Emotion in Early Christianity (Andrew Crislip) - A Review

EMOTION IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY. By Andrew Crislip. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2026. 245 pages.

How might we understand our emotions from a Christian point of view? Is it possible to find guidance in the New Testament as well as early Christians who wrote in the wake of the earliest generation of Christians? How might what we find there reflect or differ from what we might find in the broader world in which early Christianity emerged? Beyond that, how might what we find in these early Christian writings connect with what we know today about emotions? We hear a lot about what Jesus, Paul, and the author of 1 John said about love, but what about other emotions, like joy, anger, sadness, disgust, and envy? These are some of the questions that Andrew Crislip addresses in his book Emotions in Early Christianity.

Andrew Crislip is the Blake Chair of the History of Christianity at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has written about monasticism and health care in late antiquity. So, a discussion of emotions fits his area of interest. It's clear from reading his book Emotion in Early Christianity, that he has dived deeply into early Christian thinking on emotions and the contextual issues, as well as the contemporary ones. Therefore, this is a book that, while scholarly and at times dense, can serve not only scholars of early Christianity but also clergy, especially when it comes to preaching on the emotions.

Crislip suggests that his goal in writing this book is to "show how Christians from the time of Paul to late antiquity came to understand and define themselves, their communities, practices, and identity through their experience of emotion" (p. 3). The challenge he faces in doing this is the need to separate how ancient Christians understood emotions from the way we understand them today. They are not necessarily the same. Therefore, one must recognize the complexity of how we understand emotions, especially when we look at the way Christians have understood emotions theologically. Crislip approaches these questions from the perspective of being a historian of early Christianity. As such, he seeks to place the discussion of how Christians understood emotions in the broader history of emotions. That way, we can see where Christian thinking overlapped or differed from other groups.

Crislip’s introductory chapter is titled "Finding Emotion in Early Christianity." Here, he seeks to set the foundation for the subsequent discussion of specific emotions. In laying the foundation for that discussion, he reminds us that the term "emotion" is of recent vintage, and it is not a universal concept. It is very culturally laden. He notes that some cultures/languages do not have words that correspond to the emotions as understood within Western Christianity. Despite the challenges, the word "emotion" remains useful. As for defining what an emotion is, that depends on the methodologies used—and he lays out the various options. As for the emotions themselves, he speaks in terms of emotional constellations “because each ‘emotion incorporates more than a single term, which may differ in their nuances and indeed differ in their conceptions over the course of antiquity.” So, for example, when it comes to describing “joy,” he includes “ a range of related emotions of a positive valence that indicate satisfaction and pleasure as a moral good” (p. 39).  He focuses here on five constellations: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and envy.

In the chapters that follow this introduction, Crislip explores five emotions: joy (chapter 2), sadness (chapter 3), anger (chapter 4), disgust (chapter 5), and envy (chapter 6). In each case, Crislip begins with Paul or the broader context before moving into other texts, both biblical and post-biblical. Thus, with the chapter on joy, he begins with Paul and Peter and then moves to Johannine concepts, followed by understandings from the second century and beyond. I should note that one of the texts that he makes use of is the Shepherd of Hermas, which is not well known today, but was very popular in the early centuries. In fact, it made it onto some of the canonical lists. But the Shepherd of Hermas did speak of emotions. Early on, writers emphasized joy over sadness and grief. It wasn't until around the fourth century that writers began to recognize the value of sadness. I want to take note of the chapter on envy because it figured prominently in early Christian thinking, even when the Greek word for envy wasn't used. The important thing to note was that the ancients viewed envy as a "primal emotional drive" that proved to be a motivational factor. It was viewed as much more harmful than we consider it today. That said, understanding ancient views of envy can prove helpful as we deal with current realities.

You will notice that love is not one of the five emotions discussed. Crislip does say a bit about love in the opening chapter. Part of that discussion involved questions raised by contemporary scholars as to whether the ancients considered love an emotion. He also notes in that opening chapter that there are different words and concepts found there that we place under the word love. While he does address love in the opening chapter, it’s not until Crislip reaches his conclusion that he offers "A Few Notes on Love." He points out that love is a primary concept within Christianity and is also how Christians have defined themselves. However, Crislip suggests that "Love's ubiquity and shape-shifting makes it both an irresistibly desirous topic of study and a uniquely unwieldy emotion to cover in the form I have undertaken in this book" (p. 200). Therefore, he decided to simply offer a few notes about love and leave it at that, choosing to focus on other emotions that might not get as much attention. Nevertheless, Crislip points out that while love is not the subject of a particular chapter, it emerges throughout the book, for example, in the chapter on joy.

Emotions are complex, and the way we understand them has developed over time. While early Christian understandings might differ from contemporary ones, having a discussion about how early Christians understood these five emotions, as well as love, can be very helpful. This would be especially true for preachers who often draw upon Scripture to speak of such things. Our tendency is to read our understandings back into the Bible. Thus, it would be helpful to have a “translation” of sorts so we can get a better sense of what our forebearers understood when they spoke of emotions. This need for “translation” makes Crislip's Emotion in Early Christianity a very helpful resource. 

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