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APOSTOLIC FATHERS , a term used to distinguish those early Christian writers who were believed to have been the personal associates of the original
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Polycarp
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The degree of historic claim which these various writings have to rank as the works' of Apostolic Fathers varies greatly on any definition of " apostolic." Originally the epithet was meant to be taken strictly, viz, as denoting those whom history could show to have been personally connected, or at least coeval, with one or more apostles; and an effort was made, as by Cotelier, to distinguish the writings rightly and wrongly assigned to such. Thus editions tended to vary with the historical views of editors. But the convenience of the category "Apostolic Fathers " to express not only those who might possibly have had some sort of direct contact with apostlessuch as " Barnabas," Clement, Ignatius, Papias, Polycarpbut also those who seemed specially to preserve the pure tradition of apostolic doctrine during the sub-apostolic age, has led to its general use in a wide and vague sense. Conventionally, then, the title denotes the group of writings which, whether in date or in internal character, are regarded as belonging to the main stream of the Church's teaching during the period between the Apostles and the Apologists (i.e. to c. A.D. 140). Or to put it more exactly, the '` Apostolic Fathers " represent, chronologically in the main and still more from the religious and theological standpoint,. the momentous process of ' Cotelier included the Acts of Martyrdom of Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp; and those of Ignatius and Polycarp are still often printed by editors. transition from the type of teaching in the New Testament to that which meets us in the early Catholic Fathers, from the last quarter of the 2nd century onwards. The Apologists no doubt show us certain fresh factors entering into this development; but on the whole the Apostolic Fathers by themselves go a long way to explain the transition in question, so far as knowledge of this saeculum obscurum is within our reach at all. It is true that they do not include the whole even of the ecclesiastical literature of the sub-apostolic age, not to mention what remains of Gnostic and other minority types. The Preaching and Apocalypse of Peter, for instance, are quite typical of the same period, and help us to read hetween the lines of the Apostolic Fathers. Yet they do not really add much to what is there already, and they have the drawbacks of pseudonymity; they lack concrete and personal qualities; they are general expressions of tendencies which we cannot well locate or measure, save by means of the Apostolic Fathers themselves or of their earliest Catholic successors. (A) In external features the group is far from homogeneous, a fact which has led to their being disintegrated as a group in certain histories of early Christian literature (e.g. those of Harnack and Kruger), and classed each under its own literary typeso sacrificing to outer form, which is quite secondary in primitive Christian writings, the more significant fact of religious affinity. Its original
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Nor is this pre-literary and vital quality really absent even from the writing which is least entitled to a place among " Apostolic Fathers," the Epistle to Diognetus. This beautiful picture of the Christian life as a realized ideal, and of Christians as " the soul " of the world, owes its inclusion to a double error: first, to the accidental attachment at the end of another fragment ( II), which opens with the writer's claim to stand forth as a teacher as being " a disciple of apostles "; and next, to mistaken exegesis of this phrase as implying personal relations with apostles, rather than knowledge of their teaching, written or oral. Whether in form addressed to Diognetus, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, as a typical cultured observer of Christianity, or to some other eminent person of the same name in the locality of its origin, or, as seems more likely, to cultured Greeks generally, personified under the significant name " Diognetus (" Heaven-born," cf. Acts xvii. 28 along with 4)the ' See G. A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, pp. I-6o, for this distinction between the genuine " letter " and the literary " epistle," as applied to the New Testament in particular.epistle is in any case an " open letter " of an essentially literary type. Further, its opening seems modelled on the lines of the preface to Luke's Gospel, to which, along with Acts, it may owe something of its very conception as a reasoned appeal to the lover of truth. But while literary in form and conception, its appeal is in spirit so personal a testimony to what the Gospel has done for the writer and his fellow Christians, that it is akin to the piety of the Apostolic Fathers as a group. It is true that it has marked affinities, e.g. in its natural theology, with the earliest Apologists, Aristides and Justin, even as it is itself in substance an apology addressed not to the State, but to thoughtful public opinion . But this only means that we cannot draw a hard and fast line between groups of early Christian writings at a time when practical religious interests overshadowed all others.If thus related to the Apologists of the middle of the 2nd century, the Epistle to Diognetus has also points of contact with one of the most practical and least literary writings found among our Apostolic Fathers, viz. the homily originally known as the Second Epistle of Clement (for this ascription, as for other details, see CLEMENTINE LITERATURE). The recovery of its concluding sections in the same MS. which brought the Didache to light, proves beyond question that we have here the earliest extant sermon preached before a Christian congregation, about A.D. 120-140 (so J. B. Lightfoot). Its opening section, recalling to its hearers the passing of the mists of idolatry before the revelation in Jesus Christ, is markedly similar in tone and tenor to passages in the Epistle to Diognetus. Far closer, however, are the affinities between the homily and the Shepherd of Hermas, " the first Christian allegory," which as a literary whole dates from about A.D. 140, but probably represents a more or less prolonged prophetic activity on the part of its author, the brother of Pius, the Roman bishop of his day (c. 139-154). In both the primary theme is repentance, as called for by serious sins, after baptism has placed the Christian on his new and higher level of responsibility. Thus both are hortatory writings, the one argumentative in form, the other prophetic, after the manner of later Old Testament prophets whose messages came in visions and similitudes. This prophetic and apocalyptic note, which characterizes Hermas among the Apostolic Fathers (though there are traces of it also in the Didache and in Ignatius, ad Eph. xx.), is a genuinely primitive trait and goes far to explain the vogue which the Shepherd enjoyed in the generations immediately succeeding, as also the influence of its disciplinary policy, which is its prophetic " burden " (see HERMAS, SHEPHERD oF). We come finally to the anonymous Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and Papias's Exposition of Oracles of the Lord, so far as this is known to us. The former, besides embodying catechetical instruction in Christian conduct (the " Two Ways "), which goes back in substance to the early apostolic age and is embodied also in " Barnabas," depicts in outline the fundamental usages of church life as practised in some conservative region (probably within Syria) about the last quarter of the 1st century and perhaps even later. The whole is put forth as substantially the apostolic teaching (Didache) on the subjects in question. This is probably a bona fide claim. It expresses the feeling common to the Apostolic Fathers and general in the sub-apostolic age, at any rate in regions where apostles had once laboured, that local tradition, as held by the recognized church leaders, did but continue apostolic doctrine and practice. Into later developments of this feeling an increasing element of illusion entered, and all other written embodiments of it known to us take the form of literary fictions, more or less bold. It is in contrast to these that the Didache is justly felt to be genuinely primitive and of a piece with the Apostolic Fathers. Thus while its form would by analogy tend per se to awaken suspicion, its contents remove this feeling; and we may even infer from this surviving early formulation of local ecclesiastical tradition, that others of somewhat similar character came into being in the sub-apostolic age, but failed to survive save as embodied in later local teaching, oral or written, very much as if the Didache had perished and its literary offspring alone remained (see DIDACHE). As regards Papias's Exposition, which Lightfoot describes as " among the earliest forerunners of commentaries, partly explanatory, partly illustrative, on portions of the New Testament," we need here only remark that, whatever its exact form may have beenas to which the extant fragments still leave room for doubtit was in conception expository of the historic meaning of Christ's more ambiguous Sayings, viewed in the light of definitely ascertained apostolic traditions bearing on the subject. The like is true also of the fragments of the Eiders preserved in Irenaeus (so far as these do not really come from Papias). Both bodies of exposition represent the traditional principle at work in the sub-apostolic age, making for the preservation in relative purity, over against merely subjective interpretationsthose of the Gnostics in particularof the historic or original sense of Christ's teaching, just as Ignatius stood for the historicity of the facts of His earthly career in their plain, natural sense. (B) Here the question of external form passes readily over into that of the internal character and spirit. Indeed much has already been said or suggested bearing on these. The relation of these writers to the apostolic teaching generally has become pretty evident. It is one of absolute loyalty and deference, as to the teaching of inspiration. They are conscious, as are we in reading them, that they are not moving on the same level of insight as the Apostles; they are sub-apostolic in that sense also. Hence there appear constant traces of study of the Apostolic writings, so far as these were accessible in the locality of each writer at his date of writing (for the details of this subject, and its bearing on the history of the Canonical Scriptures of the New Testament, see The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, Oxford, 19o5). As Lightfoot points out (Apostolic Fathers, pt. i. vol. i. p. 7), however, personality, with its variety of temperament and emphasis, largely colours the Apostolic Fathers, especially the primary group. Clement has all the Roman feeling for duly constituted order and discipline; Ignatius has the Syrian or semi-oriental passion of devotion, showing itself at once in his mystic love for his Lord and his over-strained yearning to become His very " disciple " by drinking the like cup of martyrdom; Polycarp is, above all things, steady in his allegiance to what had first won his conscience and heart, and his " passive and receptive character " comes out in the contents of his epistle. Of the rest, whose personalities are less known to us, Papias shares Polycarp's qualities and their limitations, the anonymous homilist and Hermas are marked by intense moral earnestness, while the writer to Diognetus joins to this a profound religious insight. These personal traits determine by selective affinity, working under conditions given by the special
for instance, as appears in his twice bracketing " faith and hospitality " as grounds of acceptance with God (the cases are those of Abraham and Rahab, in chs. x. and xii.), is " from a strictly dogmatic point of view " his weakness. But the weakness is more than a dogmatic one; it is one of religious experience, as the source of spiritual insight. It is not merely that " there is no dogmatic system in Clement " or in any other of the Apostolic Fathers; that may favour, not hinder, religious insight. There is a want of depth in Christian experience, in the power of realizing relative spiritual values in the light of the master principle involved in the distinctively Christian consciousness, such as could raise Clement above a verbal eclecticism, rather than comprehensiveness, in the use of Apostolic language. As R. W. Dale remarks, in a note on Reuss's too severe words (Eng. trans. ii. 295): " The vital force of the Apostolic convictions gave to Apostolic thought a certain organic and consistent form." It is lack of this organic quality in the thought, not only of Clement but also of the Apostolic Fathers generallywith the possible exception of Ignatius, who seems to share the Apostolic experience more fully than any other, to which Reuss rightly directs attention. In virtue of this defect, due largely to the failure to enter into the Apostolic experience of mystic union with Christ, he can rightly speak of " an immense retrogression " in theology visible " at the end of the century, and in circles where it might have been least expected " (ii. p. 294, cf. S41). In fact the perspective of the Gospel was seriously changed and its most distinctive features obscured. This was specially the case with the experimental doctrines of grace. Here the central glory
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(C) In attempting a final estimate of the value of the Apostolic Fathers for the historian to-day, we may sum up under these heads: ecclesiastical, theological, religious. (a) As a mine of materials for reconstructing the history of Church institutions, they are invaluable, and that largely in virtue of their spontaneous and " esoteric " character, with no view to the public generally or to posterity. (b) Theologically, as a stage in the history of Christian doctrine, their value is as great negatively as positively. Impressive as is their witness to the persistence of the Apostolic teaching in its essential features, amidst all personal and local variations, perhaps the most striking thing about these writings is the degree in which they fail to appreciate certain elements of the Apostolic teaching as embodied in the New Testament, and those its higher and more distinctively Christian elements.' This negative aspect has a twofold bearing. Firstly, it suggests the supernormal level to which the Apostolic consciousness was raised at a bound by the direct influence of the Founder of Christianity, and justifies the marking-off of the Apostolic writings as a Canon, or body
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