First Christian Voices: Practices of the Apostolic Fathers

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First Christian Voices

friends along the journey of the Christian life but also my mentors. This sacred heritage is preserved in the lives of those saints who lived out their faith in the first and second centuries. In the introduction to the Roberts-Donaldson translation of the Apostolic Fathers, Alexander Cleveland Coxe appealed to us to continue in the footsteps of the disciples of the apostles like Clement, Papias, Polycarp, and Ignatius: If you are familiar with Scripture, you owe it largely to these primitive witnesses to its Canon and its spirit. By their testimony we detect what is false, and we identify what is real. Is it nothing to find that your Bible is their Bible, your faith their faith, your Savior their Savior, your God their God? 1 The ancient memory of the apostles has been passed down to the present day beginning with the faithful lives of those early followers of their traditions. Their memory, although often complicated and tempered by two thousand years of history, is our memory. And that memory is all the richer as we listen to these first Christian voices and hear what they teach us today. In that way, they can become your ancient friends and mentors too. About This Volume The memory of the apostles passed down to us through the Apostolic Fathers provides not only a continuity to

1 Arthur Cleveland Coxe, “Introductory Notice” in The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus , vol. 1 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 , ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and Arthur Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885), vii.