Introduction to the Church Fathers: Ignatius of Antioch

This is another instalment in our series: Introduction to the Church Fathers. Here we discuss St Ignatius of Antioch, one of the earliest known figures in the Church, and why he is one of the most important.

The Life of Ignatius of Antioch

The truth is, we know almost nothing about the life of Ignatius of Antioch (AD 50-98/117). What we do know we glean from his epistles, the Church historian Eusebius, and references to him in the writings of St John Chrysostom, St Jerome, and the fifth century Antiochan theologian Theodoret of Cyrrhus. According to Chrysostom and Theodoret, Ignatius received his episcopal consecration at the hands of the apostles themselves. When he did become bishop of Antioch, it seems as though he was the third successor of Peter after Evodius.

What we also know, from a document called The Martyrdom of Ignatius (a document that appears to be genuine), is that during the reign of Emperor Trajan (AD 98-117), a decree was put forth that everybody should participate in the religious rites of Rome: the sacrifices to pagan gods. Ignatius led his people in ignoring this decree, and as a consequence was arrested and brought before the emperor himself who was in Antioch at the time. Ignatius was condemned to death and began his journey to Rome where he was to be martyred. Along the journey, he wrote (or dictated) seven letters to the Christian communities at Ephesus, Magnesia, Philadelphia, Rome, Smyrna, Tralles, and to someone he knew personally, Polycarp of Smyrna who was a disciple of the Apostle John.

Much controversy has surrounded these letters. They were clearly known by the fourth century historian Eusebius of Caesarea and St Jerome, but for a long time they disappeared. When manuscripts were discovered, debate raged as to their authenticity. The history itself is complex since the manuscripts included the seven genuine letters, additional and questionable letters, and some translations that did not faithfully represent the writings of the author. During the Protestant Reformation, men such as John Calvin believed all of them to be forgeries. If they were genuine, then it would have been quite damning for his opinions regarding church governance.

Today, scholars (both Protestant and Catholic) tend to acknowledge that the seven letters of Ignatius are indeed genuine. And what they reveal to us of the early Church is fascinating.

Church Hierarchy

In Ignatius of Antioch, one of the things we encounter in seminal form is the strange and curious understanding of Church hierarchy. Although today we tend to take pride in a sense of anti-authoritarianism, seeing it as a badge of personal freedom and critical thought, what Ignatius offers is in some ways deeply uncomfortable but also worthy of long reflection. His Epistle to the Smyrnaeans has some of the strongest language on this topic:

Abjure all factions, for they are the beginning of evils. Follow your bishop, every one of you, as obediently as Jesus Christ followed the Father. Obey your clergy too, as you would the Apostles; give your deacons the same reverence that you would to a command from God … You have only to acknowledge God and the bishop, and all is well; for a man who honours his bishop is himself honoured by God, but to go behind the bishop’s back is to be a servant of the devil (§8-9).

What is the basis of such strong language regarding reverence for ecclesial office? Well, one of the many heresies that the early Church – and Ignatius himself – had to fight off was that of Gnosticism. The Gnostics were, generally speaking, elitist sects that believed salvation could be achieved through the attainment of some secret and mysterious “knowledge” (gnosis in Greek). It was only the “initiated” and the “perfected” who could achieve this. As Irenaeus of Lyon would argue at the end of the second century, this is not the way of the Gospel. It was not the way of the apostles. The apostles handed on to their successors not only the Gospel but also jurisdiction over their respective communities in order to preserve the Gospel.

Precisely because the Gospel was not simply for the initiated but for everybody, what the apostles and their successors represented was the gathering together of this everybody in a visible, social, and bodily communion of persons. They were to be a unified, visible witness to the love of Christ. In a time when many strange and spurious ideas were being spread about Jesus and the content of the Gospel, the tell-tale sign that you were adhering to the true Gospel was that you were gathered around the apostles’ successors: the bishops. To bring your life to bear around that visible communion was to bring your life to bear around Christ.

In his Epistle to the Philadelphians, Ignatius writes:

Every man who belongs to God and Jesus Christ stands by his bishop. As for the rest, if they repent and come back into the unity of the church, they too shall belong to God, and so bring their lives into conformity with Jesus Christ (§3).

There was nothing Gnostic about church affiliation in Ignatius. The church had a distinct and visible presence in the world: gathering around the apostles and their successors, the bishops.

The Eucharist and Church Unity

Related to this understanding of ecclesial hierarchy is Ignatius’ understanding of the Eucharist. To celebrate the Eucharist was to celebrate something in union with the bishop and the church as a whole. Ignatius continues:

Make certain, therefore, that you all observe one common Eucharist; for there is but one Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and but one cup of union with His blood, and one single altar of sacrifice – even as also there is but one bishop, with his clergy and my own fellow-servitors the deacons (Epistle to the Philadelphians, §4).

Again, we see in seminal form a relationship between the Eucharist and the Church. The Church was to be a united whole because there was only one Eucharist, which was Christ. In his Epistle to the Romans, Ignatius criticises those who ‘absent themselves from the Eucharist and the public prayers because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the self-same body of our Saviour Jesus Christ’ (§7). Because the Eucharist was not simply symbolic but involved the real presence of Christ, it was all the more important to be a Church worthy of receiving him by being unified.

In fact, the celebration of the Eucharist itself could only be led by someone who was authorised to do so.

The sole Eucharist you should consider valid is one that is celebrated by the bishop himself, or by some person authorized by him (§8).

In the same way that the succession of the Apostles was fundamental to the identity of the Church in distinguishing truth from error, so it was with the celebration of the Eucharist: those successors, and those they delegated the authority to, were entrusted with the Eucharistic feast and no one else. This is a very early understanding of the sacrament of Holy Orders.

The Desire for Martyrdom

Of all his letters, the most personal is by far the Epistle to the Romans. In this letter, Ignatius seems less concerned about doctrine and church unity and the bishops than he is with his own martyrdom. It is in this letter that we glimpse briefly into the mind of someone who is about to face death in ways he cannot even imagine. Yet, in that mind is not what we might expect. The oddity of Ignatius is that he did not simply accept his fate at the hands of the emperor; he eagerly desired it. Several times in the epistle, Ignatius urges the Roman Christians to do nothing that gets in the way of his being martyred. He saw martyrdom as a sacrifice – in the religious sense of the word. It was an offering, a libation, a pouring out of his whole self to God. There was nothing masochistic in this desire to become a sacrificial offering; at the heart of his desire was to be in the presence of Jesus. Nothing mattered except that. To the community he wrote:

Fire, cross, beast-fighting, hacking and quartering, splintering of bone and mangling of limb, even the pulverizing of my entire body – let every horrid and diabolical torment come upon me, provided only that I can win my way to Jesus Christ! All the ends of the earth, all the kingdoms of the world would be of no profit to me; so far as I am concerned, to die in Jesus Christ is better than to be monarch of earth’s widest bounds. He who died for us is all that I seek; He who rose again for us is my whole desire (§5-6).

Of all his writings, it is this desire for martyrdom – to die in Christ – that shines like a radiant star against the backdrop of a world so brutally opposed to the Gospel of Christ. And it is, frankly, a desire that sits uncomfortably amidst all modern forms of ‘reasonable religion’.

The Importance of Ignatius

Ignatius of Antioch is, without a doubt, one of the most important sources for understanding the early Church. Not only do we glimpse the tenacity and commitment to the faith of our forebears but also their beliefs regarding apostolic succession and the Eucharist. The writings of Ignatius offer almost irrefutable evidence that these beliefs have been central to the Church’s self-understanding since the very beginning.