Just recently, I decided to try reading the commentary series that is put out by Intervarsity Press under the title of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. I must admit that I did not expect to like it, because I feared an overbearing influence of Protestantism on account of the makeup of the editorial board. Nevertheless, I have found, with few exceptions, that the Fathers have been allowed to speak for themselves.
The commentary that they sent me to start with is the volume on St. Paul's Letter to the Romans. I confess, there is a great deal of editorial comment concerning "justification by faith alone," which we know for certain is not a component of Christian Faith known to the Fathers of the Church. On the contrary, the Fathers understood the Faith the same way that historical Christians understand it now; that is, that our salvation is achieved through the sacramental system instituted by Christ. Christ is not Buddha (He did not come to be an ethical teacher. He came to institute life-giving mysteries.)Besides this, however, the insights that are provided by the various selected Fathers (saints of the Early Church) more than make up for having to wade through the occasional anachronistic Lutheran-based diatribe in defense of sola fides. It will be interesting to see what the volume on the Gospel of St. John will do with the passages regarding the Eucharist, since, it is undeniable, that all of the Fathers believed in sacramental realism as far as the Eucharist is concerned.
The coordinators of the ACCS project state that what they want to do is assemble a "Christian Talmud," which will proceed through the various Scriptural books verse by verse giving explanatory commentary. The same coordinators also state that they are desiring to produce a book that can and will be used by Christians of all sorts (Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox).
I think that this is a very important project for Christian lay-people, especially, since it opens to them, really for the first time, the riches of the Patristic Age. Christianity in the Patristic Age is really philosophy in its most undiluted form, since the Fathers of the Church were, for the most part, highly trained in the Greco-Roman philosophy of their day, but, over and above that, they were deeply in love with the Divine Wisdom Himself, Who had become incarnate for our sake.
Nobody has a greater appreciation for Who Christ Is than the Fathers. They understood in a very real sense that He is the Logos (the pattern, the model, the principle of comprehensibility for everything in Creation and for the whole of Being). Each of them had a personal love for Jesus Christ, but that love was cosmic in that they recognized that the Logos is what stands behind the logoi of everything that exists. To learn about the Logos, study the logoi, they would say, for the Logos Himself engenders the logoi. Each of the logoi participates in the Logos. The challenge that presented itself to each of the Fathers as they got out of bed every morning was how to live their lives kata Logon (according to the Logos), which is the same as to say "according to Wisdom," or "according to Reason."
This commentary series is definitely worth a read. I think it has the potential to bring a lot of people, of various Christian backgrounds, to an appreciate of true philosophy.
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