A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
The First Three Thousand Years
By Diarmaid MacCulloch
Allen Lane. 1,161 pages. £35.00
ISBN 978-0-71399-869-6
(Also a BBC TV series on DVD)
This review gives an overview of both the author’s book and his six-part BBC TV series. Obviously, the latter is greatly condensed from the former — as one can see from the number of pages, it is a veritable tome! MacCulloch describes himself as a ‘gay man’ who is ‘a candid friend of Christianity’, rather than a believer.
Many readers of EN will doubtless be immediately cautious upon hearing that – while others will be mystified by the reference to ‘three’ rather than ‘two thousand years’. The answer is that MacCulloch begins by examining Greek philosophy and religion and, with regard to the former, notes that for Plato, ‘the character of true is not merely goodness, but oneness’ (p.32). He also notes that Alexander’s conquests left a linguistic and cultural legacy in the Near East (p.38), and it need hardly be said that the spread of the Greek language as the regional lingua franca was a great aid to the communication of the gospel. The chapter on Greek culture is interesting, but evangelicals will strongly object to much in the second chapter, which is dependent upon liberal biblical criticism.
