Truth Unites - The Church Fathers: 5 Books to Start With

Starting point is 00:00:00 One of the goals for my YouTube channel is to encourage a knowledge of church history, but people often ask me, where should I begin? A lot of people feel intimidated. They don't really know where should I dive into learning about church history. So I wanted to make a short video giving five suggestions of books from the church fathers to read. I'll probably follow this up with other comparable videos, maybe one, five videos from the Puritans, maybe a few others as well, maybe medieval theology, Reformation theology, modern theology, things like that. If that's of interest to you, let me know in the comments.

Starting point is 00:00:30 I've chosen five examples here that are number one, significant, theologically, historically, historically. Number two, relatively easy to understand, not necessarily totally easy, but they're not the hardest books to start with. And number three, in some cases, this is not true for the first example I'll give, but in many of the examples, especially the later ones, they're neglected. They're undervalued, underutilized today. Now, obviously, we could add on lots more beyond these five.

Starting point is 00:00:58 But this is a good starting point, and I tried to pick ones that could give you a kind of a cross-representation of east and west, early and late, within the patristic era, and so forth. The first one is Augustine's Confessions. Of course, you have to have Augustine in here. How do I even describe this book? It kind of towers above everything else. The way I like to put it is, if you think of four qualities, spiritual qualities, theological, psychological, and literary on all things. forefronts. It's an incredibly profound book. It's psychologically profound, literarily, theoretically, and spiritually. You could even add philosophically as well. You could also talk

Starting point is 00:01:39 about its influence. Other than the Bible, I don't think anything. Any text has had comparable influence upon Western civilization. You might think of Plato, but Plato gets himself kind of refracted through Augustine. So it's amazingly important book. I think people will also find it relatable. This is a theme throughout all these texts. It seems so intimidating and so forth, but when you get into it, you're able to relate to it. It's not so far off. People will feel the humanity of it, of Augustine's very human struggles and very human story. So I really recommend this book. I like to start with the older translation in the Penguin Classics series by Pine Coffin. It's a little bit more of a free accessible translation. Some people like the more

Starting point is 00:02:24 stately feel of this recent one by F.J. Sheed that some people feel like it gets the Latin a little more close. There's a new one by Sarah Rudin, a new translation that I'm not sure about. I'll link to an article by a friend of mine named Trevin Waxe who has an article about that translation. By the way, links to all these books will be in the video description as well. The second book I want to recommend is Athanasius's On the Incarnation. This is such an important text, but unlike Augustine, see, the thing about Augustine is it is longer. It'll take you some time to get through it, and some of the later chapters do get pretty abstract. I've talked about that a lot in my book on Augustine's Doctrine of Creation. But this book is so compact

Starting point is 00:03:09 and succinct. You can get through it in one sitting. In the popular patristics series, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, puts out these great texts, and this one, this edition, has an introduction by C.S. Lewis that's about the reading of old books. Fantastic essay. That essay alone is worth the price of the book. I often recommend that is the first thing for people to read to understand the value of studying church history and just history in general. It's so masterfully stated as C.S. Lewis often is. And this book is so interesting. You know, people think of Athanasius for his defense of the deity of Christ, but there's so much more to Athanasius. His theology,

Starting point is 00:03:51 the Atonement is particularly clear in this book and it's so rich and multifaceted. I've done a video on the Atonement. You can see more of my comments on Athanasius on that if you're interested. Now my third example here I have to put up a picture of it, I'm I'm putting up a picture because I cannot find my copy and I was so annoyed about that. If someone out there is watching this and you have my copy of this, I'm pretty sure I loaned it out at some point but my copy is all marked up so I really want it back if someone has it or knows where it is.

Starting point is 00:04:20 I may have just misplaced it, but I don't think so. I think I loaned it to someone. So if you know where it is, if you're watching this, if you're the guilty culprit, give me my copy back. But this is a great book. This is definitely one of those that I love to encourage. If people want to learn the patristic mindset more, this is a fantastic book.

Starting point is 00:04:41 It's his shorter and lesser known and more catechetical work compared to his main work against heresies. So catechetical meaning it's used for formal teaching, especially in preparation for baptism. And Ironaeus is earlier on. So you're getting a window into the early, like late second century period here. And what is so great about it is it just gives you this comprehensive sense of how the scripture all holds together for Ironaus. His understanding of scripture, how Christ fulfills all these various Old Testament prophecies, for example. I really think this is one of those texts that's neglected and underutilized. And it's a great one for just getting into the patristic way of thinking. So I encourage people to read that one. All right, number four is Gregory

Starting point is 00:05:25 the great, the book of pastoral rule. Once again, in the popular patristic series, there's a great addition that has an introduction and is translated by a great Gregory scholar. And so people will find this a great addition to get a fantastic book. I love Gregory. Here we're now at the tail end, the later portion of the patristic era. What I love about Gregory, and I'm going to have another video about Gregory come out probably later this year, Lord willing, drawn from my chapter on him in theological retrieval for evangelicals. What I love about Gregory is just his shrewdness and wisdom.

Starting point is 00:06:01 He's so psychologically wise as a leader, how to motivate people, how to deal with people, the complexities of leadership. He's so wise about that at a practical level. but it's all interlaced within this pastoral theology. So I really think pastors could really benefit from this book for meaning this book. And also it's just a significant text in church history. I often think of Gregory and Boethius as these two figures towards the tail end of the patristic era leaning into the medieval era that are close behind Augustine in the influence they had.

Starting point is 00:06:36 Both Boetheus, I didn't include Boetheus's consolation of philosophy, even though it's one of my favorite texts and another one that I've done so. work on at an academic level because I don't think that's representative of the general patristic way of thinking and it's a lot of a it's a harder text to get into but both boethias and gregory have this massive influence upon the medieval church but then their influences is less uh in more recent centuries especially with boethius so they're really helpful people to get into because of their influences that makes them so significant uh calvin have very positive things to say about Gregory. He called him the last good Pope. But there's a long tradition of Protestants appreciating

Starting point is 00:07:19 and learning from the pastoral theology of Gregory. All right, the last one I wanted to recommend is John of Damascus on Divine Images. Once again, Popular Petristic Series has a great collection of three treatises that he wrote on Divine Images. Another great scholar, Andrew Luth, translates and gives an introduction. I just made a video criticizing. the veneration of icons, but I think it's helpful to hear the best and read the best proponents of an alternative position. And John of Damascus is definitely that. You really want to try to understand where he's coming from in his argumentation. Plus, John just gets you into this whole world in the east. He's a fascinating thinker, and he's a window into the eastern world. People often

Starting point is 00:08:04 think of John as kind of a synthesizer or summarizer of earlier Eastern tradition. And he's very conservative and self-consciously within that tradition, you're going to be getting through John a window into the whole Eastern tradition, the Cappadocian fathers, everything that comes before him. But John also makes some of his own distinctive, unique contributions. And so that's kind of interesting. The other thing you could read from John is his exact exposition on the Orthodox faith. Fascinating book. Again, kind of like I'renaeus.

Starting point is 00:08:32 That'll give you the more short, compact, constructive work that would be really interesting to engage. That's the one I've engaged more in my work. All right, hope this is helpful. I'll put all the links to these in the video description. Check them out. Hope you can read them. And let me know if you have a sixth, their seventh suggestion of yourself. We're not in competition here.

Starting point is 00:08:50 I'm sure there's many others. There's no right or wrong answers to this. It's just suggestions for starting points. And also, if you're interested in me doing a series of videos like this for other periods of church history, let me know what you'd like to see. Hope this is helpful. Thanks for watching everybody.

Truth Unites - The Church Fathers: 5 Books to Start With

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