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Reading the Church Fathers: A History of the Early Church and the Development of Doctrine
Heresies, schisms, culture of death, persecutions, excommunications … While reflective of headlines from today, these difficulties roiled Christians of the early Church as well. In fact, the earliest Church manual, the Didache,brought clarity to a range of moral issues that our culture continues to grapple with to this day.
Here is one of the most lucid and comprehensive overviews of the Patristic period ever written. With simplicity and clarity, Dr. James Papandrea introduces you to all the major theologians, philosophers, and martyrs of the early Christian church and explains the theological principles that guided the Church from the New Testament era through the apologists, and, ultimately, to the development of the major doctrines. Best of all, he uniquely situates the teachings of the early Church Fathers against the social and cultural context of the Roman Empire and its relationship to the Church.
Dr. Papandrea will introduce you to the gnostics and their influence on the early Church, as well as explain how Church mothers, such as Macrina the Younger, laid a foundation for the monastic life to come. You’ll learn how our understanding of the sacraments developed and when devotion to Our Lady and the saints emerged. You’ll also explore how the New Testament canon was formed as well as the criteria used to interpret early Christian writings.
A must-have resource, Reading the Church Fathers offers helpful charts, recommended texts, and summaries of important theological concepts and doctrines. It also reveals:
How the early Church refuted heresies
How catechesis was taught and shared
The order of the liturgy in early Christianity
The marks of the early Church and the role of tradition
How apostolic succession was defined
What is meant by the development of doctrine
Here is one of the most lucid and comprehensive overviews of the Patristic period ever written. With simplicity and clarity, Dr. James Papandrea introduces you to all the major theologians, philosophers, and martyrs of the early Christian church and explains the theological principles that guided the Church from the New Testament era through the apologists, and, ultimately, to the development of the major doctrines. Best of all, he uniquely situates the teachings of the early Church Fathers against the social and cultural context of the Roman Empire and its relationship to the Church.
Dr. Papandrea will introduce you to the gnostics and their influence on the early Church, as well as explain how Church mothers, such as Macrina the Younger, laid a foundation for the monastic life to come. You’ll learn how our understanding of the sacraments developed and when devotion to Our Lady and the saints emerged. You’ll also explore how the New Testament canon was formed as well as the criteria used to interpret early Christian writings.
A must-have resource, Reading the Church Fathers offers helpful charts, recommended texts, and summaries of important theological concepts and doctrines. It also reveals:
How the early Church refuted heresies
How catechesis was taught and shared
The order of the liturgy in early Christianity
The marks of the early Church and the role of tradition
How apostolic succession was defined
What is meant by the development of doctrine
464 pages, Paperback
Published April 26, 2022
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83 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 21, 2024
A+ intro to early Church history & Christian philosophy. Seems unnecessarily harsh on Gnosticism haha but still a really good book
January 6, 2024
My quibbles are what you would expect from a Protestant: for all his judiciousness, Papandrea still puts his very pro-RC spin on some issues, and so some portions feel a bit propaganda-ish. Additionally, I would have liked to see a bit more precision on some of the theological minutiae throughout. Still, this is a good overview and I was really helped by it.
July 27, 2023
The best overview of the Church Fathers that I have read so far! The author does have a very critical view of Origen, and I wish there was a section dedicated to St. John of Damascus’s life and thought—not merely a passing mention.
June 22, 2022
Difficult to read in many places, however the ending ties a lot of it together. Theology is always hard to understand because a lot of it has to be invented from scratch. When I attended Catholic parochial schools, I thought a lot of what I was taught was simply dropped from heaven, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever will be”. Obviously, I was wrong.
May 3, 2024
A very good overview of the early church and its development.
December 11, 2025
A solid introduction to the Church Fathers, Early Church history, and Early Theology.
Clear, well-structured text. One is never left confused as to what has been said or where we are in the argument. It has the clarity of a carefully prepared and edited text. It reads a bit like a high school textbook, and I would be surprised if it is not used as such in Catholic high schools. It is self-consciously capital C Catholic, but not in a polemic way. But one should be aware of the perspective.
He walks through the Church Fathers in roughly chronological order. He doesn’t just review list texts or give a summary of their work; he provides context and history. And of course, to properly get a sense of the Church Fathers, one must be aware of the theological context in which they were writing, which he provides, all outlined very clearly. It covers basically the first 500 year os Chruch history, but looks forward in the last chapter to how Anselm of Canterbury, Abelard, and Aquinas fit into the picture.
The book is structured and laid out in such a way that very little prior knowledge is required to follow everything. This is not a scholarly introduction to the Church Fathers, rather a lay introduction or a pathway for high school students into the Church Fathers.
Pleasant, if somewhat sterile. The factors that make it a great textbook also make it a bit sterile. It is not opinionated except in the sense of hewing to orthodox Catholic teaching.
Valuable, a great resource. Excellent doorway to the Fathers or even Theology in general.
Recommended
Clear, well-structured text. One is never left confused as to what has been said or where we are in the argument. It has the clarity of a carefully prepared and edited text. It reads a bit like a high school textbook, and I would be surprised if it is not used as such in Catholic high schools. It is self-consciously capital C Catholic, but not in a polemic way. But one should be aware of the perspective.
He walks through the Church Fathers in roughly chronological order. He doesn’t just review list texts or give a summary of their work; he provides context and history. And of course, to properly get a sense of the Church Fathers, one must be aware of the theological context in which they were writing, which he provides, all outlined very clearly. It covers basically the first 500 year os Chruch history, but looks forward in the last chapter to how Anselm of Canterbury, Abelard, and Aquinas fit into the picture.
The book is structured and laid out in such a way that very little prior knowledge is required to follow everything. This is not a scholarly introduction to the Church Fathers, rather a lay introduction or a pathway for high school students into the Church Fathers.
Pleasant, if somewhat sterile. The factors that make it a great textbook also make it a bit sterile. It is not opinionated except in the sense of hewing to orthodox Catholic teaching.
Valuable, a great resource. Excellent doorway to the Fathers or even Theology in general.
Recommended
January 30, 2025
What a wonderful book! Definitely one of my favorite patristics to read. There can be definitely information overload. However, the Author does a great job of setting out the historical context of how early church doctrine was established, specifically how whenever one theology would sprout to the left, someone would ultimately go far right, and the author argues that Christianity is always led in the middle way, and that is orthodoxy. I would recommend this book for anybody who wants to know about the church fathers and early church doctrine. Also, the footnotes are very useful and might lead you to many other books about this topic. Great, great great book.
May 9, 2025
This was decent. I think I was hoping it would do more than it could possibly offer, but it did a good job summarizing the fathers and discussing doctrinal development. I need to just do the work of reading the fathers themselves...
June 1, 2024
One of the finest overviews of the Early Church and Church Fathers that I’ve read. Thoroughly engaging.
June 17, 2025
In a perfect world, the title would be flipped with the subtitle; I was really hoping for more direct quotations from the texts mentioned, but considering the semi-encyclopedic breadth of the book that may have been prohibitive. And thus while the (albeit somewhat discursive) narrative of the book is really on the development of doctrine (especially christological and soteriological, with some ecclesiological as well) within early Christianity from a faith-promoting catholic perspective, it is done through a patristic-historical lens (with a fair smattering of biographical context) that keeps it true to both the title and subtitle. I am not catholic myself, but I appreciated the viewpoint as it was presented as someone who is religious and respects honest faith-promoting depictions of christian history. And while there were some odd curveballs thrown out against seemingly distant (mainly protestant or Eastern Orthodox) concepts at times (like The Rapture or Universalism), this was quite rare (especially compared to how it could be given the author’s background) and the book was rather straightforward and honest, so to speak, about its intentions and methods. There were several gems in the book that I think made it especially worth the read; the case made for the lack of appreciation for the Patristic context in academic or general New Testament studies, whether faith-centered or not, was particularly compelling. The book left me wanting more, but mostly in the sense that now given the introduction I want to dive deeper into the writings of particular Fathers, or particular controversies that they dealt with. A very solid read. I should note too that the audiobook reader (Park) was fantastic.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews