The Spirit of Early Christian Thought

By: Robert Louis Wilken

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

Written by a preeminent religious historian, this book provides an introduction to early Christian thought. Focusing on major figures such as St. Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa, as well as s host of less well known thinkers, Robert Wilken chronicles the emergence of a specifically Christian intellectual tradition.

In chapters on topics including early Christian worship, Christian poetry and the spiritual life, the Trinity, Christ, the Bible, and icons, Wilken shows that the energy and vitality of early Christianity arose from within the life of the Church. While early Christian thinkers drew on the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of the ancient world, it was the versatile vocabulary of the Bible that loosened their tongues and minds and allowed them to construct the world anew, intellectually and spiritually. These thinkers were not seeking to invent a world of ideas, Wilken shows, but rather to win the hearts of men and women and to change their lives.

Early Christian thinkers set in place a foundation that has endured. Their writings are an irreplaceable inheritance, and Wilken shows that they can still be heard as living voices within contemporary culture.

The book is published by Yale University Press.

©2003 Yale University Press (P)2010 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic Reviews

"[M]agnificently learned, deeply felt and surprisingly pellucid... Anyone who approaches The Spirit of Early Christian Thought with a welcoming spirit and patient attention will learn from it... believer or nonbeliever will be touched anew by his survey of Christian intellectual life." (Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World)

Super good book.

This book will teach you Catholicism. Not just about Catholicism but it will help you form a Catholic heart and mind. It faithfully conveys a sense of the spirit of the holy men and women who knew and were formed by the risen Lord and the apostles

4 people found this helpful

Recommended for Early Church Historians

This text is a thorough read about early Christian history and thought. I gave it a high rating because it is a clear, well written, and goes into a fair amount of depth. It is also a good review for those who study church history as a primary practice. This book is part of a theology requirement for my Ph.D in Christian Apologetics.

4 people found this helpful

Dreamy

I listen to it at night as I go to sleep. The narrator has a soothing voice and the prose is poetic. Both educational and spiritually comforting.

2 people found this helpful

Caught Between Theology and History

If what you are looking for is a serious intellectual history of early christian thought, this may not be the book for you, as Wilken regularly brings in the whole of Christian thinking, from whatever source, to make his arguments.Thus, at places he refers to Cardinal Newman, Jonathan Edwards, John Donne, Thomas Aquinas, and others who properly well beyond the historical scope of the book. This is because the work is no less a work of a devout Christian than a practicing historian. In consequence the task, method, and scope of the latter is not infrequently allowed to give way before the predilections and concerns of the former. The result is not so much a historical investigation of early Christian thought, as its vindication. In consequence, much of this history is discretely passed over as failing to rise to Wilken's own conception of what is best or most appealing in the writings and controversies of early christian thinkers. Those who have read The Christians as the Romans Saw Them may well be disappointed. I know I was.

16 people found this helpful

Excellent

Wilkin does a wonderful job of synthesizing history, philosophy, theology. I felt as if I was living in the Early Church. Narrator was also excellent. Voice appealing. Narration alive. Highly recommended audiobook.