Forty-five years have passed since the publication history of Christian Spirituality that could justly lay claim to be both a readable guide for the non-specialist and a comprehensive manual and reference book for students and teachers. In this, the first of three volumes covering the history of Christian spirituality from its Jewish recent times, Fr Louis Bouyer, a scholar of international reputation, whose wide learning enables him to take into full account recent developments in historical and theological studies, surveys the spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers of the Church. In the first part of this volume. Fr Bouyer pays special attention to the Jewish foundations of Christianity before examining in detail the teaching and influence of Jesus, the Primitive Church and St Paul, the Synoptic Gospels, the Johannine writings, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the epistles linked with the names of Peter James and Jude.
Part Two describes and discusses the spirituality of the first Christian generations, the martyrs, the problem of Gnosis in its different manifestations, the different schools of monasticism and mysticism in Eastern and Western Christianity and the writings and teachings of the Fathers, concluding with St Benedict. "This history", writes Fr Bouyer in his critical and explanatory preface, “will be, in the final analysis, the search for, and the bringing to light of, the integral witness of tradition and of Christian experience to the whole concrete reality of 'life in Christ Jesus’."