Customer Reviews

The History of Christian Thought

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Unclear just what Arianism was, or what the Monophysites were upset about, or exactly why the Eastern church split from the Western? Not quite sure about the difference between liberal theology and liberation theology? Here's the book for you. This is an extremely well-written survey of Christian thought from Justin Martyr and the early church fathers through contemporary theologists, like Moltmann and Pannenberg. That's a lot of ground to cover in less than 350 pages, but Hill does about as good a job as I can imagine anyone doing. The background theological, philosophical, and cultural issues are clearly described, the key ideas of the particular theologian or thinker are carefully presented, and brief evaluations are provided. The book is published by InterVarsity Press, which might indicate a strong Evangelical bias, but Hill is scrupulously fair throughout; in fact, if anything, he leans in a moderately liberal direction. There is no lack of seriousness here, but lots of interesting anecdotes enliven the text and show the decidedly human side of men more known for weighty ideas and arduous prose. For one example, it is interesting to contemplate the teen-aged Aquinas brandishing a smoking log from the fireplace to chase a naked prostitute out of his room, a woman sent by his family to seduce him in a more worldly direction. Later, he got so fat a semicircle had to be cut from the front edge of his desk so he could sit close enough to do his writing. John Henry Newman, in contrast, was so skinny and bony he had trouble getting comfortable enough lying down to get a good night's sleep. Albert Schweitzer worked all night, with his feet in a tub of cold water and drinking black coffee to ward off sleep. The ideas are interesting, and so were the people who produced them. I had never heard of this book, which I picked up on a whim, and I'm very glad I did. It does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it in a consistently interesting and entertaining fashion, while never losing focus on the intellectual issues under consideration. What more can you ask? Highly recommended.

When an author undertakes to cover 2,000 years in under 400 pages, inevitably something or someone is going to be left out or neglected, and cognoscenti are going to be disappointed that their own pet subjects were given short shrift. I, on the other hand, brought a wealth of ignorance to the subject and was consequently well-satisfied with the work.

Hill begins his survey with the closing of the New Testament canon and tries to address the biography, career, thought, and impact of every major Christian theologian from that day to this. The reader may quibble over some of his omissions, but cannot argue with his inclusions. Hill also attempts to outline various movements and schools of thought that have arisen and flourished during the long history of Christianity.

The reader will meet many admirable men, many strange ideas, and much convoluted thought between the covers of this book.

This is a well-written introduction to many interesting and important thinkers. Hill introduces each era and movement, tells about the lives of his subjects with lively anecdotes, then sketches an outline of their thought. He has a good sense of humor; his discussion of post-modernism, for example, is suitably wry.

It seems to me, though, that Hill has bitten off much more than he can chew.

First of all, what does he mean, "Christian thought?" In the ancient world, a "philosopher" was someone who sought truth of all sorts, without being constrained by our modern concept of academic disciplines. Most of the ancient thinkers Hill discusses are "philosophers" in this sense, and so are many Medieval and Renaissance "thinkers." But in the modern era, Hill narrows his scope to recognized "theologians" (Bultmann, Barth, Tillich, etc.) He doesn't so much as mention folks like Chesterton, Girard, Solzhenitsyn, Plantinga, Stark, or C. S. Lewis. A narrative so potentially vast must limit itself, but the failure to mention such influential thinkers seems odd to me.

While his treatment of some thinkers left me thirsting for more (Pannenberg, for example), I hardly recognized his monochromatic caricature of Augustine. (I doubt he likes him.)

Worse is Hill's shallow and misleading treatment of four important topics: the relationships between faith and reason, attitudes to past thought, Christianity and culture, and the "historical Jesus."

On faith, Hill seems to buy the "Enlightenment myth" lock, stock and barrel. "Whether we like it or not," science and religion "do operate according to different value systems, and they do make conflicting claims about the world." Well, gee, glad to have that settled -- paying attention, Polkinghorne, Lewis, and Niebuhr? "People were looking at the world with new eyes -- the eyes of reason, not those of faith." Recently, I researched what thirty great Christian thinkers said about faith and reason, beginning with Justin Martyr. For most, faith and reason were like the wings on a single bird, as Pope John Paul put it, complementary though distinct. It is more plausible to say this phoney distinction between faith and reason is one of the fundamental errors of the Enlightenment. (See Jesus and the Religions of Man for details, or the anthology on faith and reason at christthetao.com.)

Rather than referring to the cogency of arguments or new data, often Hill exhibits a cloying "chronological snobbery" (as Lewis put it) to explain why new ideas supplant old ones. Origin's idea of a succession of universes "sounds like science fiction" but was "more reasonable" in those days. (Has Hill never heard of the oscillating universe or multiverse hypothesis?) "Deism seems hopelessly naive to us today." (Has he read Steven Hawking or Anthony Flew?) "Barth put the Trinity and Christology at the center of Christian thought." (Oh? And where had they been?) Hill's discussion of feminist theology suffers from a naively critical view of the past. (See "The Sexual Revolution" in my Jesus and the Religions of Man.)

Hill's treatment of faith and culture is even weaker. "For the first time (during the Enlightenment) cultured people were becoming aware that other religions were not simple forces of darkness but had worthy ideals and concepts of God." Hill has read the Church fathers; he ought to know better. Justin, Clement of Alexander, and Origin, all said that pagan philosophers not only shed light, but were "tutors" to bring the world to Christ. Augustine became a Christian through Plato, and Dante credited Virgil for his faith.

Hill's treatment of Asian Christianity is especially weakened by this error. His discussion of Nestorian Christianity in China ("Jingjiao" not "jinjaio" as he renders it) seems tacked on. He spends four paragraphs on Marco Polo, but absurdly, does not so much as mention the great Matteo Ricci. He says nothing about the Chinese Christians who developed Ricci's Biblical (and Augustinian) approach. Nor does he mention key later thinkers like James Legge, Lin Yutang, or Yuan Zhiming, any Indian thinker, or such interesting thinkers as Uchimura Kanzou in Japan. Instead, he focuses on a few obscure theologians, writing as if the idea of relating Christian faith to Asian culture were a modern idea!

Finally, Hill does not deal seriously with the "historical Jesus" question, which looms large in late chapters. Barth, he says, "rejects the whole enterprise" of the search for the historical Jesus, "cutting Christianity adrift from its historical foundations." What Hill does not explain is why Barth did that, or what it means. In Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, I described twelve basic errors in history, logic, and epistemology that undermine secular "historical Jesus research," errors implicating some of Hill's subjects. Again, Hill makes little effort to sort these issues out or critique "enlightened" views.

These are epic seas, over which Odysseus himself could not sail without occasionally grounding. Hill simply and succinctly describing the lives and thought of many important figures. Apart from these reservations, this is not a bad book. But it does show, as Hill himself admits, that there is no substitute for reading the originals.

The ambition of this book is breathtaking. In a little more than 300 pages Mr. Hill covers "The history of Christian thought." Does he do it? Yes he does but only in an almost cursory manner. This is not a liability for those who want to get the broad sweep of what Christians have believed for two thousand years.

While never stating so, I suspect that the author leans a bit to the left of the history he covers. Also there were statements that are unsupported and at odds with what history tells us (Augustine never taught total depravity?! pg. 199).

The six chapters cover: The Church fathers (1) The Byzantine Empire (2) The Middle Ages (3) The Reformation (4) The Modern era (5) and The 20th century (6).

Jonathan Hill has attempted the Herculean feat of cramming two thousand years of Christian Thought into one book. This is an entirely impossible task for anyone, so Hill has settled for representative thinkers from each historical period, leaning more heavily on those "whose contribution to Christian thought was especially original or especially influential" (11). The careful reader can ferret out some of Hill's favorites like Origen, and his less than favorites like Paul Tillich. In addition, Hill's official position is neutral and evenhanded, but some comments he makes betray conservative values, such as when he states of Paul Tillich that he "is one of the strangest theologians of the 20th century" (296), and that confusion is "symptomatic of the sometimes exasperatingly abstract nature of Tillich's work as a whole" (301). Despite these little hints being dropped in unexpectedly from time to time, Hill does maintain his neutrality fairly well, managing not to evaluate every theologian in such a manner.

This book is written for the "completely uninitiated," making this a book for the armchair Church historian, or the person who has no clue why Christians believe the way they do. Hill includes a glossary of terms, trying not to assume the reader knows anything about the subject. In addition, there is a short annotated bibliography following the books layout, for those wanting to go further in one period or another. The theologians themselves are listed in essentially chronological order as broken up into six historical periods. Each period receives its own introduction, which serves to bring people up to speed as to the historical situation. This enlivens the reading by showing links between the writers and their historical situation, proving that theology is not done in a vacuum, it is shaped somewhat by culture. Indeed, even Hill mentions the task of theology being restatement of "the Christian message in terms that contemporary people can understand" (262)--which is a statement that tends to reflect a liberal approach.

Hill begins with Justin Martyr, born in A.D. 100 and goes on a three hundred page trek through the warp and woof of Christian thought up to an including Wolfhart Pannenberg. He draws similarities between all the major thinkers in his book, not from their thought, but from their belief in Jesus Christ (329). This is the common ground he sees in all the history of Christian thought. All of history is fodder for contemporary thinkers of "unparalleled richness and diversity," no matter what is coming next.

In sum, this book is an excellent introduction to its subject matter. It follows a standard pattern throughout which makes the book easily readable. One generally unconsidered factor for reading is the font chosen for printing. In this case, the font is large enough to be easily readable and gentle on the eye. In too many books of this length the font is small and rigid which tends to put the reader to sleep, Hill font is not this way. The idea of being a liberal or a conservative is generally an issue based in one's own perspective, so some will see Hill as a liberal, and others will see him a conservative, but he represents fairly those theologians who do not represent his way of thinking. This book is an excellent starting point for anyone wanting the general sweep of history.

This book was immensely helpful for me to understand the course of Christian doctrines and thought over the centuries. With a brief synopsis of the life and thought of the main contributors to Christian thought, this is an excellent book to track the progress of Christian doctrines since the dawn of the Church. The book often pauses to give relevant historical backgrounds in which the thinkers in question were writing. Of course, the scope of the book prevents the author from dwelling on any of the Christian thinkers in a great deal of depth, but it was a great way for me to identify the writers who I now want to read-up on further.

Very well-written, and even funny at times, Jonathan Hill makes the history of Christian thought very interesting and accessible.

This book enlightened me. I graduated from seminary illiterate on the topic. Hill is one gifted guy to present the whole evolution of Christain thought in one readable book. I thought the book would be a chore to finish, and that it would be either liberal or dry. I could not put it down. As a Christian, Hill maintains a tone of spiritual passion. As a scholar, he fairly discusses the material and leaves the reader curious to learn more. This book provides a frame of reference to keep learning.

This book covers the breadth of Christian thought from the ante-Nicene era to the present. In general, I think Hill does a competent job in presenting many of the important theologians of the church. This book can be a good reference tool for someone interested in the development of Christian doctrine. However, Hill makes some disappointing editorial decisions that detract from this book's value. First, he omits any mention of Jonathon Edwards, who is widely considered the most influential North American theologian who ever lived. I am amazed at that decision. Second, Hill gives more space to Friedrich Schleiermacher than any other theologian. To be sure, Schleiermacher was a very important figure in the history of doctrine ... but does he really deserve more coverage than Augustine, or Aquinas, or Luther, or Calvin, or Barth? I question the relative weight given to Schleiermacher as opposed to those other figures. Third, Hill gives a superficial and shallow treatment of the orthodox school of Princeton Seminary of the 19th century. I do not believe that the work of Hodge and Warfield really was done justice by Mr. Hill.

These strange editorial decisions make it difficult for me to wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Hill's "History" takes an enormous body of research and condenses it into a tight volume with all the best bits. The book is readily accessible to an educated (though not specialist) reader, and provides a genuinely interesting overview of some of the amazing stories that have shaped the way Christianity has evolved.

At times the book dragged or got bogged down into too much detail, but for the most part it moves at a comfortable pace with just the right amount of detail to satisfy the attentive observer.

You don't need to be a scholar to get a great deal from this book, but don't expect every page to be riveting. You will have to struggle through parts.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in how Christianity has changed from what it was just decades after the apostles' deaths. (Note - it would have been even better to get a clearer picture of how the first thinkers had already changed Christianity from what it was when it was originally presented, though this may be a little too open for debate).

I really enjoyed reading this book as there is much in it that is not found in any primary book on Christian history. It is truly a fascinating book worthy of anybodys library.