Long before Alexandria, Egypt became a center of Christian life and thought, it was one of the intellectual hubs of the ancient world. Its library is well known, but it was also a center of Greek philosophy and Jewish learning. The version of Christianity that emerged in Alexandria built on the best of the city’s cosmopolitan, scholarly traditions and, in its maturity under master teachers like Clement (c. 150–215), Origen (c. 185–251), and Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398), developed a distinctive approach to catechesis and Christian life that impressed scholars from Eusebius to John Henry Newman.

Petroc Willey’s book seeks to recover the Alexandrian catechetical approach and to make it accessible and relevant for catechists today. This is a scholarly book, but it is not merely a scholarly book. Willey is convinced, as was Pope John Paul II, that the Alexandrian approach has much to offer to the atomized, individualistic, consumeristic society of our day. The book, therefore, has the two main tasks of explaining the history, philosophy, and practice of Alexandrian catechesis and then illuminating what an Alexandrian-influenced catechesis might look like today. In both tasks, it excels.

The Alexandrian catechists, Willey shows, had a great appreciation for their city and its many cultural, social, and academic achievements. As they instructed their catechumens in the faith, they did so in a manner that emphasized Christ and the Church as complements and completions, not as replacements or rejections. They had a universal and holistic understanding of the faith, a sense of Christ not just as the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy but also as the actualization of the best hopes and dreams of the Greeks and the Egyptians. Christianity was, in a sense, the true philosophy and the best way of life.