Patristic Collections
Anyone have a good handle on the overlap between some of the Patristic series. I have the Fathers of the Church and a bunch of Ancient Christian Writers as well the Schaff volumes. I would also welcome a way to make these more manageable in my library. I am thinking about making collections. I was thinking authors, but I am being more inclined to do it by Bible books first.
The mind of man is the mill of God, not to grind chaff, but wheat. Thomas Manton | Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow. Richard Baxter
Comments
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mab said:
I would also welcome a way to make these more manageable in my library.
From personal experience, I would suggest that if you have to ask this question, any collection system you end up with will disappoint you. Rather, I would suggest that you let Verbum/Logos give you familiarity with the materials. Rather, do the following:
- If you use Verbum, you have an automatic collection of Church Fathers; otherwise, make the collection manually.
- You may find it useful to make a second collection of anthologies of excerpts e.g. Jurgens, Bercott, ACC, Catena Aurea . . .
- Make yourself a customized passage guide including only the following sections:
- Ancient Literature
- Catholic Topical Index
- Collections: Church Fathers
- Collections: Church Fathers excerpts
Run this Guide on short, familiar passages. Randomly read the suggestions - you have various kinds of reference to passages, topical arrangements, and raw data reference - so you get a variety of relationships to the passage. You will know when you are comfortable enough with the material to know how to organize it to meet your interests and needs.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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When I first saw 'the Fathers' in Logos, I concluded trying to make any library sense was hopeless ... unless you invest the effort as MJ. My poor solution was to take advantage of Bible references as a common base. I have CitedBy Fathers panels in both my OT and NT layout windows. But for casual use, 'the Fathers' are not where 2nd Temple is (organization, ease of use, connect-the-dots, etc).
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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mab said:
I have the Fathers of the Church and a bunch of Ancient Christian Writers as well the Schaff volumes.
If you haven't already, prioritize them. I suggest ranking them
1. Fathers of the Church
2. Ancient Christian Writers
3. Schaff
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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Excellent response so far. Thank you. I was busy doing some prioritizing in my commentaries today, so doing the same for the fathers makes real sense. I think I also want to look at doing that for my Jewish literature and all the other extra-biblical stuff. It's not hard to find but if it isn't positioned you have more stuff to wade through.
The mind of man is the mill of God, not to grind chaff, but wheat. Thomas Manton | Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow. Richard Baxter
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