Cascade Companions Early Church Studies (3 vols.)

Augustine’s Confessions are a glorious exploration of a living, gracious God. We could have no better guide through Augustine than one of his great friends, Jason Byassee. For anyone who has longed for the living God, for anyone who wants to explore the depth and breadth of the human soul, Byassee opens up new dimensions of this classic of the Christian faith.

—William Willimon, bishop, United Methodist Church, North Alabama

Jason Byassee’s learned, intimate, and engaging guide to Augustine’s Confessions is a delight to read and a wonderful resource for everyone who wishes to become the faithful and discerning reader Augustine so fervently desired.

—Carol Zaleski, professor of world religions, Smith College

Jason Byassee is an ideal guide to the Confessions: lucid, unpretentiously learned, witty, and above all generous—to his subject, to his fellow scholars, and to the reader.

—John Wilson, editor, Books & Culture

Contrary to the Protestant caricature, the Egyptian monks of the fourth century went to the desert not to escape reality, but to confront it. They fled the disorienting distractions of city life so that in the quiet of their cells and their chapels they might overcome the self-will of sin and reorient their thoughts, affections, and actions wholly toward God. Jason Byassee’s An Introduction to the Desert Fathers is an excellent companion to all who seek to glean wisdom from the monks’ encounters with the realities of God and of their sin. By drawing together the world of fourth-century monasticism with our consumerist culture of the twenty-first century, Byassee helps us discern the call of the desert today.

—J. Warren Smith, associate professor of historical theology, Duke Divinity School

In this beautiful, informative, probing, and wise introduction to the spirituality of the desert, Byassee both immerses us in, and invites us to embrace, an older, sometimes alien, way of inhabiting our relationship with the triune God.

—Lauren F. Winner, assistant professor of Christian spirituality, Duke Divinity School

Jason Byassee has established himself as the master of explaining complex subjects and helping us understand why they matter. He has done it again with the desert fathers.

—James C. Howell, pastor, Myers Park United Methodist Church, Charlotte, NC

Making the desert accessible might seem a paradoxical goal. Nevertheless, just as the sick and not the healthy need doctors, so do we affluent and self-indulgent moderns need the desert fathers. Jason Byassee is the perfect guide—an intrepid all-terrain interpreter in the heart of the desert. He always knows what we are thinking and never forgets that the severity of the fathers is disconcerting to us. Yet he thinks with these ancient monks as well—with their profundity and difficulty—and never lets us get away with dismissing a single saying cavalierly. If you have ever struggled with self-control, lust, materialism, prayer, humility, obedience, patience, or any of the other vices and virtues addressed in these chapters, An Introduction to the Desert Fathers is for you.

—Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College

Jason Byassee’s Introduction to the Desert Fathers is presented in a spirit of humility that befits the subject. He offers simple yet rich engagements with the Sayings that use humor, insight, and life experience to prompt readers to reflect with the same tools. Readers who are looking for a place to begin their interaction with the often paradoxical teachings of the desert fathers would do well to begin here.

—Amy Frykholm, associate editor, The Christian Century

. . . What sets this little book apart from others on desert spirituality is Byassee’s ability to help modern readers understand and practice the wisdom the desert monks offer.

—Evangelical Review of Theology

For decades, Basil’s thought was overshadowed by the reputation of his brother, Gregory of Nyssa. But in recent years a new generation of scholarship—Völker Drecoll, Mark DelCogliano, Philip Rousseau, and Andrew Radde-Gallwtiz—has shown us anew the power of Basil as theologian . . . This concise and elegant discussion offers us the best short introduction to Basil available in any language.

—Lewis Ayres, Bede Professor of Catholic Theology, Durham University

Basil of Caesarea’s gifts as church politician and monastic founder have attracted much attention in recent scholarly literature, though his importance as a thinker and theologian had been neglected in favor of his younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa. In this clearly written book, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz helps us see Basil’s brilliance as a theologian. Basil of Caesarea establishes Radde-Gallwitz as one of the finest scholars of Christian late antiquity.

—Andrew Louth, emeritus professor of patristic and Byzantine studies, Durham University