The First Five Centuries

by Kenneth Scott Latourette

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Genres: Church History, History

412 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Kenneth Scott Latourette (August 6, 1884 – December 26, 1968) was an American historian of China, Japan, and world Christianity. His formative experiences as Christian missionary and educator in early 20th century China shaped his life's work. Although he did not learn the Chinese language, he became known for his magisterial scholarly surveys of the history of world Christianity, the history of China, and of American relations with East Asia.

Latourette was born in Oregon City, Oregon, the son of DeWitt Clinton Latourette and Ella (Scott) Latourette. His mother and father both attended Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, where they graduated in 1878. DeWitt Clinton Latourette was a lawyer in Oregon City. The Latourette family migrated to Oregon in the 1860s; the family's origins are from France where they fled religious persecution as Huguenots and migrated to Staten Island, New York in the 1600s.

In 1904, Latourette was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree from Linfield College in Oregon. He continued his education in New Haven, Connecticut at Yale, earning a BA in 1906, an MA in 1907 and PhD in 1909.

Latourette served as president of the American Historical Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the American Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society and the Japan International Christian University Foundation.

He was a leader in the ecumenical movement, and he held leadership positions in the American Baptist Missionary Union, the International Board of the Y.M.C.A., the United Board for Christian Colleges in China and the World Council of Churches.

Throughout his life he remained active in the Yale-in-China Association.

At the Yale Divinity School, the "Latourette Initiative" is a proactive program to preserve and provide access to the documentation of world Christianity. It provides funding for the microfilming of published and archival resources documenting the history of Christian missions and Christian life.

Reviews

[Leandro Dutra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Latourette, after the most part of a Century has passed, is still the standard work on Missions from the Protestant standpoint. Yet its age shows: while an Evangelical, he does concede too much to secular conceptions of Historiography that even in today’s secular environment would be perhaps outdated, showing that it is better to stick to your tradition & convictions than to try to be modern.

While bringing in a huge amount of facts, still much is summed up, since while the field of missions can be quite detailed nowadays, at the period covered by this first volume much information is missing; on the other side, he spends quite some space on a historiographical set of questions that may today sound quite speculative and outdated.

There are more recent works that must be consulted for the developments of the last Century, but none I found of this extension & ambition. Either they are useful but specialised in a short span of time, or they are equally useful but way too short. Anyway, a global History of Missions that would cover the situation until, say, the turn of the XXI Century would certainly colour the previous periods differently.

As a Reformed Baptist reader, to me he also does sound quite Latitudinarian in his attitudes, refraining from a proper Protestant Biblical evaluation of his subject. One hungers, thus, for a new History of Missions that will be not only up to date, but also more Reformed in character; perhaps something definetly Reformed Baptist such as Nicholas R. Needham’s 2 000 years of Christ’s power would be best, as his work shows Baptists can face old realities better, not being attached to mediæval survivals in the magisterial strand of Reformation.

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I have previously lamented my tendency to treat Church History as ancillary to my main goals in theological education, I did delve into the multi-volume A History of the Expansion of Christianity to research specific subjects. More than a decade ago, I purchased the full set at a Friends of the Library sale in Seattle and vowed to read the entire set. A few months ago, I finally set about to do so, starting Volume 1: The First Five Centuries. What I found was a rich resource and reading it to be a valuable experience, but the organization diffuse enough that it was difficult to read even entire chapters at a time. Yes, the book could use some of the call-outs, bullet lists, charts, and illustrations of modern book design, but it also disappoints in that it constantly provides a cross-section of facts and not those humanizing stories that help one apply history to pragmatic human experience. So, I am both glad that I struggled through A History of the Expansion of Christianity: Volume 1: The First Five Centuries but the experience was not as rich as I expected.

The organization of the book which seemed rather diffuse to me as a reader was actually rather deliberate on Latourette’s part. It is structured around seven questions which he addresses in his introduction: 1) what was the nature of the Christianity which spread (p. x), 2) why Christianity spread (p. xi), 3) why Christianity faced reverses (p. xii), 4) what methodology allowed Christianity’s spread (p. xii), 5) what effect did Christianity have on its environment (p. xii), 6) what effect did the environment have on Christianity (p. xiv), and finally, 7) what impact did the methodologies used for spreading Christianity have on the reciprocal effect of Christianity on environment and the obverse environment on Christianity (p. xv)? All good questions with #7 possibly being the most interesting of all. Yet, such an organization means that the chronological timeline is often sacrificed on the altar of attempting to answer these questions throughout the five centuries.

One disadvantage for me is that reading such a mid-20th century work means that some of the arguments cited may have already been discredited by a consensus of scholars in the field. Since I’ve already confessed that this isn’t my field, that can be dangerous. Of course, I’m such a skeptical reader anyway that it shouldn’t be too dangerous. For example, late in the book, Latourette cites a theory from B. W. Bacon’s An Outline of Christianity: Volume 1 (a volume not easily accessible according to a superficial Google search) that suggests Pauline writings about spiritual freedom influenced or inspired Gnostic antinomianism (p. 341, n. 314). It’s an interesting idea that’s “possible” but fits under the “correlation does not equal causation” part of my consideration. On the other hand, one can find plenty of consensus around his citation of Edwin Hatch’s 1899 (The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages in the Christian Church) position that the allegorical method of interpreting scripture was an outgrowth of Hellenistic Judaism (p. 328, n. 236) and that many pre-Christian rhetorical forms and styles ended up in Christian preaching (p. 328, n. 239).

Another disadvantage for me is that the extensive and semi-annotated bibliography, though divided by chapters, has neither an alphabetical nor chronological (in terms of the presentation in the text) order. There is an attempt to order the references by subject matter, but some volumes and articles can fit more than one category. As a result, it takes longer than necessary to follow up on references. For example, I wanted to find a reference to Gerhard Uhlorn’s 1901 work, The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism, from p. 343 (n. 320) that suggested Christianity would have divided into so many variants had it adopted Gnosticism that it would have died out just like Gnosticism. I ended up having to search on the web and, fortunately, found a PDF available for download. That’s okay, but it seems inefficient from a reference book standpoint.

Latourette’s thesis is that Christianity has: a) never been adopted where the pre-Christian culture remained intact (though it may have produced strong minorities—p 7), b) displacement and weakening of local cultures accelerated acceptance of Christianity (pp. 10-11, as did disorder, p. 147), c) Hellenistic education paved the way for Christianity because “Where Hellenistic education was unknown the new faith seems to have made little or no progress.” (p. 88), d) that the prime agents in expanding Christianity were “…not those who made it a profession or a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in a purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion.” (p, 116), and e) generally worked a transformation in the lives of individuals which gave rise to communities which sought to practice ethics/ideals different from the mainstream culture (p. 368).

Along the way, Latourette does not ignore the history of theology and its important role in defining heresy. However, he tends to treat movements such as Arianism, Donatism, Marcionism, Manichaeism, Mithraism, Montanism, Novationism, and Pelagianism (among others) more in terms of their numerical/cultural success than their theological positions. To be sure, there are quick definitions, but those looking for a succinct history of theology in these pages are bound to be as disappointed as I was.

Still, there were several necessarily short discussions that I found intriguing. Latourette’s discussion of Constantine’s tax exemption for the clergy and its problems (pp. 173-174) seems to have become an economic drag in much the same way as Israel’s subsidizing of rabbis and Turkiye’s subsidizing of imams modern civilization. And where I was aware of the importance of the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor (p. 78), I was unaware of the connection of Ephesus with the spread of Christianity in the Rhone Valley of what is today, France (p. 98—Hint: It’s tied to Irenaeus.). His succinct discussion of the ten major Roman persecutions (starting on p. 136) was fascinating, though no one will be surprised with his overall summary that “…in the main the Church emerged more vigorous for the ordeal” (p. 161) and that by meeting milder attacks, the Church had developed a resistance that allowed it to resist more violent attacks (p. 162).

So, as one can tell, A History of the Expansion of Christianity: Volume 1: The First Five Centuries was not all that I wished it could be. And as one can tell from how long it took me to read the volume all the way through, it is by no means a page-turner. Yet, it has significant value and my marked up, personally indexed (nine handwritten pages of references) will certainly be helpful to me in the future. I’m not ready to start the second volume anytime soon, but I definitely plan to visit it before the end of next year.

[Aaron Cliff · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a prior reviewer said, Kenneth does tend to go overboard with his claims to objectivity, however it's hard to find too much of a fault with this. I do like his asides when summing up the effects that Christianity had on the environment, listing how those who claimed Christianity were more moral and vigorous in their expansion and then asks us to consider why this is, without outright saying it's the working of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers.

It's interesting, then, that he makes these claims at objectivity and then constantly gives the wink and nudge towards a traditional evangelical protestant view on the furthering of missions. I wish he had just come out and claimed his faith in the book itself, for if the historiography was solid there would be no issue in interpreting the results in a unashamedly protestant mindset.

Regardless, there are no outright historical blunders that I've found in this book. When discussing historical details and records he cites and simply states what the original authors said, without interpretation. This adds to the usefulness of the book in my estimation. However, I did not with some shock that most of the books that were cited weren't primary source documents but generally were secondary source documents. While those cited were generally experts in the field that Kenneth was drawing from, I still get kind of anxious when seeing them cited for some reason. This fear is probably entirely irrational.

Despite being a nearly 500 page book, it still felt rather thin. I guess that's what one could expect from reading a book that covers twice the lifetime of the United States.