Creeds, Councils and Controversies: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church, AD 337–461, New Edition

by James Stevenson

Publisher:

SPCK

, 1989

Overview

For over forty years, Creeds, Councils and Controversies has been an essential primary source book for students of the later patristic period. Like its predecessor, A New Eusebius, it documents the history of the early Church, covering AD 377 to 461. Stevenson offers Persecution in Persia, The Council of Antioch, The Creed of Jerusalem and The Synod of Ashtishat. Authors of these documents include Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Marcellinus, Theodoret, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, Augustine, and Bede. Professor Frend has regrouped the documents in their historic settings. For example, Jerome’s writings are placed together as are those writings that recount the controversies in which Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria were involved. Nearly forty documents have been added to this new edition and the notes and bibliography have been updated.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Moreover we do not distribute the Words of our Saviour in the Gospels to two several subsistences or Persons. For the one and sole Christ is not twofold, although we conceive of him as consisting of two distinct elements inseparably united, even as a man is conceived of as ^b consisting of soul and body, and yet is not two-fold but one out of both. But if we hold the right faith we shall believe both the human language and the divine to have been used by one Person.” (Page 305)

“These things, they argue, a man does not receive from God, but from himself; and they say that the grace of God, whereby we are delivered from irreligion, is given us according to our merits.” (Page 240)

“For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see ⁴³¹ that our people lack aid from us.” (Page 57)

“For though the Holy Spirit has a personal existence (ὑπόστασις) of his own, and is conceived of by himself, in that he is the Spirit and not the Son, yet he is not therefore alien from the Son. For he is called the Spirit of Truth,¹ and Christ is the Truth, and he is poured forth from him just as he is also from God the Father.” (Page 306)

“Not as though he experienced death as regards his own (divine) nature—to say or hold which is madness—but that, as I said, just now, his flesh tasted death.” (Pages 296–297)

Praise for the Print Edition

Anyone interested in the early days of Christianity or in the later Roman Empire will find this book attractive to browse in. Every lecturer on the period will be grateful for the opportunity to refer his hearers to this admirable collection.

—Baptist Times

Product Details

• Title: Creeds, Councils and Controversies: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church, AD 337 - 461
• Editors: J. Stevenson and W. H. C. Frend
• Edition: New
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 1989
• Pages: 431

About James Stevenson