THIS HOLY SEED
Faith, Hope and Love in the Early Churches of North Africa
By Robin Daniel. Tamarisk Publications (distributed in the UK by Opal Trust, http://www.opaltrust.org). 454 pages. £10.00
ISBN 978-0-9538565-3-4
Robin Daniel has worked for 27 years with the persecuted churches in North Africa. This book, extensively researched and superbly written, is evidently a labour of love. He portrays the rapid growth of the church in the region, with the intense persecutions and martyrdoms it experienced.
He considers Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine and the heyday of Christianity, before its sad decline after the collapse of Roman power, at first under the Vandals and then terminally under the Arabs. Factors precipitating its decay are probed effectively. The record of the Muslim invasion and its subsequent subjugation of the church is a salutary lesson for Western Europe today. Anyone with an interest in the gospel will find this tale informative and challenging.
However, the book is marred by two significant weaknesses.
First, theologically Daniel’s handling of Augustine and the Pelagian controversy is unfortunate. Pelagius’s views on the innocence of fallen man and his ability to respond to the gospel were condemned as heresy at the Council of Carthage in 418 AD. Daniel remarks that unfortunately Augustine and Pelagius ‘were never able to meet and discuss their differences’ (p.323). He writes of distressing aspects of Augustine’s theology by which a believer ‘must spend his days in anxious doubt, wondering whether God has chosen him to heaven or hell’ (p.325); it was a grim system marked by seeming harshness and arbitrary injustice (p.326). He attributes the differences between Pelagius and Augustine to their personal backgrounds and experiences (pp.329-330). Daniel prefers semi-Pelagianism, a halfway house between the two, and commends it in an appendix.
Second, Daniel has a radically individualistic view of the church. The great ecumenical councils recognised the Trinity and the person of Christ, condemning heresies that, if unchecked, would have torpedoed the gospel. Far from introducing novel ideas, they simply acknowledged the truth. However, Daniel uniformly terms these councils ‘conferences’ — simply gatherings. Bishops are ‘overseers’. Daniel’s unilateral and eccentric change of terminology can only relativise and ultimately trivialise these foundational conciliar decisions.
This book can be read with profit, if it is accompanied by an informed understanding of the doctrine and ecclesiology of the patristic period.
Dr. Robert Letham,
minister in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales;
lectures at WEST
