THE PLACE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS IN CHRISTIANITY
‘Apostolic
Fathers’ are those Christian writers taken from a vast number of contemporary
writings, who are assumed to have met the apostles themselves or an immediate disciple
of them, and who have influenced Christian Theology from the 1st and
2nd century.
Most of their
writings are from the East and possess the same basic theological level,
compared with later theological development.
Even though the
term ‘apostolic father’ dates back from the Middle Ages, these writings were highly
regarded in Christendom since the first century, and some are included in the
NT canon of the African Church to this day (Clement I, Didascalia, Synods, and
others).
However, they
were not accepted into most biblical canons, because they never claimed to have
direct apostolic recognition, or were written after the apostolic era. Even in
cases like Polycarp or Ignatius who are assumed to have known St John Apostle,
their writings date posterior to John’s death. Only the case of the epistle of
Clement to the Corinthians assumed such recognition in Ethiopia, but not in the
rest of the Church, because of its contain even though it is assumed to have
been written around the last years of John, but even this is uncertain.
Other books like
the Didache or the Gospel of Thomas, among other many, did not enjoyed
unanimous recognition as being apostolic, so they were rejected as inspired by
the common consensus of Christendom.
CHRISTIANITY
AS HISTORY
Apart from being
a religion, Christianity is a social reality.
Christianity did
not fall from the sky. It’s a Jewish theological development that turned in 100
years into a religion on its own, and has continued developing ever since,
whether we agree with that development or not.
As any social phenomenon,
Christianity can be studied and analyzed, the same as the person of Jesus of
Nazareth, from a secular angle as historical facts. And the writings of all things
related to it, are to be considered as part of that analysis.
The 27 books
that today form the Christian New Testament, were selected for being considered
of apostolic authorship, or from disciples contemporary to those twelve men that
were the inner circle of Jesus, and for that reason, enjoyed reliability and full
reception in the Christian communities from the beginning (Colossians 4:16;
2Peter 3:16). The fact that only 27 books were received as inspired from tens
of other contemporary manuscripts stands their level of importance from
antiquity.
Later writings, not
from the apostles themselves or an authorized contemporary, are not considered
to be inspired because they either occurred after the deposit of revelation was
completed (After Apostol John’s death), or they were not known to have been authorized
by a contemporary apostle.
There are only four
cases where it is assumed the authors of the books were not one of the twelve
in the NT. The Gospel according to Mark, Luke, and the letters of Paul and
James.
However, Mark
confirms the other synoptics in theological themes, and he always was
considered to have been a follower of Paul and Barnabas, and familiar with the
Apostles (Acts 12:12, 25). Other assumed him to be one of the Seventy disciples
of Jesus (Luke 10:1).
Luke also confirms
the apostolic gospel of Matthew in his writings, plus adds other Marian themes
that came up later in Christianity; however, he also is considered to have been
a disciple of Paul (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 1:24) and the other apostles, and
therefore a reliable witness.
Paul on the other
hand was well known for having been called by Jesus and accepted by the apostles;
and St James, to have been Lord Jesus’s brother, also acknowledged by the twelve
apostles.
THE FATHERS
This cannot be
said about the writers called ‘Apostolic Fathers’.
Their existence
is known to us by a single third hand source, the Semi-Arian church historian
Eusebius of Caesarea (265-339CE), and some manuscripts reputed to these
authors, like Ignatius of Antioch (?-108CE) and Tertullian (155-240CE), not
from first sight, but from ‘stories they learned, from others’. In other words,
their reliability is harder to established than any of the NT writings. The
Gospels and the epistles had a majority acceptance by the universal Church all
along, while these writings are dependent from one source, Eusebius, and the writings
of the characters he mentions and whom he never knew.
Another issue
with the father’s writings, is that they differ in teachings and doctrine from
one to another.
Papias believed
in a different death account of Judas Iscariot than the one told in the canonical
Gospels and believed that some of the saved will live in Heaven while others
will live on an earthly paradise, and others in the New Jerusalem (Fragments of
Papias III and V).
Clement of Rome,
taught about the existence of a bird called Phoenix, which lived for 500 years,
died, and then resurrected from the fire (Clement I, 25:1-5).
Tertullian, Irenaeus,
and Justin Martyr were Premillennial, while Origen (186-254CE), and later
Eusebius, Jerome and Augustin opposed it.
And so on.
Leaving aside
the fact of the authenticity of their writings as well as the details of their
lives, the whole body of doctrines seen in the apostolic fathers are divided in
two.
TRADITION
Most of the
stories which vary from the Bible in form and essence, are explicitly mentioned
by the fathers as ‘having been received’ (Papias V), meaning, they have never
scriptural evidence of it, only oral tradition.
SCRIPTURE
Other parts of
their writings, they quote greatly the Scripture, even hundreds of years before
any canon was established, and they base their authority always, on the
authority of the Scriptural evidence (Clement I), never on their own, not even
in ‘received tradition’.
Facing the
reality of the variants among these people who are reputedly eyewitnesses from
the apostles and judging by their respect of Scripture as the truest legacy of
apostolic teaching, we also take the same position.
We acknowledge
the reality of their manuscripts, and we study them as witnesses of the
doctrinal development of the Church, but since they cannot agree and some have
terrible errors against reason, we also admit that they are fallible, and only
express not apostolic teaching, but personal views on that apostolic teaching,
intermixed with legends they learned from their times, which they themselves
attribute to ‘tradition’, and it would be most improper to use them to establish
doctrine.
CONCLUSION
The so called ‘Apostolic
Fathers’ are pious Christian men of their times. Their manuscripts, whose content
can not be verified ever, contain a mixture of truth, fantasy and error, that
can be used as a historical witness of the doctrinal development of the
Christian thought, some in good direction, others not so good, therefore they
cannot be used to establish doctrine, but only as historical information.
They respected
Scripture though, very much as God’s oracle, and so do we.
Scripture alone
always had and has today, the supreme contain of truth, infallible, inerrant, and
complete, for the salvation and sanctification of humanity.
Omar Flores.
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