Intro to Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius was one of the earliest post Apostolic authors in Church history. He lived between 35 A.D. and was martyred in about 107 A.D. contemporaneously with the apostle John. Ignatius was one of the second bishop of the Church at Antioch where he was eventually arrested and executed by Roman officials for being a Christian in about 106- 107 A.D.1 At this time, many Christians were being arrested for atheism which could be punished with imprisonment, torture, or death.

The Roman empire held to a pantheon of gods, like the Greeks before them. Christians were persecuted because of their belief in only one God which the empire viewed as a rebellion against the Roman government. The Christian belief of monotheism as opposed to the many, many gods of the polytheistic Roman empire, ironically, got Christians dubbed “atheists.”3 Christians went to their death in the first 4 centuries for their monotheism.

On the way to his execution, Ignatius wrote 6 letters to different churches throughout the Roman empire and one to the bishop Polycarp. The 6 church letters were to the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, and to Smyrnaeans.4 The letters of Ignatius have five consistent teachings: 1) He calls all Christians to obey and submit to the bishops and leadership of their local church. 2) He taught to avoid false teachers specifically the false teachings of the Gnostics. 3) The divinity of Christ. 4) That salvation came from God through Christ 5) Christ died and was resurrected in the flesh which is the promise of our resurrection.2

The divinity of Christ

In the late first through the fourth century the church was under constant attack by the Gnostics. The Gnostics believed that the material world was evil and hence God could never take it on. Ignatius takes the view of the Apostle John and Paul who taught explicitly the divinity of Christ and his taking on of flesh.5 Ignatius brilliantly articulates his claim on Christ’s divinity and his divine humility saying, “There is one only physician, of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true Life in death, Son of Mary and Son of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.”6 He captures the his relationship with both flesh and Spirit and then illustrates that Christ was both God and man through his parentage of the Holy Spirit through Mary.7

Ignatius continues by reminding the reader that Christ is our God by stating, “For this cause also they were persecuted, being inspired by His grace to the end that they which are disobedient might be fully persuaded that there is one God who manifested Himself through Jesus Christ His Son, who is His Word that proceeded from silence, who in all things was well-pleasing unto Him that sent Him.”8 The Koran explicitly expresses a denial of Christ’s divinity saying that he was a begotten being with an absolute beginning. The claim is that the Gospel has been corrupted at this point. Ignatius disagrees that the Christ being begotten on earth meant that he was fully and completely temporal. In his letter to the church at Magnesia he writes, “I advise you, be ye zealous to do all things in godly concord… with the deacons also who are most dear to me, having been entrusted with the diaconate of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the worlds and appeared at the end of time.”9

Ignatius does not only uphold the teaching of Christ’s divinity as he explicitly calls him “our God” 8 times. He teaches classic monotheism in his letter to the Magnesians. Ignatius claims the eternal nature of Christ in his letters to Polycarp and to the Ephesians. These facts put this contemporary of John in strong opposition against both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims who would call him either angel or prophet without recognizing his divinity.

Bibliography

  1. Pierce, A. H. (2016). Ignatius of Antioch. In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, … W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
  2. Lightfoot, J. B., & Harmer, J. R. (1891). The Apostolic Fathers (p. 135- 162). London: Macmillan and Co.
  3. Kapp, J. W. (1915). Atheism. In J. Orr, J. L. Nuelsen, E. Y. Mullins, & M. O. Evans (Eds.), The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Vol. 1–5, p. 318). Chicago: The Howard-Severance Company.
  4. Pierce, A. H. (2016). Ignatius of Antioch. In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, … W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
  5. John 1:14
  6. Lightfoot, J. B., & Harmer, J. R. (1891). The Apostolic Fathers (p. 139). London: Macmillan and Co.
  7. Lightfoot, J. B., & Harmer, J. R. (1891). The Apostolic Fathers (p. 141). London: Macmillan and Co.
  8. Lightfoot, J. B., & Harmer, J. R. (1891). The Apostolic Fathers (pp. 144–145). London: Macmillan and Co.
  9. Lightfoot, J. B., & Harmer, J. R. (1891). The Apostolic Fathers (p. 144). London: Macmillan and Co.