My 20+ year project is to read through all of the Schaff series of church fathers. As in the past, I do not recommend this, and instead would suggest just dipping in and out and reading only what is of interest to you. My latest volume, the select writings of Gregory of Nyssa, is probably going to be a pass for most people.
This is not because he’s bad! In fact, I got a kick out of much of it–especially the first few chapters of his book against Eunomius, where Gregory said he wasn’t going to respond to the poor quality thought and then spent lots of time talking about the poor quality thought.
But really what we have in the bulk of this volume is the foundational work on the Trinity. (One of them, anyway–Gregory is certainly not the only church father to write on the topic!). Which for modern Christians is something that has been done well. So well, in fact, that reading this just involves a lot of ‘yep, I agree with that.’ That too.
On the other hand, Gregory stands at the head of what will become the Medieval tradition. In those moments, as a modern Evangelical I often found myself saying “hold on a second!” Here we have the groundwork of later Trinitarian theology, which is great! But we also see the arrow that will eventually point the way to a works-based theology, which is much less great.
All that to say, this isn’t the best of the church fathers, but it’s one to read if you want to do a deep dive into the Trinity.
Dr. Coyle Neal co-hosts the City of Man Podcast and is an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog). He teaches Political Science, Philosophy, and History in Southwest Missouri.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In