Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries.

• Author: Muehlberger, Ellen
• Position: Book review

Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. By EVERETT FERGUSON. Grand Rapids. Mich.: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING Co., 2009. Pp xxii + 953. $60.

Over the course of the last decade, a flush of reference works for the field of early Christian studies has appeared. Following on the success of projects like Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, most of these reference works are group efforts: an expert editor, or a team of expert editors, heads an international group of scholars who each treat a special topic within the field. Encyclopedic works like the Lexikon der antiken christlichen Literatur (ed. Siegmar Dopp and Wilhelm Geerlings), or more general works like The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (ed. Frances Young. Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth, 2004) and The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter, 2008), show the strengths of the genre. Sweeping in their scope, these volumes offer a rich diversity of historical and theological discussions, of primary and secondary source references, and of methodological perspectives. Written in the aftermath of Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy and the explosion of studies of varieties of Christianity in antiquity, such multiple-author works reflect the increasing measure of knowledge in the held as well as the increasing number of approaches. The study of early Christianity has become a conversation, with many excellent results following.

It has been quite some time since any scholar has attempted a comprehensive reference work on his own. Newer equivalents of Quaesten's Patrology, or even Lietzmann's Geschichte der alten Kirche, have not appeared, and this is partly a reflection of the diversification of the field of early Christian studies. What made single-author reference works like these possible was the smaller, more systematic--in both the general and the theological senses of the term--method of studying Christianity. In Baptism in the Early Church Everett Ferguson attempts what others, by their silence, have suggested is near to impossible--the completion of a work that treats a topic in ancient Christianity comprehensively, but in a style accessible to the beginner. And he succeeds. Though it is clear that Ferguson himself understands the value of a multiple-author work (see the Encyclopedia of Early Christian Studies, of which Ferguson was an editor), this volume on baptism offers...