Trinity and Incarnation: The Faith Of The Early Church

Excellent book!

I first read this book 8 years ago, and since my shelves are double stacked I often forget I have a book or just can't find the ones I remember reading before. So I just rediscovered this one today and remembered how good it really is. Studer, a respected historian of the early Church and professor of History and Patristics at the Pontifical Atheneaum S. Anselmo and the Patristic Institute in Rome, lays out in very precise detail the movements of the early church in a manner that I find easy to follow and understand. (As much as I love Pelikan's 5 volume work, it can seem disorganized chronologically.) As you can see from the table of contents above, he leaves no stone unturned. His judgments are neither those of the fundamentalists nor those of the "Harnakians". I would refer to this book as one of the best one-stop-shopping guides to the theology and christology of the formative (and both normative and non-normative) traditions. This is also a fantastic first step for novices, since it is very thorough by reviewing the basics. Moreover, more advanced students could make use of the extensive bibliographies that are given for each section. I suppose the problem there, however, is that few references are in English. But French and German aren't too difficult and that is part of the fun, right?For a slimmer addressing of the same topic, from the same perspective, please see  Incarnation Myth or Fact (Concordia Scholarship Today) .Enjoy!