In The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities, Darrell Bock has produced a much-need orthodox introduction to the major texts produced by the ancient heretics usually described as “Gnostic.” Until now, the most accessible introductions to Gnosticism and its “gospels” have been written by scholars who are sanguine toward the heresies and critical or dismissive of orthodox Christianity. Mainstream Christian scholars have mostly watched this game from the sidelines (or from the ivory tower), while the likes of Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman have scored repeatedly on the bestseller lists.

Bock, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, comes into the game late, but well trained for the task. He begins by giving non-academics a fascinating tour of the last century’s scholarship related to “early Christianities.” He outlines the particular problems related to the study of the ancient world in general and Gnosticism in particular. The term is indeed difficult to apply with consistency, since the polymorphous groups we usually call “Gnostic” recognized no earthly authority and produced no visible hierarchy. Still, Bock, like many scholars, is able to settle on a minimal list of attributes common to all Gnostic texts (the Gospels of Philip and Mary Magdalene, for example). Similarly, he is able to distill a minimal list of attributes common to all texts associated with proto-orthodox Christianity (the canonical New Testament and the apostolic fathers). Drawing from both sets of texts, he compares and contrasts both groups’ doctrines of God, Christ, salvation, and sin.

Though the book is measured and nonpolemical, Bock’s conclusion frankly confronts the limitations of the scholars who are re-imagining and promoting ancient heresies. They are dealing with comparatively late texts (second and third centuries) from a fringe movement that never quite gained momentum — and it fizzled out not because it was crushed by orthodoxy, but because it was singularly unappealing. When we see the Gnostic books as they are — as Dr. Bock has opened them up for us — we know why they went out of print after only one edition.

In stark contrast, may this book and its author prosper.

UPDATE: Someone asked how Dr. Bock’s book differs from Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, by N.T. Wright, which I reviewed last month. Bock’s book focuses particularly on the Nag Hammadi library, the large gnostic cache that was discovered in Egypt in the 1940s, while Wright’s book is a surgical strike on the more recently discovered Gospel of Judas. Wright’s book is also a more direct response to the modern Gnostic revival, and so is more immediately useful for apologetic purposes. The two books complement one another. A Christian who reads both is well prepared for the discussions that come up whenever the newsmags decide to trumpet Judas over Jesus.

I have longer reviews of both books appearing in Touchstone magazine. You really should subscribe.

… a warm review, while the book’s still warm from the printer.

Happy Catholic is thinking happy thoughts about the new, expanded edition of my Fathers of the Church. That makes me extremely happy.

Robin M. Jensen’s early works — Understanding Early Christian Art and Face to Face: Portaits of the Divine in Early Christianity — have established her as an articulate and judicious scholar of paleo-Christian art. No one has done a better job of explaining the first three centuries of Christian images within their peculiar cultural context: the persecutions, the doctrinal disputes, and the great intellectual ferment.

Jensen is professor of Christian art and worship at Vanderbilt Divinity School, but she delivered the lectures that make up her most recent book as part of Calvin Institute of Christian Worship’s “Liturgical Studies Series.” The Substance Of Things Seen: Art, Faith, And The Christian Community is, in part, a concise summary of her work so far; in part, an apologia for icons, addressed to American Protestants in aniconic and even iconoclastic traditions; and in part a passionate esthetic manifesto for the future of Christian arts.

The book begins with a memoir, as Jensen recounts her own upbringing in a church that had “very little tolerance for visual art in the worship space of our spare, Protestant sanctuary.” She proceeds to a summary history of “Visual Art and Spiritual Formation in Christian Tradition,” which she aptly relates to the sacramental worldview of Catholic and Orthodox Christians. She tells the story of Christianity’s recurring struggles with iconoclasm, restating the eighth-century Father St. John Damascene’s arguments in favor of images. Her chapter on the relationship between art and Scripture in the ancient Church — titled “Visual Exegesis: Sacred Text and Narrative Art in Early Christianity” — is stunning.

Her conclusions, however, will perplex many readers, and not just those who come from traditions that venerate images. While dismissing sentimental art, she calls for a religious esthetic open to works as overtly transgressive as the dung madonna, Terrence McNally’s homoerotic play “Corpus Christi,” and Andres Serrano’s infamous work that featured a sacred image steeped in human waste. About the last she says: “The photograph, which shows a plastic crucifix plunged into the artist’s blood and urine, speaks deeply to me about Christ’s bodily incarnation and the sanctification of human life, especially the life of those who suffer … Serrano’s crucifix is submerged in what it means to be human.” And later: “When they shock us, they are forced to think harder about what we really believe. Have we been hanging on to old images that are no longer relevant?”

One needn’t accept her conclusions to appreciate the outstanding ecumenical (and apologetic) value of her opening chapters.

In 1950, when Pope Pius XII promulgated the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, the Anglican scholar R. L. P Milburn scoffed that “something has been solemnly stated as assured historical fact that has no other strictly historical basis even pretended than a Coptic romance.”

Now, Stephen J. Shoemaker of the University of Oregon has returned to the sources for Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, a hefty study of the ancient traditions regarding the end of the Virgin Mary’s earthly life. He takes full advantage of what he calls “the efflorescence of diverse traditions, both narrative and liturgical, all celebrating the Virgin’s departure from this world.” Not only does he provide exhaustive and technical analysis of the patristic paper trail, he mines the archeological record, too, to describe the relics of popular Marian devotion of the early Church. The book concludes with a fifty-page anthology of primary Marian material from the age of the Fathers — full texts, not just excerpts — including works from the Ethiopian, Syriac, Greek, Latin, and (yes) Coptic traditions.

The book is a demanding read, but rewarding. Both Catholics and Protestants should appreciate an historical study not refracted through the lens of the Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Shoemaker’s own religious affiliation is nowhere apparent in this study, as he trains the same critical faculties upon both the ancient texts and recent Vatican pronouncements.

This paperback is actually the second edition — the first appeared in 2003 — but it’s the first to come within the price range of mere mortals. Shoemaker’s study should be required reading for anyone who professes Marian doctrine and anyone interested in the faith of the Fathers.

In his new book Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, N.T. Wright — the Anglican bishop of Durham and renowned New Testament scholar — puts the recently discovered Gospel of Judas in its historical contexts. Just as important as the context in which it was written, he observes, is the context in which it was published. Thus he scrutinizes the ancient text itself, but also the positive spin it received from celebrity scholars like Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, and Marvin Meyer. The original author of the Judas text intended it to be a subversion of orthodox Christianity, and his modern interpreters would like him to succeed at long last. With brevity, clarity, and grace, Wright conveys the peculiar significance of this Judas text. Along the way, he teaches us much about the ancient Christians, their discontents, and ours.

The Manicheans were the New Agers of the olden days. Derivative of Christianity, but straying far afield, the religion of Mani proffered an answer to the problem of evil and a path to salvation that held enormous appeal for intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals from the third century onward. The young Augustine almost fell under its spell, but backed away before making a commitment. In later life he wrote the most devastating refutations of Manichean doctrine.

Now New City Press has gathered these eight works together in a single volume, The Manichean Debate. Augustine’s responses take several forms: treatises, dialogues, and letters, some of them mingled with memoir. The translations here are good and the introductions and notes very helpful. Some of the works appear for the first time in English.

Manicheans held that the world was made not by God, but by a wicked creator, the so-called god of the Old Testament, which they rejected. Matter was the locus of evil; spirit the realm of the good. Thus, they rejected the world and all of its delights: sex, wine, meats, and so on. Their arguments, perhaps the most persuasive of all the Gnostic species, drew out Augustine’s most important distinctions: about the goodness of marriage and food and strong drink, when ordered to their proper ends, and the even greater value of the renunciation of these goods, when they are given up for a higher Good.

Some converts to Mani’s way were drawn by the cult’s severe asceticism. It was enormously attractive during a time when the Church was wracked by scandals. The translator of this volume, Father Teske, summarizes Augustine’s response in a way that speaks to the anxieties of many of today’s Christians: “The number of the saints who follow the narrow path is small in comparison to the multitude of sinners, but that small number is hidden on the threshing floor of the Church.”

The volume will delight readers interested in Christian antiquity. But it will also prove useful for contemporary apologetics. The old religion of Mani — which would build a wall of separation between matter and spirit — is rising again under new names. Who better than Augustine should teach us to respond?

In this week’s Pittsburgh Catholic, Craig Maier had kind words to say about the new edition of my book The Fathers of the Church. Since the paper doesn’t post reviews, he kindly fulfilled my request for an electronic copy, which follows…

This past May, the film version of Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” came and went, but not before grossing $217 million domestically and over $532 million in the rest of the world. In the spirit of community service for those who haven’t had the misfortune of encountering either Brown’s book or the movie knock-off, I’ll spoil the plot: The Christian faith, Brown argues, is all a sham concocted by a “shadow conspiracy” of power-hungry, women-hating quacks.

For those who want to find the truth of the matter, though, the best bet isn’t Brown or the cottage industry of pseudo-intellectuals trying to scratch out a living in his wake. Mike Aquilina’s new edition of The Fathers of the Church, recently released by Our Sunday Visitor, not only introduces readers to the men and women of Brown’s “shadow conspiracy.” He lets them speak for themselves.

After the Apostles, the Fathers of the Church were the most important figures in making the church what it is today. Through Roman persecution and heated debates over everything from the number of books in the Bible to the nature of Christ himself, they formed a far-flung community of believers into a church.

“Many books tell the story of the first Christian centuries as a succession of creeds, councils, persecutions, and heresies,” Aquilina writes. “But it was far more than that, and far more interesting. It was the story of a family, and of how the Fathers of that family strove to keep their household together, to preserve the family’s patrimony, to teach and discipline their children, and to protect the family from danger. Only when we understand them as fathers can we understand the Church Fathers.”

The new edition, which includes more figures and selections than the first one published in 1999, covers six centuries of early Christian history, from St. Clement, the fourth pope and first of the fathers, to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a sixth century Greek about whose life we know little. It also includes a section on women like St. Perpetua whose stories and writings offer an important window into the life of the early church.

Some recent research on early Christianity paints a picture of the early church as a complex and conflict-ridden community. Yet, one of the interesting themes of Aquilina’s research into the first fathers is how consistent they really were and how devoted they were to maintaining the core of teaching that came down to them from the apostles themselves.

“Even today, the communities separated from Catholicism and Orthodoxy must confront the witness of the Fathers, and the apparent unity of the patristic experience with the experience of modern Catholic Christians,” Aquilina writes.

“In order to dismiss the early witness of today’s Catholic doctrines—for example, the Real Presence, the papacy, and the priesthood,” he continues, “Protestant scholars must posit a very early date when, they claim, the life of the Church went radically wrong, and then they must search out a subtle distinction between the witness of the Apostles in the New Testament and the seemingly identical witness of the Apostolic Fathers in the same century.”

After a brief biography and introduction for each father, Aquilina provides short passages that offer glimpses into the ideas of each. As with any book like this, some readers already familiar with the writings of the fathers—which would constitute dozens of volumes if printed in their entirety—may quibble about the inclusion of some portions over others, but the expanded edition is concise, comprehensive and readable, making it a good introduction.

Though nearly all of them are venerated as saints today, the Church Fathers were a diverse bunch. And though they all strove toward orthodoxy and led holy lives, they weren’t perfect. St. Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, had a nasty temper. Eusebius, a bishop and church historian, ended up on the wrong side of the council of Nicea. Origen, whose teachings were so important in the second and third centuries, still got a couple of things wrong. Even so, the church recognized that the truth of their writing far surpassed any personal imperfections.

Of course, some passages may be a little abstract and difficult for contemporary readers because they come from a different place and time. Though there are some exceptions, many don’t offer “theological bullet-points” that can be translated directly into daily life. They require a bit of effort and imagination to find the deeper significance they contain.

Perhaps the best advice for modern readers comes from a father himself. “My son, diligently apply yourself to the reading of sacred Scriptures. Apply yourself, I say,” Origen wrote to a student, St. Gregory of Pontus. “And applying yourself thus to the divine study, seek aright, and with unwavering trust in God, the meaning of the holy Scriptures, which so many have missed.”

Years later, St. Gregory reflected on his former teacher’s influence, paying a compliment that would apply to any of the fathers. “How shall I give account of what he did for us, in instructing us in theology and devout character?” he wrote. “He himself went on with us, preparing the way before us, and leading us by the hand, as if on a journey.”

For readers who persist, Aquilina’s book is worth the effort. The selections reveal what early Christians were worried about, and how the early fathers strove to lead their flocks gently, but firmly. It’s not surprising that the fathers weren’t worried about anything that Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” says. They were no “shadow conspiracy.”

Brown is content to read works about works about rumors. Aquilina gives readers the real deal, and the real deal is plenty interesting.