[sword-devel] Early Church Fathers

[David Trotz (Integrity Online)]

> At 04:50 PM 4/19/2001 -0400, Bruce Ramsland wrote:
> >The Fathers of the Church are the Apostles.
> >They already have references in the Bible.
>
> I know how you feel about this. For years as the operator of a BBS that
had
> these kind of files online, I tried to refer to these kind of writings as
> simply early church writings and I avoided the word fathers. But,  Early
> Church Fathers, Apostolic Fathers, and such, have a long tradition of use
> and are the names of some of the printed collections. It is very awkward
to
> not use the term "fathers." I gave up trying to avoid it. Perhaps I should
> have just used a lower case "f". But, I was using "Fathers" as a shortened
> version of the titles of these collections. And generally I capitalize
book
> titles. I am sorry my use of "Fathers" offended you. It was not meant as
an
> endorsement of any doctrine for or against applying it to any group of
men.

Me too, sorry if I offended anyone here. I have always known these writings
as "The Early Church Fathers". I don't know what to really call them, I
didn't know it was such an issue. I hope someone can clarify a better name
for these books, that won't be controversial.
In Christ,
David