Church-and-state scholars are showing a new interest in the Patristic period: consider new books from Steve Smith and Robert Louis Wilken. The Patristic period is so interesting, today, because it represents the last time in the West when Christianity was seriously challenged–if one may put it that way–as a social institution. Perhaps today’s Christians can learn something about thriving in an alien environment by examining the faith’s early centuries.

A new book from St. Vladimir Orthodox Seminary Press, The Testament of the Lord: Worship and Discipline in the Early Church, looks interesting. The author is Alastair Stewart, an Anglican priest. Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

The Testament of the Lord is one of several ancient “Church Order” texts. Written in the first four centuries of the Church, they direct Christian conduct and morality, ecclesiastical organization and discipline, and the Church’s worship and liturgical life. Beginning with an apocalyptic section in which the risen Lord himself addresses the reader, The Testament then describes the building of a church, the mode of appointment for clergy and monastics, and the conduct of daily prayers and of other liturgical services.

The text is newly translated from the extant Syriac (with an eye to Ethiopic manuscripts), and the introduction makes the case for a fourth century Cappadocian redactor who gave the work its present shape, though much of its material goes back at least to the third century. Those who are interested in early Church Orders will also find the Didache and St Hippolytus’ On the Apostolic Tradition in the Popular Patristics Series (PPS 41 and 54).