Talk:Apostolic Fathers

POV

When I set the framework with To speak historically and dispassionately, rather than entirely from within orthodox Christian tradition, I didn't mean to do anything except step outside, in the usual NPOV way. There are other threads of continuity from the 'sayings' and actions of Jesus beside the one Pauline thread that historically became the only non-"heretical" one. This NPOV can't be as diminished as it is in, say the Catholic Encyclopedia etc. I meant to hurt no feelings, but a position from the outside] is the NPOV one. Wetman 02:01, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

Your point is well taken. I wonder if the opening sentence wouldn't read smoother while retaining essentially the same meaning if it were slightly shortened, something like: The Apostolic Fathers historically were a group of Christian authors who lived and wrote in the 1st and 2nd centuries. The rest about being dispassionate and outside the orthodox Christian tradition is fine, but seems like we should be able to take it for granted.

I would also question the assumption in this article that Pauline Christianity is to be equated with Gentile Christianity, and that this Christianity is drastically different from that of James the Just. I know that's a widely held POV, but it certainly isn't undisputed fact. Wesley 07:13, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The only thing is, that as soon as one begins to take "for granted" that one is speaking dispassionately from outside the orthodox Christian tradition, that one need not even mention such a position, someone is certain to come along and suggest that any facts about the Christianity of the (now silent) James the Just are "disputed." Thus orthodoxy is enforced in silence. Why not make the first sentence smoother, without suppressing the caveat? Since "Gentile" Christianity is by definition preached to non-Jews, indeed it is not a mere synonym for Pauline Christianity. There is more than a little overlap, you'd probably agree. Arian Christianity is an example of Gentile conversion that is outside Pauline traditions. Why don't you make the edit? Wetman 13:21, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. Most early New Testament manuscripts have the Pauline Epistles after the other Epistles. The Syriac Church didn't even accept them as scripture until the fifth century or so. Even in very early liturgies the Book of the Gosples seems to have been handled with much more reverence than the books of epistles. The first christian writers to delve deeply into Paul's writings was John Chrysostom, only in the late fourth century. The Elevation of Paul to the be-all-and-end-all of early christian theology seems to be a product of the Reformation more than anything else, and seems to be related to the simple fact that his surviving writings are more voluminous than those of the other apostles. So if you throw out the tradition and admit only the New Testament (which of course is also a tradition), it is only natural the Paul receives more stres. -- 84.57.14.9 18:06, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pauline who?  :-)

I like Wesley's first line.
I feel that an article explaining "Pauline Christianity" would also shed a lot of light on this article.
The other option would be to drop the term "Pauline" altogether. I'm surprised that Blacklite depended upon that term so much.
I understand "Pauline christianity" to be Protestant Christianity, not simply Gentile Christianity. (Though that may be from some bias).
Perhaps we should also add links to the theological topics dicussed by these Fathers (Trinity, Christology, etc). --Osprey 16:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I was going to turn Pauline Christianity into a stub, on Osprey's suggestion. but "lo!" there it already was: quite unlooked-for, apparently. Dreary topic, really, and attracts such humorless company... Never mind, when the subject is Apostolic Fathers, the subtext is that these boys offer the only authentic connections to the apostolic generation, is it not? "Apostolic... fathers." Quite authoritative. That's part of the meaning of the term— and of its usefulness in manipulating discourse. Thus a possible motivation for its use, anyone would have to admit. The expression Pauline Christianity suggests that there might be other strains: Gnostic Christianity Petrine doctrine or Johannine Christianity can't be novelties to virgin ears. "To drop the term "Pauline" altogether" would suppress even the possibility of alternatives, wouldn't it? What a very revealing suggestion. --Wetman 17:57, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I haven't done any major editing to this article at all. It looks like the Pauline stuff was added here by Wetman.

I don't object to any specific mention of anything, Pauline or whatever, but the article just doesn't seem very coherent to me. It isn't broken up into sections at all, and it doesn't seem to present a really solid picture of the subject from all angles -- it may, I guess, but it just doesn't seem to flow well, or be really well organized.

Also, re: the introductory sentence, it sounds really odd to me because when one reads an encyclopedia article one expects that the subject will always be discussed dispassionately. NPOV should not have to be declared in a disclaimer, it is the way things should be written and should be assumed by the reader. "Step[ping] outside, in the usual NPOV way" is an instruction from the wikipedia community to itself, not something that the reader should be hearing about, I think. As a pretty strong example, the article about Jesus Christ does not have any such stepping-outside disclaimer sentence. Something like that just seems to mess up the flow.

Despite all my opinions, however, I know I'm not nearly as informed about the Apostolic Fathers than some or perhaps most practicing Christians, so that's why I added that "Attention" template.

Whether or not the term "Apostolic Fathers" perpetuates the Pauline discourse or not, I don't know if it's our responsibility as wikipedia writers to write articles that warn the reader of such so explicitly -- it seems to me like overcompensation. Can we not just point out that it is just that, a term, used by some (? most?) Christian churches to refer to a group of authors whom they believe were directly involved or strongly influenced by the original Apostles, letting the reader connect the dots if they are so inclined?

The meat of this article, in my opinion, ought to be: who the Apostolic Fathers are -- and whether this varies from church to church, or historically; what they historically did, if we know any solid historical facts about them; what they are believed to have done by the churches; how their writings affected Christian thought and the controversies etc surrounding the interpretations of their writings; etc. The meta-discussion about the veracity of the term itself and the implied authority it brings etc and the fact that some Christians do not accept that they are the only true link to the Apostles should be a section, not the focus. Whether or not one believes the Pauline Christian idea of the importance of the Apostolic Fathers, this article is about them. Blacklite 07:43, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

St. Clement of Rome

Will the editor who continues reverting my changes without discussion and adding unreferenced information to the article please discuss the matter on here on the talk page before conducting additional edits or reverts. Continuing to revert the text may lead to a violation of the Three Revert Rule. Thanks for discussing the content here. Dgf32 (talk) 00:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I will not revert your changes until we are able to have a proper discussion here. However, I am going to proceed to Wikify the text you have added. Please refer to Wikipedia:MoS for details on how to include internal links in text that you might add. Thank you! Dgf32 (talk) 01:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The text that was added to the article is fine, except that the "Church of Rome" can't write letters, and so the text should read as follows: "Claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, the author quotes extensively from the Scriptures and appeals to shared apostolic tradition in a call for the Christians of Corinth to maintain harmony and order." This is my proposed change. If any other editors object to this change, please post here. Thank you! Dgf32 (talk) 01:16, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Unknown Church fathers

I think it is rather odd to have a section titled Apostolic Fathers and thier works. The works, as the article states, are not by any of the recognised Fathers mentioned. I propose changing the page so that section 1 deals with the fathers themselves, possibly with a 1.4 stating that there are others unamed who wrote works that are considered to be of the same lwevel of worth (yes clunky I'll think about it). Then in section 3 split into 3.1 works by the fathers and 3.2 works used by the Fathers.

any comments anyone johnmark† 18:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The structure of the article is fine, however the content is biased in some places and utterly wrong and misleading in others. There is general consensus among historians over which authors wrote which texts. I will update the article. The article's structure is fine, but the text is misleading. I'll work on improving it. Dgf32 (talk) 19:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment Johnmark. It's good to have a fresh perspective on things. This article recenter underwent a series of edits that introduced a very strong POV. Your comment also points out the the article contained many factual errors, which I would like to correct. The section of St. Clement of Rome formerly strongly implied that he was not the author of 1 Clement, when that is generally considered to be correct. However, 2 Clement almost certainly had another author and was traditionally ascribed to Clement. I have updated the article to fix these probles. I hope to go through the other Apostolic Fathers and make corrections as needed. Dgf32 (talk) 20:16, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

clement, the 4th pope

Here's a misleading sentence with a reference. Since it has a reference, I can't change it change it unilaterally, because for all I know this is exactly what the reference says: "Tradition identifies the author as St. Clement, the fourth bishop of Rome, and scholarly consensus is overwhelmingly in favor of the letter's authenticity.[4]." Technically this is a true statement, but it gives the impression that scholars overwhelmingly accept that Clement was Pope #4. They don't. Does anyone have this reference to check? We already had a long discussion on Clement as Pope #4 on the Clement page. Can we just cut this sentence, since we can't edit it without the source? Leadwind (talk) 16:50, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Greek Texts

I cleaned up the existing references, but the list is not really complete. Perhaps a space should also be made for important English translations like those made by Lightfoot and Grant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.76.184.167 (talk) 06:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

The current usage of "Apostolic Fathers" and why this article is terrible

The current scholarly usage of "Apostolic Fathers" refers to a collection of texts not a set of authors i.e. something akin to the function of "New Testament." Many of these texts are anonymous and have had famous names attached e.g. 1 and 2 Clement. Some refer to individuals completely unknown to us e.g. "Hermas" Some of these texts have clearly undergone redactional stages e.g. the Didache. In other words, this entire article needs to be rewritten. It is currently complete crap. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.76.184.167 (talk) 07:01, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

True: the term refers to the corpus, not to the authors (whether the actual authors or the people in whose name the texts would later be pseudonymously composed). The corpus was not produced in antiquity, but is a scholarly construct (which isn't to say that it's not useful in some respects). For this reason, and to the point of the comment below this one (made on 9 Feb. 2013), the works included in this corpus vary (sometimes, though, only slightly) based on the decision of the modern editor. Ehrman discusses the development of the collection nicely in the introduction to his Loeb edition, and these points are raised in Sailors' BMCR review.141.70.11.22 (talk) 23:18, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Wow. Calling the article "complete crap" was an understatement. I've tried to clean it up a bit. It's still nowhere near good, but now it presents the Apostolic Fathers for what they are - a group of writings (though the good suggestion of the comment below about highlighting the artificial nature of the collection could be emphasized more). It seems like the old form had been written by someone with a theological axe to grind, so I've just deleted most of the pointless paragraphs on the "apostolicity" of the writings. Looks like whoever wrote the old version was keen on pointing out that some of these writers were "saints" and that they certainly weren't "Jewish Christian" - apparently they'd not read Barnabas or the Didache, etc.! Anyway, hopefully the article is not as bad now as it was.95.113.169.153 (talk) 15:47, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

¶ The section on the content of the Apostolic Fathers includes in its list a few items which are lacking in some leading editions - and, additionally, the earliest English translation, by William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury (1693) had less than those editions. I would appreciate some discussion about the development of the collection, and the decision to include or exclude certain items, of what is now listed as the Apostolic Fathers. Sussmanbern (talk) 03:56, 2 November 2015 (UTC) More specifically, the Epistle to Diognetus was added to the collection AFTER the Wm. Wake translation. The Fragments of Papias and the Relics of Irenaeus were included in an edition around 1845, were left out by Bishop Lightfoot in his translation (possibly because of his failing health and death) and added in a revised edition by Harmer (1891). I would much appreciate some discussion of which items were designated as belonging to this collection and when. (I might add that the various editions seem to differ markedly on the choice and arrangement of the fragments of Papias). Sussmanbern (talk) 00:33, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

¶ I have replaced the one-line, unattributed and unhelpful, comment on the "term" by providing Lightfoot's informative explanation. Sussmanbern (talk) 03:56, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Wrong

The Bible does not mention apostolic fathers. 71.227.121.45 (talk) 02:45, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, but do the Apostolic Fathers mention the Bible? Elizium23 (talk) 02:58, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

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