Apostolic Fathers Word

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Apostolic Fathers

Fr. Sunny Chacko



INDEX

PART - I

A. Introduction

B. Biography

C. Letters

D. Date of the letters

E. History of the lettersF. Brief content of each letters

PART - II

G. Theological contributions :-

H. Christology

I. Ecclesiology

J. Sacraments :-K. Eucharist

L. Baptism

M. Marriage

N. Confession

PART - III

O. Conclussion

P. Bibliography



Part - I

A. Introduction

There are four groups of fathers in the Eastern Orthodox Church tradition.They are (a) The Apostolic Fathers and the Pre-Nicene Fathers, (b) The Fathers of the

three ecumenical councils, (c) The post conciliar Fathers, and (d) The Monastic

Fathers.

It is necessary first to define what is meant by “the Fathers” of the Church.

“The Fathers are the leading figures in the story of the devotion, the life, the thought

and the discipline of the Christian Church in the early formative centuries.” The term

“Fathers” has no precise definition in the Orthodox Church tradition; usually it is

applied to all the great Doctors and saintly leaders of the Christian church. But in the

Roman Catholic Church there is a clear definition to this term. They have more than

twenty “Doctores Ecclesiae”. The most important doctors for the Roman CatholicChurch are Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome. In 1920 the then

Pope declared St. Ephrem as a Doctor of the Church. He was always a towering

figure for the Eastern tradition, both to the Greek and the Non-Greek. The particular

occasion for the Pope’s officially declaring him as a doctor of the Church was the

need to use him as authority for certain doctrines about Blessed Virgin Mary, which

the Catholic Church wanted to declare officially.

But the Eastern tradition cannot exalt an ancient father according to need. It is

only the consensus of the church’s tradition that so exalts a Father as an authoritative

guide in to Christian truth. Some whom the Roman Catholic Church regards as

Fathers have to be regarded as heretics by the universal tradition which the EasternChurches follow.

Among the four groups of Fathers, which we have seen, the Apostolic Fathers

are the earliest. The Apostolic Fathers were the direct disciples of the Apostles, who

lived between the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century.

The term created only in the 17 th century in the course of the debate between the

Reformation party and the Counter Reformation Party. The term is often rather

loosely applied to all writings of the period immediately following the age of the

Apostles. More strictly the Apostolic Fathers are the direct disciples of the one or

more of the Twelve Apostles. From the writings of these Fathers we get the first hand

picture of the life of the Christian community in the age which follows the death of St. John.



The canon of the Apostolic Fathers has varied greatly in various editions. Cotelier

included Barnabas, Hermas, Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp, both the letter and the

martyrdom. But additions have been made with more or less reason, until theDidache, The Fragments of Pepias, the Fragments of Quadratus and the so-called

letter to Diognetus, have been included. Good Speed included ‘Doctrina’ also, which

can now be shown to be the source of the Greek Didache and the Greek Barnabas, as

well as of most of the letter documents that have long been regarded as reproducing

material from the Greek Didache.

However, about all of the patristic scholars agree that the 7 letters of Ignatius

are canonical and they are directly from the martyr and one of the Apostolic Fathers,

called Ignatius of Antioch. These seven letters to different churches, are that of St.

Ignatius, the third bishop of Antioch who lived during the end of the first century and

the beginning of the second century.

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Apostolic Fathers Word