The Time of the Christ

Preface

Only someone who is an “outsider” to the American academic community: who is not restricted by its prejudices and “insider” tropes, could write The Time of the Christ. Steven Jones, its author, is an autodidact. Both brilliant and self motivated Mr. Jones never found his niche in American academia; or, for that matter, in mainline American religious denominationalism. Constantly exploring the various ways denominations claim [or disclaim] the riches of the Christian tradition, and constantly investigating every discipline that might assist him in discovering the truth, Mr. Jones was not hindered by the narrow confines of academic disciplines or the official pronouncements of denominational executives. He did not know, until he found it, that he was searching for the philosophia perennis that was denigrated in the Enlightenment and snuffed out by Nietzsche and Modernist relativism.
The synthesis of revealed religion with classical culture created a Christian civilization that flourished for over twelve hundred years. The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas is perhaps the most obvious manifestation of this synthesis, but it continued to flourish well into the seventeenth century in the spirituality of the Cambridge Platonists and the literature of William Shakespeare and John Donne [to speak only of the English Renaissance]. But this Christian Culture is all but unknown, even to my seminary Students! I ask them to read C. S. Lewis's The Discarded Image (Cambridge University Press, 1964) to learn something of what they had lost in their American secularized educations. What C. S. Lewis provides here is also evident in Steven Jones’ book: truth can be found, and the truth evident in revealed religion is in consonance with the truth discovered by empirical observation. Above all, the God revealed in the Old Testament and present in the New Testament is also the God who created, sustains and will bring to fulfillment His purposes in His cosmos.
One fascinating example of Mr. Jones’ research is his investigation of the Old Testament prophecies in the Book of Daniel and the story of Esther. By means of modern computer modeling, medieval commentaries, and Biblical texts he shows not only how accurately the ancients could understand the heavens, but also how the Old Testament correlates with the New Testament. His grasp of the cultural context in which Esther is set allows him to provide a remarkable solution to the disparity of the timing of the Last Supper and Crucifixion between the Gospel of John and the Synoptic Gospels.
The Time of the Christ is a book worth reading for the Christian who seeks to recover the unified worldview of classical Christianity, but it is also worth reading for the skeptic who is dissatisfied with the prevailing Nihilism of modern thought. One quote from the book states this most clearly: “Our thoughts approach perfection not when we narrow the scope of what we think, but when our beliefs are consistent with everything that actually is.” This statement is a modern parallel to the simple but magnificent motto of St. Anselm of Canterbury: “credo ut intelligere”, or “I believe in order that I may understand.”

The Rev. Arnold W. Klukas, Ph. D.
Professor of Liturgics and Ascetical Theology
Nashotah House
Feast of the Transfiguration 2007