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SILENCE: A CHRISTIAN HISTORY. Diarmaid MacCulloch, New York, NY: Viking, 2013, Pp. xii + 338, Hb, ISBN 9780670025565, $27.95. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Evangel University/Springfield, MO).
I come from a noisy church tradition-a place where young Christians like their music loud and pulsating. The notion of silence in Christianity struck me as odd when I saw it on the new books' shelf of my local library. But as I flipped through the Table of Contents and checked a few pages, many thoughts came to mind. Perhaps like historians, psychologists and counselors can learn much from silence. Silence helps interpret noise.
Diarmaid MacCulloch portrays the history of silence amongst God's faithful. The work is scholarly, intriguing, insightful, and masterfully written. MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University and an award winning author. He has also produced a multiepisode video series on the history of Christianity as well as a New York Times Best Seller on the same subject. MacCulloch organized Silence into historical eras creating nine chapters to describe four epochs.
The first chapter of The Bible era offers a look at the contrasts between silence and celebration in the Hebrew...