Book Review: Worship in the Early Church by Justo L. González and Catherine Gunsalus González

Justo L. González and Catherine Gunsalus González's book, Worship in the Early Church, was originally written in Spanish in 2021 and later translated into English. They wrote this book jointly, bringing together Catherine's interest in worship and Justo's interest in theology; this communal task led them to conclude that the “history of worship [is] absolutely necessary if we are to understand the development of theology as well as the history of the church” (ix).

To accomplish this task, they divide the book into four chronological parts: Judeo-Christianity, from 100 to 313 ce, from Constantine to the Invasions, and after the invasions. Focusing on the primary Sunday worship practices, each part contains chapters specific to preaching, baptism, and communion. The first part delves into the Jewish background of Christian worship, and the latter three parts are introduced by noting the social and political experience of Christians that impacted worship. Each part also addresses issues of time, place, and ritual.

In the introduction, González and González make three claims about Christian worship that the remainder of the book is designed to support: 1) worship establishes a bidirectional relationship with God, 2) worship joins with the hosts of heaven and thus the church is never alone, and 3) worship is enacted by the communal body of Christ and thus is not a private matter. The book succeeds in supporting these claims by engaging primary source material. While the book's main concern is liturgical history, it necessarily engages with emerging Christian theologies as they relate to worship, which aligns with the authors’ claim that theology and worship belong together.

Since the first followers of the Jesus movement were Jewish, the book begins with Jewish worship and its context, along with an overview of intertestamental literature; this helps the reader not only to understand some of the foundations of Christian worship but also provides assistance in understanding the New Testament. The authors are careful not to universalize or superimpose later Jewish worship practices onto the history. They also carefully distinguish among Jewish converts, God-fearers, and Gentiles—all of whom contribute differently to the development of Christian worship.

González and González operate with the correct assumption that Christian worship practices have evolved from early diversity to later uniformity, while at the same time theological interpretation of worship and sacraments diversified because of the spread of Christianity and those who were engaging in theology. They are quick to note places where concrete evidence cannot support previously held assumptions.

The final part of the book invites the reader to make connections between the four chronological parts and Christian worship today, noting that the task “is not to seek the restoration of primitive Christian worship or to find some other period worthy of wholesale imitation … [but instead] to reflect on what we may learn from each of those periods that may be a help or a warning within our present context” (271–72). I would argue that the book accomplishes this goal by providing an important overview of liturgical history.

The readable style of the book mirrors Justo's two-volume The Story of Christianity and would be well-suited for congregational use or for an introductory course in worship. It is not as technical as Andrew McGowan's Ancient Christian Worship or Paul Bradshaw's The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, being closer in approach to Bradshaw's Early Christian Worship. For the primary source material, the book draws on the standard sources for documents, such as ANF, NPNF, Fathers of the Church, and the Migne series, in addition to the extra-canonical literature.

The book does suffer from drawing too heavily on The Apostolic Tradition, which the authors attribute to Hippolytus, as an authoritative source for the third and fourth centuries. This is due, in part, to there being fewer authoritative liturgical texts for those periods than in later centuries. The book would have benefited from applying a hermeneutic of suspicion to The Apostolic Tradition and some of the other so-called church orders.

With that one caveat, I would recommend this book to students beginning their work in liturgical studies, congregations who desire to see how their current worship connects to the past, and those who want a better sense of how early Christians engaged with practices. The book would also serve as a companion to those studying extra-canonical Christian literature.