Gods and the One God by Robert M. Grant (review)

542 BOOK REVIEWS Forty years later, Pope Pius XI realized the atfaimpts of some writers to attribute the Church's social teaching on property to spurious sources when he wrote: Let this be noted particularly by those seekers after novelties who launch against the Church the odious calumny that she has allowed a pagan concept of ownership to creep into the teachings of her theologians and that another concept must be substituted, which in their astounding ignorance they call ' Christian ' (Quadragesimo Anno 46). Benedictine College .Atchison, Kansas MATTHEW HABIGER, 0.S.B. Gods and the One God. By ROBERT M. GRANT. Vol. 1 of the Library of Early Christianity (Wayne A. Meeks, General Editor). Philadelphia : Westminster Press, 1986. Pp. 211. $18.95. No one is more qualified that Robert M. Grant to discuss the relations between early Christianity and ifa classieal environment. As, the author of two important introductions to the New Testament, .Augustus to Constantine , The Early Christian Doctrine of God, Early Christianity and Society , Gnosticism and Early Christianity, and much more, Grant brings the fruits of a lifetime of scholarship to his task. It is cause for special rejoicing that he has produced a book which the beginning student as well as the specialized scholar can read. In this review I want to raise some questions and make some criticisms, but let it be clear a,t the outset that this is an important and valuable book. Beginning with a discussion of the references to pagan religion in the Book of Acts, Grant then surveys how, around the time of Christ, many gods were moving from the East to Rome. A third chapter looks at attacks on idolatry in the New Testament and other early Christian texts. That analysis leads into discussions of the functions and myths of various classical deities and the philosophical views of God in the ancient world. Finally, a series of chapters begins with the Christian doctrine of God and then traces the dev,elopment of Christology from its beginnings through several centuries (with special emphasis on how that development took shape in Antioch) to the culminating formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Grant has always written in a spare, clean style most scholars can only envy; this is one of the reasons for the popularity in the classroom of his BOOK REVIEWS 548 introductions to the New Testament. That style makes this work suitable even for beginning s.tudents, though attention to such an audience's background seems uneven. For example, Justin Martyr gets clearly introduced: " The first significant Christian apologist was Justin Martyr, who wrote at Rome around the year 150" (p. 87). But two pages earlier we were suddenly reading about Philo without any sueh introduction, without even locating him in Alexandria. Again, one passage concludes with the statement that, "in the second and third centuries, all ran the risk of dynamistic or modalistic l\fonarchianism " (p. 111), and another refers to " a Spanish Priscillianist" (p. 151), but such terms are never defined. Theologically oriented readers may grow impatient with some chapters. Grant has the hisforian's passion for the clearly established fact. Thus his second chapter sets out at some length the evidence for the date of the first worship in or near Rome of the Baal of Sarepta, Asclepius, the Great Mother, Isis, Serapis, Dionysius, Mithras, and the God of Israel. Later on (pp. 114ff), Grant shows how many deities, not just Zeus, could take on the attributes of cosmic creator-the case is made for Apollo, Athena, Dionysius, Hermes, and Isis. In both cases, examples seem multiplied past the point where we learn anything of more than antiquarian importance. On the other hand, the survey of Greek philosophy begins with the pre-Socratics and then puzzlingly skips to the pseudo-Aristotelian On the Heavens and the writings of the middle Platonists. Appeals by others to Plato appear again and again in later chapters, but no.t an account of Plato's own views. Greek philosophy without Plato and Aristotle does seem a bit like Hamlet without the prince of Denmark. Useful as Grant's surveys are, moreover, the early chapters lack the overarching vision of Charles Cochrane...