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In chapters on topics including early Christian worship, Christian poetry and the spiritual life, the Trinity, Christ, the Bible, and icons, Wilken shows that the energy and vitality of early Christianity arose from within the life of the Church. While early Christian thinkers drew on the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of the ancient world, it was the versatile vocabulary of the Bible that loosened their tongues and minds and allowed them to construct the world anew, intellectually and spiritually. These thinkers were not seeking to invent a world of ideas, Wilken shows, but rather to win the hearts of men and women and to change their lives.
Early Christian thinkers set in place a foundation that has endured. Their writings are an irreplaceable inheritance, and Wilken shows that they can still be heard as living voices within contemporary culture.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
There are not enough superlatives in my vocabularly,
This review is from: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Hardcover)
This book is one of the best on my shelves. I have become addicted to the writings that come out of the early church as a result of reading this excellent work by Wilken.I had read some of the church fathers before I picked up this book. I was familiar with the Didache and Origen for example. What this book does is put these writers in an historical context for the reader. Whereas before I was reading the Didache and others through the prism of my experience as a modern Catholic, this volume helped me to place my reading of these works in an historical context, which deepened my understanding the early texts significantly. Besides this historical context, I found that this book was good for my faith as well. In light of modern rationalism, many of us reject the Eucharist and baptism. As moderns we believe these sacraments are mere symbols, and not efficacious works of God's grace. To see the gulf between us and early Christianity is truly humbling. Dr. Wilken has given us a scholarly overview of the writings of the early church fathers in context. An outstanding, intellectually honest piece of work.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Remembering who we are,
By
This review is from: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Hardcover)
Robert Wilken has given us a beautiful book. In the preface, he mentions that he originally intended the book to be a sequel to his earlier excellent _The Christians as the Romans Saw Them_. The first book presented the prosecution's case against early Christianity, as it were, and the new one would present the defense. But he eventually dropped the idea, because as he delved deeper into the writings of the early Church Fathers, he realized that their thinking was much too independent of Greco-Roman thought to be interpreted merely as a response to it. So the new book emerged.One of the most fascinating and instructive points of Professor Wilken's new book is his claim that Harnack and Co. were wrong to suppose that early Christian thought was thoroughly Hellenized by cultural osmosis. This of course has been the standard way of thinking since the mid-nineteenth century. But in fact, as Wilken's goes to pains to demonstrate, just the converse is true: Christianity dramatically influenced Hellenistic culture. It was Christianity that radically transformed the secular world, not the other way around. Wilken demonstrates that this radical transformation of Greco-Roman culture--which was at the same time, of course, the coming-into-its-own of Christian thought--was never primarily intellectualistic. Christianity is a religion, not a philosophy. It stresses love, compassion, service in the world, and worship, and these elements define the parameters and shape the content of early Christian thought. Wilken works through this claim by examining, chapter by chapter, how the early Christians viewed (for example) worship, the Resurrection, the Trinity, the Passion, and so on. Chapter 7, on "Faith," where Wilken explores the connection between knowing and loving, may be the single most beautiful and enlightening discussion in the book. Also of particular interest are the final two chapters, which deal respectively with the early Church's understanding of the moral and spiritual life. Wilken's book is informative for students of historical theology, but it's also inspiring for those readers who might wish to use it as an opportunity for lectio divina. Gracefully written, sensitively nuanced, the book is a real pearl.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow,
By David Grayson (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Hardcover)
For an excellent study of the early Christian movement, and especially their theological reflection and self-understandng, go no further! I've read a lot of books dealing with Early Christianity, and many of them turn out to be judgemental and very negative ... so frequently, these days, the authors love the heretics and think that orthodox thinkers were just the "winners," and not right. This book does an excellent job of explaining what the Early Christian Fathers actually beleived, and how they expressed those beliefs. I'm glad a bought and read this book. Give it a go!
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