This book permits one to quickly find a lot of usefulreferences. However it is quite misleading as all kind of heretics areincluded. The word "Christian" should have been avoided in the title. Those who are interested in Church Fathers will have to be able to sort out the Fathers from the heretics, and that means they will have to know already a lot about the issues of orthodoxy and heresy among the ancient thinkers. In this case they will already know much, and this book may not be so useful. I do not recommend this book to those conservative Christians who do not know which thinkers were heretic or not.

A few things to note in reading this book...

1. It is a resource of quotes, for the most part. So, it's not like a typical commentary, where you can read the passage of Scripture, then read the "commentary" and have an idea of what's being said. This book is full of quotes (a few lines long) related to each passage.

2. Which leads me to the second point... Usually, when you have a commentary you know the author's bias-- whether he/she is conservative, liberal, their theological leanings, etc., and you can make like adjustments when reading. Not so here. You will need to be somewhat versed in Church History (or have access to a book) in order to distinguish the sound theology of these individuals from the not-so-sound/heretical theology. And, it's possible (as was the case with Origen, for instance) that some of what they say is sound and some is way, way off... You just need to have some tool to make that distinction.

3. This book is very helpful, nonetheless, because we often forget that the ancient Christians struggled with the essentials doctrines of the faith for hundreds of years... and were versed in Scripture (although some of them get lost in allegory, etc.). It is both helpful-- and respectful-- I think, to know what these fore-runners in the faith said.

Buy the book-- but only if you already have some other commentaries (or resources) you can consult.

Any book which meets its aim to present the thoughts of the church "Fathers" (as this book does) deserves to be evaluated on its stated intentions. Does this volume do an admirable and coherent job of offering Christianity's earliest theologians' thoughts on the letters to Corinth? Absolutely. Is it reasonable to expect views from this period to be in sync with intricate theological statements written hundreds (even thousands) of years later? Of course not. Walking through these early reflections on Scripture with the Fathers creates a fresh sense that Christianity is rooted in history, and that Christianity has an observable historical development of its own. Fascinating, on its own merits. Also of merit is the opportunity to have multiple historical sources available in the same volume. Who likes to pick up and put away dozens of books at a time?

This series is disappointing. I simply did not find the comments from the Fathers very illuminating presented in this context. This was not what I expected.

I would advise anyone who finds modern biblical scholarship unhelpful to immerse himself in the Fathers directly and in the original context. If we then read the scriptures adopting, if only for the moment, their mindset, their presuppositions, and their methods, the scriptures will be openned up to us in a new and fruitful way.

We moderns can find allegorical interpretation, for example, somewhat farfetched. But it is clear to me that some of what the apostles intended to teach cannot be understood from a strictly literal reading of the text. The apostles themselves do not take a concrete, literal approach to interpreting the Old Testament. Imitating the thought processes of the Fathers, who are much closer culturally to the apostles, opens our eyes to more of the New Testament's message.

In the final analysis, it is difficult to fully comprehend the gospel message presented in the scriptures without realizing that the early Church, for which the New Testament was written, believed in baptismal regeneration, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (understood as sacrificial) and the Church as an organic structure put in place by the apostles.

If the authors of this series had fully appreciated this I think they might taken the plunge into the stream instead of dousing themselves with thimblefuls of water.

A final comment on the choice of the RSV. The major defect of this fine translation is the tendency to downplay the messianic implications of Old Testament texts, that is to "recover" some "original" text from the accretions of subsequent interpretations. Many of the texts that are interpreted messianicly in the New Testament are translated in such a way as to obscure rather than highlight this possiblity. A similar problem arises in the New Testament with the choice of "it" rather than "He" for the Holy Spirit. I'm not sure what alternative the editors had for this problem.

The translations go on unabated, and I really hate to give this volume a bad review. It is such a good idea. But this terribly abridged and oddly selected series of translations (good translations, I have to say, that is the one star) is not the way to go about it. We need a REAL and BROAD set of ancient Christian commentaries. These won't do.

Let's hope so! If all "scholarship" was this shallow, we'd be in a lot of trouble. Are these the ONLY writings of the Father's on these particular verses? No? Then why give these? I tell you, I used this book for a class, sight unseen, because the idea of the series was brilliant. Thankfully, I used the real texts (Loeb Classical) as well, and was able to see (1) how bad the translations are in places (reads like the NIV, hmmmmm, wonder why) and (2) how unrepresentative of so many of the views of the Patristic writers on many of the issues this commentary is. You want examples? No space here, fortunately. The only thing less instructive about these idealogically-driven books is my rambling critique of them. Thankfully, I make no claim to have "international scope" in my review! Skip these volumes, the others in the series are no better. Read the original texts, draw your own conclusions.