religious. (a) As a mine of materials for
reconstructing the history of Church institutions, they are invaluable,
and that largely in virtue of their spontaneous and "esoteric"
character, with no view to the public generally or to posterity. (b)
Theologically, as a stage in the history of Christian doctrine, their
value is as great negatively as positively. Impressive as is their
witness to the persistence of the Apostolic teaching in its essential
features, amidst all personal and local variations, perhaps the most
striking thing about these writings is the degree in which they fail to
appreciate certain elements of the Apostolic teaching as embodied in the
New Testament, and those its higher and more distinctively Christian
elements.[3] This negative aspect has a twofold bearing. Firstly, it
suggests the supernormal level to which the Apostolic consciousness was
raised at a bound by the direct influence of the Founder of
Christianity, and justifies the marking-off of the Apostolic writings as
a Canon, or body of Christian classics of unique religious authority. To
this principle Marcion's Pauline Canon is a witness, though in too
one-sided a spirit. Secondly, it means that the actual development of
ecclesiastical doctrine began, not from the Apostolic consciousness
itself, but from a far lower level, that of the inadequate consciousness
of the sub-apostolic Church, even when face to face with their written
words. This theological "retrogression" is of much significance for the
history of dogma, (c) On the other hand, there is great religious and
moral continuity, beneath even theological discontinuity, in the life
working below all conscious apprehension of the deeper ideas involved
(E. von Dobschutz, _Christian Life in the Primitive Church_, 1905).
There is continuity in character; the Apostolic Fathers strike us as
truly good men, with a goodness raised to a new type and power. This is
what the Gospel of Christ aims chiefly at producing as its proper fruit;
and the Apostolic Fathers would have desired no better record than that
they were themselves genuine "epistles of Christ."

LITERATURE.--This is too large to indicate even in outline, but is
given fully in the chief modern editions, viz. of Gebhardt, Harnack
and Zahn jointly (1875-1877), J.B. Lightfoot (1885-1890) and F.X. Funk
(1901); also in O. Bardenhewer, _Gesch. der altkirchlichen Litteratur_
(1902), Band i., and in _Neutestamentliche Apokryphen_,