Ancient Christian Witness

The Orthodox Parish we went to for the conference in Indianapolis had one of the best book stores I saw in a Parish. And these were the books I got.


GRACE and Christology in the Early Church by Donald Fairbairn (Oxford Early Christian Studies)
Amazon.com




From the website it says:

"How did the early Church understand the relation between grace, salvation, and the person of Christ? This study shows that, despite intense theological controversy, there was a very strong consensus in the fifth century about what salvation was and who Christ needed to be in order to save people.
New research - impact on understanding of the christological and Pelagian controversies

Challenges common scholarly assumptions concerning christology in the early church

Unprecedented views on Cassian's christology

Deals with issues at the heart of Christianity

Was there a genuine theological consensus about Christ in the early Church? Donald Fairbairn's persuasive study uses the concept of grace to clarify this question. There were two sharply divergent understandings of grace and christology. One understanding, characteristic of Theodore and Nestorius, saw grace as God's gift of co-operation to Christians and Christ as the uniquely graced man. The other understanding, characteristic of Cyril of Alexandria and John Cassian, saw grace as God the Word's personal descent to the human sphere so as to give himself to humanity. Dealing with, among others, John Chrysostom, John of Antioch, and Leo the Great, Fairbairn suggests that these two understandings were by no means equally represented in the fifth century: Cyril's view was in fact the consensus of the early Church.".



The Epistle to the Hebrews: A commentary by Archbishop Dmitri Royster



The website


Scripture In Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church by John Breck





According to The website it says:
"The Eastern Church Fathers stressed that the Bible is not sui generis but was born and shaped in a community of faith. They understood Scripture to be an essential element of Holy Tradition: the apostolic witness passed down and developed into the fundamental teachings of Orthodox Christianity.
This book offers a fresh look at the way Eastern patristic writers used Scripture in elaborating what would become the body of Orthodox doctrine. It begins with a discussion of the aims and methods of biblical interpretation as they were developed among the Greek Fathers. The second section introduces the reader to the ancient literary form known as chiasmus and shows how important a proper "chiastic" reading of the biblical text can be for revealing its "literal" meaning.

The final section takes up several crucial issues concerning the Orthodox doctrines of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Raising from a new perspective the divisive question of the filioque, it demonstrates the continuing relevance of the Nicene Creed for expressing the most basic and significant teachings of Orthodoxy: God as Trinity and God incarnate. These doctrines reflect as clearly as any others the way Scripture takes shape in Tradition, while it serves as the ground and measure of Tradition."







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