in a longer text. Gonzalez is a very readable writer, that is, he isn’t overly technical and writes in a way that is easy to understand, although he does go more in-depth than say R. What follows from this is a 490 page discussion of the progression of Christian history from Christianity’s roots in Judaism up until the period just before the Protestant Reformation, roughly 400BC to around 1600AD. A person wearing tinted glasses can avoid the conclusion that the entire world is tinted only by being conscious of the glasses themselves… Not only is our view of the present colored by our history, but our view of history is also colored by the present and by the future we envision.” The primary reason presented is so that we will better understand our faith and what has influenced it to know that we have been influenced by a certain past which colors our vision and threatens to ‘absolutize’ our personal interpretations, thus: “One way we can avoid this danger is to know the past that colors our vision. Gonzalez begins with an introduction in which he discusses why we should study the history of Christianity. The first volume covers “The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation.” The Story of Christianity is a two volume history of Christianity by Justo Gonzalez.
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