Network Solutions, the domain name registrar for tertullian.org, are going down and down in my estimation. I asked them on Saturday to transfer it elsewhere. Their response was an email demanding that I call their call centre in the USA. The object of the latter is to hassle people into renewing, of course. I wrote and asked today and got back the same. I then complained to PairNIC, whom I am transferring to, who told me — what Network Solutions could have told me — that the process takes 6 days. Quite a long time, considering that all we are discussing is entering a row in a database table.
Avoid using Network Solutions. It is a key test of a registrar how they handle transfers out. I once had to pay a bunch of scum down in Farnborough to release tertullian.net, the first domain I ever registered. One reason why I have stuck with Network Solutions is that they didn’t make a fuss. The fuss they are making now ensures that I will transfer all my domains elsewhere.
I also have two UK domains. I have no idea who the good UK registrars are. Anyone any suggestions?
I had hoped to spend today writing a page about the catena of Nicetas, its date (1100-1105, according to Christophe Guignard; perhaps 20 years earlier according to J. Sickenberger, back in 1902), its manuscripts and so on. But I’m still too full of cold to do so. Maybe later in the week.
Instead I’ve written a review of a book about the Fathers on Amazon, and slated it thoroughly. Interestingly Amazon is sorting the reviews in a manner different from that which I remember. It used to be most recent review first. It is so no longer. Worth remembering, that.
I only picked the book up again because I need something to read. There must be something on my shelves I could look at…
I read Hall’s book in 2007. Your review (enjoy the playful moniker) reminded me of the shortcomings, though I actually completed it. Chalk that up to either ignorance or patience–your choice.
If I remember correctly, Hall reinforced the use of Regula Fidei as tradition that the Fathers used with Scripture to gauge heresy and extraneous writings, which I thought was helpful.
I wanted to like the book. But I just found it so dreary. Then I realised that, as a patristics enthusiast, I wasn’t the target audience. And I don’t mean the chap any harm — well done for having a go at the book — but the result didn’t work for me at all!
Well done for getting all the way through. That idea about the regula fidei is certainly right.
Well, there’s no great reason to spend huge amounts of time angsting about allegorical vs. non-allegorical scriptural interpretation, so obviously this book wasn’t written for me either. (Unless there’s going to be some kind of law passed against homilists using allegory and rhetorical figures in their sermons, which would pretty much shut the mouths of everyone. Especially if you invite linguists to sit in the audience and tell them which words are actually fossilized figures of speech — ie, pretty much everything that’s not onomatopoeia.)
Re: “mothers of the Church”, obviously there were some female early Christian writers and teachers whose works we have, and they are good fun to study (especially the deathbed dialogue of St. Macrina the Younger, the apologist of automata). And yes, it’s very silly to make too big a deal of it, but it is an obvious question that will be in some readers’ minds.
But I guess, from stuff I’ve been running across, that there’s some sort of “rediscovery of allegory” vs. “we hate allegory” thing going on, in some Protestant/Evangelical circles in the US, so there may be some sort of political/ideological reason to play Cappadocians vs. Other Guys. Shrug. Don’t know, don’t care.
Of course, the benefit of being a non-serious student of patristics is that I can totally ignore everything that everybody else is doing, except when it is useful to me. Mwahahaha.
There was a point in here somewhere… oh, yeah. I think that after you’ve read a certain amount of patristics, especially primary sources or even full-length translations, it’s going to be difficult for introductory-level patristics books to do much for you.
I agree about the last bit, but you don’t start the section “who were the fathers” that way. That’s perverse!