Apostolic Fathers

American  

plural noun

1. the fathers of the early Christian church whose lives overlapped those of any of the apostles.

2. the collection of works attributed to them.

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Apostolic Fathers British  

plural noun

1. the Fathers of the early Church who immediately followed the Apostles

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Etymology

Origin of Apostolic Fathers

First recorded in 1820–30

Example Sentences

It had also been suspected that some work, referred to by scholars as “The Two Ways,” had been used and partly incorporated into a number of early church manuals and writings of the apostolic fathers.

From The New Yorker

The phrases, “Apostolic age” and “Apostolic fathers” denote the first century of the Christian era, and those fathers who are supposed to have flourished during that period, and who are supposed to have seen or heard, or had the opportunity of seeing or hearing, either Jesus or some one or more of the twelve Apostles.

From Project Gutenberg

In the testimony of these Apostolic Fathers, each completing the other, we have not only the local bishop planted as the unit of the Church’s organism in any particular city, but the bishop who sits in the See of Peter, the tie and bond of his brethren.

From Project Gutenberg

What! our four evangelists entirely unknown to all the five apostolic fathers!

From Project Gutenberg

I believe it is almost as improbable, that in what Professor Brunt calls the "post-Apostolic" times sermons were written, not only from the complete silence of the Apostolic Fathers on the point—for that would really prove next to nothing,—but because it seems quite incredible that no vestige of any such sermon should have come down to us; no forgery of one, no legend or tradition of the existence of one if the practice of writing sermons had prevailed at all.

From Project Gutenberg