This 38-volume library of the works of the Early Church Fathers in the first few centuries of the Church is an invaluable resource for the serious student of Theology, and the Scriptures also, since many of the writings of the early Church Fathers are Biblical commentaries. Although this collection was compiled in the late 1800’s by Protestant scholars, it is still a primary English source for scholars of all denominations.
The originally published volumes are generally unavailable, new or used, but there paperback republications. Since the copyright has long expired, you can find these works on the internet, or you can purchase a DVD with all these works for under ten dollars.
However, we highly recommend that you purchase the individual volume DVD’s from Christian Book Distributors, as it contains the footnotes from the original translation, and also the valuable introductions. The hundred plus extra dollars for the individual DVD’s is money well-spent.
https://www.christianbook.com
Search for “Ante-Nicene Church Fathers”, you can also search for “Nicene Church Fathers” and “Post-Nicene Church Fathers”:
https://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/easy_find?Ntt=ante+nicene+fathers&N=0&Ntk=keywords&action=Search&Ne=0&event=ESRCQ&nav_search=1&cms=1&ps_exit=KEYWORD%7Clegacy&ps_domain=www
You can spend a lifetime studying these works, and it will much better for your soul than television. This vast library is broken down into three sections:
- The Ante-Nicene Fathers ranges from the Apostolic Fathers to various third and fourth century sources including the liturgies and ancient Syriac documents.
- Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I: eight volumes of the writings of St. Augustine, the greatest and most influential of the early Fathers, as well as six volumes of the treatises and homilies of St. Chrysostom.
- The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II: fourteen volumes of the works of the Greek Fathers from Eusebius to John of Damascus and the Latin Fathers from Hilary to Gregory the Great.
Dr Wikipedia includes a short description of the Anti-Nicene Church Fathers[1] and a more complete listing for the Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers[2].
These works include brief introductions and notes indicating variances in readings, references to scripture or literature, and clarifications of obscure passages. They also note corruptions or distortions of patristic testimony (i.e., the Decretals).
The COMPREHENSIVE INDEX for all three series is found in Volume 10 of the Anti-Nicene Fathers series. This includes a subject index, an index of works sorted by the name of the Church Father, and an index of Biblical references cross referenced to their quotations in the writings of the Church Fathers. There is also a bibliography, which is less valuable since there has been much scholarship in the past hundred years. Each section has excellent introductions that discuss the manuscript and church history regarding each work, even after a hundred years.
SPECIAL CASE FOR WORKS OF ST AUGUSTINE
St Augustine is a special case, all of his major works have been preserved, none have been lost to the sands of history, and recently more of his sermons have been discovered. We know this because St Augustine himself made a list of his major works when he sensed his days on the earth may be coming to an end. In addition to this list of his works, St Augustine also wrote the Retractions, these Retractions correct common misunderstandings of these works by Christians of his day, and any additional comments or corrections he wishes to make to his works. For the main works of St Augustine in the Nicene Church Fathers volumes, the applicable excerpts from his final work, Retractions, are printed with the introduction of each work.
And our illustration is from his key work, On Christian Teaching, also known as On Christian Doctrine, which teaches us how we should read and interpret Scriptures, which teaches us we should interpret all Scripture with the two-fold Love of God and love for our neighbor.
QUALITY AND COMPLETENESS OF TRANSLATIONS
For the most part, the quality of the translations is acceptable. There were many translators involved, some translators were better than others. The writing style sometimes is convoluted, in many of my blogs I play with the wording to clarify it and make it more readable, or maybe change from third person to first person to make moral messages more imperative. On occasion you will encounter an archaic usage (i.e., speak leasing was synonymous with lying). Sometimes when the wording changes are minor, I will keep the passage in quotes, sometimes when the editing or rewording is too extreme, part or all of the passage is not in quotes.
When comparing the translations of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to more recent translations, these late nineteenth translations are often just about as good as the newer translations. There is some unevenness; for example, whoever was translating St Clement of Alexandria (not St Clement of Rome) must have gotten weary or maybe died during his Stromata, as portions of it are in the original untranslated Latin. Also, when I was listening the excellent sermons by the late Dr Boice on the Psalms, he constantly complains about St Augustine’s sermons on the Psalms. I presume he was talking about the English translation, though he likely knew Greek. The translators in his introduction to this volume says that to do the sermons justice he really needed three volumes, but the publisher only wanted to publish one volume, maybe something was lost when these sermons were condensed.
The primary source of the Greek and Latin writings is the Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina, collections of the Greek and Latin Church Father in their original language compiled by JP Migne from 1841-1866. When you see a footnote in the Catholic Catechism referring to PG, PL, or PLS, this is the collection they are referred to, the majority of these works cited will be included in Church Fathers library. Only a portion of the original Greek and Latin writings have been translated for inclusion in the Church Father series. Most of the commonly cited patristic works are included, except that the works of St Cyril and the Cappadocian Fathers, St Basil and St and St Nazianzus are underrepresented, although one volume includes works from St Gregory of Nyssa. Only a portion of the Greek and Latin originals were translated into English in these 38 volumes of the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Church Fathers, as the original Greek and Latin works fill over three hundred volumes.
For the better-known works of St Augustine and other important Church Fathers other more modern inexpensive translations are available, in particular the Confessions, the City of God, and the Trinity. An Orthodox scholar named Robert Charles Hill has released fresh translations of the works of John Chrysostom, including the Psalms which are not included in this library.
GREEK AND LATIN ORIGINALS
Dr Wikipedia has articles that list the works in these volume, these are referenced in our video on Learning Koine Greek, where we also discuss where you can find the Greek and Latin original works that are the basis for these translations.
Please refer to our video and blog on Learning Koine Greek:
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/on-learning-attic-and-koine-greek-classical-latin-and-biblical-hebrew/
HOW TO READ THE ANCIENT CHURCH FATHERS
There were no editors in the ancient world. Few ancient works were closely edited, the exceptions include the Old and New Testaments, the Homeric epic poems, the Platonic dialogues, the Greek plays, St Augustine’s Confessions, and perhaps Plutarch’s Lives. Many ancient writings are very uneven in quality. By far the Scriptures have the most manuscripts surviving, followed by Plato’s dialogues, but it is surprising how many of even famous ancient works survive in only one or a handful of manuscripts, and how many treasured ancient works have been lost, like Cicero’s Hortensius, On Philosophy, which St Augustine credits to encouraging him to pursue moral truths through philosophy, a type of mini-conversion on his road back to the Church. Many church writings, including most of St Augustine’s writings, were dictated to a scribe. Most biblical commentaries, including those by St Augustine and St John Chrysostom, are transcriptions of actual sermons that the preaching saint may or may not have reviewed.
Usually, the original copy of the work has been lost in the sands of history, all we have are copies of copies of copies, with all the errors inherent when the copyists are careless: words or sometimes whole lines can be dropped, pages are missing, pages have partially deteriorated, a word can be unwittingly substituted for similar sounding word, or a scribe can try to correct what he thinks is a copying error and corrupts the text even more.
So, when a passage is unclear, maybe the passage was unclear when it was transcribed, or maybe corruptions crept into the text as it was copied over the centuries, or maybe a precise translation is impossible because the original meanings of the words are lost. Sometimes only the Latin or another translation of the original Greek survives, as in the works by St Irenaeus or St Clement of Alexandria, sometimes the translator has to imagine what the original Greek could have been to try to find the original meaning.
When reading the Church Fathers, it is helpful to know a little bit of the background of the history or the work, hopefully this blog will serve as such an introduction. One good example is the early Christian works by Irenaeus, Against Heresies, and the works of St Justin Martyr. If you read these works without knowing their background you may think they reads like a rambling discourse, but they decided many of the important theological questions of the early Church, including the exact role of the Old Testament in the Christian Church, and they first coined the phrases we use up to the current day to describe our faith, and they were pioneers in the development of Christian doctrine.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers
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