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Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years |  | Author: John Philip Jenkins
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $26.99
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 14262
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0061768944
Dewey Decimal Number: 270.2
EAN: 9780061768941
ASIN: 0061768944
Publication Date: March 1, 2010
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Product Description
Jesus Wars reveals how official, orthodox teaching about Jesus was the product of political maneuvers by a handful of key characters in the fifth century. Jenkins argues that were it not for these controversies, the papacy as we know it would never have come into existence and that today's church could be teaching some-thing very different about Jesus. It is only an accident of history that one group of Roman emperors and militia-wielding bishops defeated another faction. Christianity claims that Jesus was, somehow, both human and divine. But the Bible is anything but clear about Jesus's true identity. In fact, a wide range of opinions and beliefs about Jesus circulated in the church for four hundred years until allied factions of Roman royalty and church leaders burned cities and killed thousands of people in an unprecedented effort to stamp out heresy. Jenkins recounts the fascinating, violent story of the church's fifth-century battles over "right belief" that had a far greater impact on the future of Christianity and the world than the much-touted Council of Nicea convened by Constantine a century before.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 Wars of Foundation May 11, 2010
Hande Z (Singapore)
48 out of 50 found this review helpful
Jenkins tells the history of the Christian Church before the first Council of Nicea (325 CE) when Antioch and Alexandria were the centres of the faith and takes us to the sixth century in a fascinating account of the time when the Christians were divided in their belief of the nature of Jesus Christ. Arius from Antioch led the culture of the two natures of Jesus - the divine and the human, with the latter being subordinate to the former. Athanasius the Bishop of Alexandria eventually won the early part of the "Jesus Wars" when his One Nature Christ doctrine became the orthodox view at the time. In 451 Council of Chalcedon decreed that Christ was of two natures, one fully human and the other fully divine, but the ideological battle did not end but continued for almost 200 years more before the roots of the modern doctrines became more firmly established. "The Jesus Wars" is an informative account, written in an accessible style in spite of the numerous events and names that had to be covered. That had to be done at the expense of the scholarly approach of a standard history book. Some of the inferences and comments as well as references (even Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" was cited) might attract criticism from serious history enthusiasts, but the book as a historical account seemed accurate. It tells a single continuous story in one of the most important 300-year history of Christianity and compels the reader to realise that the doctrines and liturgies that Christians take for granted today weren't quite like that at first. The Antiochean and Alexandrian divide was manifest in Calvinistic and Lutheran thinking. The Christian faith might well be quite different had the Monophysite culture prevailed. What was it like then, and what it might have been today are questions the answers to which can be found in this book.
The formation of Christian orthodoxy revealed! June 21, 2010
J. A Magill (Sacramento, CA USA)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
In the plethora of current works on non-orthodox early movements from the likes of excellent scholars such Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagel (plus the absurd novels of Dan Brown and his imitators, which I shutter to mention in the same sentence), there has been precious little recent consideration of the establishment of Christian orthodoxy from a historical perspective. Into that breach steps Philip Jenkins with his interesting and readable "Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians would Believe for 1,500 Years."
Jenkins illuminates often neglected history of the competing strains of Christianity, the charges of heresy and counter-heresy leveled over and over again as theologians and bishops sought to settle the apparent contradictions inherent in ideas like the Trinity and "The Divine Made Flesh." If some imagine these conflicts as intellectual, they were at the time considered deadly serious, and a deluge of blood was shed on both sides.
While on occasion one might grow confused about the various heresies, Jenkins does yeoman work helping the reader keep them straight, including excellent appendices following at the end of certain chapters. As for entertainment, he also offers a variety of interesting character sketches of the prime movers in the debate, neither beatifying nor overly vilifying them. No doubt some will take offense, but for those interested in learning of the battles that set the fault lines for a millennium and half of Christianity, this is a welcome read.
The Road To Orthodoxy June 22, 2010
John D. Cofield
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Jesus Wars is a thorough and fascinating study of the tumultuous fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, when Christianity had become the legal religion in the Roman Empire, but Christians had not yet figured out what they were supposed to believe about their religion and its founder, Jesus Christ. Philip Jenkins does an excellent job detailing the conflicts over doctrine that shook the Roman world during this period, making the differences between Nestorius and Cyril, for example, clear.
But most importantly, Jenkins sets the endless debates over theology in their proper context. The numerous councils in which Christians argued over whether Jesus had one or two natures, or whether the Virgin was the Mother of God or "merely" the Mother of Christ took place in an empire which was under constant attack from invaders. The western half of the Roman Empire had lost most of its political unity but possessed in Rome the most eminent center of Christianity, while the eastern half was still centralized but riven with discord between rival patriarchs in Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch. Jenkins points out that the religious fragmentation caused political weaknesses that eventually led to loss of parts of the eastern empire and allowed rival powers and faith like Islam to grow.
Jenkins' scholarship is impeccable, and the readability of Jesus Wars is enhanced by his occasional use of modern terms like "Don't Ask Don't Tell" or the "Gangster Council." I also enjoyed his counterfactual speculations on what might have happened had theological issues been decided in other ways.
A 'must' for any serious Christian history library June 18, 2010
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
JESUS WARS: HOW FOUR PATRIARCHS, THREE QUEENS, AND TWO EMPERORS DECIDED WHAT CHRISTIANS WOULD BELIEVE FOR THE NEXT 1,500 YEARS comes from a fine historian who reviews the often-violent story of how the Church kept its belief that Jesus was human. Christians have struggled to resolve tensions between contentions that Jesus was either fully human or fully divine: this provides a focus on the fifth-century battles that decided the future of Christian thinking and is a 'must' for any serious Christian history library.
One nature, two natures? June 28, 2010
Frank J. Konopka (Shamokin, PA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If we think that the religious problems we are experiencing today are unique in history, reading this book will certainly squash that notion. Over 1500 years ago, when there was, basically, one Christian church, there was a tremendous amount of religious turmoil.
In an era where there were no newspapers or other types of media, it appears that what people talked, and argued, about the most were issues of religion. The biggest one that is covered by this book is the controversy about the exact nature of Christ: human or divine, or something in between.
Because of this controversy, which went on for centuries, throusands of people were killed, and patriarchs were expelled and returned, only to be expelled again. Of course, there was a monolithic Empire, and the rulers of it stuck their noses into this controversy constantly, either on one side of the fight, or the other. Was Christ wholly human, and then endowed with divinity at some time in his life (probably after his baptism in the Jordan), or was he always divine and merely took on the appearance of humanity? To we modern folks these disagreements seem silly, but when you realize that the Catholic and Orthodox churches split over the word "filioque" in the Creed, perhaps not so silly to the people at the time.
This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in early church history, or for someone merely wanting to learn more about how people lived and thoght almost 2 centuries ago. We'll find that they were not so different from us as we thought.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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