The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God Book

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.