Q+A with Warren Smith on his Early Christian Theology

Q. What was the motivation for writing this kind of detailed study of early Christian theology from the 2nd to the 8th centuries? When I was in seminary, the classic text book for patristic theology was J.N.D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrine. But that was written back in the 70’s. Much scholarship has been published and new insights have been gained by that research. So it was time to update the larger picture of early Christian thought that this books tries to prove. Q. This book appears to be a summary of what you’ve been teaching for many years at Duke (and elsewhere?), so in a sense it is a summary of your life’s work in your field. Were there predecessor volumes by other scholars that you modeled this on, or was this real sort of de novo? I was thinking of the 2 volumes by Brian Daley, but his thrust is advocating for a return to the patristic way of interpreting the Bible, and a critique of the historical critical contextual approach. This doesn’t seem to be your agenda in this book. Right? You are just trying to familiarize the reader with what these early theologians actually said and taught with enough historical context to help us understand a figure like Ambrose, for in...