Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction: snobs, bumpkins and dinosaurs

1 Only let me reach Jesus Christ!

The Apostolic Fathers

2 To arms

Justin Martyr and Irenaeus

3 Against the world

Athanasius

4 Loving wisdom

Augustine

5 Faith seeking understanding

Anselm

6 The dumb ox

Thomas Aquinas

Intermezzo

Introduction: Snobs, Bumpkins and Dinosaurs

C. S. Lewis was a self-confessed dinosaur. He knew perfectly well that he simply did not belong in the modern world. Yet, being born out of due time, he was able to spot what the natives could not. And what he saw in modern culture, perhaps more than anything else, was a suffocating enslavement to the beautiful myth of progress, the dream that history is evolving ever onwards and upwards, that newer is better.

It is the sort of belief that sits very comfortably in the subconscious, giving one the warm glow of knowing that we are faster, better, wiser, more advanced and more knowledgeable than our parents and forebears. Yet one of the problems Lewis noticed in the myth was that such superiority tends to produce not wisdom but ignorance. If we assume that the past is inferior, we will not bother consulting it, and will thus find ourselves stranded on the tiny desert island of our moment in time. Or, as Lewis put it, we will become like the country bumpkin, full of the cocksure conviction of an ignorant adolescent that his own village (which is the only one he knows) is the hub of the universe and does everything in the Only Right Way. For our own age, with all its accepted ideas, stands to the vast extent of historical time much as one village stands to the whole world.

Of course, such ˜chronological snobbery" does not like to admit its own existence. No snob likes to be thought of as an ignorant bumpkin. Indeed, the chronological snob will often be the first to bedeck himself with historical references. The modern writer will allude to the old. But so often it is simply a case of the living plundering the dead. The cachet of the Augustine, the Luther, the Aquinas is purloined, as sound bites from their writings are torn from their original context and pressed into the service of other arguments, or simply used as weapons in the latest theological street fight.

But what Lewis found, and what reading old books makes very clear, is that every age works with a large set of assumptions that seem to it so self-evident they are never questioned. Like the proverbial frog in the kettle, we find it almost impossible to get a real sense of the water we inhabit, and can thus be blissfully unaware of how faddish our beliefs are. It is very tempting for me now to don the grand airs of a sage cultural critic and attempt to list what our unquestioned assumptions are today. But anyone excavating this book from the dusty bowels of some copyright library in fifty years' time would only chuckle at the profound issues I had overlooked. They are simply part of the air we breathe every day, and as such are quite invisible to us.

What to do? ˜The only palliative", said Lewis, ˜is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds." That is, we refuse to imprison ourselves in the stuffy broom cupboard of the present and safely familiar, and open up the doors to the refreshing influences of other times. And practically?

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones . . . Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

Such is the motivation behind The Breeze of the Centuries and its companion volume. It is that, far from turning us into irrelevant dinosaurs, reading old books can rescue us from bumpkinery and enlarge our vision. From other centuries we receive an enrichment we could never have through mere feeding on ourselves. And if that is true for old books in general, it is more so for the books of old theologians. Theology is something to be done corporately, by the church. But if we ignore what the bulk of the church has said down through history, then we act as schismatically as if we ignored the church on earth today. More so, in fact.

Would Lewis not be appalled?

Clearly, then, this is a work built on Lewis's foundations. And yet, is this not exactly the sort of dreary modern book Lewis feared would insulate people from the health-giving breeze? Why write another new book when the aim is to have people read old ones?

But this was just why Lewis wrote so much. The fact is, theologians like Athanasius and Calvin are like famous guests of honour at a party. Most people there would love to have some time with them, but few dare to approach them without a polite introduction. And providing a few introductions to fascinating but potentially intimidating celebrity theologians is the aim of these pages.

In that sense, while there might seem to be an insane arrogance to the thought of trying to squeeze such titans into so few pages, this is actually a work that makes no great pretences. Rather, it seeks to do itself out of a job by leading readers on to better books than this. For that reason I will not spend time pontificating on ˜Anselm's view of God" or ˜Barth's view of Scripture“; to do so could leave readers just as frightened of approaching the great men for themselves, perhaps more so. Instead, I will try to intrude as little as possible, simply letting the reader get to know the theologians on their own terms. Of course, that will not be entirely possible. and there will be moments when I will be unable to restrain myself from commenting, but that is the aim: not to predigest, pillage or spin, but to introduce real people, which means people whose thoughts are so often a puzzling swirl of glories and gaffes.

Reading these introductions

Each introduction will begin with a little biography and background; after all, no theology is written in a vacuum, and somehow, knowing about, say, Athanasius' sense of humour and his 'Boy's Own' adventures makes Athanasius easier to get into. Then on to the theology, which will amount to a fast jog through each theologian's major work(s). Note: this is rather different to my writing on ˜Calvin's doctrine of election" or the like; instead, I will try to walk with readers through Calvin's Institutes, getting to know its structure, feel and argument. Readers interested in Calvin's doctrine of election should then feel confident enough to put Reeves on one side and converse with Calvin direct. At the end of each introduction I will make some suggestions for getting to know that theologian better, and I will provide a timeline to help give a snapshot-sense of the order and context of the life in question.

There is a story that emerges from these pages, and readers who work through one introduction after another should, by the end of the second volume, have glimpsed something of the overall movement and flow of Christian thought through the centuries. However, this is just as much a work to dip in and out of. Its purpose is not so much to tell a grand narrative as to meet and get to know some of the key characters. And those characters are remarkably diverse: some will sound more winning, more trustworthy or more familiar; others may seem quite alien or off-putting. Thus if you find yourself floundering or overly enraged by one theologian, feel happy to move on to the next. He will, assuredly, be quite different.

But why these theologians, and not others? Quite simply, the goal of this work is to make accessible what otherwise seems intimidating, but if the very girth of the volumes was daunting, it would have failed in what it set out to do. I have therefore had to pick and choose theologians to introduce, and that means disappointing those whose heroes are not included. Still, I have not simply come up with a list of personal favourites; I have minor disagreements with every theologian here, and major problems with a few. Nor is this my list of ˜great Christians". Francis of Assisi, John Bunyan and John Wesley will make no appearance, though undoubtedly they were great and influential; it is that their greatness was not so much as theologians. Rather, I have tried to choose theologians who are influential or significant especially for the English-speaking world (many of whom, I suspect, are the very ones English-speaking people are most eager to know better). As a result, such mighty names as Origen, Palamas, Gerhard, Turretin and Suárez (the list could go on) are not included. My apologies to any who miss them: accessibility calls.

The last word of introduction really belongs to C. S. Lewis, who grasped so well the point of wrestling with theology:

For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that ˜nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

May it be so for you now.