Customer Reviews

Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church

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While I agree that the feat of compressing early Christian history into just under 300 pages is laudable, this book suffers from spelling mistakes (including one on the first page "ofen" for "often"), random changes of tense, awkward sentence structure, and outrageously biased opinions such as calling Tertullian a "bigot" without good cause (see page 69). Admittedly, many of these faults are the editor's, but they all contribute to a sense that the book was assembled hastily and carelessly. Hall's book hangs together much more comprehensively if the reader pretends he or she is at a live lecture, since Hall's prose style lends itself more to an oral presentation than to a written work. All in all, if you are a stickler for grammar and punctuation, choose Chadwick's "The Early Church" ...lots of good information without the aggravation.

This book is an excellent overview of the doctrines and history of the early church, placed nicely into the context of the Roman Empire.

With skillful precision, Stuart G. Hall compressed nearly five hundred years of Church history and doctrine into a small but definitive volume that's very readable and thorough. The up-to-date scholarship sheds new light upon several questions that have gathered dust over the years. From Nero's onslaught of the primative Church, to Leo's "Tome" and subsequent edicts of Chalcedon, Hall's consistency and brilliance stabilizes the vicissitudes of the churches struggle to rise to the summit of Orthodoxy. Through the Theological dissent and schismatic atmosphere of the "Arian Contreversy", to the new era of Monastism and settled popular piety, I found Hall's representation to far surpass others in getting down to the nitty-gritty of Church Doctrine and History. Hall's characterization manifests a picturesque quality of each individual that impacted the Early Church. From Tertullian, Irenaeus, Clement, and Ignatius, to Augustine, Jerome and the Cappadocian Brothers, I found once again precision and composure that's unparrelled when compared with other works. So for the scholar and novice alike, I highly recommend this work.

Hall writes with engaging candor about the early history of Christianity. The reader is left with a vivid sense of the Zeitgeist in which Christianity was born and in which it grew. Hall's historical objectivity is so pristine that this reader had to read the biography on the back cover to be certain whether or not the writer is a Christian.

Halls walks us through the first seven centuries, touching on the issues of the time and candidly introducing each of the Church Fathers; Origen, Iranæus, Tertullian ... a wonderful presentation and a terrific read. I could not put this book down, and it led at once to a lot more purchases. Highly recommended.

I bought this book and there are two obvious things: The author is an expert on patristic and early church, and he's a zwinglian who believes firmly the Sola Scriptura axiom and this prejudice doesn't let him understand even the posiblity of tradition in a early christian sense. He even thinks that the apostolic sucesion is an idea deduced from the Bible. He can't believe it a reality. He obviusly don't trust the information provided by First Letter of Clement and Ireneus. But to be to be a protestant 21 century scholar and to be a second century christian. I think Iraneus and Tertulian had better and safer information that Stuart Hall.
He said that for the ancient church to change a bit the gospel would be something unaceptable. Well, Stuart Hall does precisely this when he says that the early christian believed that the bread "represented" the body of Chist. Well, If you read Ignatius, Iraneus, Justin, you will see that they believed that Jesus was real present, not just represented and you could partake of His Body eating it. J.N.D Kelly, Jaroslav Pelikan who study the same period affirm the truth that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. Stuart Hall says that the Eucharist was understood as sacrifice by the second part of third century. And this is a great error. Stuart Hall just gives this information, but he doesn't give the sources upon that inspired it. Once more you read "Early Church Doctrine" and you'll see he's wrong.
By the second century you will see that the early church held this belief. Read also article thysia by Jurgen Roloff on Exegetical Dictionary of the NT.
To finish, Jaroslav Pelikan , at that time protestant, and J.N.D Kelly works are far better works than Hall. They gave you the patristic evidence, something Stuart Hall doesn't do that much. Save money and choose Kelly or the volume one by Pelikan.
A methological

I bought this book and there are two obvious things: The author is an expert on patristic and early church, and he's a zwinglian who believes firmly the Sola Scriptura axiom and this prejudice doesn't let him understand even the posiblity of tradition in a early christian sense. He even thinks that the apostolic sucesion is an idea deduced from the Bible. He can't believe it a reality. He obviusly don't trust the information provided by First Letter of Clement and Ireneus. But to be to be a protestant 21 century scholar and to be a second century christian. I think Iraneus and Tertulian had better and safer information that Stuart Hall.
He said that for the ancient church to change a bit the gospel would be something unaceptable. Well, Stuart Hall does precisely this when he says that the early christian believed that the bread "represented" the body of Chist. Well, If you read Ignatius, Iraneus, Justin, you will see that they believed that Jesus was real present, not just represented and you could partake of His Body eating it. J.N.D Kelly, Jaroslav Pelikan who study the same period affirm the truth that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. Stuart Hall says that the Eucharist was understood as sacrifice by the second part of third century. And this is a great error. Stuart Hall just gives this information, but he doesn't give the sources upon that inspired it. Once more you read "Early Church Doctrine" and you'll see he's wrong.
By the second century you will see that the early church held this belief. Read also article thysia by Jurgen Roloff on Exegetical Dictionary of the NT.
To finish, Jaroslav Pelikan , at that time protestant, and J.N.D Kelly works are far better works than Hall. They gave you the patristic evidence, something Stuart Hall doesn't do that much. Save money and choose Kelly or the volume one by Pelikan.
A methological