Daniel Nelms

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Daniel is Currently Reading

Daniel Nelms is currently reading

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

bookshelves: currently-reading

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"Seriously one of the best history books ever." — May 03, 2026 06:14AM

Apr 28, 2026 05:03PM

Daniel Nelms is currently reading

The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God

by Robert L. Wilken

bookshelves: church-history, historical-theology, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in November 2019

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Daniel Nelms said: " This is a well learned book, and one of the more interesting and thought provoking works on Church history that I have journeyed through.

Wilken, the professor of the History of Christianity and the University of Virginia, tackles the complex project This is a well learned book, and one of the more interesting and thought provoking works on Church history that I have journeyed through.

Wilken, the professor of the History of Christianity and the University of Virginia, tackles the complex project of defining and articulating the spirit of Christianity in its early centuries, and the basis of its intellectual development.

You learn of all sorts of rather obscure figure in early Christianity, (Prudentius, for example, as the first Christian allegorical writer in the spirit of John Bunyan, Hilary of Poieter, the fascinating story of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, etc.). I realized how much I do not know about early church history, and how much more reading I need to do.

All in all, he argues that Christianity brought into the ancient world a new way of thinking about God and religion, which was truly transformative: the idea of a participatory relationship with God that involved all the person - emotions and desires, the will, all driven by love. It wasn't enough to have knowledge of God, but rather to love him through his presence. "Desire is emotion of absence, love that of presence" (pg. 295). God was accessible through his Holy Spirit, brought through the incarnation. This was why icons grew in popularity and became central to the early church - they were so desperate for the presence of God, to know him through presence (eventually leading to the controversy of iconoclasm when it was taken too far).

All in all, this quote below is a good summary of his thesis:

"Like Origen and Gregory and Augustine - indeed, like all of the thinkers considered in this book - Maximus [the confessor] knew that the knowledge of God was participatory, a knowledge that changes the knower. 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Only those who have been cleansed, purified, and transformed can know God. Maximus puts it this way: "Knowledge of divine things without passion does not persuade the mind to disdain material things completely, but is like a mere thought of a thing known by the senses... For this reason there is a need for the blessed passion of holy love that binds the mind to spiritual realities [that is, God] and persuades it to prefer the immaterial to the material and the intelligible and divine things to those of sense." (pg. 307)

Great book. Highly recommended. ...more "

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(page 30 of 398)
— Apr 20, 2026 03:50AM

Nov 24, 2019 04:30AM · see review

Daniel Nelms is currently reading

After Virtue

by Alasdair MacIntyre

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(page 80 of 304)
— Feb 08, 2026 04:03AM

Jan 16, 2026 11:58AM

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Daniel’s Quotes

“It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

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“I don't believe in God, but I miss him.
”
― Julian Barnes

110 likes

“Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.”
― Hannah Arendt

tags: forgiveness, history

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“Hope is the last thing that dies in man; and though it be exceedingly deceitful, yet it is of this good use to us, that while we are traveling through life it conducts us in an easier and more pleasant way to our journey's end.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

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“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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