Wisdom for Today from the Early Church: A Foundational Study provides a fascinating, inspiring, and eye-opening entranceway into the theological and spiritual riches of Christ’s Church in the first five centuries of the Christian era. And it makes clear how these insights are highly relevant for our life as Orthodox Christians today, and how they can not only inspire us in our personal relationship with our LORD and all His Saints, but also how they can equip us for living and proclaiming the historic Faith in the midst of our increasingly anti-Christian society and culture.
The book addresses ten of the most important themes of the life of the Early Church, as seen in the Table of Contents:
Chapter One: An Orthodox Understanding of the Book of Acts
Chapter Two: The Apostolic Fathers Teach and Encourage the Faithful
Chapter Three: The Apologists Explain and Defend the Faith to the Surrounding Society
Chapter Four: St. Irenaeus Meets the Challenge of the Gnostics
Chapter Five: The Church Meets the Challenge of the Montanists
Chapter Six: Tertullian and the Dangers of the Sectarian Mind-Set
Chapter Seven: The Canonization of the New Testament: The Church Decides
Chapter Eight: The Rise of Papal Presumption
Chapter Nine: The Holy Martyrs Live and Die for Christ
Chapter Ten: The Rise of Monasticism, the New Martyrdom; and the Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
“This ten-chapter journey is by no means a dry read. Dr. Ford is well known for his passionate teaching of Church History. For 25 years at St. Tikhon’s Seminary, he has instructed hundreds of students, who are now lay leaders, deacons, priests, bishops, and a metropolitan of the Church; he has served as the Chair of the Department of Church History and Patristics; and he has been promoted to the rank of full Professor. His commitment to the school and to his course of study flows from his great love for Christ and His Church – and her two millennia-old story.
If you were to speak with any of his students, you would find that they all agree on his incredible devotion to teaching, his unwavering faithfulness to the Church and her Tradition, his respect for her Scriptures, his obedience to her teachings, and his veneration of her Saints. He literally re-lives the moments that he is teaching, with all their drama, joys, and sorrows. He makes the pages of Church History come alive in his classroom – and it is no different in this book.”
His Grace, Bishop MICHAEL (Dahulich), Bishop of the Diocese of New York and New Jersey (OCA)
Dr. David C. Ford is also the author of Women and Men in the Early Church: The Full Views of St. John Chrysostom, published by St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press. And he and his wife Dr. Mary Ford have coauthored the widely popular Marriage As a Path to Holiness: Lives of Married Saints. The revised and expanded, 20th Anniversary edition of this book has been recently published by St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press.
