Journal of Early Christian Studies

It has become a virtual truism that the history of patristic research has been directed toward ancient texts and manuscripts. This is natural given that our resources for knowledge of the early church are preserved largely in this way. Scholars in recent decades have turned toward social and psychological analyses, cultural studies, gender considerations, network relations, and so forth to provide further avenues to explore ancient settings and motivations behind the literature, and there is great value in such investigations since most early believers were neither well educated nor [End Page 1] as erudite as those who produced the texts we now study. Further, such disciplines lead toward situations where academics otherwise have often been hesitant to tread, having limited insight concerning the ancients or their communal circumstances.

The problem is that the fourth- and fifth-century church itself spun boldly toward texts as a canonical standard of faith, identifying those that might serve as a regula fidei for what the framers of contemporary theology thought to be true, as well as orienting itself around literary standards by which ecclesiastical figures could control the perspectives and loyalty of their parishioners. In a sense, this construction formed an essential "narrative" of theological praxis and creedal confession.¹ As the "faith" became a universal institution, it sought grounding for its authority within texts that its own predecessors had provided.² If this seems somewhat self-serving, it is, but it is perhaps not unique to ecclesiastical tradition.

This was not viewed as problematic to the extent that ancient Christian views aligned themselves with value judgments about what was "orthodox" and "heterodox," good and evil, true and false, etc., all in service to the institutionalization of a living faith that had long since begun to be seen as "getting out of hand." It was vital to know whom to follow and whom to believe, and the literary standards of a developing canon of scripture provided what was seen to be a suitable standard to some degree. A "problem," though, was that leaders of the faith also continued to employ secondary writings and common traditions as they directed their followers, and that is what guides our attention here. We turn toward a thin fragment of such literature, the Apostolic Fathers, and hopefully offer some cogent insight into the danger that these writings have at times introduced into later "orthodox" creedal theology and institutional management.

What first must be questioned here are the texts and authors themselves, some of which have clear roots, but many of which remain of questionable origin. For example, 1 Clement has long been assigned to the end of the first century within a late Roman setting whose parameters remain [End Page 2] vague.³ On the other hand, there may be good reason to place it earlier toward the 60s within a context even more elusive.⁴ Or perhaps, as some scholars would suggest, it reflects a mid-second-century attempt to correct and combat the views of Marcion and his anti-Jewish tendencies.⁵ Such a wide range of years—a virtual century of possibilities—raises concern for the value of traditions preserved by the epistle since Roman culture itself evolved widely over those years. This remains a question to this day.

So too, one must ask whether a text like the Martyrdom of Polycarp, long assigned to the late second century, does not in fact reflect later concerns such as those seen in the mythic martyrologies of the third and fourth centuries, within whose contexts the growth of relic collections and reverence for the holy dead took firm root.⁶ Similarly, the famous Epistle to Rome by Ignatius of Antioch may likewise have found its origins far beyond the original hand of that defender of ancient creedalism. As has been argued recently, what one reads there may better reflect concerns of the post-Constantinian church than of the second-century writings of the bishop himself.⁷ To many who see Ignatius as a poignant figure of defiant faith preserved within this letter, such suggestions of displaced context strike a discordant note within an otherwise comfortable symphony of music among visions of the ancient martyrs for the cause.

Further, of course, there is the Didache, whose evolution remains almost a complete mystery with respect to both its location and its date. Those [End Page 3] who would assign it in toto to an early milieu often overlook the fact that the manuscripts of the tradition that remain do not all reflect within their pages the entirety of our primary text, itself a medieval document (internally dated to 1056). In sum, that which publishers offer as the text of the Didache in modern translations clearly reflects a final form of evolved tradition found in a single instance of preservation rather than within the diverse forms in which the teaching, its manuscripts, and its usages likely were employed.⁸ Those manuscripts—as with a majority of the Apostolic Fathers—are varied and limited, and to one extent or another they derive largely from the post-patristic period. Such examples are only a representative fraction of our corpus of texts.

In all these cases, what one often considers to be stable times and places are in fact quite uncertain. Simultaneously, hasty or uninformed researchers often quickly assume an unjustified confidence with respect to the traditions that these works preserve.⁹ So too, others rely on the suppositions and casual acknowledgments of such researchers as statements of broad fact, while in truth they are mostly guesses as to reality. Thus, we turn to a few such traditions and conjectures from such investigations to demonstrate the problem.

Long recognized within the collection are rituals and prayers from ancient Christian communities. Among the former are baptismal practices preserved in Didache 6, for example, which incorporate a method of determination for who may be included based on catechetical instruction (9.5).¹⁰ Both Barnabas and 2 Clement offer similar contexts, with the latter depicting a "seal" (σφραγίς), presumably of baptism, as the sign of any candidate's undefiled nature (2 Clem. 7.6, 8.6).¹¹ It is impossible to know if such a mark was generally recognized in antiquity as a literal sign of followers of the faith, but there may be good reason to believe such to be true.¹² The Shepherd of Hermas further elucidates this by the resolution of repentance as an essential prerequisite for those who desired to be [End Page 4] included at baptism (Herm. Vis. 2.6.4). In each case, insistence on adult entry into the ritual seems a given, often accompanied by instruction in at least the principles of Jewish "two ways" instruction as advised by the framework of Didache 1–6 and presumably Barnabas 18–20. Hence, one generally finds that among disparate early communities the ritual of baptism was widely considered an activity of faith for candidates of mature perspective.¹³ No verifiable evidence for the practice of infant baptism is obvious within the literature.

Most interesting with respect to the history of baptism is the situation of 1 Clem. 42.4, which in reference to the apostles observes that, "preaching both in the country and in the towns, they appointed their first fruits."¹⁴ This much seems simple and logical at its core, though the Latin version of the comment adds the words, "preaching to those who obey the will of baptism (eos qui obaudienbant voluntati de baptizantes)".¹⁵ The case seems minor, yet it begs the question of whether the Roman church saw baptism as an institutionally approved response to its particular version of the apostolic kerygma and thus testimony to a specific theology, perhaps in opposition to those who might have followed such figures as Marcion or even Sabellius shortly thereafter. To this end, one questions whether baptism in such contexts was not viewed simply as general ritual as much as a specific response to a particular view of the faith.¹⁶

By way of necessary corollary, this demands consideration of how the foundation of our manuscript witnesses may otherwise have shaped modern views of ancient Christian practice. In the case of baptism, for example, one asks whether the Latin rendering of 1 Clement does not reflect institutional practices from a time beyond the original composition of the autograph, whenever that may have been. If so, this later insistence on a specific view of the ritual may have been popular within a Constantinian [End Page 5] or post-Constantinian setting so that one might argue that it did not have its roots earlier in the tradition but derived as a corollary of subsequent tradition. If so, this perspective could logically be seen as an aberration within the trajectory of liturgical development rather than some supposed justification for the roots of the practice in nascent Christianity.

One appeals further to Chrysostom's views on both baptism and Eucharist that seemingly link to the perspectives of the Shepherd and the Didache.¹⁷ As to baptism, he argues against those who delay based on their concern that there is no second remission of sins after participation in that sacramental event. While ostensibly a common apprehension of the second century, the Shepherd not only acknowledges but also supports just such an approach. But during subsequent days, Chrysostom observes another anxiety based on how it is unsafe to give so-called "mysteries" to sinners based on this same principle, assuming there is no second remission of sins. The same objection arises in Did. 9.5 ("do not give what is holy to dogs")¹⁸ and hence is often viewed by scholars as an ancient ecclesiastical concern. But in fact, this line, with its quotation of "the Lord" is not reflected in manuscripts of the tradition until after the late fourth-century witness of Apostolic Constitutions 7.35. Consequently, the objection that Chrysostom raises, though it reflects a clear reality within the second- and third-century patristic world, is hardly dependent on the oldest manuscripts of the Didache. Instead, our reading of the Didache likely indicates a later insertion of views introduced by the post-Constantinian church. As such, available manuscript witnesses should not be seen as evidence for this perspective as though it were widely accepted in antiquity.¹⁹

One turns finally to the famous dictum of Ignatius that "Jesus the Christ . . . was born and baptized so that through his suffering he might purify the water" (Eph. 18.2)²⁰—presumably for those who followed his example in ritual immersion—which raises additional questions about the nature and value of baptism as a rite. From the outset, this seems an Ignatian interpretation of how Jesus replied to John the Baptizer's protest that he himself needed to be baptized by Jesus, to which Jesus is noted to have said, "It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness" (Matt 3.15). Some likely indication of the bishop's familiarity with Matthew's narrative (at least in [End Page 6] a broad sense) arises from this single passage in which the objection has been preserved.²¹ As a second concern, such speculative clarification of tradition associated with episodes in the life of Jesus clearly gives pause for those who might argue that ancient Christian scribes typically conveyed sayings and episodes without interpretive embellishment. To support some form of this opinion is to defy the witness of such passages, and parallel texts in the Apostolic Fathers argue early in ecclesiastical history against such a perspective. One may thus wonder what other additions to evolving traditions were added by the editors of our literature. More to the point, why should anyone care?

Three good illustrations of why this does indeed matter are immediately evident from our contemporary use of the tradition. The first occurs within the 1997 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.²² Within those pages, the Apostolic Fathers are referenced almost fifty times, with roughly half of these allusions drawn from the words of Ignatius himself.²³ The bishop's use of creeds not known elsewhere in our literature thus stands as a shaky foundation on which certain pillars of later ecclesiastical orthodoxy and belief have been established and continually justified.²⁴ Here one questions the extent to which later creedal statements have been shaped by views not original to the core of apostolic roots. Similarly, Ignatius's insistence on the primacy of Rome (as he is slowly hauled there for his almost certain death) and his tripartite division of ecclesiastical offices receives specific consideration, even where such parallels are explicitly absent elsewhere in the literature. One also asks how Ignatius would have spoken to such concerns in another situation when there was no value [End Page 7] to making appeals on behalf of those who held the keys to his fate. We simply will never know.

A second illustration may be more immediate for many readers, that is, support for contemporary views related to "right to life" perspectives and objections to the practice of abortion. Here the Catechism offers scattered quotations of material from Jewish scriptures about the relationship of the unborn child to the creator. Yet with respect to the prohibition against abortion itself the editors are forced to rely on texts from the Didache (2.2), Barnabas (19.5), and a highly suspicious parallel in the Epistle to Diognetus (5.6) about not exposing infants. Beyond this, the Catechism can offer only the clear objections of Tertullian (Apol. 1.9) from the third century. Again, such prohibitions are seen to derive chiefly from second-century writings rather than from the earliest foundations of faith tradition, and in no way do they reflect contemporary Jewish roots or rabbinic thought.

The third example speaks less directly to immediate ethical debate and more to how the authors themselves thought (or in fact did not think). One case derives from Diognetus, where traditional prose lines that define the nature of pagan culture and Jewish practices are given in contrast with the faithful existence of Christian believers during the period of Roman culture now known as the Second Sophistic. The text, which is a mixture of languid prose and hymnic rhythms, is combined at specific junctures throughout its rhetoric with a series of emotional outbursts related to statements of faith and piety. The appearance of such interjections has intrigued editors for decades. One reads, for example, about "fasting and new moons" that are described as "absurdities unworthy of discussion!" and about seasons divided between feasts and mourning that are adorned with, "Who would consider this proof of their reverence rather than imprudence?" (4.1–6). About philosophers who are charged with having "said that God was fire" one reads the semi-jocular joust, "To where they themselves are about to depart, this they call God!" (8.2), and about the justice and mercy of the Lord of Christian tradition one encounters the words, "Oh, the infinite kindness and love of God!" and "Oh, the sweet exchange! Oh, the unfathomable design! Oh, the unexpected benefits!" (9.2, 5). These may indeed be the emotional responses of the author(s) of the original text, but more likely they represent the pious retort of scribes and copyists who have secondarily added their own views as marginalia within the manuscripts they have produced, only later to have another generation of transcribers errantly introduce such tributary observations into the evolving manuscript tradition itself.²⁵ While this was not an infrequent [End Page 8] practice within the evolution of literary texts and literature, one cannot always know the extent to which it stands in fact as a commonplace occurrence within the transmission of Diognetus. If this does not make a scholar of textual traditions nervous, one is hereby warned that it should!

So too with rituals, eucharistic practices are broadly defined in their course. Indeed, the roots of eucharistic tradition have been highly researched and can hardly be summarized here. The diversity of such foundations, however, is clearly reflected in our canon of material. Indeed, what are often considered to be agapē prayers over the bread and cup in Didache 9–10 have more recently been argued to reflect common practices within the earliest church setting—illustrated by passages in 1 Corinthians, for example—that did not include the now famous so-called "words of institution" known from the Gospels.²⁶ If this holds true, what Paul offers in 1 Corinthians 11 might be seen as a specific corrective with respect to what had become common tradition (via the fourth- and fifth-century church) of ancient meal practices perhaps experienced widely around the Mediterranean world. That such wording continued without the words of institution into later ecclesiastical ritual is demonstrated by a variety of patristic texts.²⁷ Yet more to the point is the possibility that such eucharistic rituals were adorned with additional prayers and practices reflected in the diversity of later religious movements, and these with ancient roots. Any comparison of Roman Catholic ritual with that of Lutheran or Southern Baptist practices, or Greek Orthodox approaches to sacred meal ceremonies in contrast with those of Armenian or Coptic liturgy, immediately betrays the multi-headed hydra of Greek antiquity whose original form eventually devolved into post-modern religious practice. Of course, "ours" (in whatever way one's own tradition celebrates its Eucharist) is the one true form, whereas all others are heterodox derivations.²⁸ The problem, however, is that no clear "one true form" is obvious within the earliest sources. If it were otherwise, then there would have been no need for the palpable diversity of argument and perspective that even now is preserved within the Apostolic Fathers. [End Page 9]

As to prayer, assorted evidence abounds. We return first to the three prayers of the Didache. Those found in chapters 9–10 offer words of thanksgiving over the cup and bread so as to suggest ancient eucharistic ritual within a Jewish setting but without inclusion of the so-called words of institution typical of such practices in the later church. Such phraseology finds foundation in the synoptic Gospels and Paul, and thus scholars assume ancient historical roots for that ritual, which leads many to see the Didache prayers as representative of some variant agapē practice. More likely, however, Didache tradition witnesses to some of the oldest forms of the ancient messianic meal ritual among ancient Christian authors, perhaps advised elsewhere as a ritualized ceremony observed by the Corinthians (as noted above) before Paul introduced another perspective.²⁹

Otherwise, the so-called "Lord's prayer" of Didache 8, whose wording is a virtual parallel to that found in the Gospel of Matthew, necessarily comes under suspicion. This passage often is employed as evidence for the authenticity of the Matthean form of the prayer—which itself finds odd placement within the three rules of Jewish piety on almsgiving, prayer, and fasting in Matthew 6—but otherwise reflects almost no literary evidence until Tertullian's commentary on the prayer at the beginning of the third century.³⁰ Indeed, manuscript support for this part of the Didache likewise is not found until the Apostolic Constitutions in the late fourth century. This should worry any researcher.³¹

Elsewhere, the concluding prayer of 1 Clement (59.2–61.3) advocates for one way in which ecclesiastical leaders applied authority within the community. After a long-impassioned plea to the Corinthians in favor of unity and duty, the author concludes with an appeal to divine holiness and [End Page 10] power to cleanse those who walk in sin and conflict (i.e., the Corinthian audience), granting to them health, peace, harmony, and stability—albeit as viewed through the eyes of the community in Rome. The petitionary orientation of this prayer strongly resembles the form of Diaspora synagogue prayers, notably seen in phraseology like "as you [gave] to our ancestors," though the petition for "health, peace, harmony, and stability"³² seems more applicable to the orientation of the empire than to ancient Christian community structure. An appeal to God as the founder of such concerns tempts one to ask whether this is a conscious effort on the part of the Roman church to drive house churches away from the hegemony of the state and toward the rivalry of an illicit religious context. Yet such conclusions are tenuous given that ancient social standards are prevalent throughout the literature of the period. One can only recognize the ultimate situation that eventually evolved in which power was shared between church and empire under the firm direction of Constantine in the fourth century—that moment when religious orthodoxy became rigorously defined and enforced as the official religion of the state.

Further related here are directions for nascent community organization oriented around ancient household codes. These arise variously in 1 Clement, the Didache, Barnabas, Ignatius's letter to Polycarp, Polycarp's own letter to Philippi, and the Shepherd. Such authors offer Greco-Roman models as directives for the development of early Christian ethics and for a domestic community standard that presumably was seen to be suitable for the ancient Christian experience. Found similarly in the deutero-Pauline literature of the New Testament, these codes all but disappeared with the fixed establishment of the authority of bishops around the Mediterranean. But one must question why this dissolution occurred and for whose benefit it transpired.³³

From the outset, household codes by their very name gave priority to the house, and this (while somewhat universal in form and expectation both within Greek, Roman, and Jewish circles) thus gave authority to those who managed the home. By civic expectation, this was the patriarch of the home; by social practice, it was the matriarch of the family. In a word, such codes provided substantial voice to female leadership both in terms of organization and meal preparation.³⁴ The mid-second-century disappearance [End Page 11] of such cultural usage within the house-church setting expunged that influence in favor of institutional structures inclined toward clerical domination and, as a natural consequence, shifted governance of social and communal orientation from a largely female-controlled setting into one that was almost exclusively male. In this respect, the Apostolic Fathers reflect the dying practice of ancient empirical, moral principles within the evolution of the faith favored by individual privileges exercised by specific ecclesiastical leaders. ³⁵ In this way, the order and organization of housechurches most likely reflected from its origins the specific idiosyncrasies of their regional preferences. House-churches in Asia Minor no doubt reflected local standards; house-churches in northern Greece and Macedonia likely endorsed similar if somewhat different orientations; housechurches in Italy and Egypt likewise would have had selected elements in common, but more importantly, they almost certainly featured regional peculiarities that would have portrayed local prejudices about beliefs and practices. The specifics of such regionalism are in most cases lost to history, though such entitlements no doubt were often linked in variously loose ways. But with an evolving insistence on universal, institutional standards under Constantine, such regional fundamentals soon merged with canonical foundations that pushed toward a focus on universal "norms," while regional orientations themselves were progressively seen as idiosyncratic views exercised by singular personalities that ultimately were considered to be heterodox or, if not that, at least outside what otherwise was thought to be acceptable tradition and practice.

Beyond the practicalities of daily ritual and community interaction, the influence of theological assertions found among the Apostolic Fathers are far too numerous to recount in any meaningful sense here. For the moment, however, the instance of 2 Clem. 1.1 will suffice to illustrate the situation. The author begins the homily with a bold assertion: "We ought to think of Jesus Christ as we do of God, as judge of the living and the dead."³⁶ While scholars seek to confirm such high christological aspirations within the sacred texts of the faith, the reality is that the earliest followers of "the [End Page 12] Way" proclaimed simply that "Jesus is Lord,"³⁷ with little to define the matter beyond a general, Jewish expectation that the creator of the universe would one day send a victor of appropriate character to rescue those who were faithful to covenants made with Abraham and Moses and hopefully—at least according to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—would restore the original created order in a way that would also, if not perhaps save, at least return the world to a rectified situation in which evil was put into its deserved place and those who had the right relationship with Adonai (perhaps including some of the nations) into a favorable position, thus re-establishing the correct order of creation as originally envisioned by the creator. Beyond the obvious role that such a figure, a messiah, would have in completing such a task, ultimately an important purpose of this individual would be to serve as an advocate before the creator who would ultimately judge the creation on behalf of those persons who should be declared holy (or at least innocent) before the seat of judgment. Now, to shift perspective with the author of 2 Clement, one finds this same advocate—here identified as Jesus Christ—in the judgment seat of God the creator. In whatever way one might view this situation, this is no minor shift in outlook. Its vision brings harsh damage to latent Jewish sensitivities in the evolution of Christian doctrine. But patristic authors latched onto this transition almost immediately, as is evident from subsequent sources.

Thus, Origen in his Commentary on John insists that the prophets teach that believers ought to think of the Son as they think of God.³⁸ While not a specific citation as such, the allusion is clearly drawn from the instruction of 2 Clement, and Origen's reference to his source as prophetic in character gives weight to the authority this tradition holds for his own views. This emphasis on prophecy is found elsewhere in his homily on Jeremiah 18, where similar imagery abounds in his words. In this way he links diverse authors into a single union, detecting the juncture of Johannine imagery with that of Jeremiah, each in its own way sifted through the lens of post-biblical Christology. Such efforts fed readily into later monophysite controversies, but more generally for the patristic authors of the West they [End Page 13] provided a foundation upon which to construct basic views of Trinitarian doctrine. In a word, one can hardly give full credit to 2 Clement for the basis of such perspectives (and I do not intend to do so here). But there is little question that the vision by which the author opens this address is a step beyond what many earlier framers of the faith had ever dared to envisage. Otherwise, the Apostolic Fathers offer little of real value on the nature of the Holy Spirit in this discussion, as clearly seen from the "vestal virgin" imagery prominently depicted throughout the Shepherd.³⁹

Finally, beyond traditions, practices, and theology, the Apostolic Fathers clearly served as a source of authority and influence during the formation of canons.⁴⁰ Despite whatever debate scholars now undertake with respect to discussions of canon and the nature of scripture, literary evidence visibly identifies that certain texts in the collection held influential weight for the post-Constantinian church. While Irenaeus himself, a prominent figure behind what tradition considers to be "scripture," already recognized 1 Clement as γραφή ("scripture"),⁴¹ so too various fourth- and fifth-century uncial texts that included New Testament writings also encompassed various examples of these works. Thus, Codex Alexandrinus incorporated 1-2 Clement, while Codex Sinaiticus featured Barnabas and the Shepherd. Also telling is that the Didache, while not included in any canonical collection, became the structural foundation for Book 7 of the Apostolic Constitutions. Its witness there is elucidated by the application of what now is considered to be scripture rather than the other way around, that is, scripture informed by non-canonical writings and traditions. This strongly suggests a priority for the writing in the eyes of the editors, a primacy that had the same level of authority as did canonical writings themselves. Whether one should attribute this prominence to a region such as Syrian Antioch remains a matter of debate. Nevertheless, to make this suggestion gives singular attention to a slice of Mediterranean Christianity that had great influence on later conciliar debates and the formation of doctrines within the medieval church.⁴² [End Page 14]

Further, the well-known Epistle 39 of Athanasius, the so-called Festal Epistle, serves as the quintessential illustration of what we have offered here from the late fourth century (367 c.e.). The bishop lists the Shepherd and the Didache among what are considered to be non-canonical writings, including works like Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, and Tobit. To these he provides the description "instruction in the divine word,"⁴³ indicating that, while such works were unsuitable for use in liturgical contexts, each in its own right held value for the instruction and life of the faith community. In summary then, from Antioch to Alexandria (if not elsewhere throughout the empire), it was not just formulation of canons that mattered for issues of authority but also non-canonical writings such as the Apostolic Fathers that were alive and well within the structure of ecclesiastical expansion. That such a reality may be acknowledged at all again deserves scholarly reflection.

More to the point, however, is the question of what Athanasius assumed was the role of such materials if they were not of liturgical value and yet worthy for instruction. In some sense they stood somewhere between sacred writings and apocryphal texts, the latter of which existed to mislead the simple-minded heretic, at least in his view.⁴⁴ What he likely assumed was that they held essential teachings designed to guide and motivate the direction of ecclesiastical leaders, on the one hand, and the spiritual perception of all believers, on the other. But though we often accept such a category as essential to the very art of education and instruction today, it is indeed strange in that it initiated into the history of Christianity a dangerous precedent partially borrowed from its Jewish lineage yet without the perceptive framework of that heritage. In other words, while rabbinic Judaism (based upon its own schools of teaching) sought to interpret and apply the written Torah within the light of a gradually revealed understanding of oral Torah, the developing canon of Christian scriptures sought to employ extraordinary writings (i.e., writings outside the evolving canon) within this third category—the category of pedagogy—as a guide for the naïve faithful based on divergent teachings from scattered authors whose perceptions—while admittedly not exactly sacred or in that sense even worthy of use within liturgy and worship—were deemed useful for those who themselves offered their particular instruction and teaching according to those very processes.

Historically, this so-envisioned "third category" of textual status introduced into later ecclesiastical instruction an open-ended avenue of unproven teaching, much of it likely drawn from regional sources alone, [End Page 15] under the facade of semi-sacred authority. This comment is not offered lightly. It is substantiated by the clear reality that, while the written texts of the Apostolic Fathers themselves eventually faded away after the fifth century, their individual teachings and collective vision continued to pervade the approved acumen of ecclesiastical tradition. Thus, as we have attempted to demonstrate above, while only a limited number of patristic scholars bother to examine the Apostolic Fathers in any great detail either as to their form or content, they continually encounter their teachings among the wiles of later patristic, medieval, and contemporary theologians. As a result, scholarly presumptions about both the authenticity and validity of teachings from the Apostolic Fathers that are repeated and endorsed by later authors in the tradition often give credence to what is otherwise a most shaky foundation for belief.

Having looked at this material on occasion myself, my counsel is to recognize such materials when they are encountered and to tread lightly where they are employed as a basis for understanding the general perceptions of earliest patristic Christians and the foundations of subsequent religious teaching. On the one hand, one could do worse in terms of patristic research than to examine such texts and utilize their perspective of the later, evolving world of ecclesiastical literature and thought. At the same time, to employ such foundational writings without careful examination, having accepted their varied teachings as valuable based on whole-cloth assumptions, may be among the most dangerous things that a scholar of religious literature might do in reconstructing the foundation and pillars of the early patristic tradition. The road of historical reconstruction is precarious enough without further warping the views of history that already have utilized questionable sources in the process of ecclesiastical development. The acceptance of vague concepts from ancient authors as the primary (and often singular) basis for contemporary views of faith and ritual appears little short of reckless. [End Page 16]