AP

Review of Nick Needham, Shapers of Christianity, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2025.

Dr Nick Needham here presents twelve very short essays to introduce the life and writings of Christians from Irenaeus of Lyons in the second century to J. Gresham Machen in the twentieth. There are two somewhat unusual choices, namely Theophylact of Ochrid (1050-1109), who is described as ‘the Matthew Henry of the Eastern Church’, and Tikhon of Zadonsk who drew on the Pietist, Johann Arndt’s True Christianity, and in turn inspired Dostoeveky in his great novels, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov.

The Arminian, John Wesley, also gets a chapter, which includes his honest confession regarding open-air preaching: ‘What marvel the devil does not love field-preaching! Neither do I: I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal, if I do not trample all these under foot in order to save one more soul?’

There are incisive quotes sprinkled throughout the book. From the second century, Irenaeus wrote of Christ: ‘He was both man and God, so that he might suffer for us as man, and have compassion on us as God, forgiving us our debts in which we had become debtors to our Creator … Therefore, just as we were made debtors to God through a tree, we gain forgiveness of our debt through a tree’ (Against Heresies, 5.17.3). Those who blame Constantine for the doctrine of the deity of Christ have some explaining to do.

An Archbishop of Canterbury in better days, Anselm (1033-1109), portrayed the need for faith:

Whoever refuses to believe will not understand. Why? Because whoever refuses to believe will not experience; and whoever will not experience something will have no knowledge of it. Experiencing something is superior to hearing about it.

As Jonathan Edwards commented, he who has tasted honey knows far more about it than he who has merely looked at it.

Some surprising facts are noted. I did not know that Stephen Gardiner saved Peter Martyr from being burned at the stake, by talking Mary Tudor into allowing him to go into exile. Francis Turretin considered the perpetual virginity of Mary to be a ‘pious opinion’. Jonathan Edwards, the ‘Theologian of Beauty’, once suggested that perfect repentance would be accepted as sufficient atonement for sin. The great mind sometimes overdid his speculations.

The last one that Needham deals with is J. Greham Machen who experienced theological liberalism at its most attractive when he studied under Wilhelm Hermann at Marburg University. He came through this, and thoroughly denounced its terrible implications in his must-read, Christianity and Liberalism.

All in all, an interesting tip-toe through twelve giants of Church History.

–  Peter  Barnes