The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (review)

Henry Chadwick's latest book is a contribution to the Oxford History of the Church, a series edited by Henry and his brother Owen. This volume in the series is a 700-page survey of the development of Christianity from Jesus through to the seventh century. Throughout, Chadwick continues to demonstrate that he knows the textual evidence with extraordinary sureness and has an almost incredible command of personalities and places. Most of us can only hope to aspire to a fraction of his knowledge. Professor Chadwick also displays here his wonderful ability to epitomize the character of his subjects. At an Oxford Conference of some years ago, another senior British patrologist sat next to me during one of Chadwick's wonderful lectures. Just as Chadwick rose to speak, I heard in my ear, "now for another episode of 'The Church Fathers as I knew them.'" At times, reading the quick sketches of character and personality found in almost every chapter of this book, I heard the same voice in my ear. The book is thus both extremely readable and yet also a little beguiling in presenting the personalities of the era.

The volume will take its place as one of the few standard large summary accounts of early Christianity for some decades, providing an initial chronological account of people and events for the more advanced reader. I say "advanced" here because Chadwick refers to classical and Christian personalities and concepts in ways that would defeat many students encountering the field for the first time. The book divides into roughly three sections (in total there are 61 short chapters). The first 200 pages are devoted to the pre-Nicene Church. A little over the next two hundred pages focus on the fourth century with a strong but not exclusive concentration on the trinitarian controversies. The remainder of the book treats the period up to Gregory the Great in the West and Justinian in the East. Throughout, Chadwick focuses on the history of personalities and ideas (in that order, as may be seen from the prominence of names as chapter titles!). In general the book demonstrates a remarkable familiarity with the primary texts and an excellent knowledge of scholarly debates.

There are, however, some problems that demand comment. Chadwick's account is at times weak where recent scholarly work demands reconsideration of basic descriptive categories and narrative assumptions. The fourth-century chapters offer some examples. In the first place, Chadwick's account demonstrates his impressive familiarity with the sources and with scholarship through the 1990s. One can quibble with occasional points, but usually this is only a matter of Chadwick's having taken a particular position on a disputed point. There are, however, some wider problems. He still retains a strong division between "Arians" and their opponents despite widespread scholarly demonstration of the problematic status of ancient heresiological categories in the fourth century. Similarly, his treatment of the background to these controversies is a little simplistic. He observes antecedents—behind Arius stands Origen, behind Athanasius Irenaeus—but one gets little sense of the immediate theological contexts within which this dispute occurred. "East" and "West" are also deployed in a largely uncritical manner, speaking, for instance, of "eastern" and "western" councils at Serdica 343 even though the surviving lists of signatories (and Chadwick pauses to indicate the relevant sources) indicate that a large proportion of the "westerners" were from Greece and the Balkans. Other examples could be found.

These concerns, however, point us to a larger problem with the text. Only a few chapters focus on thematic analysis of a particular issue or dispute; the discussion of religious intolerance constituting chapter 33, liturgy in chapter 33, and asceticism in chapter 42 are good examples. But it is notable that the last two of these examples take the form of...