Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 15:2 (Fall 2018)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

[Electronic Edition Editor’s Note: The footnotes in the print edition restarted with each individual book review. In this edition they have simply been numbered consecutively. The original numbers have been retained within the body of the footnote text.]

Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church. By Michael J. Kruger. London: SPCK, 2017. 256 pages. Paperback, $21.69.

Michael J. Kruger is president and Samuel C. Patterson Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. He also serves as associate pastor of teaching at Uptown PCA. Kruger earned a BS from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, an MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary, and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He is a leading scholar on the New Testament canon and transmission of the New Testament text. Kruger has authored and edited several books and articles, including The Question of Canon (IVP, 2013), Canon Revisited (Crossway, 2012), and The Heresy of Orthodoxy (Crossway, 2010).

Kruger’s thesis is that second-century Christianity faced many critical issues that would significantly shape the form of Christianity we know and enjoy today. Unfortunately, this “Cinderella Century” (as Larry Hurtado calls it) has been often neglected in scholarly research, especially when compared to the attention other centuries have received. The goal of Kruger’s book is to provide an introduction and general overview of Christianity and what it faced during the second century.

The second century can be described as one that was both transitional and vulnerable for the church as it began to move beyond the apostolic age. As the title suggests, Christianity in the second century came to the crossroads. Christians faced major sociological, cultural- political, ecclesiastical, doctrinal, and textual-canonical transitions that would impact the direction of the church.

Kruger begins by examining the sociological make-up of second-century Christianity. He notes that it is both a time of great expansion for the church and a time when Christians were becoming more distinguished from both the Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures. The church was ethnically, economically, and intellectually diverse. For many reasons, Christianity also proved to be more favorable toward women than the culture at large.

Second-century Christians faced a tremendous amount of political and intellectual persecution. Referencing many primary sources, Kruger concludes that there were two main reasons Christians faced political persecution. First, Christians were solely committed to the worship of Jesus and ref...

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