Can anyone recommend a substantial series of books on the early church fathers (apostolic, church). Something that is in depth.
The time line can go up to the end of the eighth century, but preferably the first four centuries.
mm.
Well assuming you are looking for something different than the CF series offered by Logos, a good starting point might be The Teachings of the Church Fathers by John R.Willis. If you are asking which translation of the fathers is best, the modern one is likely going to give you your best bet. But that said Scribner's is a fair translation and being so much cheaper a good set. I do not have this book but this one may also be helpful to you: Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction by Bryan Litfin
-Dan
Thanks Dan,
I have Willis' book and Litfin's.
These are the resources that I have along with the CF series;
Also, the usual brief histories in the various journals and magazines.
What I'm looking at to buy are these volumes. If you or anyone else has them, i'd like to know what you think about the material in them in relationship to my question.
Farrar's Lives of the Fathers
The Early Christian Literature Primers
Church History
Farrar's Lives of the Fathers The Early Christian Literature Primers Church History
I do own the top 2 having purchased them in CP the lower one did not link properly and I am unsure which resource that is. I will fully admit I have not used those two resources much. Farrar is very readable but Jackson's Primers feel more scholarly (also having benefit of discussing their influence in church history). I honestly have not used either resource too much to tell you much about them but am willing to post a couple short snippets so you can evaluate them if you like.
the third link should work now. I edited just after i re-read my thread. Ok thanks, I'll see if anyone else chimes in.
Sure if u don't mind, would. U post a couple of snippings
Farrar's Lives of the Fathers The Early Christian Literature Primers Church History I do own the top 2 having purchased them in CP the lower one did not link properly and I am unsure which resource that is. I will fully admit I have not used those two resources much. Farrar is very readable but Jackson's Primers feel more scholarly (also having benefit of discussing their influence in church history). I honestly have not used either resource too much to tell you much about them but am willing to post a couple short snippets so you can evaluate them if you like. -Dan
I'd suggest these in Logos:
Old, Hughes Oliphant. The Biblical Period. Vol. 1. The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998.
Old, Hughes Oliphant. The Patristic Age. Vol. 2. The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998.
Not in Logos:
History of Biblical Interpretation, Vol. 1: From the Old Testament to Origen (Society of Biblical Literature Resources... by Henning Graf Reventlow and Leo G. Perdue
History of Biblical Interpretation, Vol. 2: From Late Antiquity to the End of the Middle Ages (Society of Biblical... by Henning Graf Reventlow and James O. Duke
The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century (The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian... by Bernard McGinn
The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great Through the 12 Century (The Presence of God) (v. 2) by Bernard McGinn
Here is the start of the articles on jerome from both...
__________________________________________________
ST. JEROME
SECTION I
YOUTH AND EDUCATION OF JEROME
STRIDON was a little town on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia, in the diocese of Aquileia. It was destroyed by the Goths even in the days of St. Jerome, and its site is unknown. When the saint speaks of “his native land,” he seems to speak of Pannonia. Domnus, one of the bishops who subscribed to the creed of Nice, calls himself “a bishop of Stridon from Pannonia,” but there was no bishop of Stridon in Jerome’s day, and the superscription is of doubtful genuineness.Whether we regard Jerome as a Pannonian or as a Dalmatian, he had a very low opinion of the moral condition of the people among whom he lived. “In my country,” he says, “rudeness is indigenous, the god is the belly; men live for the present only; the richer a man is the more saintly is he.” He goes on to say, “like people, like priests.” Lupicinus, the bishop, was as bad as his flock. “The worm-eaten vessel had a weak pilot, and the blind led the blind into the ditch.” Even after making allowance for the splenetic mood in which Jerome often poured forth his thoughts, it is clear that he had no great affection for the place of his birth. He scarcely ever alludes to Stridon. When he was called there by duty his chief friends and his chief interests were at the neighbouring towns of Æmona and Aquileia. Æmona was a fortified market town, larger and more important than the modern Laybach, which stands upon its site; Aquileia, which is now a straggling village of fourteen hundred inhabitants, was in Jerome’s day a splendid commercial emporium, of which the ruined fragments attest the ancient magnificence. It had a mint of its own, and as the capital of Venetia stood fourth among the great cities of Italy. Its military strength enabled it to defy the army of Maximus in the third century (A.D. 238), and to baffle for three months the tremendous assault of Attila in the fifth (A.D. 452). In the churches, the monastery, and the stirring life of this city Jerome found an escape from the dulness and provincialism of his native Stridon.His exact name is uncertain. He is often called Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus. Eusebius was the name of his father, and was perhaps given to the son. Whether he ever bore the name Sophronius is very doubtful. He never calls himself by that name, and it may possibly have arisen from some confusion with the Sophronius who, even in his lifetime, translated some of his works into Greek.The date of his birth is a matter of dispute. His younger contemporary Prosper, who is followed by many modern authorities, says that he was born A.D. 331, and that he died at the age of ninety-one. Others—especially Baronius and Tillemont—think that he did not live beyond his seventy-eighth year, and therefore place his birth A.D. 342. Vallarsi furnishes many reasons for supposing that he was not born earlier than 346. This date seems the most probable, although there are not sufficient data for arriving at an exact decision.
Frederic W. Farrar, Lives of the Fathers: Sketches of Church History in Biography & II, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1889), 203–205.
JEROME
THE author of the Vulgate. Eusebius Hieronymius Sophronius, commonly known as Jerome, was born at Strido, not far from Aquileia, about A. D. 345, and was probably a Dalmatian by race. His family was Christian and orthodox, and of such wealth and position as secured to Jerome liberal study and refined associations. His early life was a period of great agitation in the religious world. The Emperor Constantius long sought to force the Church into Arianism, and through the action of the Council of Rimini, as Jerome afterward said, “the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian.” Julian the Apostate next tried to revive the worship of the ancient gods. Valentinian, though himself an orthodox believer, yet ruled an empire sharply divided between the Arian and Nicene confessions. In the midst of such contentions, a mind like Jerome’s must even in boyhood have been interested in religious thought. He was not, however, baptized, nor actively devoted to the religious life until he reached manhood. He had been sent to Rome to complete his education, and there was trained in classics and philosophy.Upon the completion of his studies at Rome he traveled and studied for some time in Gaul, when, at Treves, he first came to think seriously upon divine things. Returning to Strido and Aquileia, he begins literary work, having gathered for that purpose a valuable library; but, soon conceiving the idea of retirement from the world, he sets out, in company with several of his friends for the East. After various travels, Jerome finds himself in solitude in the deserts of Syria, having with him, however, his beloved library. Here he spends four years in pious exercises and in study. A noteworthy incident of this period was his remarkable vision, in which he was scourged before the throne of divine judgment, for being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian. Sickness at length compels his return to civilization, and we find him in turn at Antioch, where he was ordained a priest, though on condition that he should not perform the priestly function; at Bethlehem; at Constantinople, where he met with Gregory Nazianzen, whom he calls his master; and then at Rome. Here he was made secretary to Pope Damasus, and at his request undertook his first work of translating and revising the Scriptures. Besides these literary labors he was active in promoting the ascetic life and the study of the Scriptures among the higher classes of society, particularly among the Roman ladies of most distinguished rank.This effort aroused much opposition to him, not only from friends of his devotees, but from the Roman clergy, whose follies and vices he denounced with scathing ridicule. Upon the death of Damasus, whose successor he did not become, Jerome set out for the East, and was followed by Paula, a noble and wealthy Roman lady, and her daughter Eustochium, who proposed founding in the East a monastic establishment for themselves and the friends who accompanied them. After making the tour of Palestine, and visiting Egypt, where Jerome met with Didymus, the three friends came to Bethlehem, and there established four monasteries, three for women and one for men. Here was performed Jerome’s great work upon the Scriptures, of which we shall speak hereafter.This retreat became an establishment of great renown, to which visitors gathered from all parts of the world, and whither, in the troublous times attending the fall of Rome, refugees flocked in great numbers and were received with bountiful hospitality. Unhappily, the peace of the retreat was much disturbed by Jerome’s propensity to quarrels. The part which he took in the bitter controversies over Origen, and his attacks upon the supporters of Pelagius, so embroiled him with his old friends, and especially with his neighbors at Jerusalem, that the monastery at Bethlehem was once attacked and partially destroyed by an armed mob. These controversies, which somehow extended to nearly every one with whom he had to do, lasted to the closing years of Jerome’s life, which ended, after a lingering illness, on September 30, 420.
George A. Jackson, The Post-Nicene Latin Fathers, ed. George P. Fisher, Early Christian Literature Primers (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1884), 54–56.
Hope that helps.
I forgot:
Von Harnack, Adolf. History of Dogma. Edited by T. K. Cheyne and A. B. Bruce. Translated by Neil Buchanan. Vol. 1. Harnack’s History of Dogma. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1895.
Von Harnack, Adolf. History of Dogma. Edited by T. K. Cheyne and A. B. Bruce. Translated by Neil Buchanan. Vol. 2. Harnack’s History of Dogma. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1897.
Von Harnack, Adolf. History of Dogma. Edited by A. B. Bruce. Translated by Neil Buchanan. Vol. 3. Harnack’s History of Dogma. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1897.
Von Harnack, Adolf. History of Dogma. Edited by T. K. Cheyne and A. B. Bruce. Translated by Neil Buchanan. Vol. 4. Harnack’s History of Dogma. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1898.
Von Harnack, Adolf. History of Dogma. Edited by T. K. Cheyne and A. B. Bruce. Translated by Neil Buchanan. Vol. 5. Harnack’s History of Dogma. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1899.
thanks for the suggestions. i went ahead and picked up these three sets;
The Early Christian Literature Primers (4 vols.)
History of Dogma (7 vols.)
and this looked interesting as well. Formation of Christian Theology (2 vols.)
have a great labour day holiday. Watching some CFL football today. Bombers lost yesterday, but hopefully the Argo - Ti-Cat game will be as exciting as yesterday's Labour Day Classic.
Thanks again for your help.
I have not read it, but I have read a journal article on it (and Ayers and Hanson) with some extracts. Reports are that it is excellent, but NOT an introduction - it assumes you know the figures already.
For an introduction, I used Boniface Ramsey's Beginning to Read the Church Fathers. Last I heard, it is not yet in Logos. At a more basic level were a set of talks by Benedict XVI on many Church fathers that he gave during his papacy...
