Just finished a read with my book club. The consensus among those of us who hadn’t read it yet was that we were surprised how familiar many parts felt—a testament to its lasting influence in Christian thought throughout the years. I look forward to returning to it often!
Thanks, I am currently reading his book on Saint Antony and will put this on my list. I appreciate the length of these works, which encourage re-reading.
You are welcome! And good question. In my view, one of the benefits of reading the fathers is that they inhabit a world with a different set of assumptions and social imagination. So you end up reading a book like On the Incarnation and see how similar it is to us; yet on reflection, you begin to see how his patterns of thought, of spirituality, and doctrine flow from different springs of reasoning than ours do. This, I think, is a key for how reading the fathers can help shake us out of our biases and more clearly see things that we might not otherwise see.
Just finished a read with my book club. The consensus among those of us who hadn’t read it yet was that we were surprised how familiar many parts felt—a testament to its lasting influence in Christian thought throughout the years. I look forward to returning to it often!
Thanks, I am currently reading his book on Saint Antony and will put this on my list. I appreciate the length of these works, which encourage re-reading.
You convinced me! The book has been collecting dust on my shelf for years... The time has come!
It's going to change your life!
You are welcome! And good question. In my view, one of the benefits of reading the fathers is that they inhabit a world with a different set of assumptions and social imagination. So you end up reading a book like On the Incarnation and see how similar it is to us; yet on reflection, you begin to see how his patterns of thought, of spirituality, and doctrine flow from different springs of reasoning than ours do. This, I think, is a key for how reading the fathers can help shake us out of our biases and more clearly see things that we might not otherwise see.