Customer Reviews

The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology

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This book is in realiy a series of small articles about various patristic subjects. It attempts to cover the whole period in a rather limited number of pages. It is also written for the general reader and so is of less help to the patristic specialist. Here the references after each article are of help. I could have wished that each of the regional Church Councils would have been dealt with separately. Anything by McGuckin, however, is going to be good.

Professor McGuckin is the world's foremost authority on Patristics. He has gathered a wonderful collection of scholarly description and commentary. It is both a reference, and contemporary analysis. This book is indespensable.

Professor MCGUCKIN views rightly that book as an introduction, to a fundamental and fascinating subject.
He is not to be faulted: he has the talent and the knowledge to write thousands of pages.
But the reader risks the disappointment of too little information, "rester sur sa faim", as we say in France, still being hungry for knowledge. It's not a bad thing but it is a handbook.
Professor MCGUCKIN's great merit is to write about theology, when too many authors (in France, for instance) pretend to stay on an history path.
I won't discuss in detail what I think were the lost oportunities of Christianity, or the triumph of heresies.

As another starter, I would propose ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY, edited by EVERETT FERGUSON, St James Press 1990,
who stops wisely, I think at the beginnng of the 7th century.
The 9th century is more a reference to the story of the Church than to Christianity.
The two are not the same, sorry.