David Wilhite intended his study of ancient African Christianity for beginning scholars and specialists. It will serve both admirably. The book covers the full range of surviving evidence, from the first appearance to the last traces of the movement. It offers comprehensive coverage of both primary and secondary literature. It narrates events in detail and offers new perspectives for their interpretation. This volume should become a standard introductory and even reference resource.

A principal objective of the study is to uncover a peculiarly African type of Christianity—that is, to find characteristics evident in its roots that continue through to its final stages under Islamic political and religious control. Such qualities would identify both sides of the fourth-century schism. To this purpose, Wilhite is attentive to the names of the various actors, distinguishing Roman names from Latin translations of Punic ones. When applied to the martyrdom accounts of both the second and third centuries, this method suggests that members of the native elite, rather than emissaries from Rome, instigated the actions against Christians. Although occasionally overextended—such as in the identification of the bishop of Carthage elected in 481 as of eastern origin on the basis of a name found earlier in the western imperium (273)—the method is usually successful.

Building on his doctoral research and recent studies of the development of African Christianity, Wilhite shows that Tertullian laid the foundation for a distinctively African theology on which subsequent theologians and bishops would build. His conscious promotion of an African identity is found, for example, in the promotion of the pallium rather than the toga as the proper Christian garment and in his identification of the “Queen of the South” in Matt. 12:42 as Carthaginian. Wilhite uncovers in third-century Christian writers a current of opposition to the Roman culture that was being imposed upon them. Tensions with the Roman bishop also resulted from the African multiplication of equal and independent bishops who governed even small local churches collegially rather than under primatial or metropolitan supervision. In both Arnobius and Lactantius, Wilhite finds greater sympathy for African, rather than Roman, traditional polytheism.

Wilhite reviews the surviving evidence for the events of the schism in Carthage in the wake of the Diocletian persecution. He generally follows the account provided by Optatus of Milevis later in the fourth century. In some instances, however, he seems to misinterpret the evidence. Caecilian's willingness to be ordained (again) by the Numidians, who judged that Felix of Abthugni had been incapable of doing so (Optatus 1.19.2), need not have been a concession that Felix actually had failed in the persecution (197n13). Wilhite also accepts W. H. C. Frend's plausible but unproven proposal that representatives of each province had the right to participate in the election and consecration of the bishop of Carthage. More useful are Wilhite's suggestions that Constantine was moved to oppose the Donatist party by Anulinus, the proconsul in Carthage both before and after the accession of Constantine, and by the contemporary Arian dispute in Egypt (171–176, 196–201).

The treatment of Augustine as an African is more extensive than that of either Tertullian or Cyprian. The study cites insults leveled at him by Roman-identified opponents (Jerome and Julian of Eclanum), his own self-identification with Punic-speaking Christians, and his denigrating of the significance of the Roman Empire and its purported benefits to subjected peoples, particularly in City of God (256–258). Wilhite also provides a brief but full and largely accurate summary of Augustine's writing and teaching. Still, he missed Augustine's use of Rom. 9:11 to reject the fall of the soul into a material body (Sermon 165.6–9; and Epistle 190.4) and misstated the foundational role of the universality of salvation through Christ and the church for his doctrine of inherited guilt (246–247).

Chapters are devoted to the state of African Christianity after the territory passed from Latin Roman governance to that of the Vandals, Byzantines, and Arabs. Each begins with an account of the military and governmental developments. Wilhite's account of the Vandal era suggests that much of the persecution of the existing Christian population was related to the appropriation of property by the new overlords rather than an attempt to suppress the religious practice of the existing Christian population. Wilhite is also appropriately cautious of the moralistic interpretation of the fall of Carthage to the Vandals offered by Salvian, noting that he had no direct knowledge of the events and made similar charges against the Romans when that city suffered a Vandal raid. Wilhite calls attention to the challenge that the Byzantine imperial supervision of metropolitan bishops posed to the conciliar form of governance that empowered local bishops in Africa. He notes that the Africans considered themselves free to oppose imperial attacks on the Chalcedonian decree by condemning the Three Chapters and promoting the doctrine of a single will and energy in Christ. The bishops also pushed back against the meddling of the Roman bishop, Gregory I.

The final chapter details the Arab conquest and subsequent governance of Roman Africa and the evidence for the continuing presence and gradual decline of the number of practicing Christians into the medieval period. Wilhite then considers the factors that may have contributed to the failure of Christianity to survive under Islamic rule in Africa, as it did elsewhere in the Mediterranean region. He lists seven theories based on the prior history and the effects of the successive conquests. He proposes a combination of these, using the similarities of African Christian and Islamic religious practices and the failure of Christianity to root itself deeply in African culture.

David Wilhite succeeds in identifying characteristics that distinguish the African church over the half-millennium of its existence. This admirable volume establishes him as a leader in the contemporary study of African Christianity.