Collected wisdom crossing time to engage current issues. . .
So many concerns of today’s world require nuanced consideration and a sensitive response. Yet human nature and spiritual need remain remarkably constant. Practical, moral, and spiritual struggles are not peculiar to modern life.

Early Christians looked at all things through the lens of God and Christ, including those that today we would consider secular in nature, as the wide range of subjects these writers addressed clearly demonstrates. The words of Christian writers such as Tertullian, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea, and Clement of Alexandria are organized around familiar, everyday themes. In study, reflection, or devotional reading, use this book to look through their eyes at our issues — and, perhaps, find a deepened and sharpened awareness of what it means to choose the Christian life.

Introduced, organized, and translated by Everett Ferguson, these quotes are arranged to allow the ancient authors to speak for themselves. Inheriting Wisdom will refresh modern readers with the rich resources of early Christianity and provide direction and guidance for the twenty-first century.

"Ancient Christian wisdom applies so readily to contemporary living that we have to realize, with a kind of shock, that the problems and temptations humans face today are far from new under the sun. The idea that new moral challenges require new solutions is an illusion. What’s required is humility, as we listen to the wisdom of older brothers and sisters who trod this same road, presented here in this beautiful and very accessible book." —Frederica Mathewes-Green, Author of The Illumined Heart: The Ancient Christian Path of Transformation and At the Corner of East and Now: A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy