"One of the first great events in Christian history was the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, convened to organize Christian sects and beliefs into a unified doctrine. The great Christian clergymen who wrote before this famous event are referred to as the Ante-Nicenes and the Apostolic Fathers, and their writings are collected here in a ten-volume set. The Ante-Nicenes lived so close to the time of Christ that their interpretations of the New Testament are considered more authentic than modern voices. But they are also real and flawed men, who are more like their fellow Christians than they are like the Apostles, making their words echo in the ears of spiritual seekers. In Volume I of the 10-volume collected works of the Ante-Nicenes first published between 1885 and 1896, readers will find the writings of: Clement of Rome, the fourth pope, who was supposedly martyred by being tied to an anchor and tossed overboard Mathetes, an anonymous writer considered the first Christian apologist Polycarp, a Christian bishop who was stabbed to death after he failed to burn at the stake Ignatius, a student of John the Apostle, who was Bishop of Antioch before he was killed Barnabas, an anonymous writer given the name of Saint Barnabas Papias, author of Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord, a textbook on quotes from Jesus Justin Martyr, a Christian apologist and accomplished philosopher, and Irenaeus, disciple of Polycarp, apologist, and bishop of Lugdunum."

The authors move past the Enlightenment foundational approach to offer a revolutionary methodology for doing theology in a postmodern age. Their method uses three sources: the Spirit speaking authoritatively through the biblical text, tradition providing a historical interpretive framework; and culture as context for constructive theological reflection.

This monumental work is the first comprehensive biblical theology to appear in many years and is the culmination of Brevard Child's lifelong commitment to constructing a biblical theology that surmounts objections to the discipline raised over the past generation. Childs rejects any approaches that overstress either the continuity or discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. He refuses to follow the common pattern in Christian thought of identifying biblical theology with the New Testament's interest in the Old. Rather, Childs maps out an approach that reflects on the whole Christian Bible with its two very different voices, each of which retains continuing integrity and is heard on its own terms.

With the publication of his two early works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), James Cone emerged as one of the most creative and provocative theological voices in North America. His books offered a searing indictment of white theology and society and introduced a radical presentation of the Christian message of our time. Combining the visions of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Cone radically reappraised Christianity from the perspective of the oppressed black community in North America. Fifty years later, his work retains its original power.