Apostolic fathers Sentence Examples

Their writings, like those of the apostles, are epistolary; but editions of the apostolic fathers now usually admit also the early Church order known as the Didache, the allegory entitled the Shepherd, and a short anonymous apology addressed to one Diognetus.

There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers.

The evidence of the apostolic fathers is disappointing.

Hence the precariousness of the proofs derived from more or less close parallels to Johannine passages in the apostolic fathers.

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."

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.

The Preaching and Apocalypse of Peter, for instance, are quite typical of the same period, and help us to read between 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.

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.

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.

It is in contrast to these that the Didache is justly felt to be genuinely primitive and of a piece with the Apostolic Fathers.

It is lack of this organic quality in the thought, not only of Clement but also of the Apostolic Fathers generally - with the possible exception of Ignatius, who seems to share the Apostolic experience more fully than any other, to which Reuss rightly directs attention.

The passages in which these things are laid bare by Paul's remorseless analysis of his own experience "under Law" seem to have made practically no impression on the Apostolic Fathers as a whole.

There is continuity in character; the Apostolic Fathers strike us as truly good men, with a goodness raised to a new type and power.

This is what the Gospel of Christ aims chiefly at producing as its proper fruit; and the Apostolic Fathers would have desired no better record than that they were themselves genuine "epistles of Christ."

The most useful edition for ready reference, containing critical texts (up to date) and good translations, is Lightfoot's one-volume edition, The Apostolic Fathers (London, 1891).

Le Clerc's new edition of the Apostolic Fathers of Johann Cotelerius (1627-1686), published in 1698, marked an advance in the critical study of these documents.

The Apostolic Fathers say nothing about Simon Magus, but with Justin Martyr we get startling developments.