Abstract
The early Christian literature preserved in the Corpus Apologetarum provides some remarks about the place and the value of the writings of the Apologists. The second century authors have not had a good press in theological literature. It is customary to divide the history of the early Church before its stabilisation around AD 180 into three phases, the New Testament period the Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists. The usual estimate of this period is that the waters rapidly ran out, not in order to make the deserts blossom, but merely to run into sand. We need only place side by side the figures of Paul, 1 Clement, Justin Martyr or of John, Ignatius and Theophilus of Antioch, to sense the all too rapid beginning and continuing process of spiritual decline and rationalising superficiality.Keywords: early Christian apologetics; early Christian literature; early Church; New Testament period
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