As I was checking out a stack of church history books, the librarian mentioned her father was a "church history buff." Brings to mind a very buff man who enjoys reading very old books, but it was interesting to find out I was checking out one of her father's favorite books. Here's a lengthy quotation from The Apostolic Fathers, in English by Michael Holmes. I found it articulated and brought a framework for some of the similarities and differences of the fathers.
"Taken on their own terms and in the context of their own times, these writers prove to be an engaging cast of characters. They are real people struggling to deal with various opportunities, problems, and crises as best as they can. There is, as Lightfoot observes, the 'gentleness and serenity of Clement, whose whole spirit is absorbed in contemplating the harmonies of nature and of grace'; the 'fiery zeal of Ignatius,' in whom the passionate desire for martyrdom overwhelms all other concerns; the enduring faithfulness of Polycarp, whose entire eighty-six-year life 'is spent in maintaining the faith once delivered to the saints'; the 'moral earnestness and simple fervour' of The Shepherd of Hermas and The Didache; and the 'intensity of conviction' of The Epistle to Diognetus, which 'contrasts the helpless isolation and the universal sovereignty of the Christian.'"
"Even in The Epistle to Barnabas, which Lightfoot thought was 'overlaid by a rigid and extravagant' allegorical interpretation of scripture, one 'cannot fail to reconise a very genuine underlying faith'..."
"In short, for all their differences and disagreements, they share a deep and genuine devotion to Jesus."
Imagine taking all those significant descriptions of character and combining them. Imagine knowing a believer who has enduring faithfulness, moral earnestness, intensity of conviction, with a fiery zeal for martyrdom if necessary to spread the gospel...
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