Although containing much useful information, some illuminating insights, and a fresh perspective on the early years of the China Inland Mission, this revisionist history is almost fatally flawed by a profound prejudice that prevents objectivity in dealing with the sources and leads to misinterpretation and at times even misrepresentation.

Like others in the past few decades, Moffett concludes that Nestorius did not, as he was falsely charged, deny the deity of Christ, nor did he teach the existence of two “persons” in Christ, as charged by his arch-enemy, Cyril of Alexandria.

Samuel Moffett has presented us with a work that is comprehensive, yet concise; lucid, yet lively; balanced and yet not totally without an occasional, but mostly-controlled, bias; incisive, yet irenic – not a small achievement in a history of this scope.

This substantial volume includes eighteen papers from a conference on its title theme held in San Francisco under the sponsorship of the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History and the Center for the Pacific Rim of the University of San Francisco in 1999.