Book notes: Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

An incredibly ambitious book by Diarmaid MacCulloch. He really does cover it all, from the Council of Nicaea to the intricacies of African Christianity in the post-colonial era.

I picked this one up mostly to get a better understanding of the 200 years after the birth of Christ and then stuck around for the rest because I’m a completionist. Despite growing up in the church, there’s a bunch of tradition outside of the gospels that I wish someone would put in one place. As an example, Thomas went to India! I continue to think that this would make a great podcast.

After listening to this book (I did the audiobook — no way I was ever going to get through this one in print), I think I have a better understanding of why: “tradition” is a friendly stand in for “sources outside the Bible” and discussion of these makes people uncomfortable. I’m not particularly sure why, but this is a theme of the book — what goes into the cannon of scripture gets people riled up!

Some other topics like this:

• What is the nature of Jesus? Fully God? Fully man? How exactly can one be both?

• What is the trinity? Is the trinity one or three?

• What is the human role in salvation? To what degree are we choosing Christ or being chosen?

One of the benefits of the breadth of the book was seeing these topics reoccurring throughout times, places, and cultures. It made me feel better about the parts of my faith I simply don’t fully understand.

I was surprised at how much of the story I already knew. Between The Rest Is History, Literature and History, and Dominion, I have a pretty workable understanding of the story of the beginnings of Judaism and Christianity. I'm also surprised that less of this is taught in churches.

There parts of the history, say from between 500 and 1700 in Europe, where centering the history on what was happening within the church rather than what was happening with political leaders clarified the story for me. A reminder that the separation of religion and state is a modern one. It also helps explain why religious details that seem uninteresting in 2025 were all consuming. These were the organizing principles of society, in the way that gender, sexuality, and citizenship are today.

I gained a deeper appreciation for Eastern Christianity and Syrian Christianity in particular. I might be mangling some of the details here, but the book mentioned that one of the Syrian churches has chants that seem to be unchanged since the early 100s AD. Isn’t that an incredible lineage? Augustine also seems more important to me now.

My next book in this area is going to be on the early Christian sources. Suggestions are welcomed!

2025-04-14