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The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God
"[A] magnificently learned, deeply felt and surprisingly pellucid set of essays."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World
"A delight to read. It is written as history ought to be, especially for nonspecialist readers."—Richard A. Kauffman, Christian Century
In this eloquent introduction to early Christian thought, eminent religious historian Robert Louis Wilken examines the tradition that such figures as St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and others set in place. These early thinkers constructed a new intellectual and spiritual world, Wilken shows, and they can still be heard as living voices in the modern world.
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.
"A delight to read. It is written as history ought to be, especially for nonspecialist readers."—Richard A. Kauffman, Christian Century
In this eloquent introduction to early Christian thought, eminent religious historian Robert Louis Wilken examines the tradition that such figures as St. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and others set in place. These early thinkers constructed a new intellectual and spiritual world, Wilken shows, and they can still be heard as living voices in the modern world.
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.
398 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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January 27, 2024
What a lovely surprise. I started this with the feeling it was a “should” read , I ended it amazed at the author’s skill in making these ideas accessible and life giving. Where I expected dry, he breathed life into these fathers even going so far as to intertwine stories from literature to explain complex ideas. I learned so much and it especially helped me in my ongoing wrestlings with the role of education in producing virtue. I feel much better knowing this has been an ongoing thought process through the ages.
October 12, 2025
A classic for a reason.
August 31, 2015
This book is not a polemic or a book of apologetics; it is instead an exposition of what early Church theologians thought about important topics in Christian belief, and how those thoughts evolved and grew. If you think all theology is merely empty wind or arguments about angels dancing on the head of a pin, this is not the book for you. But if you want to know how early Christians developed their thought about the Trinity, or theological views on Christ being simultaneously fully human and fully divine, or how they viewed faith through the prism of reason, this is the book for you.
Don’t plan on finishing this book in an evening. It’s not too long, and it’s surprisingly readable, but it benefits from careful reading and consideration—I’m sure it benefits from multiple readings, as well. Moreover, given how it’s divided into clear topics, it is easy to return to the book when considering a specific topic, whether that is Christian views on the Trinity, the resurrection of the body, or the role, origin and logic of faith in Christian belief.
While it is not intended as such, this book is also a rebuke and response to the currently fashionable New Atheist set of such imagined luminaries as Dawkins and Harris (as well as other similarly shallow thinkers on the topic such as Gibbon). A key premise, always unexamined, of the New Atheists is that Christian thought is an oxymoron, and that they have discovered this key fact as a revelation missed by all prior opponents of Christianity. “The Spirit Of Early Christian Thought” shows in detail what anyone who is not ignorant already knows, that Christian thought and reasoning has absorbed the finest minds of the West for two millennia, and from the very beginning Christian thinkers actively grappled with and definitively responded to critics (Celsus, the Emperor Julian, Porphyry) who wrote in the same vein but with infinitely more intelligence and insight than the New Atheists, who are, in any reasonable view, a bunch of supercilious clowns. In fact, Wilken wrote a prior book on the topic of the arguments of early opponents of Christianity, to which this book was initially supposed to be a type of sequel/response, but which instead developed into an independent examination of Christian thought.
The conflict between the New Atheists and Christians is not an abstract philosophical argument—it, or the issues under discussion, have very real consequences. All Western morality is premised on Christian thought and principles. And it is a very different moral code than that of non-Christian societies, since it is a pure myth that the Golden Rule has any core relevance to any religion but Christianity. The New Atheists believe that without God societies can still retain a moral core—Steven Pinker actually argues that morality is merely the outcome of people finding positive-sum games. Maybe. But more likely, as Wilken says, “Augustine’s ‘City of God’ defends a fundamental truth about human beings and about society. Only God can give ultimate purpose to our deepest convictions, for example, the dignity of the human person, and provide grounds for communal life that transcend self-interest.” An abstract core belief in human dignity (real dignity, not Anthony Kennedy “dignity”) seems an unlikely automatic outcome of positive-sum games. Human history suggests the opposite. But we’ll find out within the next fifty years or so.
In any case, apologetics or calling out silly people is not Wilken’s goal in this book, and he does neither. Rather, the core of the book, the reason for its existence, is “Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about our world and history.” When talking about this thinking, Wilken focuses on Origen; Gregory of Nyssa; Augustine; and Maximus the Confessor. These are all pre-medieval, or at least pre-High Medieval, thinkers—while later theologians, like St. Thomas Aquinas, are occasionally mentioned, the focus is on *early* Christian thought. That said, some readers may expect “early” to be first century, and that is not the case here, if for no other reason than that detailed theological exposition of most Christian topics took centuries to accomplish.
Aside from the specific topics, Wilken maintains two threads throughout the book. The first is the importance of Biblical exegesis to all these thinkers. The Bible, Old and New Testament, suffused all their analyses, even the most complex. This is in contrast to the popular Protestant view that before Martin Luther, the Bible was ignored. And this Biblical analysis was extremely focused and subtle, using both comparisons of different passages from the Bible and sophisticated reasoning, which is in contrast to the modern tendency to view each personal analysis, even of the uneducated and stupid, as equal, and to view purely literal interpretations as somehow superior. As Wilken notes, “the church fathers took it as self-evident that the words of the Bible often had multiple meanings and the plain sense did not exhaust their meaning.”
The second thread is that the Hellenization of early Christianity has been grossly overstated. In its simplest and crudest form, the idea is that the Judaic Christianity of Christ and the Apostles was hijacked by Saint Paul and his Neoplatonist progeny. Wilken doesn’t like this idea. Instead, he emphasizes the concrete roots of all early Christian thought in the Scriptures; informed sometimes, to be sure, by Greco-Roman philosophical ideas, but those ideas flavored rather than supplanted the Scriptures and traditions of the Apostles.
I personally found the discussions of the Trinity and the simultaneous divinity and humanity of Christ the most interesting. The Trinity absorbed many early thinkers, who first fit Jesus into the Trinity and later fleshed out the Spirit (though the Trinity itself was always accepted as a core Christian doctrine and mystery), relying primarily on Biblical exegesis rather than deductive reasoning—or, as Gregory of Nyssa said, “his aim is to ‘fit together’ what he learns from the Scripture with ‘conceptions that are drawn from arguments based on reason.’” This includes gems like Tertullian’s analogy of the social nature of the Trinity to the back-and-forth that occurs inside any human’s head while thinking.
Similarly, the early Christians struggled with the apparent paradox of simultaneous divinity and humanity (i.e., the hypostatic union). They saw clearly how this was essentially impossible to fully grasp and how ridiculous it seemed to non-Christians, and they addressed such objections head-on, when they weren’t contending among themselves on the issue. (For those keeping score at home, the mainstream Christian position that was converged on over the centuries is that in Christ there are two natures and two wills; each retaining its own properties, and together united in perfect harmony in one substance and in one single person).
As to faith itself, Wilken explains how Christians have always viewed faith not as some required unreasoned belief—quite the contrary. Outsiders, non-Christians or the non-religious, view religious faith as an inverse invincible ignorance. Wilken notes that Christian faith has been a key point of attack by non-Christians from the very beginning, citing Galen and Celsus, through many later thinkers. But Wilken carefully shows how Christians, from earliest times, have instead viewed faith as a combination of recognition of the testimony of reliable people who had come before, reasoning, and concrete evidence.
Wilken’s core point is that any historical (as opposed to mathematical) knowledge involves a type of faith, as Augustine said, and quotes Augustine: “Nothing would remain stable in human society if we determined to believe only what can be held with absolute certainty.” The existence of witnesses (the original meaning of “martyr”), reason, evidence, and authority (in the sense Augustine used the Latin “auctoritas,” as a person able to guarantee the validity of a legal document or action), allow Christians to conclude that their faith is not blind. Once you read this section of Wilken’s book, anybody who uses the Flying Spaghetti Monster (which lacks all four markers of Christian faith) as a counter-Christian argument will, if he thinks clearly, be duly ashamed and put that argument aside with his Hot Wheels.
That said, Wilken also acknowledges that faith is not at all a matter of pure reason, as the Manichees would have it. He has a long discussion of the role of hope and love in faith, again quoting Augustine, “If you have faith without hope and without love, you believe that he is the Christ, but you don’t believe in Christ.” And he concludes, “But in matters of religion the away to truth is not found in keeping one’s distance. It is only in loving surrender that we are able to enter the mystery of God. In the words of Richard of Saint Victor, the twelfth-century theologian and spiritual writer, ‘Where there is love, there is seeing.’ By putting itself in service of truth, faith enables reason to exercise its power in realms to which it would otherwise have no access. It is only in giving that we receive, only in loving that we are loved, only in obeying that we know.” And, of course, this is the core of Christianity. The Trinity is important but abstract to most believers’ lives. But faith itself is not, and Wilken’s book ties the entire Christian project together.
Don’t plan on finishing this book in an evening. It’s not too long, and it’s surprisingly readable, but it benefits from careful reading and consideration—I’m sure it benefits from multiple readings, as well. Moreover, given how it’s divided into clear topics, it is easy to return to the book when considering a specific topic, whether that is Christian views on the Trinity, the resurrection of the body, or the role, origin and logic of faith in Christian belief.
While it is not intended as such, this book is also a rebuke and response to the currently fashionable New Atheist set of such imagined luminaries as Dawkins and Harris (as well as other similarly shallow thinkers on the topic such as Gibbon). A key premise, always unexamined, of the New Atheists is that Christian thought is an oxymoron, and that they have discovered this key fact as a revelation missed by all prior opponents of Christianity. “The Spirit Of Early Christian Thought” shows in detail what anyone who is not ignorant already knows, that Christian thought and reasoning has absorbed the finest minds of the West for two millennia, and from the very beginning Christian thinkers actively grappled with and definitively responded to critics (Celsus, the Emperor Julian, Porphyry) who wrote in the same vein but with infinitely more intelligence and insight than the New Atheists, who are, in any reasonable view, a bunch of supercilious clowns. In fact, Wilken wrote a prior book on the topic of the arguments of early opponents of Christianity, to which this book was initially supposed to be a type of sequel/response, but which instead developed into an independent examination of Christian thought.
The conflict between the New Atheists and Christians is not an abstract philosophical argument—it, or the issues under discussion, have very real consequences. All Western morality is premised on Christian thought and principles. And it is a very different moral code than that of non-Christian societies, since it is a pure myth that the Golden Rule has any core relevance to any religion but Christianity. The New Atheists believe that without God societies can still retain a moral core—Steven Pinker actually argues that morality is merely the outcome of people finding positive-sum games. Maybe. But more likely, as Wilken says, “Augustine’s ‘City of God’ defends a fundamental truth about human beings and about society. Only God can give ultimate purpose to our deepest convictions, for example, the dignity of the human person, and provide grounds for communal life that transcend self-interest.” An abstract core belief in human dignity (real dignity, not Anthony Kennedy “dignity”) seems an unlikely automatic outcome of positive-sum games. Human history suggests the opposite. But we’ll find out within the next fifty years or so.
In any case, apologetics or calling out silly people is not Wilken’s goal in this book, and he does neither. Rather, the core of the book, the reason for its existence, is “Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about our world and history.” When talking about this thinking, Wilken focuses on Origen; Gregory of Nyssa; Augustine; and Maximus the Confessor. These are all pre-medieval, or at least pre-High Medieval, thinkers—while later theologians, like St. Thomas Aquinas, are occasionally mentioned, the focus is on *early* Christian thought. That said, some readers may expect “early” to be first century, and that is not the case here, if for no other reason than that detailed theological exposition of most Christian topics took centuries to accomplish.
Aside from the specific topics, Wilken maintains two threads throughout the book. The first is the importance of Biblical exegesis to all these thinkers. The Bible, Old and New Testament, suffused all their analyses, even the most complex. This is in contrast to the popular Protestant view that before Martin Luther, the Bible was ignored. And this Biblical analysis was extremely focused and subtle, using both comparisons of different passages from the Bible and sophisticated reasoning, which is in contrast to the modern tendency to view each personal analysis, even of the uneducated and stupid, as equal, and to view purely literal interpretations as somehow superior. As Wilken notes, “the church fathers took it as self-evident that the words of the Bible often had multiple meanings and the plain sense did not exhaust their meaning.”
The second thread is that the Hellenization of early Christianity has been grossly overstated. In its simplest and crudest form, the idea is that the Judaic Christianity of Christ and the Apostles was hijacked by Saint Paul and his Neoplatonist progeny. Wilken doesn’t like this idea. Instead, he emphasizes the concrete roots of all early Christian thought in the Scriptures; informed sometimes, to be sure, by Greco-Roman philosophical ideas, but those ideas flavored rather than supplanted the Scriptures and traditions of the Apostles.
I personally found the discussions of the Trinity and the simultaneous divinity and humanity of Christ the most interesting. The Trinity absorbed many early thinkers, who first fit Jesus into the Trinity and later fleshed out the Spirit (though the Trinity itself was always accepted as a core Christian doctrine and mystery), relying primarily on Biblical exegesis rather than deductive reasoning—or, as Gregory of Nyssa said, “his aim is to ‘fit together’ what he learns from the Scripture with ‘conceptions that are drawn from arguments based on reason.’” This includes gems like Tertullian’s analogy of the social nature of the Trinity to the back-and-forth that occurs inside any human’s head while thinking.
Similarly, the early Christians struggled with the apparent paradox of simultaneous divinity and humanity (i.e., the hypostatic union). They saw clearly how this was essentially impossible to fully grasp and how ridiculous it seemed to non-Christians, and they addressed such objections head-on, when they weren’t contending among themselves on the issue. (For those keeping score at home, the mainstream Christian position that was converged on over the centuries is that in Christ there are two natures and two wills; each retaining its own properties, and together united in perfect harmony in one substance and in one single person).
As to faith itself, Wilken explains how Christians have always viewed faith not as some required unreasoned belief—quite the contrary. Outsiders, non-Christians or the non-religious, view religious faith as an inverse invincible ignorance. Wilken notes that Christian faith has been a key point of attack by non-Christians from the very beginning, citing Galen and Celsus, through many later thinkers. But Wilken carefully shows how Christians, from earliest times, have instead viewed faith as a combination of recognition of the testimony of reliable people who had come before, reasoning, and concrete evidence.
Wilken’s core point is that any historical (as opposed to mathematical) knowledge involves a type of faith, as Augustine said, and quotes Augustine: “Nothing would remain stable in human society if we determined to believe only what can be held with absolute certainty.” The existence of witnesses (the original meaning of “martyr”), reason, evidence, and authority (in the sense Augustine used the Latin “auctoritas,” as a person able to guarantee the validity of a legal document or action), allow Christians to conclude that their faith is not blind. Once you read this section of Wilken’s book, anybody who uses the Flying Spaghetti Monster (which lacks all four markers of Christian faith) as a counter-Christian argument will, if he thinks clearly, be duly ashamed and put that argument aside with his Hot Wheels.
That said, Wilken also acknowledges that faith is not at all a matter of pure reason, as the Manichees would have it. He has a long discussion of the role of hope and love in faith, again quoting Augustine, “If you have faith without hope and without love, you believe that he is the Christ, but you don’t believe in Christ.” And he concludes, “But in matters of religion the away to truth is not found in keeping one’s distance. It is only in loving surrender that we are able to enter the mystery of God. In the words of Richard of Saint Victor, the twelfth-century theologian and spiritual writer, ‘Where there is love, there is seeing.’ By putting itself in service of truth, faith enables reason to exercise its power in realms to which it would otherwise have no access. It is only in giving that we receive, only in loving that we are loved, only in obeying that we know.” And, of course, this is the core of Christianity. The Trinity is important but abstract to most believers’ lives. But faith itself is not, and Wilken’s book ties the entire Christian project together.
October 17, 2015
Wilken’s aim—to “depict the pattern of Christian thinking as it took shape in the formative centuries of the church’s history”—was soundly achieved, and his central argument, that “Christians reasoned from . . . . history, from ritual, and from text,” was thoroughly and even eloquently demonstrated (xiv, xvii). Several features emerge as important to Wilken’s successful presentation. First, the essential characteristics of early Christian thought that Wilken proposes at the beginning recur over and over again throughout each chapter. Yet these characteristics recur naturally, giving the reader assurance that Wilken is not forcing his ideas on the data, but that these ideas emerged from the data. One clear example of this is the “omnipresence of the Bible” (xvii), which Wilken had promised at the outset: nearly every page of his book has some reference to, if not a quotation of, Scripture. Second, Wilken draws from the writings of the early Christians themselves to walk his readers through their thought processes. For example, when he discusses how the early Christians would allegorize Scripture, he gives several examples of how Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory the Great did just that (69-79). Even for readers who disagree with an allegorical hermeneutic, Wilken’s primary source examples render such allegorizing to be understandable, if not compelling. Third, Wilken seems to have really captured the spirit, not just the ideas, of the early Christians. What he says about the work of Gregory the Great is also true of Wilken’s own work: “He did not construct a world of ideas for others to admire, but one to live in” (313). Thus, while well-researched and accurate, the book is also unavoidably devotional, pulsating with the love for Christ that saturated the hearts and minds of these Christian forerunners.
Readers looking for a critique of early Christian doctrinal thought (especially from a Protestant perspective) will not find it here. While Wilken comments unfavorably on the way in which some Christians handled debates (concerning the debates about Christ’s nature he writes, “it is not an edifying history,” 112), he makes no attempt to evaluate Biblically, for example, whether the veneration of icons is right or wrong (237-261), or whether the allegorizing is a legitimate method of Biblical hermeneutics (69-77). Reviewer A. M. C. Casiday notes that Wilken bypasses the topics of monasticism and the offices of the church, but those omissions certainly can be attributed to Wilken’s primary aim of capturing the spirit of early Christian thought, not so much the structures in which this thought developed.
Conclusion
Because Wilken’s book has so effectively captured the spirit of early Christian thought, students can expect it to be foundational in orienting their future studies of this period of church history. Despite its uncritical reporting of areas in which the early Christians deviated from Scripture, students can also expect it to be an ongoing source of spiritual refreshment and inspiration. Besides these benefits, Wilken has offered tantalizing glimpses of these heroes of the faith, enticing his readers to journey back to those first centuries and make their personal acquaintance.
Readers looking for a critique of early Christian doctrinal thought (especially from a Protestant perspective) will not find it here. While Wilken comments unfavorably on the way in which some Christians handled debates (concerning the debates about Christ’s nature he writes, “it is not an edifying history,” 112), he makes no attempt to evaluate Biblically, for example, whether the veneration of icons is right or wrong (237-261), or whether the allegorizing is a legitimate method of Biblical hermeneutics (69-77). Reviewer A. M. C. Casiday notes that Wilken bypasses the topics of monasticism and the offices of the church, but those omissions certainly can be attributed to Wilken’s primary aim of capturing the spirit of early Christian thought, not so much the structures in which this thought developed.
Conclusion
Because Wilken’s book has so effectively captured the spirit of early Christian thought, students can expect it to be foundational in orienting their future studies of this period of church history. Despite its uncritical reporting of areas in which the early Christians deviated from Scripture, students can also expect it to be an ongoing source of spiritual refreshment and inspiration. Besides these benefits, Wilken has offered tantalizing glimpses of these heroes of the faith, enticing his readers to journey back to those first centuries and make their personal acquaintance.
May 16, 2024
The value of this book is that, as the title suggests, it is more of a guide to how the earliest Christians THOUGHT than it is a basic church history.
A few highlights: in the second chapter, An Awesome and Unbloody Sacrifice (this chapter alone is worth buying the book), Wilken shows clearly that early Christian worship was centered around a re-presentation of the cross, an encounter with the true body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and an entering into the one sacrifice of Calvary that transcends time and space. Read this chapter!
In the fourth chapter, Seek His Face Always, Wilken explains how we as Christians arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity. This was not a doctrine that came from thinkers in an ivory tower. Rather, he shows that our belief in the Trinity comes from the life of Christian worship and prayer from the very beginning. Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief)
If you are like me and are interested in the young earth/old earth conversation, then the sixth chapter, The End Given in the Beginning, is an amazing insight into how the early church fathers read the book of Genesis. I think that many of the silly and unnecessary debates that go on today about the first 11 chapters of Genesis would go away if we would take time to learn to read Genesis from the church fathers.
Lastly, the tenth chapter, Making This Thing Other, is a great look into how the church fathers viewed the use of pictures, statues, images, and relics of Christ and the saints. Because of their theology of the Incarnation, the historic church has always recognized that when God takes on physical matter in the Incarnation, he “makes this thing other.” Every icon of Christ, Mary, and the saints is a testament to the gospel; it is a sign that Christ has redeemed our physical world. Wilken shows how God is glorified in Christ and the saints.
Give this a read!
A few highlights: in the second chapter, An Awesome and Unbloody Sacrifice (this chapter alone is worth buying the book), Wilken shows clearly that early Christian worship was centered around a re-presentation of the cross, an encounter with the true body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and an entering into the one sacrifice of Calvary that transcends time and space. Read this chapter!
In the fourth chapter, Seek His Face Always, Wilken explains how we as Christians arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity. This was not a doctrine that came from thinkers in an ivory tower. Rather, he shows that our belief in the Trinity comes from the life of Christian worship and prayer from the very beginning. Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief)
If you are like me and are interested in the young earth/old earth conversation, then the sixth chapter, The End Given in the Beginning, is an amazing insight into how the early church fathers read the book of Genesis. I think that many of the silly and unnecessary debates that go on today about the first 11 chapters of Genesis would go away if we would take time to learn to read Genesis from the church fathers.
Lastly, the tenth chapter, Making This Thing Other, is a great look into how the church fathers viewed the use of pictures, statues, images, and relics of Christ and the saints. Because of their theology of the Incarnation, the historic church has always recognized that when God takes on physical matter in the Incarnation, he “makes this thing other.” Every icon of Christ, Mary, and the saints is a testament to the gospel; it is a sign that Christ has redeemed our physical world. Wilken shows how God is glorified in Christ and the saints.
Give this a read!
December 15, 2025
It took me until the epilogue to understand what Wilken is trying to do with this book. He's showing the dynamic way that the early church addressed and appropriated the practices, philosophies, and arts of the secular world that it grew up in. A pretty interesting and edifying read, and I probably only took home 15 percent of it. Will revisit in the future. Good work, Wilken.
May 15, 2024
This was a great book!
This book is not a chronological display of facts about the early church. It’s a topical overview of specific Fathers of the early church such as Augustine, the Cappadocians, and Maximus the Confessor to name a few, with each chapter usually highlighting one or two Fathers and diving deep into their spirituality on the topic.
Big takeaways:
-The early church was liturgical and sacramental. In the same way as today? Not sure. But surely they believed in genuine, sacred mysteries happening during the Eucharist and Baptism, full stop.
-The early church fathers were very well versed in Holy Scripture, philosophy, and literature generally. The Fathers let scripture be the lens through which they interpreted the secular philosophy of their day and of the ancients, and they did a great job of not throwing out the baby with the bath water.
-Lastly, the Fathers never did theology without these two things: a zealous love for God and a life of disciplined prayer. You can just tell from their writings that these deep theological treatises are not just intellectual works, they are deeply spiritual and full of love for God, with rich theology pouring out from that.
Will definitely be referring back to this book often!
This book is not a chronological display of facts about the early church. It’s a topical overview of specific Fathers of the early church such as Augustine, the Cappadocians, and Maximus the Confessor to name a few, with each chapter usually highlighting one or two Fathers and diving deep into their spirituality on the topic.
Big takeaways:
-The early church was liturgical and sacramental. In the same way as today? Not sure. But surely they believed in genuine, sacred mysteries happening during the Eucharist and Baptism, full stop.
-The early church fathers were very well versed in Holy Scripture, philosophy, and literature generally. The Fathers let scripture be the lens through which they interpreted the secular philosophy of their day and of the ancients, and they did a great job of not throwing out the baby with the bath water.
-Lastly, the Fathers never did theology without these two things: a zealous love for God and a life of disciplined prayer. You can just tell from their writings that these deep theological treatises are not just intellectual works, they are deeply spiritual and full of love for God, with rich theology pouring out from that.
Will definitely be referring back to this book often!
July 20, 2026
The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God summarizes and explains the systematic theology of the early Christians, mainly in the patristic period. Unlike today, when won, the illusion may have written an entire textbook on systematic theology, in the early church, it seemed to be that various theologians were experts on different subjects. While reading each of the works of the early church fathers would be greatly beneficial, this book may give you a good introduction or a summary of each belief. There is a lot we can learn from the early church. In the words of Saurav, we often think we don’t have the answers but in reality it was already answered before us by the church fathers.
October 13, 2021
Brilliant, learned, and readable set of essays that give an illuminating, though not exhaustive, overview of early Christian thought. Would definitely recommend!
December 5, 2023
Margt mjög áhugavert hér.
July 14, 2025
it wasn’t bad! i just wasnt blown away by it! was a little confused if it was supposed to be biographical or about the historical reception of the Trinity ?
August 2, 2026
Wilken aims to sketch out the development of Christian thought in various areas, and how – contra. Harnack’s theory of a “hellenization of Christianity” – the early Church drew from and worked within Greco-Roman thought and culture, yet “transformed them so profoundly that in the end something quite new came into being.” Early Christian thought was rooted in the history of Israel and Jesus, from the experience of Christian worship, and from the Scriptures. It was rooted in the life of the Church, and its aim was love, not mere understanding.
Wilken splits the book into five segments: The first three chapters are broad chapters on knowledge of God, early Christian worship and sacraments, and the role of the Scriptures. The next three chapters deal with the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, and creation. The following two chapters deal with the role of faith and the relationship between the Church and society. The next two chapters touch on the interplay between the Church and culture – specifically in poetry and art. Lastly, the final two chapters discuss how the early Church thought of the moral life and the spiritual life.
Chapter 1 begins with the early apologists, who though sought to employ philosophical reasoning and eschewed blind faith, seemed also to move away from Greek philosophical standards. Origen argued that the gospel “has a proof that is proper to itself and is more divine than the dialectical arguments of the Greek”, namely, “proof of the Spirit and of power”. The gospel is not a mere idea, but a narrative of actual “event[s] recorded in history”. The Scriptures showed that the knowledge of God begins with God (especially Christ’s incarnation), and thus knowledge of God is participatory, necessitates love, and guides one’s use of reason – which cannot be exercised independently of the life and work of Christ.
Chapter 2 argues that early Christian thought was anchored in the Church’s worship and the sacraments. Christian worship was trinitarian even before Nicaea, the Eucharist celebrated “the presence of the living Christ” and praised God for His mighty deeds throughout history, and rituals like baptism transformed ordinary items (like water) into holy things and allows relation to the very life of Christ Himself. Preaching was not a mere speech, but an invitation to enter into the mystery of Christ – “the present grace” – inextricably linked to the liturgy within which it is situated. Thus the liturgy, with actions and words, “engraved the communion of the saints on the minds and hearts” of the early Christians.
Chapter 3 discusses the Scriptures, and how it reshaped ideas which were found in classical Greco-Roman literature, such as Clement of Alexandria interpreting Plato and Alcinous’ goal of human life as “likeness to God” as “becoming Christ-like.” The Bible is a book of events, but it is also a book about Christ, and thus the early Christians interpreted the Scriptures through the lens of the promise and redemptive work of God in and through Christ. Therein lies the reason for allegory – if “Christ is the subject of biblical interpretation”, it justifies looking for signs of Christ in interpreting Old Testament texts rather than deriving meaning from Hebrew words studies or analysis of the historical context.
Chapter 4 covers the doctrine of the Trinity. Scripture, the liturgy, and the early creeds confessed belief in one God, yet worshipped Christ and were full of trinitarian formulae. The early Church thus sought to find language to express its belief about God. At the same time, the early Christians reflected on the communal inner life of the one God and the relations between the Persons, Christ being identified with Wisdom and how both are associated with divine attributes in Scripture, and how the Son and Spirit are sent by the Father and confer on us the benefit of abiding in God.
Chapter 5 is on Christology – how did Christ have both divine and human natures? Cyril of Alexandria saw Christ as a man, yet no ordinary man – He was the second Adam from heaven, and by suffering and conquering death and corruption “as man”, “we conquered in Him.” Maximus the Confessor similarly looked at Christ’s words in Gethsemane and saw Christ’s humanity as He “conform[ed] his human will wholly to God’s will”, thereby suffering in the agony in the garden – i.e. Christ had two wills. For this faith, Maximus was tortured and martyred in the Monothelite controversy.
Chapter 6 concerns creation – created by God’s wisdom and love (not arbitrarily), by operation of the Trinity, purposeful and ongoing. The creation of man is unique due to the imago Dei, marked by attributes such as a capacity to “enjoy God”, capacity for free choice, and culminating in Christ. With the fall, the early Christians preferred metaphors relating to defacing, damaging, or tarnishing an image, rather than language of losing the image. This culminates in resurrection hope, and the importance of the bodies in Christian thought and practice.
Chapter 7 concerns the role of faith. For Augustine, faith “is a constituent part of historical knowledge”, and just as in daily life we rely on authorities, so to knowledge of God stems from faith in the testimony of those who know and love God. Faith is also like a sixth sense on top of the five sense – it is how one can “see” the Word and “behold” his glory. Faith is the beginning of knowledge of God, and after one believes in and loves God, one “enter[s] into him and are incorporated in his members”, “like seeing a light”, and leads one to obey God’s will.
Chapter 8 examines the relationship between the Church and society via Augustine’s City of God. The city of God is contrasted against the earthly city, with the former united by love of God and the latter denying God the worship He is due. Christians, as members of society, work to achieve peace on earth, albeit “fragile and destined to fail”, as the Church can gift society with “a glimpse, however fleeting, of [the city of God]”. Christians can thus participate in customs and practices of society as long as it does not misshape their souls or detract from love of God and of each other in God.
Chapter 9 covers Prudentius’ poetry and how he “wedded traditional forms to a new content” and expounded on spiritual warfare and the Christian life, and Ambrose’s hymns for congregational singing, which were able to touch the affections and intellect of Christians.
Chapter 10 touches on the veneration of icons. John of Damascus defended the practice by appealing to the incarnation and God’s use of matter, and Theodore of Studium opined that the image may be identified with the person depicted (i.e. the prototype). It was thus proper to kiss and kneel before an icon of Christ as one would before Christ himself.
Chapter 11 discussed how the early Christians inherited the conceptual framework of Greek and Latin moralists and redefined the goal of the good life as fellowship with God, along with the reality of the imago Dei and sin. Virtues were also not spoken of in the abstract, but with reference to the perfect life of Christ. The fathers also redefined and synthesised the cardinal virtues, e.g. Ambrose interpreting prudence as faith in God and justice as first directed towards God.
Chapter 12 is on the spiritual life. Love moves the believer to seek God, and while the stoics eschewed passion, Christians were unable to avoid the language of love. Only in love can one enjoy the presence of God, and the Christian intellectual tradition is an exercise in knowledge becoming love, and in turn seeking the One who is loved.
[Thoughts and critical review to follow]
Wilken splits the book into five segments: The first three chapters are broad chapters on knowledge of God, early Christian worship and sacraments, and the role of the Scriptures. The next three chapters deal with the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, and creation. The following two chapters deal with the role of faith and the relationship between the Church and society. The next two chapters touch on the interplay between the Church and culture – specifically in poetry and art. Lastly, the final two chapters discuss how the early Church thought of the moral life and the spiritual life.
Chapter 1 begins with the early apologists, who though sought to employ philosophical reasoning and eschewed blind faith, seemed also to move away from Greek philosophical standards. Origen argued that the gospel “has a proof that is proper to itself and is more divine than the dialectical arguments of the Greek”, namely, “proof of the Spirit and of power”. The gospel is not a mere idea, but a narrative of actual “event[s] recorded in history”. The Scriptures showed that the knowledge of God begins with God (especially Christ’s incarnation), and thus knowledge of God is participatory, necessitates love, and guides one’s use of reason – which cannot be exercised independently of the life and work of Christ.
Chapter 2 argues that early Christian thought was anchored in the Church’s worship and the sacraments. Christian worship was trinitarian even before Nicaea, the Eucharist celebrated “the presence of the living Christ” and praised God for His mighty deeds throughout history, and rituals like baptism transformed ordinary items (like water) into holy things and allows relation to the very life of Christ Himself. Preaching was not a mere speech, but an invitation to enter into the mystery of Christ – “the present grace” – inextricably linked to the liturgy within which it is situated. Thus the liturgy, with actions and words, “engraved the communion of the saints on the minds and hearts” of the early Christians.
Chapter 3 discusses the Scriptures, and how it reshaped ideas which were found in classical Greco-Roman literature, such as Clement of Alexandria interpreting Plato and Alcinous’ goal of human life as “likeness to God” as “becoming Christ-like.” The Bible is a book of events, but it is also a book about Christ, and thus the early Christians interpreted the Scriptures through the lens of the promise and redemptive work of God in and through Christ. Therein lies the reason for allegory – if “Christ is the subject of biblical interpretation”, it justifies looking for signs of Christ in interpreting Old Testament texts rather than deriving meaning from Hebrew words studies or analysis of the historical context.
Chapter 4 covers the doctrine of the Trinity. Scripture, the liturgy, and the early creeds confessed belief in one God, yet worshipped Christ and were full of trinitarian formulae. The early Church thus sought to find language to express its belief about God. At the same time, the early Christians reflected on the communal inner life of the one God and the relations between the Persons, Christ being identified with Wisdom and how both are associated with divine attributes in Scripture, and how the Son and Spirit are sent by the Father and confer on us the benefit of abiding in God.
Chapter 5 is on Christology – how did Christ have both divine and human natures? Cyril of Alexandria saw Christ as a man, yet no ordinary man – He was the second Adam from heaven, and by suffering and conquering death and corruption “as man”, “we conquered in Him.” Maximus the Confessor similarly looked at Christ’s words in Gethsemane and saw Christ’s humanity as He “conform[ed] his human will wholly to God’s will”, thereby suffering in the agony in the garden – i.e. Christ had two wills. For this faith, Maximus was tortured and martyred in the Monothelite controversy.
Chapter 6 concerns creation – created by God’s wisdom and love (not arbitrarily), by operation of the Trinity, purposeful and ongoing. The creation of man is unique due to the imago Dei, marked by attributes such as a capacity to “enjoy God”, capacity for free choice, and culminating in Christ. With the fall, the early Christians preferred metaphors relating to defacing, damaging, or tarnishing an image, rather than language of losing the image. This culminates in resurrection hope, and the importance of the bodies in Christian thought and practice.
Chapter 7 concerns the role of faith. For Augustine, faith “is a constituent part of historical knowledge”, and just as in daily life we rely on authorities, so to knowledge of God stems from faith in the testimony of those who know and love God. Faith is also like a sixth sense on top of the five sense – it is how one can “see” the Word and “behold” his glory. Faith is the beginning of knowledge of God, and after one believes in and loves God, one “enter[s] into him and are incorporated in his members”, “like seeing a light”, and leads one to obey God’s will.
Chapter 8 examines the relationship between the Church and society via Augustine’s City of God. The city of God is contrasted against the earthly city, with the former united by love of God and the latter denying God the worship He is due. Christians, as members of society, work to achieve peace on earth, albeit “fragile and destined to fail”, as the Church can gift society with “a glimpse, however fleeting, of [the city of God]”. Christians can thus participate in customs and practices of society as long as it does not misshape their souls or detract from love of God and of each other in God.
Chapter 9 covers Prudentius’ poetry and how he “wedded traditional forms to a new content” and expounded on spiritual warfare and the Christian life, and Ambrose’s hymns for congregational singing, which were able to touch the affections and intellect of Christians.
Chapter 10 touches on the veneration of icons. John of Damascus defended the practice by appealing to the incarnation and God’s use of matter, and Theodore of Studium opined that the image may be identified with the person depicted (i.e. the prototype). It was thus proper to kiss and kneel before an icon of Christ as one would before Christ himself.
Chapter 11 discussed how the early Christians inherited the conceptual framework of Greek and Latin moralists and redefined the goal of the good life as fellowship with God, along with the reality of the imago Dei and sin. Virtues were also not spoken of in the abstract, but with reference to the perfect life of Christ. The fathers also redefined and synthesised the cardinal virtues, e.g. Ambrose interpreting prudence as faith in God and justice as first directed towards God.
Chapter 12 is on the spiritual life. Love moves the believer to seek God, and while the stoics eschewed passion, Christians were unable to avoid the language of love. Only in love can one enjoy the presence of God, and the Christian intellectual tradition is an exercise in knowledge becoming love, and in turn seeking the One who is loved.
[Thoughts and critical review to follow]
June 13, 2015
Very fine intro to patristic thought.
August 14, 2018
I have not done much reading in patristics, other than Augustine’s Confessions, and I found this book a perfect introduction.
It managed to cover a large amount of material (and church fathers) in a fairly short book, seeming to take a magnifying glass to specific events or people when most necessary. I learned a lot and wrote down a lot that I wanted to delve into more deeply. The chapter on early Christian poetry was one of my favorites.
“The words of the Scripture made a temple deep within the hearing of early Christian preachers. Not only in sermons but also in theological works, in letters, and in spiritual writings the church fathers display an enviable verbal command of large sections of the Bible. In contrast to modern theological writings in which the Bible is cited in support of theological ideas, and hence usually relegated to the footnotes, in the early church the words of the Bible were the linguistic skeleton for the exposition of ideas. Even in the writings of the most philosophical of early Christian thinkers their thoughts are expressed in the language of the Bible, seldom above it. The liturgy provided a kind of grammar of Christian speech, a key to how the words of the Bible are to be used” (p. 43).
This book really made me want to delve further into the works of the fathers of the early church. It showcases their beauty and theological depth. I love these words on patience from Tertullian:
“Patience outfits faith, guides peace, assists love, equips humility, waits for penitence, seals confession, keeps the flesh in check, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hands, tramples temptation underfoot, removes what causes us to stumble, brings martyrdom to perfection; it lightens the care of the poor, teaches moderation to the rich, lifts the burdens of the sick, delights the believer, welcomes the unbeliever, commends the servant to his master and his master to God, adorns the women and gives grace to men; patience is loved in children, praised in youth, admired in the elderly. It is beautiful in either sex and at every age of life…Her countenance is tranquil and peaceful, her brow serene…Patience sits on the throne of the most gentle and peaceful Spirit…For where God is there is his progeny, patience. When God’s Spirit descends patience is always at his side.”
It managed to cover a large amount of material (and church fathers) in a fairly short book, seeming to take a magnifying glass to specific events or people when most necessary. I learned a lot and wrote down a lot that I wanted to delve into more deeply. The chapter on early Christian poetry was one of my favorites.
“The words of the Scripture made a temple deep within the hearing of early Christian preachers. Not only in sermons but also in theological works, in letters, and in spiritual writings the church fathers display an enviable verbal command of large sections of the Bible. In contrast to modern theological writings in which the Bible is cited in support of theological ideas, and hence usually relegated to the footnotes, in the early church the words of the Bible were the linguistic skeleton for the exposition of ideas. Even in the writings of the most philosophical of early Christian thinkers their thoughts are expressed in the language of the Bible, seldom above it. The liturgy provided a kind of grammar of Christian speech, a key to how the words of the Bible are to be used” (p. 43).
This book really made me want to delve further into the works of the fathers of the early church. It showcases their beauty and theological depth. I love these words on patience from Tertullian:
“Patience outfits faith, guides peace, assists love, equips humility, waits for penitence, seals confession, keeps the flesh in check, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hands, tramples temptation underfoot, removes what causes us to stumble, brings martyrdom to perfection; it lightens the care of the poor, teaches moderation to the rich, lifts the burdens of the sick, delights the believer, welcomes the unbeliever, commends the servant to his master and his master to God, adorns the women and gives grace to men; patience is loved in children, praised in youth, admired in the elderly. It is beautiful in either sex and at every age of life…Her countenance is tranquil and peaceful, her brow serene…Patience sits on the throne of the most gentle and peaceful Spirit…For where God is there is his progeny, patience. When God’s Spirit descends patience is always at his side.”
March 29, 2023
An eloquent introduction to various broad themes in early Christian thought. This almost hagiographic survey highlights how Christians thought about the nature of Christ, the purpose of his work, the reasonableness of faith, communion with God as our creaturely end, the nature of being in God's likeness, and various other things.
I found the book to be somewhat inspiring (when I wasn't trying to sleepily cram it in before class). But really, what was most evident to me was that for many theologians of the early years, rigorous thought about God was ultimately to "seek His face." Not that mystery could be eradicated, but that God was worth pursuing with all human facilities. They were moved to write, think, preach, and serve out of the deep conviction that something cosmos-changing had happened when God became man.
I found the book to be somewhat inspiring (when I wasn't trying to sleepily cram it in before class). But really, what was most evident to me was that for many theologians of the early years, rigorous thought about God was ultimately to "seek His face." Not that mystery could be eradicated, but that God was worth pursuing with all human facilities. They were moved to write, think, preach, and serve out of the deep conviction that something cosmos-changing had happened when God became man.
February 27, 2020
I recommend this book for those interested in learning how early Christian thinking developed from the inception of Christianity beginning with the ascension of Christ through the first few centuries.
The author reveals the development of theology (focusing mostly on Christology), Christian worship (focusing mostly on communion, baptism, and public Scripture readings), and other liturgical practices amidst external threats from Rome and internal challenges from within the church.
The only minor piece of critique I have is that the author does not deal with the shortcomings of the prominent figures discussed in the book. For example, most of the key Christian thinkers who contributed greatly to the development of Christian thought were only described in a positive light, and rarely were their fallacies mentioned. The failure of mentioning their struggles hides some of the additional challenges they and subsequent Christians faced.
The author reveals the development of theology (focusing mostly on Christology), Christian worship (focusing mostly on communion, baptism, and public Scripture readings), and other liturgical practices amidst external threats from Rome and internal challenges from within the church.
The only minor piece of critique I have is that the author does not deal with the shortcomings of the prominent figures discussed in the book. For example, most of the key Christian thinkers who contributed greatly to the development of Christian thought were only described in a positive light, and rarely were their fallacies mentioned. The failure of mentioning their struggles hides some of the additional challenges they and subsequent Christians faced.
January 15, 2024
A solid introduction to the development of Christian thought in the Patristic age, it offers a large survey of the time’s major writers. While interweaving quotes consistently throughout, Wilken does well to keep his own voice alive throughout the book. The diction Wilken uses is comprehensible, making the content easily digestible for novices on the book’s topics. Also, the chapters are all roughly the same length and are broken into sections through helpful headings, giving the whole work a coherent feel.
July 2, 2019
Fascinating read. This is a page-turning survey of the intellectual life of the church fathers that legitimately surprised me by how much Reformed spirituality owes to these early Christians. Filled with refreshing quotes and I summaries, Wilken sounds like a learned teacher that loves his subject enough to share it beautifully. I'm probably turning to this book again in the future.
February 28, 2020
An incisive account of the defining contours of the practices and theology of early Christianity. Wilken highlights how Christians saw themselves as primarily being immersed in a robustly biblical social and doctrinal imaginary, guiding them in their unique witness to the pagan world as well as solidifying their distinct sense of liturgy.
interest
December 30, 2022Today I found this book (and others) on a complicated way (20 skip compare list).
Kantacademy, Skandalon and https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2... as follower of a Koran translator..
Kantacademy, Skandalon and https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2... as follower of a Koran translator..
April 18, 2023
This book was fantastic. One of two books that was recommended to me to read before I start my graduate Theology program this Fall.
For anyone looking for a baseline of what the Church Fathers believed and taught, I would recommend this. I have to say there are some amazing spiritual insights in here as well. There’s something that particularly stood out to me about lectors and the need for them to be intimately familiar with the Word of God.
For anyone looking for a baseline of what the Church Fathers believed and taught, I would recommend this. I have to say there are some amazing spiritual insights in here as well. There’s something that particularly stood out to me about lectors and the need for them to be intimately familiar with the Word of God.
April 25, 2019
This book is a fabulous look into the development and heart of the early Christian church. In truth the knowledge of God and the love of God must be formed together in order to see God, to be changed by God. The early church leaders demonstrate this again and again by their writings and their lives. They cover themselves with and wrestle with the language of the scriptures and cling to the incarnation of our Lord Jesus. As the last line of the book states "They are still our teachers today."
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November 1, 2022Excellent stuff. Highly recommend
August 21, 2023
Impressive in its breadth
December 10, 2024
I actually enjoyed the audiobook version more than the physical book
February 10, 2025
Fantastic overview of how Christian leaders and thinkers refined their theology for the next few hundred years after the apostles.
January 22, 2026
Excellent
May 13, 2024
A helpful primer on the intellectual life of Christianity, although not necessarily “early” in its timeframe.
July 1, 2024
“Like an inexhaustible spring…[the church fathers] irrigate the Christian imagination with the life-giving water flowing from the biblical and spiritual sources of the faith. They are still our teachers today.”
October 22, 2024
Really good introduction on the early church fathers, what they were concerned about, and how we should interact with their thoughts today as we do theology.
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