Church Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity.
The historical period in which they worked became known as the Patristic Era and spans approximately from the late 1st to mid-8th centuries,[a] flourishing in particular during the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity was in the process of establishing itself as the state church of the Roman Empire.
In traditional dogmatic theology, authors considered Church Fathers are treated as authoritative, and a somewhat restrictive definition is used.
The academic field of patristics, the study of the Church Fathers, has extended the scope of the term, and there is no definitive list.[1][2]
While some such as Ephrem the Syrian and John of Damascus were fully embraced, others such as Origen and Tertullian, while having made major contributions to the development of later Christian theology, had certain elements of their teaching later condemned.