The Apologist Fathers of the Second Century

Fresco with Irenaeus of Lyon and Fathers of the Church (2011)

Alongside the Apostolic Fathers examined in the preceding chapters, the second century produced another group of writers of enormous importance for the history of the Christian faith: the so-called Apologist Fathers. Unlike the Apostolic Fathers, who addressed their writings primarily to Christian communities, the Apologists wrote largely for the outside world: they defended Christianity before Roman authorities and pagan philosophers, and combated the heresies that threatened the faith from within the Christian communities themselves. Their works are of exceptional value for our purpose, because in them one can observe that the doctrines which Protestantism rejects as medieval inventions were already fully consolidated in the second and third centuries, before any of the historical disputes that Protestantism invokes to justify its break with Rome ever existed. The four authors we will examine in this section are Saint Justin Martyr, Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Tertullian, and Saint Cyprian of Carthage.