Phronema Volume 30(2), 2015

Timothy Dowley, ed. Introduction to the History of Christianity,

Second Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. 616 pages.
ISBN 978 0 8006 9969 7.

Historiography is a slippery undertaking. This discipline has for many

decades been affected by positivism, a pretence towards the objective
accumulation of facts that presupposes the elision of the role of the
historian, his/her opinions, bias, etc. But since the historian, as a
conscious, thinking subject is the agent through whom these ostensibly
objective facts are filtered, and, more importantly, interpreted, then
something of his or her disposition always conditions the final outcome
of their work. Hence, the historian’s ‘objective’ standards can often be
dubious, which is even more so the case in his or her approach towards
matters of spirituality. This is because the Enlightenment project within
which this discipline was refined demarcated sharply (and aggressively)
between science and religion – the study of history belongs to the
former, and theology to the latter. But are contemporary faith groups
not entitled to their own assessments of history, to explore the past in
a way that is existentially meaningful for them and that will determine
their future? Of course they are, and in its ‘Preface,’ The Introduction
to the History of Christianity, a comprehensive volume contributed to
by sixty-five scholars from various fields, promises just that, for “[it]
is written largely by scholars who are Christians, and who write with a
sympathetic understanding that breathes life into their accounts” (18).

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Its ‘Study Companion’ volume, compiled and edited by Beth Wright,

includes excerpts from primary sources taken from various epochs
and divided into sections that correspond to the consecutive parts of
the History. Returning to the History proper, the first part of the work
covering ‘Beginnings AD 1-325’ (23-102) is indeed refreshing from this
point of view, because one is exposed to a treatment of early Christianity
by faithful persons who are not interested in denigrating the religion, as
has so often been the case in the academy. Whilst historicist trends are
evident in the work insofar as it treats the Christian story as beginning
with the birth of Christ, and not earlier (since He is the alpha and omega
of the whole cosmos, much can be said for His presence in the world
before the incarnation),1 nevertheless it starts off promisingly, until one
realises that the contributors to this work have a particular bias, one that
precludes any Churches that might construe themselves as ‘traditional,’
including Orthodoxy.

Generally speaking, this bias seems ‘Protestant,’ but I alternate

between referring to it as Protestant and as ‘Evangelical.’ In ascribing
these terms to the bias, I do not wish to criticise Protestantism or
Evangelicalism per se. Instead, I am highlighting the problems with
applying such approaches unilaterally to Christian history whilst
claiming to represent Christianity (and thus, all Christians everywhere)
in general. Being a variegated movement, Protestantism is in any case
difficult to reduce to a defining characteristic, but since Evangelicalism
– one of its offshoots – adheres to a Bibliocentrism (or Biblicism) that
I demonstrate below is in fact a core feature of the History’s approach,
then the latter term is indeed apt. In any case, one gets hints of this
bias almost immediately with references to the cherishing of relics as
superstitious (56): the disjuncture between the teaching of the apostles
and the “orthodoxy about which theologians wrote,” which are “not the
same” (77);2 and the criticism of saints including Ignatius of Antioch,
described herein as “neurotic” (79), and Cyril of Alexandria, presented as
implacably hostile and a “violent controversialist” (133). To these claims

1 Revelation 1:8, 22:13.

2 This is asserted in a section dealing with the writings of St Justin Martyr (77).

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are added the following presuppositions about the nature of the Church:
that by the early second century, “the Spirit-gifted leadership had largely
disappeared” (86); that the growth of the cult of saints represents “another
example of the blending of old paganism with Christianity” (107); and that
“[i]n the Byzantine East, once the doctrine that the Emperor was above
the church had been established, it was never effectively challenged”
(109). Later, within the context of an analysis of the formulation of the
creed during the council of Nicaea, it decries that “[t]echnical terms
without biblical origins” were used which resulted in people frequently
appealing “to Scripture to confirm their theology, rather than decide it”
(118). The giving of “critical importance” to “non-biblical terms” is
reiterated as problematic, insofar as it indicates the extent to which the
Nicene council “introduced a new kind of orthodoxy” (120). Beyond
the council, the Trinitarian formulations of the Cappadocian Fathers
Sts Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory the Theologian
are described rather unsympathetically as too “complex, and at points
controversial,” and, in relation to a particular analogy, misleading (128-
29). The mysticism of St Dionysius the Areopagite, known in scholarship
as Pseudo-Dionysius is described as “having secular Greek roots […]
rather than using biblical concepts” (207). Later, in the outline of the
dispute between Nestorius and St Cyril over the former’s dissociative
Christology that implied that in the One Christ there were two (or even
three) subjects, Nestorius is described as having been “condemned more
for ecclesiastical than doctrinal reasons” (133) whilst Cyril is charged
with being a “ruthless antagonist” (135). The spiritual experiences of
ascetics are rendered as purely psychological, fostering “hallucinations”
(170) as well as contributing to “a double standard, with a spiritual elite
set above the general level of Christians” (169). Indicatively, the chapter
on ‘The Eastern Church’ (202-214) includes more stereotypes, that in the
fourth and fifth centuries “the church began to regard correct belief as
much more important than correct behaviour” (206) and that, because of
this, “there was no immediate transformation of society” (207). Jumping
to a later period, it is asserted that during the iconoclastic controversy
in Byzantium the ‘iconodules’ “consisted largely of monks and other
ascetics, together with their uneducated and superstitious followers from

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the general population” (211). To this imputation of ignorance to the

Byzantines is later added a further generalisation of the Russians, for
whom the primary reason for converting to Orthodoxy “was aesthetic,
rather than intellectual or moral” (272).

In contrast to this depiction of persons, events and experiences

sacred to Orthodoxy in various historical periods, a favourable disposition
towards the Reformation, and, the person and works of Martin Luther
in particular, is made clear in part four of the book on ‘Renewal and
Reform 1500-1650’ (293-366) where the many events that are depicted
as preceding and preparing the way for the Reformation, such as the
‘discovery’ of the new world and the flourishing of the printing-press
(300), are mentioned only insofar as they fall “within the lifetime of
Luther” (295). When Luther is finally given the spotlight, he is introduced
as follows: “More books have been written about Luther, the great German
Reformer, than about any figure in history except Jesus Christ” (304).
Indeed, the chapters on Luther and the Reformation occupy the centre of
the book, the veritable axis around which all the other information turns,
so as to give one the impression that it was not until this period that the
Gospel was rediscovered in the Scriptures or the Bible, which was given
the inordinate emphasis that many Protestants and Evangelicals today
still ascribe to it. This is the “Word of God” (308, 309), a holy book that,
whilst read in the past through the lens of various layers of interpretation
– adumbrated as “the literal, the spiritual, allegorical, and anagogical” –
nevertheless was not, according to one contributor, understood plainly
by the average believer, at least not until the Reformation (309). With
the Reformation, one could experience Christ directly through the Bible,
without the need for “the Virgin Mary as intercessor, the clergy as priests,
and the departed saints as intercessors” (308). I will stop my analysis
of the Reformation as presented in this book here. For whilst it does go
on to treat its radical manifestations, the Counter-Reformation by the
Roman Catholics, and other historical trajectories taken by the various
Christian denominations as they split apart from one another from this
point onwards, nevertheless a preponderant emphasis is given in later
chapters to those variants that adhered more-or-less to the Bibliocentrism

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that began with the Reformers. Thus, whether referring to the birth of
Methodism with great John Wesley (397) or the mass evangelism of Billy
Graham (515), one is left with the same impression, namely, that genuine
Christianity is most authentically expressed in such manifestations. Since
this book has made the audacious claim of being written ‘by Christians,
for Christians,’ I am compelled to address the misrepresentations of
the history of the Orthodox Church contained therein, and intend to be
nuanced in my approach towards the spirit with which the book was
written and the spirit of Orthodoxy, which, since claims were made about
its past, deserves an opportunity to address their legitimacy.

Drawing from both experience and the Scriptures, the Orthodox

Church extols the Trinitarian God revealed in the dispensation of the Son
or Word (Logos) of God – the agent of creation of the universe and all it
contains (John 1:1-5) – who in “these last days” (Hebrews 1:1) assumed
humanity as the person of Jesus Christ (Jn 1:14), founded the Church as
his own body (1 Corinthians 12:27-31) and delivered to it the faith “once
for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Unlike modern Evangelical
traditions that affirm that Christianity or the Church is based on the Bible,
the Orthodox have it the other way around: that the Scriptures, whilst
also constituting the ‘word’ of God, insofar as they testify to (but do not
exhaust) the ‘Word’ himself, nevertheless belong to a particular context,
namely the ecclesial framework – the body of Christ – that produced
these divinely inspired and venerable representations of the experience
of the saints.3 Thus the living Word – the agent of creation – and His
Church/the saints precede the Scriptures that are written for the ecclesial
framework. This does not diminish the importance of the Scriptures.
Rather, it highlights the conviction of Orthodox Christians that Christ
was (and is) still present amongst them, and could be experienced
both via the Scriptures and all the other facets of an ongoing ecclesial
tradition. Functioning within the parameters of this word’s etymology

3 My position here is the outcome of various suggestions made by the Protopresbyter

Dr Doru Costache during our informal conversations at St Andrew’s Theological
College.

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– traditio, meaning “delivery”4 – of those sacred ‘tools’ that can effect

the transformation of persons into Christians, tradition, which is passed
on from generation to generation, includes the mode of initiation into
and participation in Christ’s body (baptism, frequent participation in the
Eucharist), the right manner with which to interpret the Scriptures (such
as “the literal, the spiritual, allegorical, and anagogical” mentioned at
309), good works and the general cultivation of the life in Christ. This
way of life was preserved by the inner, mystagogical experience of the
Church and its external administration, which very early on organised
itself around bishops as successors to the apostles, and established the
ordained ministry of priests and deacons/deaconesses, with the Scriptures
attesting to these developments.5

In fact, the Orthodox Church has never traditionally used the term
‘Bible’ for the Scriptures, since our faith is not based on a book, but on
the living Christ who inspired their composition and who is immediately
experienced by the saints. These saints, rejected by modern Evangelicals
as either existentially inferior to the ‘golden age figures’ of the earliest
Christian communities (who are still not acknowledged as holy, but
nevertheless are superior to later ‘theologians’ – p. 77) or not recognised
as intercessors (308), testify to the fact that the Spirit had not left the
Church (86), since saints existed both within the official hierarchy (in the
case of holy bishops, priests, deacons and deaconesses, etc.) and outside
it (as in the case of the many martyrs and ascetics of both genders, and so
on). None of these saints, however, fell outside of the ecclesial framework,
that is, in fact, both hierarchical and egalitarian.6 The hierarchy (objected
to on p. 308) is meant, in theory and in practice, to guide Christians to the

4 Lewis and Short define traditio as “delivery,” “a teaching, instruction” or “a

saying handed down from former times.” Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short,
A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891) 1883. For this reason, it
is helpful to observe the Greek correspondent of this word, παράδοσις, which
is more consistent with its etymology to ‘hand over,’ ‘transmit’ etc. G. W. H.
Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961) 1014.
5 1 Timothy 3:8, 4:14, 5:17; Titus 1:5.
6 I thank Fr Doru Costache for highlighting this in his Patristics Studies lectures at
St Andrew’s.

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one and the same encounter with Christ experienced not only by members
of the hierarchy, but by charismatics and the many other saints within the
ecclesial framework. Indeed, the fact that some Christians could (and
still can) experience Christ more directly than others has nothing to do
with elitism (169), but a sincere acknowledgement of Christ’s own words
that there are few who find the narrow gate that leads to life (Matthew
7:13-14), which is best crossed by those who “take up their cross” and
follow Him (Mt 16:24-25) in order to be perfected (Mt 5:48): in other
words, by those who undertake a degree of asceticism (prayer, fasting,
self-control) on the Christian journey, an asceticism that may lead, by
grace, to sainthood, which is nothing other than a conformance to the
likeness of Christ. It is precisely this form of asceticism – praised and
encouraged by St Paul throughout his epistles7 – that the Reformation
abandoned, showing a selective approach to the Bible that is inconsistent
with the fact that it was meant to be taken for granted as God’s ‘Word.’

Here, we must address the fact that those who undertake a

strenuous ascetic routine experience reality very differently. The early
sayings from the desert and the hagiographical and philokalic literature
demonstrate that, either on account of the closer proximity of certain
persons to Christ, or as a challenge set by Him to bring them closer to
himself, the Lord – having already defeated Satan and his demons in
His person – nevertheless permits Christians to be tempted by them for
the sake of their spiritual transformation. In the volume in question,
these temptations are described as psychological hallucinations (170);
but the experience of the Church, since Christ’s time (as reflected in the
Scriptures),8 demonstrates the reality of such experiences that have been
intrinsic to the process of spiritual transformation from the outset and

7 Asceticism is described by St Paul chiefly in terms of mortifying the ‘old person’

(Romans 6:8 and 13, 13:12-23; 2 Corinthians 4:16; Galatians 5:24; Ephesians
4:25-31; Colossians 3:5-9) and, having put on Christ (Rom 13:14; Gal 3:27),
renewing oneself through knowledge of God (Col 3:10-11), watchful prayer
(Eph 6:18), self-control (Gal 5:16-21) and cultivation of good deeds/love (Rom
12:9-21; 13:8-10) in self-sacrificial service to God and one’s neighbour (2 Cor
6:4-10).
8 See Mark 5:1-20; Matthew 12:22-28.

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which, whilst appearing predominantly in monastic literature, are not

limited to such milieus. This brings me to another point. The fact that,
in later centuries, monasticism developed into an organised ‘institution,’
so that some Christians became monks or nuns and others not, has very
little to do with ‘double standards’ (169) in relation to monastics and lay
Christians, but everything to do with one’s personal circumstances and
what he or she is capable of enduring for the sake of their salvation. In
any case, the establishment of organised monasticism began in the fourth
and fifth centuries, around the same time that, according to the History
of Christianity, “the church began to regard correct belief as much more
important than correct behaviour” (206). This is not only an inherent
contradiction – since monastic life is concerned with correct behaviour
– but it is precisely within these two centuries that the theologian saints
Athanasius and Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of
Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine of Hippo
laboured both theologically and pastorally on behalf of the Church. The
saints, whether direct apostles of the Lord, or the theologians of later
centuries just mentioned, all share this in common – the love and struggle
for Christ and one’s neighbour that ‘prepared’ them for the reception
of the gift of grace. In this way, the construal of the “orthodoxy about
which theologians wrote” and the faith of the apostles as “not [being] the
same” (77) collapses, since the theologians, like the apostles, shared the
same convictions for both God and neighbour. As mentioned above, the
disjuncture between the apostles and the saints is implied in the History
of Christianity not just in relation to the theologians; but to all the saints
posterior to the apostles. Hence the construal of St Ignatius of Antioch
as “neurotic” (79) and likewise the adverse comments about St Cyril,
who is denigrated in this book along the lines of the secular portrait
that emerged in the Enlightenment that, I have elsewhere demonstrated,
constitutes a novel construct that has no resonance with the traditional
image of him as a holy person (and promoted by the Church since his
own epoch).9 In relation to Ignatius, we know that in his case, as in so

9 Mario Baghos, ‘Ecclesial Memory and Secular History in the Conflicting

Representations of Cyril of Alexandria: An Apology for the Saint’ Phronema
29:2 (2014) 87-125.

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many others, the saint testified to an immediate experience of Jesus,10

just like the apostles did during the Lord’s earthly sojourn, and likewise
St Paul after the ascension (Acts 9, 23:11). St Ignatius also happened to
be a bishop, which again testifies to the fact that the Holy Spirit did not
depart the Church’s leadership after the apostles had died (as suggested
in History at 86). This is evidenced also by the martyrdom of another
Christian bishop, Polycarp of Smyrna, who is depicted in the account
of his martyrdom as deified on a pyre: “his flesh burning but like bread
baking or like gold and silver being refined in a furnace. For we also
perceived a very fragrant odor, as if it were the scent of incense or of
some other precious spice.”11 After his death, St Polycarp’s relics were
cultivated,12 a practice objected to above as superstitious (56). In fact, the
author of Polycarp’s martyrology anticipates the Protestant concern over
relic veneration many centuries before the Reformation took place by
depicting a pagan in the crowd as suggesting that the Roman magistrate
not give up the saint’s body, for the Christians “may abandon the crucified
one and begin to worship this man,” to which the author responds in the
text:

...we will never be able either to abandon the Christ who suffered
for the salvation of the whole world of those who are saved, the
blameless on behalf of sinners, to worship anyone else. For this
one, who is the Son of God, we worship, but the martyrs we love
as disciples and imitators of the Lord, as they deserve, on account
of their matchless devotion to their own King and Teacher. May
we also become their partners and fellow disciples!13

Despite the exaggerated approach to relics, including the very profitable

commerce associated with the practice of veneration, evidenced by the
10 This is evident in his title θεοφόρος, which means “God-carrier” or bearer, and
to his repeated, intimate references to the Lord Jesus in his writings. Ignatius
to the Magnesians in Ignatius of Antioch, The Letters, trans. Alistair Stewart
(Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013) 44-45.
11 J. R. Harner and J. B. Lightfoot (trans.), The Martyrdom of Polycarp 15 in The
Apostolic Fathers, 2nd Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989)
141.
12 The Martyrdom of Polycarp 18 (Harner and Lightfoot 142).
13 The Martyrdom of Polycarp 17 (Harner and Lightfoot 142).

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Medieval Catholic West – to which Martin Luther rightly objected –

what we see in the early Church is a desire for Christians to be near the
presence of God residing in the saints. Here, there is no trace of the “old
paganism” (107), but an acknowledgment that God continues to abide
in his Church, a belief mitigated in the Medieval West when the sharp
division between the supernatural and natural realms presupposed that
God subsists in the former, and humans in the latter (whereas, in the
East, God was considered as paradoxically transcendent according to his
nature, and immanent according to his grace). For the Orthodox Church,
the supernatural and natural realms – if we can call them that – intersect.
The God who is above the creation remains within it, guiding his servants
towards salvation. Since God is within all things – and especially makes
his presence known in the Church – and the Church’s saints are within
God (by grace), then the saints continue to abide in him and pray for the
Church on its behalf.

For the Orthodox Church, the experience of God is manifested

primarily in the saints as the ones who are receptacles of grace; but, in
its holistic vision, this does not preclude the manifestation of God in the
Scriptures, the aspects of the Church’s tradition enunciated above, the
writings of the saints, and even the entire creation. For Christians that limit
their entire experience exclusively to the literal rendition of the Bible, this
is incomprehensible, and accounts for the unsympathetic treatment of the
Cappadocians (128-29), who, to give an example, in their employment
of the Greek philosophical terms οῦσία and ὑπόστασις in order to
articulate their experience of God as Trinity, transformed these terms
in the process. Hence, the former term was identified exclusively with
the Trinitarian God’s essence and the latter with personhood, precluding
thereby the Sabellian modalism that was considered as undermining the
full reality of each person of the Trinity and impairing the knowledge
and experience of the faithful. In light of this Cappadocian maneuver,
we can discern that for Orthodoxy faith and life are inter-related. Correct
belief can impact the transformation of the Christian in his or her journey.
To articulate this belief, often the saints would use non-biblical terms
that were interpreted according to the spirit of the faith “once and for all

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delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3), but there were no concerns regarding
the use of non-biblical language, since the Scriptures were considered
as pointing towards – and not exhaustive of – the immediate experience
of Christ within the ecclesial tradition. To echo St Paul, it was the spirit
that interpreted the letter, not the other way round (2 Corinthians 3:6).
This same Christian spirit inspired the saintly author known today as
Pseudo-Dionysius, whose attempt to communicate the experience of the
Church by using the forms of Neoplatonic expression that he nevertheless
infused with Christian content, is unjustifiably described in the History as
‘secular’ and unbiblical (207).

So far we have seen that the Introduction to the History of

Christianity is based on the Protestant and/or Evangelical misconception
that the Bible is the sole authority and means by which a believer can
experience Christ, and that this has led to a misconstrual of Orthodox
history and tradition, including the experience of the saints, their
veneration as participants in and intercessors to Christ, and the positive
appraisal of their lives and works (which are related). Since the Orthodox
Church flourished in the Byzantine empire, it was noted above that
the book presupposes that this flourishing necessarily denoted the
subjugation of the Church to the state. The History rightly delineates
the notion of divine kingship that was applied by Eusebius of Caesarea
in his depiction of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to
Christianity, which construed the latter as “the earthly image of the
Logos,” nevertheless it errs in asserting that “[i]nevitably the emperors
became supreme in church as well as state” in the Byzantine context
(124). This is a common misconception amongst scholars, who assess
the development of the Church from a mere institutional or external point
of view and, in relation to the ecumenical councils, assume that “it was
always the Emperor who called [them] and presided over” them (203).
In fact, the uniformity of Christian belief is in this section construed as
utterly dependent upon the emperor, who was free to call councils and
depose heretics and schismatics at will (203). This ostensible closeness
between Church and state resulted in “secular events often directly”
influencing “the development of Christianity” (208), one such example

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being iconoclasm, which is described as stemming from the failure of

average Christians “to distinguish between the holy object or holy person
and the spiritual reality it stood for,” leading them to “idolatry” (210).
Once the iconoclastic emperors initiated their program of destroying
icons, it was, as mentioned above, the “uneducated and superstitious”
amongst the Byzantines who flocked to their defence. This defence is
articulated on purely didactic lines, assisting the believer to worship
Christ, and reminding them to respect the saints (211).

I shall take these topics on the Church and state point by point
in order to indicate their inaccuracies. Firstly, the fact that the Eastern
Roman state adopted Christianity as its official religion did not necessarily
mean that the latter became subject to the former, or that the emperor
became the ‘head of the Church’ (124); as in fact did occur, for example,
with the Church of England in the sixteenth century. Irrespective of
the fact that emperors styled themselves as God’s representatives, the
saints – who we have seen above most authentically represent ecclesial
tradition and are thus the true representatives of Christ – were prompted
on many occasions to defend the faith from imperial interference and in
spite of the threat of persecution. There are so many examples of this
in the Byzantine context that here I will name only a few: the defence
of the Nicaean spirit by Sts Hosius of Cordova, Athanasius the Great,
Pope Liberius of Rome, Eusebius of Vercelli, Basil the Great, Gregory
the Theologian and others over-and-against the Arianising tendencies
of emperors Constantius II and Valens (and, for some of these figures,
the pagan proclivities of Julian); the persecution of St John Chrysostom
by the self-aggrandising empress Eudoxia, and the persecution of Sts
Maximus the Confessor and Pope Martin I of Rome by the Monothelite
emperor Constans II. In each of these cases, the Church was represented
by (and continues to venerate) its saintly heroes over-and-against the
imperial establishment, meaning that the statement in the History that
in Byzantium “once the doctrine that the Emperor was above the church
had been established, it was never effectively challenged” (109) is
redundant. Secondly, although ecumenical councils were often called
by emperors or empresses, in most cases these rulers were petitioned

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by ecclesiastical figures or responded to problems affecting the Church.

The rulers did not have unilateral power (203) over the proceedings and
their outcomes, which were always decided by the bishops in assembly,
and then promulgated by the ruler throughout his/her dominion as law.
And finally, in relation to iconoclasm: the Protestant problem with
images is very well known, based on a literalist reading of the decalogue
anchored in the Bibliocentrism of some of its traditions and in line with
the Carolingian rejection of Byzantine iconology, mainly based on the
confusion between adoratio and veneratio. The Byzantines, whose
tradition was more holistic and nuanced, always distinguished between
the veneration of images that, on account of their having been inscribed
with the name of a saintly figure, point towards and even participate in
that figure (without being identified with him or her as such), and the
worship which was due to God alone. The mentality underpinning such
a position has to do with the fact that for the Byzantines – as for the
contemporary Orthodox – the spiritual world and the terrestrial were
intertwined, especially within the Church, the body of Christ. This means
that the saints are considered as close to God by his grace, interceding for
us to the Lord – and that is why they are venerated, in icons or otherwise.
As for the fact that such a position was held only by the “uneducated and
superstitious followers from the general population” (211), one wonders
if the contributor of this particular section ever read the writings of the
erudite iconodule theologians St John of Damascus and St Theodore
the Studite, or if they realised that three-hundred million plus Orthodox
Christians actually continue to venerate images of saints for the reasons
I just outlined, a number which includes highly educated converts to
Orthodoxy from heterodox ‘Western’ denominations.

Historiography is a slippery undertaking. When approached

with the pretence to account for the entire history of Christianity,
which includes many traditions that still draw on elements addressed in
this book, one must either be sensitive to each and every one of these
traditions, or say nothing at all. Although one can find in this volume
solid raw material regarding the beginnings of the Church (pages 23-
102), and especially concerning Western traditions that are addressed

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according to their own merits, the editor should have made it clear from
the outset that this is a particular reading of the history of Christianity,
and not representative of how other Christians, such as the Orthodox –
whose disposition towards the Church is, as demonstrated above, very
different – would view that history.

Mario Baghos
St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College

212