Early Church Fathers Study Guide Recommendation

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I would appreciate any recommended of an early church fathers study guide and corresponding text. It’s for a weekly men’s small group meeting.
 
Not aware of any study guides. How do you plan to do this study? Do you plan to study about the Fathers from earliest to later, or something else? I have their actual writings and I do study them. If you want to contact me about ideas then feel free. (Removed email address)
 
Copland,

We’ve been using the Come And See study guides for OT and NT books and wasn’t sure of what to use as a discussion guide for the ECF. This is for a small men’s group of 4-8 people. I’d likely look at the study guide and decide how to move through the material based on the guide… Thank you.
 
i’ve been studying a series called the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. It’s published by Intervarsity Press. The volumes are around $30 each, for each book(s) that a volume covers. I’m currently waiting for the fourth volume of my subscription.

It tends to be a line by line commentary. It might be good for the moderator to use this. I find it tough reading, but worthwhile. There are some Protestant overtones in the commentary, but the church fathers quoted you’d recognize as ‘Catholic’ saints and such.

There’s hardly any (if at all) cross-references. Romans, for example, was broken up into over 75 sections. As such, the pace of progress is slow, which is what I like. The writers bring out details of what Paul is saying, that I might otherwise gloss over.

There are endorsements from Catholic clergy to use the series.

ivpress.com/accs/
 
to the previous post I would add that this commentary is simply a collection of excerpts from the early church fathers, chosen by the editor and staff. There is an introductory remark to each section, but then the quotes follow.

The bias, if any, in this type of commentary, is in the quotes that were selected. But, I’d have to say that the quotes I’ve seen so far are pretty much on the mark, as being relevant to the scripture under discussion.

There are, if I remember, over 75 of these early church writers that are quoted. names like Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostum, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, etc. appear.

For some reason, I was reading in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary and the quick impression I get there is that the early church fathers are considered passe’ in the arena of modern Bible scholarship.
 
The Ancient Christian Commentary series a wonderful work. The volumes are done by many different people, and one that i know of is a devout Catholic who did the volumes of Isaiah. But with all the volumes some are better than others, which means some who did the selection and research did better than some of the others who did other volumes. I have noticed in Matthew 16 where Jesus called Peter the rock, there is only a selected comment that does not interpret it as Peter as the rock. Augustine clearly did, and it shows the biased slant, especially considering that there usually is more than one interpretation for many passages. But as far as the ACC volumes on the Gospels, the Catena Aurea done by St. Thomas Aquinas is by far superior to the ACC.

Intervarsity has also the Ancient Christian Text series where they have been translating commentaries by the Fathers.
 
Yes, Jimmy Akin’s is good. So is Mike Aquilina’sThe Fathers of the Church. It’s shorter, but the excerpts are very nice and the writing vivid and winning (whereas Jimmy is trying to give more raw information on lots of different authors).He also has a book of excerpts from early Christian women, called "The Mothers of the Church". (Not in a weird feminist way; just in an “early Christian women saints and writers were interesting, too” way.)

If you wanted a really focused study, The Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett is very good on just four of the Apostolic Church Fathers. (Don’t confuse it with the four Gospel writers book of the same name by a different guy.)

Hope this helps!
 
Here is a link to the Church Fathers Lenten reading plan. There is the regular and lite plan. It’s available in PDF. The texts are taken from New Advent.

Only the readings are available, no commentaries.

churchyear.net/lentfathers.html
 
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