A Brief Overview
Henry Chadwick’s The Early Church presents a historical narrative of the formation of the early Christian Church and its spread across the Roman Empire. The book is concise and demonstrates a deep font of research. However, Chadwick’s non-Orthodox perspective is apparent in his recounting of historical events.
The book begins with the emergence of Christianity from Judaism and their gradual separation, finalised by the destruction of Jerusalem. Chadwick then defines what he considered the biggest threat to the early Church – Gnosticism. In fact, a disproportionate amount of this book is dedicated to Gnosticism and exploring the influence of Plato and other philosophers on Christian theology. Chadwick’s analytical approach often hampers the development of his arguments, as he overemphasises philosophical development from Greek philosophers rather than demonstrating Christianity to be a faith revealed through the Holy Spirit.
The following chapters look at the main challenges facing the early Church, such as: Gnosticism and the internal divisions in the Church (especially regarding the date of Easter), and the development of early theology through Clement of Alexandria and others. This raises another issue regarding Chadwick’s Western academic mindset; many of the theologians he cites are not saints in the Orthodox Church and others had their work famously anathematised, as in the case of Origen.
As the narrative progresses, Chadwick discusses the Novation schism, pushback from Pagans and The Great Persecution culminating in the Council of Nicaea. The author notes the presupposed difficulty in achieving a consensus at Nicaea yet he fails to mention why unanimity ultimately emerged, an issue this paper will address later.
After Nicaea, he focuses on the struggle against Arianism, the failed revival of paganism under Julian, the emergence of the Church as an unstoppable force penetrating every aspect of life and society, the controversies around Nestorianism and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. His discussion of liturgics and hymnography is concise but accurate before offering a woefully inadequate summary of the iconoclasm.
The Arguments
This paper will therefore be divided into two sections: The first will contrast Chadwick’s presentation of Origen with that of St. John Chrysostom, and the second will evaluate his generally accurate recounting of early theological developments such as the Papacy against his rushed and imprecise account of the iconoclasm and the Council of Nicaea.
Chadwick provides a stern defence of Origen in Chapters 6 and 13. As noted earlier, some of Origen’s teachings have been anathematised by the Orthodox Church. However, Chadwick observes that the Church “was not merely exhuming the dead for trial, but specifically mentions the living influence of Origen… on ‘certain Egyptian monks'” (Chadwick 184). Many Orthodox saints, such as St. Augustine of Hippo who contributed to the Filioque (Chadwick 236) and Clement of Alexandria (no longer venerated) who spoke of being “purified by the wise fire” (Chadwick 99), expressed heterodox ideas, yet both were venerated. Origen’s prolific writings and abundant hypotheses, left him open to censure. It is understandable why an intellect like Chadwick would defend him. This is not a defence of Origen, but rather a defence of Chadwick’s defence of him.
As strongly as Chadwick defends Origen, he equally disparages St. John Chrysostom, describing him “ill fitted to be bishop of an affluent city” (Chadwick 186). His reasoning is that Chrysostom was “outspoken to the point of indiscretion” (Chadwick 188). Viewing matters with an ecumenist eye, Chadwick portrays Chrysostom as offensive to the sensibilities of wealthy people. Yet, a gentle bishop is not what people need when they are distracted from God, for Christ taught “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). Chadwick says that the rich “resented… his socialist sermons” (Chadwick 188) and that women should have been spared his “sarcasms about feminine luxuries” (Chadwick 188). However, an Orthodox bishop cannot treat the rich one way and the poor another; he cannot reassure the rich that they can serve both mammon and God. In this, Chadwick shows the weakness of an overly intellectual approach and a lack understanding of the pastoral guidance required in Christian leadership.
Chadwick is notably fair in his assessment of the papacy avoiding anachronistic attempts to promote later ideas of papal supremacy. He states “The ‘Petrine text’ of Matt xvi, 18… cannot be seen to have played any part in the story of Roman leadership and authority before the middle of the third century.” (Chadwick 237) Even afterwards, such claims remained limited, as both East and West were busy establishing a canon for the whole Church, and the “Council of Nicaea… had done much to elevate the authority of provincial bishops” (Chadwick 238). Unlike the East, no other churches in the West had apostolic foundations, therefore the papal letters to local churches took the form of decretals (Chadwick 239-240) but this is still far removed from papal supremacy as defined at Vatican I.
Chadwick fails to explain how the Council of Nicaea 325 reached an unexpected decision with near unanimity. Throughout the book, he relies on tangible evidence while ignoring the great miracles that shaped the Church. He overlooks the miracle performed by St. Spyridon with a brick showing one entity could be in three forms at once, in this case fire, water and clay (“St. Spyridon – Patron Saint”). With this, he defeated the Arians.
Chadwick also seems sympathetic to the iconoclasts claiming there was a “measure of truth” in their association of icons with idolatry and even compares an image of an enthroned Jesus to “pictures of Zeus” (Chadwick 283). He describes the iconoclasts as “not Philistines but conservatives” (Chadwick 284) while ignoring the persecutions that created martyrs and confessors for the faith (Ouspensky 109).
Chadwick squeezes a lot of history into a short book, however, his ignoring of miracles, sympathy toward iconoclasm, heavy reliance on non-Orthodox theologians for theological framing and misunderstanding of pastoral responsibility, cannot be ignored. From an Orthodox perspective the book lacks key information to be an accurate historical narrative. His ecumenism, and intellectualism together with his tolerance of heresies overshadows the strength of his research and narrative.
Bibliography
- Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church. Revised edition. The Penguin History of the Church, vol. 1. Penguin Books, 1993.2
- Ouspensky, Leonid. Theology of the Icon, Vol. I. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992.
- “St. Spyridon – Patron Saint.” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church (WV), https://www.stspyridon.wv.goarch.org/patron-saint/. Accessed October 2, 2025.