Early Christian Fathers ed. by Cyril C. Richardson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 179 the term "person "-a word "not absolutely per se necessary to faith" (p. 104) -in favor of " distinct manner of subsisting." (p. ll3) But just how much of a gain is this? It does serve to preclude the tendency to think of three conscious subjectivities in God; moreover, Rahner does explicitly preclude any Modalistic interpretation of the formula. Less certain is whether " manner " or "mode " adequately safeguards the Divine Simplicity (at least in the popular mind), and whether the precise meaning of " subsisting " is any less alien to contemporary man than that of ontological " person." It is questionable whether we can make do without recourse to "persona," "hypostasis," and "subsistentia" in the highly refined intelligibility these words began to assume for Christian faith from the time of the Cappodocian Fathers in the East and St. Hilary in the West. Strangely enough, little attention has been paid by contemporary writers to the relationality that is indigenous to these terms, for example, in the Thomistic tradition as represented by Capreolus and in the gnoseology of Merleau-Ponty. At any rate, Rahner's achievement here is constructive, of high originality , and profoundly illuminating. If it only opens the way to work yet to be done, it does mark a recovery of the speculative challenge in Trinitarian theology. St. Thomas noted that only an understanding of the Trinity provides the key for unlocking the mysteries of creation and salvation (Summa Theol., I, q. 32, a. I, ad. 3) -thus the immense consequences of this theological endeavor of Rahner. Dominican Houae of Studiel Washington, D. C. WILLIAM J. HILL, 0. P. Early Christian Fathers. The Library of Christian Classics, volume I. Ed. by Cyril C. Richardson. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970. Pp. 415. $2.95. The Macmillan Company of New York and Toronto has at last undertaken to reprint in paperback form some of the excellent translations which first appeared in the Library of Christian Classics published by the Westminster Press of Philadelphia. The present volume, as edited by Dr. C. C. Richardson, the distinguished Washburn Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York, still remains the superb, solid piece of work it was when it first appeared in 1953. The editor has distributed his chores as follows: E. R. Hardy has the difficult First Apology of Justin Martyr and some important selections from lrenaeus; E. R. Fairweather translates the anonymous Epistle to 180 BOOK REVIEWS Diognetus; M. Hamilton Shepherd handles the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, as well as the moving anonymous document called the Martyrdom of Polycarp; and the editor himself, with the lion's share, wrote the general Introduction, and translated the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, the Didache, the First and Second Epistle of Clement (so-called) , and the Embassy for Christians of Athenagoras. In accord with the policy of the series, the special introductions which preface each section discuss the major problems connected with each work and supply a very ample bibliography (up to 1950); but for further literature the student can easily consult the bibliographies of Altaner and Quasten, F. L. Cross, The Early Christian Fathers (London, 1960), as well as the reviewer's Mentor-book, The Fathers of the Primitive Church (New York, 1966). There are also the parallel volumes which have appeared in the Penguin-Pelican series, Ancient Christian Writers, and the Fathers of the Church Series. The Richardson text can still serve the serious student as a first-rate initiation to the problems of early Christian literature; of related texts it only lacks the Epistle of Barnabas, Hermas, the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, and the account of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne under Marcus Aurelius. Of course, it is only natural that a number of problems have somewhat changed in emphasis over the course of the years: the theology of Ignatius, the problem of the early martyrs, the Didache, the structure of the Epistle to Diognetus. Methodius of Tyre, as he is here called, is now more correctly referred to as Methodius of Olympus; and it is less certain now that Athenagoras' speech (which Richardson translates as "A Plea") was really a fiction and not actually...