Books I Reread in 2025 by Dr. Kevin L. Hester
Often, authors on sites like this post some of the things they have read in the past year. Commissioner Jeremy Craft recently posted one on this site. I have tended to do things a little differently as I did in this 2023 post in which I reflected on two companion volumes. In 2024, I highlighted some recent books on the theology of the body. At times, I have used this opportunity to share with the readers how I review textbooks for my courses in theology. This year, I thought I would focus my discussion on three books that I reread this year. I often reread spiritual or theological classics for my own edification. I reflected on one of these volumes during the Christmas season. The books I would like to discuss this year don’t quite fall into this category. Instead, they each offer something different. In all cases they address specific topics that I wanted to refresh, and I remembered receiving significant benefit from my first reading of them.
In October, I attended the Commission’s Theological Symposium. In addition to a number of wonderful presentations, there were some tables set up with used theological books for purchase. I happened upon a copy of Kurt Aland’s Did the Early Church Baptize Infants. Because this had been a rare volume detailing a historically important theological argument, I picked it up. I had read it previously, but I can say that even on my second reading I did not find that his argument had lost any saliency or power.
Baptism: Kurt Aland and Joachim Jeremias
Kurt Aland initially published this work in German in 1938 as a point-by-point rebuttal to Joachim Jeremias’s Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries. Aland’s book was only translated into English in the 1960s and was a translation of his revised German work. Jeremias had argued based on his reading of the biblical text and early church references that infant baptism was almost universally observed in the post-apostolic community. In contrast, Aland argues that infant baptism was a novelty in the Christian community until its gradual adoption in the third century. Much of this argument is driven by textual evidence in Scripture and the early church fathers. Aland reviews the evidence Jeremias posited and shows how his interpretation is either flawed or overly expansive in its reading.
In chapter one, Aland reviews the biblical evidence related to baptism and challenges Jeremias’s assumptions that household baptisms necessarily included infants. Much of his argument surrounds his finding that Jeremias’s distinction between “the baptism of children born to Christian parents” and “the baptism of children joining the church” has no warrant in the biblical text and cannot be substantiated in the first (or even broadly in the second) century.
In chapter two Aland reviews additional evidence from the early church and demonstrates that the earliest unambiguous evidence of infant baptism dates to the third century. He focuses upon the necessity of a period of probation to further his argument. This emphasis throughout early Christian history on the necessity of probation extended to baptism, ordination, and even hospitality (as found in the Didache). Aland also works to problematize Jeremias’s use of the term “children” in baptism, saying that the real distinction is between infant baptism and believer’s baptism. Thus, if evidence is not clearly applicable to infants, such statements should be understood to reference believer’s baptism even in the case of children.
Chapters three through six review additional patristics witnesses to the administration of baptism into the third century. He documents growing concern over the salvation state of unbaptized infants as a motive for the growing impetus to baptize infants of Christian parents. This movement, beginning in North Africa around 200 AD will continue to grow and will be evidenced in Palestine (Origen) and later in Rome (Hippolytus). It is only then in the latter half of the second century when infant baptism becomes customary in the early church.
Chapters seven through nine return to the biblical evidence and provide a helpful review of several related passaged. Aland concludes his work in chapter ten by arguing that the emerging doctrine of original guilt (humanity’s inheritance of the sin of Adam) and depravity in the second century were influential in the rise of infant baptism. He cites important evidence from Cyprian, Origen, and Tertullian. For Free Will Baptists, it should be noted that Aland, as a Lutheran, remains an advocate of infant baptism even though he sees no support of the practice in the church prior to the second century.
Readers interested in this topic and the current state of scholarship on this question should consult the more recent, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries by Everett Ferguson.
Creeds and Doctrine: J. N. D. Kelly
2025 marked the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) which met to condemn Arius and define the divine nature of the Son as consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father. The creed that emerged from this council was refined and reiterated at the council of Constantinople (381 AD). The resulting Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed has been universally used in worship across Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and many Evangelical communities together with the Apostle’s Creed. This anniversary, and a desire to refresh my thinking for an upcoming course I will be teaching on creeds and councils of early Christianity, reminded me of an author and two books I had read a number of years ago that I wanted to reread and would like to recommend to you.
J. N. D. Kelly was an Anglican priest and professor of theology at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University for much of the twentieth century. Two of his more important works are his Early Christian Doctrines and his Early Christian Creeds. Early Christian Doctrines is a foundational work on the historical development of Christian doctrine and in many ways Kelly’s methodology, use of sources, and focus on doctrinal development have been formational for the discipline of what is often called historical theology. Much of the interest in evangelical retrieval stems from his work and that of historical theologians like him. His writing is rich in primary sources and communicates clearly.
Early Christian Doctrines was originally published in 1958 and continued to expand through its fifth edition in 1977. While it has been surpassed, especially by Jaroslav Pelikan, it still provides a valuable introduction both to the method of historical theology and to the historical development of doctrine in the early church including: theology proper, Trinity, Christology, and aspects of soteriology.
If Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines is a product of historical theology, his Early Christian Creeds shows the template he used for this kind of analysis. In all fairness, this is a very technical work and some proficiency in Greek and Latin will be a help to the reader. Nevertheless, Early Christian Creeds still provides the best historical study of the development of the Apostle’s Creed available today. His sections on the Nicene and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creeds have been surpassed most notably by Lewis Ayres, (Nicaea and its Legacy) and Frances Young (From Nicaea to Chalcedon). Another work on this topic worth noting is the book by Ortiz and Keating.
This work was initially published in 1950 with expanded editions following in 1972 and 1982. It continues to be a foundational work for the historical development of creeds in the church. Kelly reaches back to the earliest Christian kerygma and demonstrates how the basic doctrinal content of the Gospel comes to be included in Scripture. The evangelistic fervor of the earliest Christian community meant that the presentation of Jesus as Lord, who died for our sins and rose on the third day would be foremost in the collective consciousness of the community. Such language shows up later in the text of the New Testament itself where we see early creedal components and structures. Some examples include Paul’s reflection from I Corinthians 15:3 and following of the things of “first importance” and his statement on Jesus’s death and ongoing intercession outlined in Romans 8:34. Additionally, Peter 3:18 and following shows similar evidence of a collection of truths about Christ that provided useful reflection for Christians, namely, that the Messiah had “suffered for sins,” been “quickened in the Spirit,” and has now “ascended to heaven.”
These types of statements, tied to the proclamation of the Gospel, would form the basis for later instruction of children and those newly converted to the faith. These early creedal statements would slowly coalesce as part of the catechetical process of the church. Thus, individual churches in specific localities would slowly develop their own individual expressions of common Christian truths. The incorporation of these local creeds into formal worship would serve the purpose of binding the local body of believers together as one with the saints and martyrs who had passed on before them.
Kelly walks the reader through a number of different localized creeds emphasizing their commonality and their traditional Trinitarian formula consistent with earlier interrogatory baptismal creeds. As the church begins to unite against particular heresies these creeds expand to meet the challenge and come to have a more defined, doctrinal, and dogmatic edge. This emerging policing function eventually bleeds back into the liturgical celebration of the gathered communities. Additionally, the importance of certain ecclesial and intellectual centers like Rome and Constantinople means that their previously local creeds will come to have more impact across the church.
Kelly methodically walks the reader through the process whereby the Old Roman Creed slowly develops into what the church today commonly calls the Apostle’s Creed. From worship to theology and back again, this work traces how a doctrinal statement came to define the church. It therefore provides an opportunity for the reader to think about the importance of Christian worship and the doctrinal definitions of Christianity that unite us in worship and belief.
I can’t leave a discussion of J. N. D. Kelly’s work without also mentioning two additional, and not altogether unrelated works. Notable and highly recommended are his theological biographies of Jerome, who deserves much more evangelical study, and John Chrysostom, the “golden-mouthed” preacher himself.