Brepols Library of Christian Sources

The cry 'ad fontes!' has been a constant among theologians of every variety since the mid-twentieth century. This is no simple process. Each generation needs to engage with the ancient and medieval sources afresh in a great act of cultural, intellectual, and linguistic translation. More than reproducing an historical artefact or transferring it into a new linguistic code, it requires engaging in a dialogue with the text.

One dialogical pole is to acknowledge the inherited text's distance from us by reading it in its original language, the other is to explore what it says within our world and language. Here the facing-pages of text and translation express this. These editions respect the original context by providing the best currently available Greek or Latin text, while the task of stating what it says today is found alongside it in the translation and in the notes and commentaries.

The process testifies to the living nature of these texts within traditions. Each volume represents our generation's attempt to restate the source in our language, cognisant that English is now the most widely used language among theologians either as their first language or their adopted language for scholarly communication.