Description
Many recognise Everett Ferguson as the definitive voice on early Christianity, patristic writing and ecclesiology. The Early Church at Work and Worship is a challenging collection, broad in scope and formidable in depth.
These two volumes of Ferguson’s collected essays include some of his most memorable work, especially on “laying on of hands” (discussed in Volume 1) and the early development of the doctrine of baptism (discussed in Volume 2). Practices of ordination and attitudes to religious schism in antiquity are also analysed in this collection, which includes articles and papers from various sources and also material that is published here for the first time.
About the Author
Everett Ferguson is Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Abilene Christian University. He was editor of The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (2nd ed, 1997) and is author of many works including Early Christians Speak (2 volumes, 1999, 2002); Backgrounds of Early Christianity (3rd ed, 2003); Inheriting Wisdom: Readings for Today from Ancient Christian Writers (2004); Church History, Vol. 1: From Christ to Pre-Reformation (2005); and Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (2009). Ferguson received the “Distinguished Service Award” from the North American Patristics Society (2008) and the “Vestigia Award for Excellence in Early Christian Studies and Service to the Church” from the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies (2002).
Contents
Volume 1: Ministry, Ordination, Covenant, and Canon
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Images of the Church in Early Christian Literature
2. Attitudes to Schism at the Council of Nicaea
3. A Note on Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses IV.8.3
4. Ordination in the Ancient Church, I: Greek, Roman, and Jewish Backgrounds
5. Ordination in the Ancient Church, II: The Ceremony of Ordination
6. Ordination in the Ancient Church, III: Ordination in the Second and Third Centuries
7. Ordination and the Early Church, IV: Ordination in the First Century
8. Selection and Installation to Office in Roman, Greek, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity
9. Jewish and Christian Ordination: Some Observations
10. Qumran and Codex D
11. Origen and the Election of Bishops
12. Eusebius and Ordination
13. Laying on of Hands: Its Significance in Ordination
14. The Covenant Idea in the Second Century
15. Justin Martyr on Jews, Christians, and the Covenant
16. Canon Muratori: Date and Provenance
17. The Muratorian Fragment and the Canon: Review of Hahneman
18. Pseudepigraphy: Post-Canonical Letters
19. Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon
Bibliography
Index of Ancient Documents
Index of Subjects
Volume 2: Catechesis, Baptism, Eschatology, and Martyrdom
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Irenaeus’ Proof of the Apostolic Preaching and Early Catechetical Instruction
2. Catechesis and Initiation
3. Christian and Jewish Baptism according to the Epistle of Barnabas
4. Baptism according to Origen
5. The Doctrine of Baptism in Gregory of Nyssa’s Oratio Catechetica
6. Exhortations to Baptism in the Cappadocians
7. Basil’s Protreptic to Baptism
8. Preaching at Epiphany: Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom on Baptism and the Church
9. Spiritual Circumcision in Early Christianity
10. Inscriptions and the Origin of Infant Baptism
11. The Disgrace and the Glory: A Jewish Motif in Early Christianity
12. The Kingdom of God in Early Patristic Literature
13. Was Barnabas a Chiliast? An Example of Hellenistic Number Symbolism in Barnabas and Clement of Alexandria
14. Millennial and Amillennial Expectations in Christian Eschatology: Ancient and Medieval Views
15. Number Symbolism in the Ancient World
16. Divine Pedagogy: Origen’s Use of the Imagery of Education
17. Early Christian Martyrdom and Civil Disobedience
Bibliography
Ancient Sources Index
Subject Index
Endorsements and Reviews
These essays, spanning four decades of Ferguson’s scholarship, sum up major discussions of ministry and canon in early Christianity. Especially useful for exploring the terminology surrounding ordination, these essays are vintage Ferguson.
Elizabeth A. Clark, Professor of Religion, Duke University, North Carolina
This volume [Volume 1] contains much insight and common sense in a field beset by rival theories.
Liviu Barbu, in The Expository Times, Vol 127, No 6
This volume [Volume 2] is another great contribution by Everett Ferguson towards a better understanding of the practices of the early church. Because of his vast and thorough knowledge of the original documents, as well as scholarly studies that contribute to one’s understanding of their context, Ferguson’s essays in this volume are an indispensable contribution to this field of study. Ferguson’s style of weaving his commentary with original and supporting sources is masterful. I look forward to using this and the first volume in several graduate courses I teach in historical and presentday ecclesiology.
Earl D. Lavender, Lipscomb University, Nashville, TN
