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Distinguished Religion scholar Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School delivers a powerful and timely assessment of the past, present, and future of Christianity in his book The Future of Faith. Cox asserts that we are moving from an age of belief into an age of the Spirit with the rise of Christianity in the global south.

After a pre-Constantinian age of faith that followed closely in the pattern of Jesus, Christianity moved into an age of creeds beginning with Constantine and petering out today as Christians outside of the west bring a charismatic, Spirit-led Christianity to the table that will resemble the age of faith in many ways.

Writing in an engaging, page-turning style, Cox deftly carries readers through his own journey through fundamentalist Christianity and into the conversations with individuals and groups who are leading today’s renewal. He shares a vision of real hope in this account of the rise of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America rather than a lament of the West’s decline.

From liberal to conservative, there is a fairly strong consensus among scholars that Constantine’s endorsement of Christianity surrendered far too much in the interest of state legitimacy. Indeed, many of those we celebrate from church history either aimed to reform or to separate themselves from the bulk of the established church. The collapse of Constantinian Christianity is widely celebrated.

Cox is correct to that extent, and his celebration of liberation theology and the rise of indigenous worship from Africa to Asia points toward a future of Christianity that celebrates the indigenous expressions of Christianity, the very thing that many of today’s missionaries have known for years—which their sending congregations tragically ignored even in the midst of celebrating their work.

From start the finish the book is simply superb. In a broad sense Cox presents what I believe to be a very compelling and accurate case for the future of faith. However, his arguments are not above critique, and I trust that many of my readers on the conservative end of the spectrum would be concerned should they read my endorsement of such a book without a few caveats. Well, there are probably more than a few.

Cox and Caveats

Cox’s account of such events as the Council of Nicea don’t always match up with the accounts I’ve read in a number of other sources. Written for lay readers, Cox passes on extensive end notes and citations from historical documents, so there’s no way to determine the accuracy of his whirlwind tour based on this book alone.

Based on Cox’s story we get the idea that the divinity of Christ hung in the balance and really wasn’t that big of a deal, so Constantine twisted a few arms, expelled a few freshly minted heretics, and pushed for a handy creed to separate friend from foe. While Constantine’s presence at the council is troubling and his expulsion of some Christians is very problematic, every other account I’ve read of Nicea mentions that those who would downgrade the divinity of Christ were practically shouted down when they presented their views to all present.

The majority of Christians at that time believed in the full humanity of Christ, though we can debate the value of this argument that was based on Greek conceptions of divinity. Was Nicea much ado about nothing? I’m not the one to say that, but so far as I know, it was not a toss up that Constantine refereed.

Nicea may not have been as close as Cox insists, but without knowing his list of sources I don’t think I can say much more than noting that several other notable scholars would certainly take issue with him, especially leading scholars from Latin America such as Justo Gonzalez. See Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity for a competing view.

It’s hard to know if Cox sometimes romanticizes a bit too much about the age of faith that followed Jesus. To be sure, Christianity was quite different then from today. Creeds were not in the picture in the picture then, and neither was scripture.

However, Cox conveniently passes over the Judaizer controversy that nearly tore the early church apart along racial and cultural lines. At one point in the controversy Paul said that he wished those who distorted the Gospel with the Law’s requirements would emasculate themselves. The result of the Jerusalem council was a written document that all churches were expected to obey.

It was no Nicea for sure, but to a certain degree there was an effort to promote a certain message about Christ. Faith and faithfulness were certainly the point, but I doubt that the early church was quite so… liberal with their theology at that early stage as Cox suggests. In addition, Cox seems to think of Constantine as the one who virtually created heresy, but as early as 200 AD theologians such as Irenaus wrote Against Heresies, though I hasten to add that Irenaus was primarily concerned with the effects of Gnosticism on Christian practice (see Bass’s A People’s History of Christianity).

Was there diversity of belief? For sure. Certainly more than we would tolerate today. But Cox has a suspicion of creeds that I find a bit tough to swallow at times. Perhaps the creeds did a lot of harm, but perhaps the larger problem was the way in which they were used rather than their existence. Perhaps Cox didn’t spend enough time suggesting the future of belief and creeds in an age of the Spirit. In addition, he sometimes levels a heavy critique against the beliefs of the global south, which makes me wonder what he expects the age of the Spirit to be like. Will there not be a place for certain lines to be drawn in the sand? This is a gray area in the book that I would have liked to see clarified.

Cox is not unique in presenting a fairly romantic view of the early church, though I’m sure a work such as this isn’t intended to provide all of the angles in favor of providing a rough overview. Nevertheless, I can’t help wondering if Cox has mistakenly thrown out theology/creeds as hindrances to Christianity when perhaps they have been divorced from faith and action and need to be reunited. In a broad sense I agree with Cox, but I don’t feel I can go quite so far as he does.

There were other points in the book where I felt Cox belabored a few points, but his oversights in these instances don’t change the overall value of this book. In fact, I would say that it is not only one of the best books I’ve read this year, and it may be one of the more significant books on religion of this century thus far.

If Cox is right, then Christianity may look quite different over the coming centuries, but those changes may well be for the best.  Nevertheless, there are essentials to Christianity that we dare not leave behind in our quest to live by faith under the lead of the Spirit. Finding that balance will be the work of the church in the years to come.