‘Silence: A Christian History’, by Diarmaid MacCulloch – review

This is a specialist book for non-specialist readers — by which I mean in part that it is made highly accessible to anyone seriously interested by excellent and lively writing rather than by any dumbing down. It may be an odd thing to say about a history of the intersection of platonic philosophy and Christian and Judaic spiritual theologies, but actually it is great fun. A good read.

Nonetheless it is also odd and unexpected. One of the oddities is the curious balance of silence and confessional in the authorial voice. It is a sign of the times, I think, when a book of this substance tells the reader more about the author’s sexuality than about his relationship to the faith he is discussing. He does try, but clearly for ‘serious’ academics, even those as media savvy and sympathetic to the reader as Diarmaid MacCulloch, subjectivity remains an awkward problem.

But the real reason it is an odd book is because it is really two different books not quite seamlessly stuck together.