of grace with external morality strictures. They wanted to
keep a legalistic law-based morality; the very thing Jesus
had come to put an end to by His grace! Paul would have
none of it. He indicated that what they were teaching was
"another gospel" which was "not gospel at all." It was
damnable! (Gal.1:6-10).
Within the second and third centuries A.D. we look
back to the writings of the early Church fathers, also called
the Apostolic Fathers, the earliest extant writings of
Christians after the New Testament writings. We search
their writings to determine what perspective they had of the
gospel of grace, and the freedom of the Christian "in
Christ." Did they retain Paul's understanding of the
dynamic of Christ's life functioning in the Christian?
Regrettably, they did not! Their primary concern seems to
have been moralistic conformity, emphasizing external
conduct rather than the internal spiritual dynamic of God's
grace. T.F. Torrance reports,
"What occupied the foreground of their (Apostolic fathers) thought
was how they were going to walk in the way of this life, and
conform to its high standards. So concerned were they about right
and wrong behaviour that everywhere they were driven into
legalism and formalism. The Christian ethic was codified, and the
charismatic life under the constraining love of Christ reduced to
rules and precepts. Law and obedience, reward and punishment,
these were the themes of their preaching. The centre of gravity was