Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church

Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought

by: Ronald E. Heine

series: Evangelical Ressourcement

• Format

  E-Book

  ISBN

  9781441201539

  Pub. Date

  Sep 2007

  SRP

  $29.00

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About

"Heine's well-informed work will benefit a broad range of readers: pastors, interested laypersons, students, as well as scholars and teachers in biblical and patristic studies. . . . A valuable addition to the continuing evangelical interest in recovering a broad sense of church history."--Martin C. Albl, Review of Biblical Literature

The contemporary church dismisses Christianity's foundational Scriptures at its own peril. However, the teachings of the Old Testament are less and less at the center of congregational preaching and conversation. The early church fathers--visionaries such as Augustine, Origen, and Tertullian--embraced the Hebrew Scriptures, allowing the Old Testament to play a central role in the formation of their beliefs. As today's Christians struggle to relate to concepts such as the Jewish law and the prophets, pastors and students benefit from looking through the lenses of these thoughtful pioneers. This fourth volume in the Evangelical Ressourcement series helps the Old Covenant to come alive.

About the series: The Evangelical Ressourcement series is grounded in the belief that there is a wealth of theological, exegetical, and spiritual resources from the patristic era that is relevant for the Christian church today and into the future. Amid the current resurgence of interest in the early church, this series aims to help church thinkers and leaders reappropriate these ancient understandings of Christian belief and practice and apply them to ministry in the twenty-first century.

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Endorsements

"Ron Heine has written Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church for a wide variety of readers: pastors, New Testament and patristics scholars, and general lay readers. This is a very helpful introduction to the ways the ancient Christian writers viewed the Scriptures. Heine comes to the subject with a significant grasp of both primary sources and contemporary scholarship. The argument is illuminating and inspiring."--Thomas C. Oden, general editor, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture

"Ronald Heine brings together two contemporary interests: renewed attention to the Old Testament as Christian Scripture and rediscovery of the church fathers. He offers the reading of the Old Testament with the church fathers as guidance for the contemporary church's use of the whole Bible. His endorsement of a spiritual reading of the Old Testament means not a rejection of history but a going beyond history for what is 'useful' for Christian living. Examining how the church fathers read the Law, History, Prophets, and Psalms becomes an effective plea for using the church fathers in present-day understanding and preaching of the Old Testament, for the fathers' usage is rooted in New Testament practice. The early church's example is a call to do more than understand the text; it is a call to live in and to mold life by the text. I recommend this excellent book to a wide readership."--Everett Ferguson, distinguished scholar in residence, Abilene Christian University

"Heine's overview of the uses of and attitudes toward Jewish Scripture in the ancient church is offered as a corrective to a very common neglect of and lack of appreciation for this topic among lay and leadership audiences in evangelical churches. His lucid prose is eminently readable and his concise summaries include a wide array of authors from Christian late antiquity. This handy volume seems well designed for its audience, who will benefit greatly from Heine's scholarship on this topic."--Michael A. Williams, professor of comparative religion and Near Eastern languages and civilization, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

"Ron Heine's Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church fills a gap in the history of biblical interpretation. The work is comprehensive in scope, yet it provides carefully crafted, succinct treatments of major patristic writers that reflect close, informed reading of the primary sources. Only someone who has lived with these patristic authors and pored over their writings could produce such a lively, sympathetic treatment. Both specialist and nonspecialist readers will benefit from this richly detailed exposition."--Carl R. Holladay, Charles Howard Candler Professor of New Testament, Candler School of Theology

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Reviews

"While a great many books address the Christian use of the Jewish scriptures, this is the first full-length treatment narrowly focused on the perspectives of Christians of the second and third centuries C.E. Even more significantly, Heine . . . has produced a text that will simultaneously satisfy the needs of academics, students, theologians, clergy, and interested lay readers. His own perspective is clearly and self-avowedly evangelical; in discussing, e.g., the views of Jews, Gnostics, Marcionites, and the church fathers with regard to the Old Testament Law, he clearly sides with the latter, now orthodox group. Yet he details the various ancient views fairly if not always sympathetically, supports his interpretations with copious evidence and citations from relevant primary texts, and helpfully points out areas of agreement as well as difference. Of interest to divinity, academic, and larger public libraries."--Darby Orcutt, Library Journal

"An excellent book that will be helpful in assimilating the Old Testament personally and as a result in preaching the Old Testament."--Preaching

"[This book] will be helpful to preachers."--R. Albert Mohler Jr., Preaching

"[Heine's] latest offering brings [his] scholarship down to a college level, where student and church leader alike can glean the extraordinary insights of the Nicene and Ante-Nicene church fathers. . . . The book has a helpful listing of patristics resources, both print and online, and a subject index. . . . Heine's area of specialty with respect to the fathers is clearly Origen, and Origen's writings are prominent throughout the book. But Heine has an excellent balance of the works of other Fathers as well. . . . This volume has value as a main text in any patristics course, or as a supplemental text in an early church history course. The chapter on the Psalms might just revolutionize one's prayer life. . . . One can trust that Heine has faithfully mined [the church fathers'] riches and presented them for easy consumption by those who have a solid biblical foundation. Preachers and teachers alike cannot afford to bypass the value of this book--Heine has packed his immeasurable wealth of knowledge of the church fathers into this valuable paperback."--Scott Stocking, Stone-Campbell Journal

"Heine writes in a clear and accessible manner, presupposing little theological or historical background. An accomplished translator and commentator on the Fathers (especially of Origen's exegetical works), Heine displays a rich knowledge of both Latin and Greek patristic exegetical traditions, together with a command of the secondary literature. . . . Heine's well-informed work will benefit a broad range of readers: pastors, interested laypersons, students, as well as scholars and teachers in biblical and patristic studies. Its most valuable feature is its detailed presentations of patristic interpretations. . . . Heine's work is a valuable addition to the continuing evangelical interest in recovering a broad sense of church history, and thus recovering common ground with the Orthodox and Catholic traditions."--Martin C. Albl, Review of Biblical Literature

"Heine has displayed his expertise in patristics. . . . [This book] is accessible to a broad scope of readership. Heine's analysis contains insights that are useful for those in academic or pastoral settings, and at the same time curious laity can easily follow Heine's prose in order to receive a reliable primer on how early Christians perceived the OT."--Everett Berry, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

"This fourth volume in the Evangelical Ressourcement series is true to its aims: first, the explicit focus of the series is on the Patristic period, exploring the richness of this tradition and its relevance for the (evangelical) church today, and secondly its aim is 'to help church thinkers and leaders reappropriate these ancient understandings of Christian belief and practice and apply them to ministry in the twenty-first century.'. . . This book would be useful for the audience intended by the series, i.e. church leaders, but also perhaps as an introduction to undergraduate courses in church history and biblical interpretation, as a companion to more technical works."--A. Jeffers, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

"[An] excellent brief survey of the use of the OT in the early church. . . . [Heine is] 'interested in examining the central role that the [OT] played in the formation of Christian thinking and life in the early centuries of the church.' He succeeds admirably in achieving this goal."--Paul L. Watson, Restoration Quarterly

"A lucid, comprehensive, yet succinct treatment of the early patristic use of the Old Testament. . . . This book offers a good introduction for students interested in further study of patristic interpretation of the Old Testament. . . . The author succeeds admirably well in organizing a plethora of diverse patristic writings."--Michael J. Choi, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

"[Heine] draws upon a wealth of knowledge of the Church Fathers to write this rich yet readable book. . . . Heine's book is a great resource for the Christian who wants to understand some of the rich history of Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. . . . Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church is surely a helpful guide for finding good examples of the Fathers' teaching from the Old Testament. . . . Heine is to be commended for guiding us to many instructive examples of the Church Fathers' teaching on and from the Old Testament."--Paul M. Hoskins, Southwestern Journal of Theology

"Well researched and clearly written, this book is a good introduction to major themes in the interpretation of the Old Testament in the patristic period."--William T. Koopmans, Calvin Theological Journal