Book Review: Ancient Christian Doctrine Volume Five

We Believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church by Angelo Di Berardino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Where would a person go to get the comments of the ancients regarding the Nicene Creed and the doctrine contained therein? How about turning to the five volume series on Ancient Christian Doctrine from Intervarsity Press?
These five volumes bring the words of the fathers from the first through the eighth centuries into an encyclopedic sort of setting so that modern day readers can have a handy reference and commentary on the Nicene Creed. This is something that will be of great help to scholars, student, and theologians everywhere.
Volume five, which is the subject of this review, covers “We believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church” and continues to the conclusion of the creed which is “And the life of the world to come.”
Each phrase has a very good introduction that gives an overview of how the patristics viewed that particular phrase. We then find a large body of comments from these ancient writers: comments that show us what they believed concerning the creed and its doctrine.
This particular volume shows us much about the view that the ancients had of the church, baptism, the resurrection of the dead, and the world to come. One can certainly learn much while reading this book!
This series gives us both a historical and theological view that would be practically inaccessible to the average person due to the time that would be involved in digging and researching to determine what the ancients believed. What is especially helpful is the fact that one would have to pore through many volumes of literature to get what is in these books. Even an electronic search would not be as helpful as pulling one of these volumes off of the shelf and using it as a reference. Thomas Oden and the folks at IVP have certainly done us a great service.
This volume provided freely by IVP for review with no expectation of a positive review.

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