The Apostolic Fathers, Pre-Nicene Fathers, and Post-Nicene Fathers are the three main divisions of the early Church Fathers. The church fathers of the apostolic age, like Clement of Rome, were the apostles’ contemporaries and presumably received their instruction from them, carrying on their own customs and teachings. Clement succeeds Linus as the Bishop of Rome, who is recorded in 2 Timothy 4:21. As a result, Clement of Rome and Linus are both regarded as the founding fathers of the apostles. Yet, whereas many of Clement of Rome’s writings have survived, the works of Linus do not appear to have done so. The Apostolic Fathers had almost vanished by the start of the second century, with the exception of a few who were undoubtedly followers of John, such Polycarp. The apostle John is said to have passed away in Ephesus about the year 98.
The fathers who came before the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 and before the Apostolic Fathers are known as the Pre-Nicaean Fathers. Pre-Nicaean godfathers included people like Irenaeus, Ignatius, and Justin the Martyr.
The Fathers after Nicaea are the Fathers following the Nicaean Council in 325 AD. These men included Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who is frequently referred to as the “Father of the [Roman Catholic] Church” due to the importance of his work on Church doctrine, Chrysostom, also known as “The Mouth of Gold,” and Eusebius, who penned a history of the Church from the time of the birth of Jesus to AD 324, the year before the Council of Nicaea. Because he composed his history after the Council of Nicaea, he is regarded as belonging to the post-Nicaea era. Jerome, who authored the Latin Vulgate translation of the Greek New Testament, and Ambrose, who played a significant role in Augustine’s conversion to Christianity, were two other post-Nicene Fathers.
So what were the beliefs of the early church fathers? The Gospel’s proclamation as made by the apostles themselves was of great importance to the Apostolic Fathers. The message they had acquired from the apostles was sufficient for them, so they had no interest in developing theological doctrines. The Apostolic Fathers sought out and disproved every false doctrine that surfaced in the early church with the same passion as the apostles. The Apostolic Fathers sought to uphold the orthodoxy of the message by being faithful to the Gospel that the Apostles had taught them.
The pre-Nicaean fathers made an effort to uphold the faith, but they also had another issue on their minds. Some apocrypha currently assert that their writings are just as important as the canonical works of Paul, Peter, and Luke. These documents were fabricated for a clear cause. The church will become corrupt if phony documents are accepted by the body of Christ. As a result, prior to Nicaea, the church fathers devoted a lot of time to defending the Christian religion against heresies, which helped to establish the canonical church teachings.
The post-Nicene fathers, whose task it was to defend the Gospel from all forms of heresy, become less and less concerned in disseminating the Gospel in its truest and purest forms and more and more interested in strategies for doing so. Therefore they began to gradually depart from the orthodoxy that was the defining characteristic of the Apostolic Fathers. It is the age of theologians and never-ending debates about unimportant details.