In the third and final part of his three-volume study, Christianity in the Making, James D. G. Dunn gives an account of the movement running from 70 ce to the time of Irenaeus, towards the end of the second century. In such a periodisation, the fall of Jerusalem is seen as a decisive moment in the history of Christianity and of Judaism, and Irenaeus as a decisive figure for the manner in which ‘he secured the character of Christianity that endured beyond these conflicts’.

Dunn's objective is not to write a history of Christianity's beginnings, but to examine the factors and primary influences which gave early Christianity its distinctive character. To this end he discusses the impact of various figures on the developing Christian movement beginning with Jesus and ending with John. Dunn is clear that the figure of Jesus was of primary importance. The shift to a written Gospel was an extension, constructed in different forms by the evangelists, of Paul's understanding of ‘Gospel’ with its emphasis upon Christ's redemptive acts of death and resurrection, an extension which became more pronounced with John, whose Gospel, inter alia, gives central importance to what would become the idea of incarnation. John, however, in spite of his distinctiveness both in content (some of which Dunn holds to be historical) and emphasis, remains within the broad framework of the synoptic Gospels’ presentation of Jesus. Dunn argues strongly for the ongoing importance of Jesus traditions in non-canonical material from the second century, playing up the significance of oral tradition, but also arguing that by the middle of the second century the written Gospels had begun to displace oral tradition as the primary mode of conveying Jesus tradition. In relation to non-canonical Gospels, Dunn is clear that these show the ongoing significance of Jesus for the formulation of faith in this period but that the Gnostic Gospels, in particular the Gospel of Thomas, in their distinctiveness, are not derived from genuine Jesus tradition (unlike John, these writers, in Dunn's view, are not reworkings and elaboration of previous tradition, but regraftings of that tradition onto essentially alien modes of thoughts). Dunn is clear that Irenaeus’ argument in favour of four Gospels is not the enunciation of a novel position, but the reflection of growing Christian acknowledgment of these texts.

Dunn then turns to what one might call the Jacobean aspect of early Christianity (ie. associated with James, the brother of Jesus), a trope in some ways for the perennial question of Christianity's Jewish identity in this period. While it is clear that the second century saw the gradual exclusion of what in scholarship are termed Jewish Christian groups, who often elevated the status of James, Jesus’ brother (as to some extent did more orthodox groups indicated in the presence of the Epistle of James in the canon, and the ongoing interest in James as the first bishop of Jerusalem), Christianity retained its strong Jewish character during this period. Claims, as found in Ignatius’ epistles, that Judaism and Christianity were somehow separate expressed the views of a developing Christian leadership rather than what Dunn terms the ordinary believers.

Discussions are then devoted to Paul and Peter. The former is the enfant terrible of early Christianity, very influential, but a person who, through the Pastoral Epistles and other works, had to be tamed for the consumption of the Early Church. His plasticity is seen both in the way he is described in the apocryphal acts, and the manner in which he apparently comes to the aid of Marcion and Gnostic writers such as Valentinus. The fact, however, that Irenaeus engaged in such a sturdy defence of his theology is a sign of his central place in the canon and the fact that he remained a focus of ‘orthodox’ discussion.

Peter emerges as someone who defines the common ground, a broadly ‘ecclesiastical’ figure, whose central position in such texts as Matthew meant that he played a significant role in attempts by Christians to articulate their views.

Dunn's discussion of the Johannine tradition largely repeats things that he has said in the section on the role of the Jesus tradition in which John's distinctive but essentially similar position to that found in the synoptics is emphasised.

In his lengthy conclusion, which helpfully summarises the volume's main contentions, Dunn emphasises the centrality of Christ to developing Christian identity, the necessity, even if non-biblical, character of the development of offices in the Church (‘Social conformity triumphed over the ecclesiastical diversity which the NT encapsulates’), and a theme, which has been dear to him for many years, the idea of unity within diversity, which he sees as embodied in a New Testament canon that he sees as largely in place by the middle of the second century: ‘[T]he diversity which is included within that circumference remains significant. So much so that an insistence on conformity to one ecclesiology or a single coherent expression of Christian faith can be said to condemn itself as non-canonical’.

The summary above is an inadequate account of the contents of this voluminous monograph. As ever with Dunn's work, it possesses a strongly synthetic character, lending it the quality of a well-informed text book, which reviews a vast amount of material clearly and helpfully (specialists, not least in the New Testament but also in early Christian studies, will find that the work covers a lot of well-known ground, however elegantly). It also very much reflects the specialism of its author, namely the New Testament, for the contents of the New Testament are the organising principle around which the volume is arranged and in a sense the basis for Dunn's own assessment of the character of the way in which Christianity went on to develop in the second century (Dunn remains in some ways a classical Protestant scholar in this respect). Some may query such an approach, not least because they would claim, rightly I would suggest, that the New Testament canon is the product of the second century and so the second century's perspective on what earliest Christianity may have looked like; and it is a pity that Dunn never problematises this point. Related to this it is odd that in his illuminating engagement with Gospel traditions and their formative importance for the development of the Christian tradition, Dunn does not directly address Francis Watson's widely discussed thesis that Irenaeus, in his advocacy of four Gospels, brings order to a much more chaotic body of allegiances. True, Dunn is clear that this is not the case but a discussion of Watson's volume would have added to the value of his argument at this point.

Some may also seriously question Dunn's unity and diversity model, arguing that it too easily, even glibly, simplifies the complexity of developing Christian identity, assuming a core set of agreed beliefs out of which something like an orthodox Christianity emerged, too easily leaving to one side expressions of that identity that did not come to be seen as core, or at least conceiving of them as flawed in relation to an assumed set of unifying ideas. In this respect Dunn, in an admittedly sophisticated and nuanced way, can appear to submit to a Eusebius-like view of early Christian identity, from which he in fact distances himself at the beginning of the volume, and by extension to give a probably too smooth reading of the history of early Christianity. In this context it is striking that he nowhere looks at the development of schools in early Christianity, now so much a subject of discussion among scholars of the second century, which tends both to emphasise the developing nature of early Christian identity and the extent to which those schools included both those who were to come to be called orthodox and the heretical. In such a model there can be a more open-ended view of the development of Christian identity, a greater sense in which categories such as orthodox and heretical look inadequate, and less of a tendency to a crypto-essentialism. Such an approach is exemplified in Judith Lieu's monograph on Marcion, which Dunn highlights as a text whose arguments he regrets he was not able to address in the work under review.

Much more could be said, not least on Dunn's periodisation, as well as his discussion of Christianity's Jewish identity, in the latter case highlighting, inter alia, his failure to differentiate sufficiently clearly between an institutional separation between Christians and Jews and an ideological one. But in the end Dunn has to be congratulated on having the strength of purpose and breadth of learning to have brought this mammoth project to an end. While in the end I sense that the work, particularly volumes ii and iii, will not have transformed our understanding of the history of early Christianity, they have certainly given us a map of its many contours and landmarks, and done so with a clarity and erudition which will be as good a starting point as any for those who want to study the perennially fascinating topic of Christian origins.