Silence: A Christian History

Short Review: Diarmaid MacCulloch is an excellent historian. And the riffs off the idea of silence, while interesting as individual ideas are not cohesive. So on the whole the book lacks focus and organization. My problem is that it seems like MacCulloch is saying that there is no correlation within the idea of silence. So silence can be good, it can be bad, it can be sinful, it can be holy, it can be transcendent, etc. But if it can be everything then I am not sure what the point of the book is, other than to say ‘hey here are some essays on silence.'

I do appreciate MacCulloch's outsider status to Christianity. So he can talk about gnostics without feeling the need to defend orthodoxy. But at the same time MacCulloch does not seem to need to denigrate Christianity because he is not a Christian himself. So MacCulloch plays a useful role as a historian. I think my real disappointment is that I thought this would be better because I so much enjoy his last book.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/silence/