When the Church Was Young

Masterful summary of the early Church Fathers

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely. I have read other books on the early Church and the Church Fathers, but this book brings both to life. Each Father has an intriguing and compelling story that is told in a conversationalist manner so as to leap off the page.

What does Marcellino D'Ambrosio bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Dr. D'Ambrosio is a skilled orator. Hearing a passionate author speak in his own words is a great experience.

Any additional comments?

This book does an outstanding job explaining heresy’s within the early Church such as Gnosticism and Aryanism and shows how each was debunked and defeated and by whom. We present day Christians take difficult topics like the Trinity for granted. This book is a reminder of how it wasn’t always so and how Christian thought solidified through apostolic Tradition.
Perhaps most importantly, this book reminds us that early Christians were willing to die for their faith. How many present day Christians are ready to do the same? In those days it was expected and embraced.
The pithy recap of the apostolic Tradition’s points of convergence in Chapter 26 is brilliant and concise.
The early Church Fathers would be outraged to see the many divisions within present-day Christianity. Their words and, in many ways, this book is a call for unity. Thank you, Dr. D’Ambrosio for writing and compiling it.

28 of 28 people found this review helpful

One of the best

I had a bias. I had listened to this writer give a past talk that I didn't much care for, and so I didn't think his book would be much better frankly. I was wrong. This is one of the most readable and important books on the subject precisely because it is so accessible. Well researched and a fantastic resource. Fascinating read.

13 of 13 people found this review helpful

Every Christian should read this book

I have studied the church fathers in the past. This is the best single volume on the subject I have ever read. The author does a fantastic job of explaining the church fathers and their position in the church versus the many different heresies that infected the early church. I strongly strongly recommended. Although I would caution my Baptist friends they may not like what they find when they start to probe the way the early Christians worshiped and what they believed.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Epic

What did you love best about When the Church Was Young?

It was great to see ordinary human beings struggling to understand the messages of Jesus - and to make sense of it in the light of the things they had always believed. Wonderful to meet the inspiring and amazingly committed people who created Christianity

What other book might you compare When the Church Was Young to and why?

Acts is the first chapter.

Which character – as performed by Marcellino D'Ambrosio – was your favorite?

Basil

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It helped me understand how we became what we are.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

An extraordinary lesson for my spiritual journey.

This book further deepened my gratefulness for the depth of understanding and writing conveyed by the early church fathers.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

eye opening

I learned a lot and am inspired to read more on the early church fathers

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

guide to early church fathers

The resurgence of awareness of the early Church Fathers, not only in the more traditional liturgical church settings but in the Evangelical world has given rise to a number of good books about early Church history and the actual writings of those early Christians.

After reading John Michael Talbot’s mostly memoir-ish look at the early Church fathers I decided that I wanted a more history oriented book, but still introduction level. I have read fairly in depth about the early Church Fathers on the trinity, but not on much else. (Although I have read several other than Christian history survey books that cover the era.)

When the Church Was Young fits the bill well. D’Ambrosia is Catholic and writing this in part to encourage Catholics, but this is not an exclusively Catholic view of the early church. After all, at this point it was just the Church, the major splits were yet to come, although there were certainly lots of little splits. There were a few places where I think that D’Ambrosia made too much of a leap from ancient to current Catholic and I think he started referring to all Christians as Catholic earlier than the history warrants, but with those caveats, D’Ambrosia does a good job of giving context and history to the various Church Fathers and enough of a sense of their writing to feel like you are getting more than just survey history.

I have decided that it is going to take me a number of repeated reading to really get my history and understanding of the era down. This is probably my fourth quick survey of the era and each time I get more, but the historical names and theological terms and philosophical concepts do not roll right off the tongue, especially when there are a number of similarly named Fathers.

D’Ambrosia is not giving any controversial readings here. This is standard history that is supportive of Catholic doctrine. I think he, and Catholics in general, are mostly right especially on the importance of the eucharist, the trinity, and early church authority. But there are other areas where I am just not sure. Especially about the Eucharist, there was new insights and information. Much of the early church had a semblance of the Eucharist every day, if not in a full church gathering, then the members would take home portions and have them daily as a household. The full doctrine of Transubstantiation had not been developed by 600 when this book ends, but there was a sense of the ‘real presence of Christ’ that would be acceptable to most Christians today that was present in this era. As I have said on a few other occasions, I do think the lack of participation in the Eucharist is a weakness of the mega-church world that I attend. I understand why it is not done, but I still disagree with it.

D’Ambrosia ends with a helpful postscript about the fact that these Early Church Fathers are fallen humans, just as we are. Several of them wrote doctrine that was later defined as heresy, but I agree with him that it is important to understand where we are coming from. If you have read a fair bit of theology, then much of the rough concepts will be familiar as well as a number of famous quotes that have entered general culture, like the famous ‘When in Rome’.

Because I am still a Protestant, I am going to have to think more about how to think about the progression of theology. Much of what is here is the root of our current faith, including early church worship and the creeds, but some is fairly foreign and it is clear that we have moved away from what the early church thought on a number of issues. Still this is an introduction that is worth reading if you are interested in the subject.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

The Catholic church

I was hoping to get a book explaining the interaction of the early church fathers with the apostles, but that's not what this is. It's an explanation perhaps a defense, of the beliefs and structures of the Catholic church wherever it can be shoehorned into letters of antiquity. This book has all the scholarship one would expect from a work of Catholic literature.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

True History

What made the experience of listening to When the Church Was Young the most enjoyable?

Hearing the letters of the Fathers

What was one of the most memorable moments of When the Church Was Young?

The discovery of how the Traditions started with the Apostles and were handed down.

What does Marcellino D'Ambrosio bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He has the conviction and makes the words come alive

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

The beginning of the Church today.

Any additional comments?

This book like so many try to make the letters of the Fathers available to all people who want to know the truth. If read with an open mind, one might have to consider that the so called great Martin Luther might have been wrong on a few key points. If you ask me who I will believe it will always be those who walked with Jesus and the Apostles. Rather then someone who came later and said he was enlightened by the Holy Spirit. I know the Holy Spirit works in all who accept him but I believe those early Church guys had the Holy Spirit or how would they have been able to die the horrible deaths they bore with joy for our Savior.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Church Fathers

One of the best books on the Church Fathers. Easy to follow because it is laid out chronologically, rather than covering one Father at a time. This makes it easier to see the relationship of the Fathers to each other .

5 of 7 people found this review helpful