A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

The first generations of Christians were Jews who lived in a world shaped by Greek elite culture. They had to try to fit together these two irreconcilable visions of God, and the results have never been and never can be a stable answer to an unending question.

Christianity in its first five centuries was in many respects a dialogue between Judaism and Graeco-Roman philosophy, trying to solve such problems as how a human being might also be God, or how one might sensibly describe three manifestations of the one Christian God, which came to be known collectively as the Trinity.

There is no surer basis for fanaticism than bad history, which is invariably history oversimplified.

Plato’s influence on Christianity was equally profound in two other directions. First, his view of reality and authenticity propelled one basic impulse in Christianity, to look beyond the immediate and everyday to the universal or ultimate.

Plato’s second major contribution to Christian discussion is his conception of what God’s nature encompasses: oneness and goodness.