CHAPTER NINE: Second-Century Witness of Apostolic Fathers

I. Background and Setting of Their Writings

Attention is now directed to the fragmentary writings of that small group of little-known men called the Apostolic Fathers. These were the Christian leaders living immediately after the last of the apostles, in the sub-apostolic age. Some of their writings, known to antiquity, have been lost. Others have been preserved in whole or in part, though often in tampered form. And while the precise authorship of certain of these existent treatises is not known, and the exact time of their writing cannot be ascertained, they nevertheless reflect with some fidelity the current beliefs of the time, and voice the teachings of that hazy period. ^{1Schaff, History, vol. 2, pp. 12, 634.}PFF1 205.1

The situation in the Christian church, immediately following the apostles, did not require an extensive literature of its own. Men were expecting important changes in the world. The authoritative teaching of the apostles was, of course, still fresh in memory, and the struggle between Christianity and paganism had not yet assumed any large proportions. It was the twilight period, before the literature of the early church philosophers had developed. Their first writings were not so much history, expositions, or apologies, as simply letters. ^{2Westcott, op. cit., pp. 19, 20.} They form but the connecting link between the writings of the apostles and those of the Ante-Nicene fathers.PFF1 205.2

This period of the Apostolic Fathers occupied, in general, the first half of the second century of the Christian Era, reaching from the time of the apostles on to the days of Justin Martyr. It embraced the decades following the scattering of the apostles to the Gentile provinces. It was the time of accelerating speed in extending the gospel and in gaining converts, ^{3See Eusebius, Church History, book 2, chap 3, in NPNF 2nd series, vol. 1, p 107; Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho, chap. 17, in ANF, vol. 1, p. 203; Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 1, chap. 3, in ANF, vol. 1, p. 319, 320; Tertullian, Apology, chap. 37, in ANF, vol. 3, p. 45; Origen, Against Celsus, book 1, chap. 37, and book 3, chap. 24, in ANF, vol. 4, pp. 412, 473.} as the early Christian churches went forth ardently to extend the faith. It embraced roughly the period of the early martyrs under the inhuman cruelties of the Roman persecutions from Domitian onward. This formed the background against which the Apostolic Fathers, and the succeeding Ante-Nicene church fathers, wrote. Those rugged days were marked by heroic deeds rather than by eloquent words, by tragic suffering rather than by extensive writing. But the records left, though meager, are revealing, and represent the earliest evidence to the conquering march of the gospel.PFF1 206.1

These second-century writings are in sharp contrast to the inspired Scriptures of the apostles. These successors were already definitely influenced by the sophistries of the day, which had introduced such legends as that of the phoenix, ^{4Phoenix: A sacred bird in Egyptian mythology, fabled to live for five hundred years or longer in Arabia. At the expiration of that time it made itself a nest of twigs on which it died by burning itself alive. From the ashes rose another phoenix, young and beautiful; hence, the phoenix became a symbol of immortality and of the resurrection.} and other fables. The views of some were tinctured with Jewish concepts; others were marred by gross extravagances. The very inferiority of these writings enables us to attach a higher value to the superiority of the canonical writings of the apostles, for these fragmentary works were but the “lingering echoes,” in distorted form, of those vital messages before them, written under inspiration.PFF1 206.2

Under the emperors of this period, Rome was approaching the height of its external grandeur and might in its climb to world supremacy. And the early church was steadily expanding while the Roman dominion was attaining its widest range and loftiest authority. The Pax Romana opened the way for easy access to all quarters of, the Roman world. And this pagan Roman Empire was, for the first few centuries of our era, the civil sphere in which the early church lived and moved and had her being.PFF1 206.3

By the very nature of its precepts and principles, Christianity was destined to find opposition and persecution leveled against it, and to feel the full weight of paganism’s power. The concept of the kingly Christ and the stern morality of Christian purity were both obnoxious to the pagan. The rising sun of Christianity did not banish the lingering shadows of pagan idolatry and superstition. An irrepressible conflict was bound to continue until, in the next two centuries, paganism was conquered, except in the remote corners of the empire.PFF1 207.1

These writings of the Apostolic Fathers are of lesser value and validity, in part, because they are less accurately transmitted to us. But they are, nevertheless, the necessary transition between the apostles of the first century and the less fragmentary and more authentic writings of the Ante-Nicene church fathers which followed. So we will now take a brief look at their understanding of the prophecies and the advent before we go on to the clear, authenticated writings of the next period. ^{5The words valid and authentic are used here in reference to the text of these writings, not to their doctrinal soundness. Although it is true that, on the whole, the church following the apostolic age retained the early prophetic interpretation to a considerable degree down to the end of the era of pagan persecution-and even to Jerome-there were definite divergences, and many of the fathers departed more from the apostolic viewpoint in other respects than on prophetic interpretation. The writings of the fathers reveal the early inroads of unscriptural doctrines and practices into the church. Protestants do not cite the church fathers to authenticate doctrines, prophetic or otherwise, but only to trace their development.}PFF1 207.2

The early church was distinctly premillennialist in her cherished expectations of Christ’s second advent. His coming and kingdom were her constant hope. The Apostolic Fathers anticipated a future kingdom in connection with the Redeemer’s advent. They built upon, and generally harmonized with, those basic principles of prophetic interpretation enunciated by Christ and the apostles, which in turn were the continuation of the antecedent Jewish principles of interpretation. Let us now note their testimony.PFF1 207.3