Laurie Guy: Introducing Early Christianity

Laurie Guy, Introducing Early Christianity: A Topical Survey of Its Life, Beliefs & Practices (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 310 pages, ISBN 9780830826988.

In Introducing Early Christianity, Laurie Guy, a lecturer in church history at Carey Bible College in Auckland, New Zealand, and a lecturer with the School of Theology at the University of Auckland, has written a balanced but provocative, simple but scholarly account of the earliest centuries of Christianity and their nascent implications for its most developmentally formative period. It lucidly lays out the major landmarks and will serve well as an introduction to the era for those embarking on or renewing their journey into Christian history. Well-placed hints at deeper directions and their internal dynamics in the events it covers should intrigue readers enough to invite further reflective research.

Guy’s effort ambitiously aims at analyzing early Christians’ life as well as well as their beliefs and practices during the first five centuries of Christian history. Thus it is characterized more by breadth than depth. Yet it relies heavily on primary sources and does not sacrifice substance for simplicity. It is also topical rather than chronological, though in turn investigating each of its chosen themes in a generally chronological manner. It is limited primarily to Christianity’s early development within the environs of the Roman Empire, although readily admitting its reach even early on beyond those borders. Numerous charts, graphs, and tables, suggestions for further reading, as well as a Glossary, maps, and author and subject indexes are helpful aids.

Introducing Early Christianity has an orderly and easily discernible development of its contents. After a very brief Preface, Chapter One, “If Paul Could See Us Now” looks at what Guy calls “Four Centuries of Dramatic Change,” and sets the tone for the rest of the book by comparing and contrasting the Christianity of Paul’s time with that of the next four centuries. Guy’s creative freshness shows as he invites readers to imagine Paul having something like a Rip Van Winkle experience in which he awakes after four centuries to see what had become of Christianity by then. Guy suggests that the core affirmation of Christ’s lordship remained constant while enormous shifts in day-to-day existence occurred as well. The next ten chapters examine selected topics that arise out that comparison-contrast. Chapter Two, “Second Generation Christianity,” looks at “The Churches of the Apostolic Fathers” and Chapter Three, “Suffering and Dying for God,” at “Persecution and Martyrdom.” Chapters Four and Five, “Getting Organized: Ministry and Structure” and “Getting Recognized: Emperor Constantine’s Revolution,” address the political and practical landscape of early Christianity’s development. Here one not only sees seeds of current ideas on relations of Church and State, but also how they eventually affected, for good or for ill, the shape and substance of the Early Church.

In Chapter Six, “Radical Discipleship,” Guy goes over the rise of “Asceticism and Monasticism”. Chapter Seven is on “Women in the Early Church” through the categorical question of “Liberated or Confined?” Chapters Eight and Nine, “The Emerging Shape of Worship: Eucharist and Liturgy” and “Getting In and Staying In: Baptism and Penance” examine how pastoral needs contributed to early sacramental developments. Chapter Ten, “Exploring the Paths: The Development of Early Christian Doctrine,” and Chapter Eleven, “Mapping the Mind of the Church: Orthodoxy Defined,” focus on how debate and controversy contributed to the formation of what came to be accepted as standard Christian beliefs. A very brief Conclusion sums up Guys main observations.

Essentially, Guy emphasizes that the first several centuries of Christianity’s history were times of “dramatic change”. These changes include movement from a charismatic dynamism to a hierarchical institutionalism, from a fundamental simplicity of faith to an increasingly complex and sophisticated doctrinal system, from a largely lay movement to specialized classification of clergy and ascetic and monastic separatism. For Guy, these and other changes largely illuminate the Church’s legitimate attempt to develop and clarify its boundaries. They “point back to the original gospel as well as on from the original gospel.” Yet they also remind Christians of subsequent centuries of the need to “always be reforming if it is to remain true to its beginnings.” Here one can easily get an impression that Guy is suggesting something like an unchanging standard in Christianity’s earliest roots that is nevertheless constantly changing in its fruitful application in each unfolding age. If so, perhaps the chief lesson to be learned of early Christian history would thus be something like: Christianity should always be faithful to its origins but flexible in its applications.

Pentecostals and Charismatics in particular may find Guy’s treatment of charismatic dynamism and hierarchical institutionalism especially interesting. Transition from a primarily charismatic mode of being to a more institutional ethos is a key theme, and affects all of the Church’s faith and life, notably including leadership and worship. Guy concludes that a “sense of direct Spirit inspiration persisted in the postapostolic church alongside increasing institutionalization.” However, Church leadership eventually resolved these conflicting values in favor of the latter by making bishops “arbiters” of the Spirit’s power. The “domestication of charismatic leadership” observes Guy, is part of a repetitive pattern for religious movements—at least for those that last. A certain amount of institutionalism is inevitable for survival. Plainly put, coherence and influence demand central direction. Guy insightfully opines that the challenge for institutionalized religion is to weld the “earlier vitality and vision” into “a stable organization.” Not surprisingly, vitality and stability are both necessary for the Church’s continued growth and good health.

Yet is it really as simple as affirming both the charismatic and the administrative? This welding together can be incredibly problematic. The two are so often in tension. Unchecked charisma can careen out of control. Authority tends to dominate all else. Thus, in actual practice Christianity historically seems to go through alternate, unending cycles of empowering but disruptive charismatic activity and calming but cooling hierarchal interventionism. Freedom and order are always at odds. Do the modern Pentecostal and Charismatic movement offer a potential resolution of this enduring dilemma? Can a movement intentionally founded on rediscovery of charisma mature into institutional status without loss of its initial energy? Or will Pentecostalism retrace the erroneous path of the Early Church, reenacting its eventual diminishment of charisma in favor of safer roads? In other words, will Pentecostalism “burn out?” Or, conversely, will it “burn up”? Will it eventually consume itself out of existence with repetitive, and, increasingly, radical attempts to duplicate, or orchestrate, earlier religious experiences? The final verdict is still out. The movement has become huge and influential, but is still, in a sense, immature and impressionable. In any case, apparently contemporary Pentecostals and Charismatics would do well to refuse a false choice between gifts and government, but rather attempt to integrate both for a balanced and powerful Church (cf. 1 Co 12-14).

Guy’s insightful account of women’s ambiguous roles in the early Church certainly seems apropos for contemporary Pentecostalism (cf. Acts 2:17-18). According to Guy, after the arguably “radical and women-affirming ministry of Jesus” the Church soon compromised with “pervasive cultural attitudes” consequently seriously limiting women’s roles. In this case, the Church tragically lost the healthy tension between the gospel and society. Is Pentecostalism following this same path? Early on in its existence modern Pentecostalism was unabashedly influenced by prominent women in ministry. That Spirit-anointed egalitarianism dramatically declined as the movement sought and achieved a measure of cultural acceptance and respect. Oddly enough, in the twenty-first century, the general society and many churches are now advocating affirmation of females in unlimited roles; but some segments of Pentecostalism are offering resolute resistance. Will Pentecostalism recover its roots? Will it cave into culture? The issue of women in ministry may represent a case study in Pentecostalism’s ability to adapt and apply biblical and historical faith and values to complex and difficult contemporary issues.

Introducing Early Christianity, by Laurie Guy, is an informative and relevant study. It is well written, and engages several significant issues. As an introductory survey it does not claim to be exhaustive. Some topics are not covered, or barely covered. For examples, one will not find chapters on economics or pacifism. Yet overall, it is a fine overview and should be a welcome addition to any history library.

Reviewed by Tony Richie

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