In this book, published originally in Greek in 1976 and translated by Fr Gregory Edwards, the late Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas of Pergamon, Ecumenical Patriarchate, provides the reader with a very well-informed and nuanced critical approach to the various issues related to the meeting of Hellenism and Christianity, with a particular focus on what he sees as the first three formative centuries of the early church. In this work, Zizioulas considers the special role played by Judaism in this development, along with how various church intellectuals and fathers of the early church (Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyon, etc.) addressed this new situation, striving to articulate a distinctive Christian worldview while expressing their own faith in the trinitarian God as it was experienced in the eucharistic life of the ecclesial communities. (From the foreword to the English edition)