This Ancient Christian Texts volume, translated and edited by Gerald L. Bray, is the first of two that will offer a first English translation of the anonymous fourth-century commentary on the thirteen letters of Paul. Widely viewed as one of the finest pre-Reformation commentaries on the Pauline Epistles, this commentary, until the time of Erasmus, was attributed to Ambrose. It was Erasmus who gave the author the epithet Ambrosiaster ("Star of Ambrose").

Ambrosiaster ("Star of Ambrose") is the name given to the anonymous author of the earliest complete Latin commentary on the thirteen epistles of Paul. The commentaries were thought to have been written by Ambrose throughout the Middle Ages, but their authorship was challenged by Erasmus, whose arguments have proved decisive. The commentaries, which serve as important witnesses to pre-Vulgate Latin versions of Paul's epistles, are noteworthy in several respects. Ambrosiaster was a careful and thoughtful interpreter, who made little use of allegory, though he employed typology judiciously....

Bray examines the 39 Articles of Religion, one of the three historic formularies of the Church of England. Along with the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal, they gave the church its distinctive identity at the time of the Reformation.

The gospel of justification by faith alone was discovered afresh by the Reformers in the epistolary turrets of the New Testament: the letters to the Galatians and the Ephesians. At the epicenter of the exegetical revolution that rocked the Reformation era was Paul's letter to the Galatians. There Luther, Calvin, Bullinger and scores of others perceived the true gospel of Paul enlightening a situation parallel to their own times--the encroachment of false teachers and apostates upon the true teaching of salvation by grace through faith. In Ephesians, the Reformers gravitated to what they...