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Reading the Early Church Fathers: From the Didache to Nicaea
Hey folks, author Jim Papandrea here - this book is an outdated version, and there is now an updated and expanded second edition of this book, with a new title and publisher. The new title Reading the Church A History of the Early Church and the Development of Doctrine (2022). It's available here on Amazon and from the publisher, Sophia Institute Press. Please do not buy this 2012 version of the book, get the new one instead. For my this version of the book will not be adequate for our classes, and will not match the syllabus. Thanks!
- GenresReligionNonfiction
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2012
23 people are currently reading
127 people want to read
About the author
James L. Papandrea
29 books39 followersDr. James L. Papandrea is an award-winning author, Professor of Church History and Historical Theology, and the host of the Catholic Culture podcast, The Way of the Fathers. His many books have been translated into multiple languages, and he has an online presence via his YouTube channel called, The Original Church. A former Protestant deacon, now a Catholic layperson and catechist, Jim has an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in the history and theology of the early Christian Church, with secondary concentrations in New Testament interpretation and the history of the Roman Empire. He has also studied Roman history at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. He is currently on the faculty at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. He is a senior fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, and is a member of multiple professional organizations, including the Academy of Catholic Theology, the North American Patristics Society, and the Society of Biblical Literature. More information can be found via Jim’s website: www.JimPapandrea.com, and his Amazon Author Page: www.DoctorJimsBooks.com. Dr. Papandrea is not on social media, but interacts directly with anyone interested in the New Testament and the early Church in The Original Church Community on Locals.com – you can find them at TheOriginalChurch.Locals.com.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 12, 2014
This is a very good book on early church history and the development of doctrine in the context of the history of the time. At times it was a bit elementary for me, but then I am a theologian. He is writing for what I take to be the educated layperson or average cleric. At times I realized that he was taking a particular interpretation of history and wondered whether I agreed or not, but that is the nature of theology. If I agreed 100% right away something would either be wrong with me or with him (he would have been cribbing on my notes or something). What I found was that I several times copied material from the book to share with a class I am teaching. That is how clear he made things and how well he expressed it, especially since it was a graduate class. So I heartily recommend this book for history (starting with the New Testament and ending after Nicea - he covers Augustine and more or less through the end of that century) and for theology, as well as for early church hermeneutics. It was an enjoyable read for me, and not everything one reads on this period of history is an enjoyable read.
December 4, 2018
3.5 stars. Good synthesis and overview of the Patristic period, giving a good guide through the early major theologians, philosophers, and martyrs of the Christian church.
I don’t give 4 stars for one reason. Papandrea, being a Roman Catholic, has some interpretive lenses through which bears pretty strongly on how he understands certain things throughout this period, which in my opinion, allow him to over interpret several aspects of this history. But, overall, his portrayal of the way in which orthodoxy formulated and developed in between extremes of heretical teaching (unapostolic) was very helpful. He also contains some valuable charts and summary overviews of many of the diverging sects and beliefs, and for a short volume, is annotated with many sources, encouraging the reader to go back and read the primary sources for oneself.
As a firm Protestant, I’d recommend this read alongside other volumes to gain a perspective of good Roman Catholic scholarship into the early Patristic period.
I don’t give 4 stars for one reason. Papandrea, being a Roman Catholic, has some interpretive lenses through which bears pretty strongly on how he understands certain things throughout this period, which in my opinion, allow him to over interpret several aspects of this history. But, overall, his portrayal of the way in which orthodoxy formulated and developed in between extremes of heretical teaching (unapostolic) was very helpful. He also contains some valuable charts and summary overviews of many of the diverging sects and beliefs, and for a short volume, is annotated with many sources, encouraging the reader to go back and read the primary sources for oneself.
As a firm Protestant, I’d recommend this read alongside other volumes to gain a perspective of good Roman Catholic scholarship into the early Patristic period.
March 22, 2020
I read the first half of this book during Advent last year and just got around to finishing it this Lent. What I had not realized was that after the half-way mark, which takes you up to the the fourth century of the common era, there is only a little bit more text devoted to Augustine and the philosophers of the Middle Ages (a surprise to me), followed by tables and end notes.
I was hoping to find something that would give an insight on what it was like to be a Christian during those first couple of centuries after Jesus, and maybe make it easier to keep the various doctrinal camps I'd heard about straight in my mind a little better. It did a pretty good job at these functions, although like so many things about ancient history there isn't a lot of solid factual evidence in the records that made it to our time, so it's not like reading a history covering events occurring some time in the last couple of centuries. The glimpses into how the structure of the christian church evolved over the decades and centuries and how the definition of the various roles people played back then was pretty good and made it a lot easier to see why centralization of authority steadily increased to something approaching to the way the Catholic church is set up today. It gave good explanations of what it meant to be a confessor, an apologist, a widow in the context of the Christian community, and a metropolitan bishop and how these worked together with the central roles of deacon, priest, and bishop. From other books I already knew something about the declining centuries of the empire which made background appearances with the church history always in the forefront of the narrative.
As for the various doctrinal factions and their proponents, it probably would have been good if I'd known about the appendices with their capsule summaries of the main points of contention while I was reading the chapters. For most of these, instead of portraying the arguments as dogma vs. heresy, the author talks about each point with two extremes and the established church generally taking a middle position. I was interested to find out that for some of the movements led by people who separated from the rest of the church, what would happen wasn't a suppression of the heretical teachings but a schism which would eventually be forgotten by people when the last members of those communities died out. As organized movements, anyway, since it was easy to see that some of the things they came up with (things like "Jesus was only a human, a good one, but not divine" plus its antithesis) are still around in one form or another.
I read this as an e-book, not in the audiobook form, and would have to say that while it wasn't especially easy to get through, I think it was pretty accessible to the reader who arrives with an interest in the topics covered. So many of the later fights of the Middle Ages, Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries hearkens back to councils of the early Church, even though they mostly centered on different issues in faith, so I feel a person interested in Western religious history would do well to have a good understanding of these beginnings. And as far as the broader crises the churches face today are concerned, it is good to gain perspective by understanding what the early communities were like, while recognizing that there is no way Christianity can truly return to that state.
I was hoping to find something that would give an insight on what it was like to be a Christian during those first couple of centuries after Jesus, and maybe make it easier to keep the various doctrinal camps I'd heard about straight in my mind a little better. It did a pretty good job at these functions, although like so many things about ancient history there isn't a lot of solid factual evidence in the records that made it to our time, so it's not like reading a history covering events occurring some time in the last couple of centuries. The glimpses into how the structure of the christian church evolved over the decades and centuries and how the definition of the various roles people played back then was pretty good and made it a lot easier to see why centralization of authority steadily increased to something approaching to the way the Catholic church is set up today. It gave good explanations of what it meant to be a confessor, an apologist, a widow in the context of the Christian community, and a metropolitan bishop and how these worked together with the central roles of deacon, priest, and bishop. From other books I already knew something about the declining centuries of the empire which made background appearances with the church history always in the forefront of the narrative.
As for the various doctrinal factions and their proponents, it probably would have been good if I'd known about the appendices with their capsule summaries of the main points of contention while I was reading the chapters. For most of these, instead of portraying the arguments as dogma vs. heresy, the author talks about each point with two extremes and the established church generally taking a middle position. I was interested to find out that for some of the movements led by people who separated from the rest of the church, what would happen wasn't a suppression of the heretical teachings but a schism which would eventually be forgotten by people when the last members of those communities died out. As organized movements, anyway, since it was easy to see that some of the things they came up with (things like "Jesus was only a human, a good one, but not divine" plus its antithesis) are still around in one form or another.
I read this as an e-book, not in the audiobook form, and would have to say that while it wasn't especially easy to get through, I think it was pretty accessible to the reader who arrives with an interest in the topics covered. So many of the later fights of the Middle Ages, Enlightenment, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries hearkens back to councils of the early Church, even though they mostly centered on different issues in faith, so I feel a person interested in Western religious history would do well to have a good understanding of these beginnings. And as far as the broader crises the churches face today are concerned, it is good to gain perspective by understanding what the early communities were like, while recognizing that there is no way Christianity can truly return to that state.
November 16, 2020
An amazing book that covers the first years of the church with simplicity and clarity. It explains all those various Church Councils and debates in a welcomed and introductory manner. This reader especially appreciated the chapter about Gnosticism and will recommend it to any one wanting an introduction to Gnostic thinking and writings.
The author is a practicing Roman Catholic with a degree in theology from a Protestant conservative seminary, a PhD from a secular university and teaches in a United Methodist Seminary - this unique background and unique person is able to include in his writing insights from his faith and church that might be not possible for someone with a different educational and faith background.
The book ends with very useful charts and tables. A bibliography of primary resources is available from the publisher but readers must reply on the footnotes for secondary resources consisting of 90 pages and 992 entries.
The author is a practicing Roman Catholic with a degree in theology from a Protestant conservative seminary, a PhD from a secular university and teaches in a United Methodist Seminary - this unique background and unique person is able to include in his writing insights from his faith and church that might be not possible for someone with a different educational and faith background.
The book ends with very useful charts and tables. A bibliography of primary resources is available from the publisher but readers must reply on the footnotes for secondary resources consisting of 90 pages and 992 entries.
July 20, 2018
Not terrible. It does leave me thinking that there must be a better option out there.
The most helpful parts were the introduction (four instructions for how to read early Christian texts) and the appendix (nine assumptions of patristic exegesis and several charts detailing the positions of different sects and key figures).
I stand by my earlier comment that this seems more aimed at an intelligent high school or non-specialist college audience, not a seminary audience. This is true for both tone and content.
I am hoping that Henry Chadwick is better.
The most helpful parts were the introduction (four instructions for how to read early Christian texts) and the appendix (nine assumptions of patristic exegesis and several charts detailing the positions of different sects and key figures).
I stand by my earlier comment that this seems more aimed at an intelligent high school or non-specialist college audience, not a seminary audience. This is true for both tone and content.
I am hoping that Henry Chadwick is better.
December 20, 2021
This was decent. There were a few things I’m unsure about in this, but reading about the history of the Church and how heresies came about through over-emphasising individual truths, for example—the divinity and humanity of Christ, the distinctiveness and the consubstantiality of the persons of the Trinity, etc.
February 28, 2017
Students of Gnostic Studies will find this book detailing the church's response to Gnosticism and the various developments that took place to give primacy to the Church of Rome.
April 9, 2016
Awesome read. The ending, however was a bit abrupt and anti-climactic.
August 11, 2015
This was exactly the book I was looking for to answer some of the questions no one really had answers for.
August 24, 2014
This book presents the early church fathers (Apostolic Age to Augustine) in a chronological fashion and discusses the major issues of the day as well as the historical circumstances.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews