From the Cross to the Church by A.C. Graziano

[WaltBristow]

It is easy to forget that Christianity had a rather rocky first couple hundred years. In From the Cross to the Church: The Emergence of the Church from the Chaos of the Crucifixion, Anthony C. Graziano brings a lifetime of scripture study to bear on those first few centuries following the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Graziano is not a theologian in the professional sense. He did attend six years of seminary but, having “learned Attic and New Testament Greek, and enough Hebrew to know it would not be part of his future”, he turned to a career in financial planning bookended with years of government service.

Graziano’s own description of the book may be the best: “All I did was to construct a setting—the years between the crucifixion of Jesus and the emergence of the church—and then cataloged the brilliant ideas of others: scripture scholars, historians, archaeologists, and theologians as their writings illuminated the journey from the cross to the church. The experts do the talking. It’s an inventory of sixty years of study.”

The author provides the reader first with the important foundation for biblical understanding – the Jewish influence on Jesus, Paul and Peter. Next, he provides a high level overview of the variety of religions existing at the time, including polytheism, mystery religions, Gnosticism, Judaism and the many early Christian congregations, each of which seemed to treasure one gospel more than the others.

Graziano then reminds us, in reviewing the development of the gospels, that the age in which they were written was much different that the world in which we now live. Documents were copied by hand; copies of copies of copies meant that errors crept in. News travelled primarily by word of mouth; what a person taught in one region was not likely to be what was reported in another.

Yet, in another sense, the world has not changed that much. Special interests (whether for personal gain or out of a sense of conviction) emphasized certain teachings or corrected ‘mistakes’ they ‘discovered.’ The author notes, for example, that “[a] major issue when discussing a theology of a gospel or epistle is the danger of projecting what the view wants to see into the document. It is relatively easy to cite passages, some fairly clear, some ambivalent, and build a case for one’s theology which seems reinforced by a multitude of citations. This is an especial problem when the reader has fully embraced a particular point of view; then, the seeker is not even aware of his mental selection.”

After reviewing the “higher criticism” of a number of scholars, the author concludes that the true meaning of scripture is clear: “Christ, sent by God for our salvation, confronts us to rely completely on him in faith. He says this over and over.”

Finally, Graziano notes that through at least the end of the first century, there was no organized church in the sense that churches are organized today. Originally the apostles called by Jesus visited an area and then left. It was not until the second and later generations of Christians that theological disputes began to be widespread – at a time, presumably, when believers no longer had apostolic teachers to clarify doctrine. In addition, that first generation may well have believed that the second coming promised by Jesus would come in their lifetimes. When it became apparent that it probably would not, the need for a more formal organized church to perpetuate Christian beliefs became important.

From the Cross to the Church is a fascinating journey into the history of early Christianity.

Review based on a GoodReads Giveaways copy.