The Ante-Nicene Fathers, subtitled "The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325" and abbreviated as ANF, [1] is a collection of books in 10 volumes (one volume is indexes) containing English translations of the majority of Early Christian writings. [2] The period covers the beginning of Christianity until the promulgation of the Nicene Creed at the First Council of Nicaea.
The series was originally published between 1867 and 1873 by the Presbyterian publishing house T. & T. Clark in Edinburgh under the title Ante-Nicene Christian Library (ANCL), as a response to the Oxford movement's Library of the Fathers which was perceived as too strongly identified with the Anglo-Catholic movement. The volumes were edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. This series was available by subscription, but the editors were unable to interest enough subscribers to commission a translation of the homilies of Origen.
In 1885 the Christian Literature Company, first of Buffalo, then New York, began to issue the volumes in a reorganized form. This was done without permission, and was indeed a pirate edition. The new series was edited by the Episcopal bishop of New York, A. Cleveland Coxe. Coxe gave his series the title The Ante-Nicene Fathers. By 1896, this American edition/revision was complete. Unable to close down the pirate, T. & T. Clark were obliged to make what terms they could.
In 1897, a volume 9, which contained new translations, was published by T. & T. Clark as an additional volume, to complete the original ANCL. Apart from volume 9, the contents entirely derived from the ANCL, but in a more chronological order. Coxe added his own introductions and notes, which were criticized by academic authorities and Roman Catholic reviewers. [3]
T. & T. Clark then associated with the Christian Literature Company and with other American publishers for the publication of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers .
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Eusebius of Caesarea, also known as Eusebius Pamphilus, was a Greek Syro-Palestinian historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the biblical canon and is regarded as one of the most learned Christians during late antiquity. He wrote Demonstrations of the Gospel, Preparations for the Gospel and On Discrepancies between the Gospels, studies of the biblical text. As "Father of Church History", he produced the Ecclesiastical History, On the Life of Pamphilus, the Chronicle and On the Martyrs. He also produced a biographical work on Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, who was Augustus between AD 306 and AD 337.
Origen of Alexandria, also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Alexandria. He was a prolific writer who wrote roughly 2,000 treatises in multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, homiletics, and spirituality. He was one of the most influential and controversial figures in early Christian theology, apologetics, and asceticism. He has been described as "the greatest genius the early church ever produced".
In Christian theology, Sabellianism is the belief that there is only one Person in the Godhead. For example, Hanson defines Sabellianism as the "refusal to acknowledge the distinct existence of the Persons." and "Eustathius was condemned for Sabellianism. His insistence that there is only one distinct reality (hypostasis) in the Godhead, and his confusion about distinguishing Father, Son and Holy Spirit laid him open to such a charge." Condemned as heresy, Sabellianism has been rejected by the majority of Christian churches.
Tertullian was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity", as well as "the founder of Western theology".
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, usually known as the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF), is a set of books containing translations of early Christian writings into English. It was published between 1886 and 1900.
Clement of Rome, also known as Pope Clement I, was the bishop of Rome in the late first century AD. He is listed by Irenaeus and Tertullian as the bishop of Rome, holding office from 88 AD to his death in 99 AD. He is considered to be the first Apostolic Father of the Church, one of the three chief ones together with Polycarp and Ignatius of Antioch.
Hippolytus of Rome was a Bishop of Rome and one of the most important second-third century Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communities include Rome, Palestine, Egypt, Anatolia and other regions of the Middle East. The best historians of literature in the ancient church, including Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome, openly confess they cannot name where Hippolytus the biblical commentator and theologian served in leadership. They had read his works but did not possess evidence of his community. Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his Bibliotheca as a disciple of Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus so styled himself. This assertion is doubtful. One older theory asserts he came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have headed a schismatic group as a rival to the bishop of Rome, thus becoming an antipope. In this view, he opposed the Roman Popes who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts. However, he was reconciled to the Church before he died as a martyr.
The Shepherd of Hermas, sometimes just called The Shepherd, is a Christian literary work of the late first half of the second century, considered a valuable book by many Christians, and considered canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus. The Shepherd was popular amongst Christians in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. It is found in the Codex Sinaiticus.
The Epistle of Barnabas is a Greek epistle written between AD 70 and 132. The complete text is preserved in the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, where it appears immediately after the New Testament and before the Shepherd of Hermas. For several centuries it was one of the "antilegomena" ("disputed") writings that some Christians looked on as sacred scripture, while others excluded them. Eusebius of Caesarea classified it with excluded texts. It is mentioned in a perhaps third-century list in the sixth-century Codex Claromontanus and in the later Stichometry of Nicephorus appended to the ninth-century Chronography of Nikephoros I of Constantinople. Some early Fathers of the Church ascribed it to the Barnabas who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, but it is now generally attributed to an otherwise unknown early Christian teacher, although some scholars do defend the traditional attribution. It is distinct from the Gospel of Barnabas.
The Apostolic Fathers, also known as the Ante-Nicene Fathers, were core Christian theologians among the Church Fathers who lived in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD who are believed to have personally known some of the Twelve Apostles or to have been significantly influenced by them. Their writings, though widely circulated in early Christianity, were not included in the canon of the New Testament. Many of the writings derive from the same time period and geographical location as other works of early Christian literature which came to be part of the New Testament.
Patristics or patrology is the study of the early Christian writers who are designated Church Fathers. The names derive from the combined forms of Latin pater and Greek πᾰτήρ (father). The period of the Church Fathers, commonly called the Patristic era, is generally considered to run from the end of New Testament times or end of the Apostolic Age to either AD 451 or to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.
The Apostolic Constitutions or Constitutions of the Holy Apostles is a Christian collection divided into eight books which is classified among the Church Orders, a genre of early Christian literature, that offered authoritative pseudo-apostolic prescriptions on moral conduct, liturgy and Church organization. The work can be dated from 375 to 380 AD. The provenance is usually regarded as Syria, probably Antioch. The author is unknown, although since James Ussher it has often considered to be the author of the letters of Pseudo-Ignatius, perhaps the 4th-century Eunomian bishop Julian of Cilicia.
Firmilian, Bishop of Caesarea Mazaca from c. 232, was a disciple of Origen. He had a contemporary reputation comparable to that of Dionysius of Alexandria or Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. He took an active part in the mid-3rd century controversies over rebaptising heretics and readmitting lapsed Christians after the persecutions of Decius and was excommunicated by Pope Stephen I for his position. A single letter of Firmilian to Cyprian survives among Cyprian's correspondence. Jerome omits Firmilian from De viris illustribus. "To his contemporaries his forty years of influential episcopate, his friendship with Origen and Dionysius, the appeal to him of Cyprian, and his censure of Stephanus might well make him seem the most conspicuous figure of his time" (Wace).
Arthur Cleveland Coxe was the second Episcopal bishop of Western New York. He used Cleveland as his given name and is often referred to as A. Cleveland Coxe.
T&T Clark is a British publishing firm which was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1821 and which now exists as an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.
Homoousion is a Christian theological term, most notably used in the Nicene Creed for describing Jesus as "same in being" or "same in essence" with God the Father. The same term was later also applied to the Holy Spirit in order to designate him as being "same in essence" with the Father and the Son. Those notions became cornerstones of theology in Nicene Christianity, and also represent one of the most important theological concepts within the Trinitarian doctrinal understanding of God.
Debate exists as to whether the earliest Church Fathers in Christian history believed in the doctrine of the Trinity – the Christian doctrine that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons sharing one homoousion (essence).
Christianity in the ante-Nicene period was the time in Christian history up to the First Council of Nicaea. This article covers the period following the Apostolic Age of the first century, c. 100 AD, to Nicaea in 325 AD.
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical period in which they worked became known as the Patristic Era and spans approximately from the late 1st to mid-8th centuries, flourishing in particular during the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity was in the process of establishing itself as the state church of the Roman Empire.
Ancient Christian Writers: the works of the Fathers in translation is a book series with English translations of works by early Christian writers. The translations are made from Latin and Greek. The series was founded by Johannes Quasten and Joseph C. Plumpe, the first volume being published in 1946.
The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 (ANF) and A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (NPNF) are well over a century old, but they continue to be reprinted by publishers and cited by writers in the field.
