The Background and Doctrine of the Post-Apostolic Church Leaders

It may appear in this section that I am attempting to character­ize the Church fathers as villains, or pagans, or per­haps even servants of the devil.  Be assured that is nei­ther my goal, nor my desire.  I look upon the doctrine of the Trinity as a mistake, a grievous mistake, but yet it was a mistake made by men attempting to do what they believed God would have them do.  I make no attempt to judge their actions or con­demn their motives; I merely want to illustrate the overpowering in­fluence of pagan Grecian philosophy that was implemented during the development of Christian the­ology.  This influence, which far outweighed the influence of the Bible, has been de­nied and ignored by the Orthodox Christian Church.  It has been taken for granted that the foundation of Church doctrine laid down by the Church fathers was accurate, therefore ex­empting it from any thorough examination in the light of the Bible.  This is a more serious error than that of the Church fa­thers.

Concerning the post-apostolic church fathers, Schaff makes the following comments:

This class consists of Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, and in a broader sense, Hermas,  Papias, and the unknown authors of the Epistle to Diognetus, and of the Didache. 

Of the outward life of these men, their extraction, edu­cation, and occu­pation before conversion, hardly anything is known….But the pious story of the mar­tyrdom of several of these fathers, as their entrance into perfect life, has been co­piously written.  They were good men rather that great men, and excelled more in zeal and devo­tion to Christ than in literary attainments.  They were faithful and practical workers, and hence of more use to the church in those days than profound thinkers or great scholars could have been.[1]

I have not included Barnabas in this discussion be­cause the epistle that is assigned to his authorship has been determined to be spurious by most authori­ties.  I have also not included a discussion of the un­known authors referred to for the obvious reason.  On the other hand, I have in­cluded other post-apos­tolic leaders because of their contri­bution to the de­velopment of church doctrine.  Another ti­tle, possi­bly more accurately descriptive of these leaders, would be ante-Nicene fathers

[1] History of the Christian Church, by Phillip Schaff, Volume II, Published 1887 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 633.