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Apostolic Fathers

Fr. Sunny Chacko

INDEX

PART - I A. B. C. D. E. F. Introduction Biography Letters Date of the letters History of the letters Brief content of each letters

G. H. I. J. K. L. M. N.

PART - II Theological contributions :Christology Ecclesiology Sacraments :Eucharist Baptism Marriage Confession PART - III

O. P.

Conclussion 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 Catholic Church 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 Popes 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 churchs 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 Eastern Churches 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 17th 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 the Didache, 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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