The church Fathers of the first two centuries knew
nothing of an end of revelation and wrote only little on its completion.
They were more interested in highlighting the fact that Christ had promised he
would come again, and they awaited Creation’s full participation in the
fullness of God revealed in Christ.
The Fathers made no
sharp distinction between themselves and the apostles, and they did not clearly
separate between apostolic and postapostolic heritage. Hence, in its origin,
the transition from the normative constitution of the apostolic heritage to its
tradition was subtle.
This does not mean
that they showed no interest in the criteria of true revelation. Clement of
Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, pseudo-Barnabas, and Polycarp of Smyrna saw a
difference between themselves and the apostles. These authors regarded the
apostles as the immediate and therefore particularly authoritative witnesses of
Christ and of the Gospel, and this heritage had to be kept pure. At this moment
in history, the Deposit of Faith had not yet received its authoritative
expression in Holy Scripture, as the Christian canon was only formed in the
middle of the second century; only after the Council of Nicaea in 325 did
theologians begin using the concept ‘‘canon.’’ Even so, the aforementioned
patristic authors heralded an authoritative and universally valid truth,
inherited from the apostles, which, in its substance, equals the fullness of
God revealed in Christ although received normatively in the testimony of the
apostles. Hence there was from the beginning a close relationship between the
revelation in Christ and its authoritative apostolic testimony. (Niels
Christian Hvidt, Christian Prophecy: The Post-Biblical Tradition [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007], 188-89, italics in original)
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