The Apostolic Age is, to some church historians, the period in early church history during which some of Christ's original apostles were still alive and helping to influence church doctrine, polity, and the like. This period ended at about the close of the first century C.E., perhaps with the death of John the Apostle.
To some conservative Protestant groups, this marked the end of the working of miracles by the Holy Spirit through human agency. This concept is based on the idea that only the apostles and those upon whom they had laid their hands could perform miracles at will in order to confirm the truth of the Christian faith. To this group, this is the event foretold by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 -- the passing away of these gifts was a necessity once the entire New Testament had been revealed. Once those upon whom the apostles had laid their hands had all died, this miraculous ability, according to this theory, also died out. Other equally conservative Protestants discount this theory largely or entirely, insisting that all of the miraculous gifts reported in the Acts of the Apostles and elsewhere in the New Testament are available today to those who truly believe.
To members of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and other faiths accepting the doctrine of apostolic succession the Apostolic Age is in a sense ongoing, since the apostle's legitimate successors are alive and working on earth today. Most of these groups agree that there exists in the world "one holy, apostolic, and catholic (universal) church," so in fact the Apostolic Age, according to this belief, will continue until the Second Coming of Christ.
They have not caught the Apostolic meaning, because they have not penetrated to the full religious experience which gave to the words, often words with long and varied history both in the Septuagint and in ordinary Greek usage, their specific meaning to each apostle and especially to Paul.
Firstly, it suggests the supernormal level to which the Apostolic consciousness was raised at a bound by the direct influence of the Founder of Christianity, and justifies the marking-off of the Apostolic writings as a Canon, or body of Christian classics of unique religious authority.
Secondly, it means that the actual development of ecclesiastical doctrine began, not from the Apostolic consciousness itself, but from a far lower level, that of the inadequate consciousness of the subapostolic Church, even when face to face with their written words.
It is the age of the Holy Spirit, the age of inspiration and legislation for all subsequent ages.
Paul was the chief actor in the second stage of the apostolicchurch, the apostle of the Gentiles, the founder of Christianity in Asia Minor and Greece, the emancipator of the new religion from the yoke of Judaism, the herald of evangelical freedom, the standard-bearer of reform and progress.
The chronology of the apostolicage is partly certain, at least within a few years, partly conjectural: certain as to the principal events from AD 30 to 70, conjectural as to intervening points and the last thirty years of the first century.
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