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Rating: 
Summary: What a shame
Review: (This was originally posted anonymously. I am now adding my name. Thanks.)Hmmmm.... J.I. Packer, Thomas Oden, and Timothy George giving "advance praise." My first question, after seeing that Intervarsity Press was the publisher of this series, was, "What are conservative evangelicals doing reading the Fathers?" After perusing the Romans commentary, I can see that they haven't, at least in any diverse way. The idea that the "Fathers" were a monolithic entity who were in agreement on "exegesis" runs throughout this book, as well as the Markan volume (same review there, too). Any trained exgete will know that this is madness--there has only been one period in the church when views and scholarship were more multifarious than the present age: the Patristic period! The particular sort of scholarship as well as the conservative (read: unrepresentative of biblical scholarship as a whole) intent of the series is indicated in a cover blurb from Richard John Neuhaus (NOT a conservative evangelical). Can you detect the ideological underpinnings of the ACCS from this perjorative sentence?: "In the desert of biblical scholarship that tries to deconstruct or get behind the texts, the patristic commentators let the pure, clear waters of Christian faith flow from its scriptural source." Goodness, is that really what is going on in the ACCS? Which Fathers, may I ask--Origen? Universally ignored or maligned in conservative seminaries (the largest of which in the world I am a product, sad to say), Origen is one of the few really interesting voices in the ACCS, but only his least "dangerous" commentary is allowed in the series, it seems. Same for the Cappadocians, and many others. In any event, it is no "commentary" at all--which manuscripts were being commented on? Were these all from exegetical works, or were the exerpts from the Fathers taken from letters, sermons (polemics) and such? Why these comments, and not others? Is this ALL the Fathers had to say on the issues? Certainly, only a selection could be presented, but again, why these comments arranged in this way? A possible answer: these support the readings of the biblical texts the editors wanted to promulgate. Sadly, these questions go unanswered, I am afraid. None of the diversity and dissent of the first centuries of the faith shine through in this volume, and that is what is needed in any deeper reading of the Fathers. Early Christian writings can indeed shake up our complacent scholarship and our spiritually devoid lives, but not if they are packaged in such a mundane way. Ideologically-driven scholarship is immediately suspect. I predict that this laborious project will gather dust on the library shelves of mainstream centers of scholarship and seminaries, if they bother to spend budgeted money on it at all after the IPOs hit the bookstores of the world, blaze for a while (nice, slick covers on these volumes), and fade away. In all, avoid the steep price for these books, unless you want high-dollar Sunday School literature. And it's too bad, too--this is a great idea for a commentary set. Maybe Doubleday ought to take over the idea from IVP; they gave us the Anchor Bible series and dictionaries. Now THAT would be something to be reckoned with. Pax.
Rating: 
Summary: Reading Scripture With the Early Church
Review: After 20 years of reading and studying the Bible, I have never been more encouraged with a commentary series. The study on Romans is exceptional! I am neither Roman Catholic or Protestant and have found this Ancient Christian Commentary series a BLESSING. I had grown weary of the Reformation, Lutheran, Calvinist readings of scripture. It is so encouraging and refreshing to see what the first 3 centuries thought about Romans before Christianity became Christendumb (sic).
Rating: 
Summary: A place to begin
Review: The ACCS series, of which this volume on Romans is a part, is a place to begin in terms of patristic commentary, not a place to end. If this series had claimed to be an in-depth and comprehensive collection on the Church Fathers' statements on Scripture, then many of the critiques leveled at it would be justified. However, these negative reviews are aiming at a straw man. The ACCS series provides selected commentary by various thinkers in the early centuries of Christianity regarding the various books of the Bible. Even with its selectivity, these books are hundreds of pages long (compared to the at most thirty or so pages of the actual Scriptural text). To try and be as comprehensive as some reviewers seem to be demanding, the volume on Romans would no doubt have to be at least three large volumes itself. The series creators hoped these volumes could help encourage cross-denominational discussion with these formative thinkers. It is a starting place for thinking and discussing, not the end. Perhaps the best use of these volumes are as time-savers. Even the best Patristics scholar will not have the location of every comment on a particular Scripture verse by the Fathers right of the top of his/her head. And they may not want to spend the time of going through the index of, say, every volume in the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers series (all, what, 28 of them?). Instead, the scholar can look quickly at this volume from the ACCS, looking to see what various Fathers had to say, then go to the original document to see the topic in context, where the various commentaries can be compared. Certainly, the ACCS volume on Romans is useful for that. If one is looking for every comment from every Church Father on Scripture, this is not the series for you. But, then again, that's not what this series intended to be in the first place. But, as a starting place for further research, it is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: What a shame
Review: The translations go on unabated, and I really hate to give this volume a bad review. It is such a good idea. But this terribly abridged and oddly selected series of translations (good translations, I have to say, that is the one star) is not the way to go about it. We need a REAL and BROAD set of ancient Christian commentaries. These won't do.
Rating: 
Summary: Selected conservative spin on the Fathers
Review: This book is a great disappointment. The concept is great: collecting Christian commentary on the book of Romans from the first eight centuries of the Church. However, the "Christian" commentary includes far more selections from authors considered heretical than from those venerated as Saints and Fathers of the Church. For example, St. Athanasios and St. Gregory the Theologian are quoted only once each. St. Maximos is completely ignored. St. John of Damascus and St. Gregory of Nyssa have about a half dozen quotes each. Of the great Fathers of the Church, only St. John Chrysostom and St. Cyril of Alexandria are well represented. Instead of quotes from the Church Fathers, the editors give us hundreds of quotes from Pelagios, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Origen, Tertullian, the Montanist Oracle, etc. So, if you want quotes from those commonly considered heretics, buy this volume. If, however, you want commentary from the Fathers of the Church, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: A place to begin
Review: This series is disappointing. I simply did not find the comments from the Fathers very illuminating presented in this context. This was not what I expected. I would advise anyone who finds modern biblical scholarship unhelpful to immerse himself in the Fathers directly and in the original context. If we then read the scriptures adopting, if only for the moment, their mindset, their presuppositions, and their methods, the scriptures will be openned up to us in a new and fruitful way. We moderns can find allegorical interpretation, for example, somewhat farfetched. But it is clear to me that some of what the apostles intended to teach cannot be understood from a strictly literal reading of the text. The apostles themselves do not take a concrete, literal approach to interpreting the Old Testament. Imitating the thought processes of the Fathers, who are much closer culturally to the apostles, opens our eyes to more of the New Testament's message. In the final analysis, it is difficult to fully comprehend the gospel message presented in the scriptures without realizing that the early Church, for which the New Testament was written, believed in baptismal regeneration, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (understood as sacrificial) and the Church as an organic structure put in place by the apostles. If the authors of this series had fully appreciated this I think they might taken the plunge into the stream instead of dousing themselves with thimblefuls of water. A final comment on the choice of the RSV. The major defect of this fine translation is the tendency to downplay the messianic implications of Old Testament texts, that is to "recover" some "original" text from the accretions of subsequent interpretations. Many of the texts that are interpreted messianicly in the New Testament are translated in such a way as to obscure rather than highlight this possiblity. A similar problem arises in the New Testament with the choice of "it" rather than "He" for the Holy Spirit. I'm not sure what alternative the editors had for this problem.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing
Review: This series is disappointing. I simply did not find the comments from the Fathers very illuminating presented in this context. This was not what I expected. I would advise anyone who finds modern biblical scholarship unhelpful to immerse himself in the Fathers directly and in the original context. If we then read the scriptures adopting, if only for the moment, their mindset, their presuppositions, and their methods, the scriptures will be openned up to us in a new and fruitful way. We moderns can find allegorical interpretation, for example, somewhat farfetched. But it is clear to me that some of what the apostles intended to teach cannot be understood from a strictly literal reading of the text. The apostles themselves do not take a concrete, literal approach to interpreting the Old Testament. Imitating the thought processes of the Fathers, who are much closer culturally to the apostles, opens our eyes to more of the New Testament's message. In the final analysis, it is difficult to fully comprehend the gospel message presented in the scriptures without realizing that the early Church, for which the New Testament was written, believed in baptismal regeneration, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (understood as sacrificial) and the Church as an organic structure put in place by the apostles. If the authors of this series had fully appreciated this I think they might taken the plunge into the stream instead of dousing themselves with thimblefuls of water. A final comment on the choice of the RSV. The major defect of this fine translation is the tendency to downplay the messianic implications of Old Testament texts, that is to "recover" some "original" text from the accretions of subsequent interpretations. Many of the texts that are interpreted messianicly in the New Testament are translated in such a way as to obscure rather than highlight this possiblity. A similar problem arises in the New Testament with the choice of "it" rather than "He" for the Holy Spirit. I'm not sure what alternative the editors had for this problem.
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