The Fathers of the Greek Church

by Hans von Campenhausen

Hardcover, no dust jacket. Ex-library, shaken, edge-worn cover. Good otherwise.

Hardcover

First published August 8, 2015

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a liberal and academic viewpoint that pervades these summaries of some of the Church Fathers. By academic, I mean that von Campenhausen seems to evaluate these Fathers as if they were members of his mid-century German University faculty, teaching theology or rhetoric - they are lauded for their learning or broad-minded approach, criticized for "dogmatism", etc. It is a consistently aggravating and obnoxious perspective on the Fathers.

Von Campenhausen gives twelve brief summaries of Church Fathers who wrote in Greek. He's reasonably good at giving a bit of biography and describing their writing style and theological approach, but is very light on actually telling the reader what the substance of their theological contributions were.

I am hopeful I can find a copy of Pope Benedict's "The Fathers" because this was quite disappointing.