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| Ignatius of Antioch being eaten by beasts |
It was late in the fall when the emperor Trajan and his army
arrived in Antioch. It was time to
resupply and rest for in two days they would be continuing their march east to
battle the Parthians (ancient Persia) who had been encroaching upon the Roman frontiers. Antioch Syria (now part of present-day
Turkey) had a very large Christian community which had once been taught by both
the Apostles Peter and Paul and was actually the place where people were first
called “Christians” (Acts 11:19). The
Church of Antioch was born out of Roman persecution and had suffered from it
sporadically for many years. Ignatius of
Antioch was the beloved bishop of the city and gave loving oversight to the
church much like a father would his children.
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| Antioch is in present-day Turkey |
Antioch was a long ways from Rome and Trajan saw that this
distance had provided the freedom for the Christian “disorder” as he called it,
to take root there like an aggressive weed.
The citizens of Antioch were among those he and his army had come and
would possibly give up their lives to defend but to his thinking they were
hardly loyal to him. Like other Roman
emperors before and after, Trajan decided to make a stand against this
movement. Through the torture of several
citizens, he learned who the Christians were and where they could be found and
many in the Christian community were rounded up to be publicly “reconverted” to
the gods of Rome (which among them was often the emperor himself) or be
executed for treason.
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| Ancient "enhanced interrogation" |
As a crowd assembled in the amphitheater to see what was
going on, an elderly gentleman made his way through the streets to the
gathering. He was on a mission. Trajan was seated on his
portable throne to look upon the proceedings.
Church members were going to be brought forward and be asked if Caesar
was lord. If they said yes, they would
be asked to fully apostasize by offering incense to the genius of the emperor. If they denied Caesar and continued to only
acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, they would be tortured and then put to death
before Trajan left town. But something
entirely different happened that day.
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| A computer generated model of the ancient city |
That same elderly gentleman seen on the streets was
well-known to everyone in Antioch as bishop Ignatius. Quite fearlessly Ignatius entered the theatre
and walked directly towards Trajan.
Trajan’s guard tried to stop the meeting, but Trajan recognized that
Ignatius must be a key person in town and wanted to hear what he had to say and
so the two men met face to face.
“You have no call to harass these people!” said
Ignatius. “I am their spiritual leader
and it is I who have taught them to give all their allegiance to the Lord
Jesus. The blame for this should fall
upon me, and me alone.”
“And who are you old man?” replied Trajan. “My given name is Ignatius, but my true name is Theophorus (meaning
“God-bearer”) because as the bishop of this town, I bear the truth of God
and the sacred meal of our religion which is the body and blood of our Lord and
God Jesus of Nazareth.”
Most all of this was incomprehensible to Trajan, but as a
skilled politician, senator, and military man, he had long ago learned to
identify the strategic moment in most situations and this was certainly one of
them. Ignatius was the head of this
subversive movement in Antioch and once he was disposed of, this whole
Christian craze will likely die for lack of leadership or splinter apart with
in-fighting about who will be his successor.
And with that thought in mind, Trajan had Ignatius the
bishop of Antioch arrested and placed in chains and sent to Rome with a
detachment of ten soldiers. Normally the
death sentence would have been executed then and there, but as I mentioned
before, Trajan was a strategic thinker.
The people of Rome loved watching execution by wild animals as part of
the entertainment program at the Circus Maximus. Why not let them watch a great religious
leader be torn apart in front of them at the very least, or, in a best case
scenario, watch him cower in fear at the sight of the lions and renounce his
faith in Christ and find his new found allegiance to Caesar in the capitol of
the Empire?
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| Trajan a man skilled in war and politics |
Normally the trans-shipment of a prisoner was done by sea,
but with winter closing in the sea route was not going to work. And so, even as Trajan’s army marched east
towards Persia, Ignatius of Antioch, his Roman guard detail, and a few friends
who were allowed to attend to him began the march west moving first though
Anatolia (Asia Minor) and then joining the via Egnatia in Macedonia which would
take them overland to Rome. All along
the way to Rome, in something providentially akin to the book of Acts, local
Christians come to meet Ignatius, most likely feeding him and his traveling
companions, and then staying to hear a brief homily (short sermon).
Ignatius also takes time to dictate letters to Christian communities and
friends such as bishop Polycarp of Smyrna along the way.
These letters are the primary source of information we have about
Ignatius as a person but also what he believed.
Because he is a person who lived during the apostolic age and just into
the sub-apostolic age, his writings give us a picture of the pattern of life
and theology of the earliest church.
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| Possible routes that could have been taken |
The question I ask when I read these letters is why these
receiving congregations thought these letters valuable enough to collect them
long after the fact (which they did) and why Ignatius, in the absence of there
existing anything remotely akin to a monarchial bishop in the day, felt the
freedom to exhort these congregations who had their own bishop?
If there is any truth to some of the later accounts that
come to us through the historian Eusebius and other church fathers, Ignatius,
though not an apostle, was an eyewitness of Jesus himself but also knew
personally the Apostles Peter and Paul, and was later taught, along with
Polycarp, by the Apostle John in Ephesus.
The Martyrium of Ignatius says
that when Jesus took a child into his arms and said let the children come to me
(Mk. 9:36) the actual child he held was Ignatius at possible 4 years of age. This is very possible if Ignatius lived to be
in his 80s. The bulk of his letters are
to congregations in Asia Minor with the exception of the final one directed to
the Church of Rome. It could be that
Ignatius was simply well-known in that part of the world because he was one of
the last living eyewitnesses at the time or just as plausible, he actually knew
many of the congregational leaders because of his strong connection to Ephesus
and the Apostle John. Whatever the
reasons, the letters of Ignatius were valuable at the time they were written
and are of greater importance today as the only testimony from an era in
Christian history we know so little about.
So what do we learn from the epistles of Ignatius? In all of them there are three principle
concerns: Christian unity, remaining steadfast in sound doctrine, and finally
that Ignatius himself would bravely face his martyrdom. Ignatius considered being killed by the
Romans for his testimony of Christ to be the ultimate form of discipleship,
laying down his life for his church, even as Christ did at the cross.
Christian unity is a theme that must be understood in the
context of the schismatic churches and teaching that were in blossom during
this time. Ignatius is the first
Christian to actually use the term “catholic church” in his writing. For him, this church went beyond local
congregation to a world wide body of true Christians walking faithfully with
the Lord and in unity with one another.
The basis for that unity was walking in fellowship and concord with your
local bishop. The bishop was the spiritual
father of the area who was in charge of all instruction and celebration of the
Eucharist. Churches had a divinely
charged threefold ministry of bishop, elders, and deacons and these correspond
to the Father, Son, and the Apostles.
Two of the controversies that Ignatius dealt with in his day
was those who believed Jesus was God but didn’t have a true human body but
rather only appeared to have one as a concession to our weakness as
humans. The other was the age-old issue
of whether Christians should keep the Sabbath day or not. To these issues we find Ignatius quite direct
and unequivocal. He directly states that
Jesus is God and that Jesus is God incarnate.
I would guess that even as a young lad, Ignatius would have noticed or
not if Jesus didn’t have a real physical body when he held him. This is important as Ignatius shows us the
earliest theology is very much that of the later ecumenical councils. To the Sabbath, Ignatius points out that
Christians have always worshipped on Sunday because this is the day of the resurrection
of Christ and it is the new day of God’s choosing for worship. Once again, something Christians believed
long before the day of Constantine and his legislation of Sunday as a day of
rest for all.
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| Christ and Apostles Mosaic in Antioch |
Most important is the theme of martyrdom as a sacrifice and
offering in the letters. It has a
benefit for the faith of the entire church.
The mood of his correspondence on this topic is exaltation bordering on mania. Martyrdom is following Christ in his passion. This
was the highest form of discipleship.
Ignatius sets his face like flint to Rome in this matter. This may have been partly out of an internal fear that he
apostasize to save his own life or that a rumor get started that he did.
Ignatius writes “Near the sword is near to God.” And elsewhere
“I am the wheat of Christ, and am ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I
may be found the pure bread of God.” This
echoes the teaching of Jesus about God’s judgment being a separation of the
wheat and the chaff (Mt. 3:12). As he
sends a letter forward to the Christians in Rome he writes: do not show
inopportune kindness to me but let me meet my doom as a witness and
martyr. He asks several times in the
letter for their non-intervention. This
request to me is quite intriguing. Does
it suggest that they did have some power to save him? Were there powerful people in the Roman
church or did they have people on the inside of the military who could arrange
for a timely escape?
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| Cave church of St. Peter in Antioch today |
Traditionally it is believed that Ignatius was fed to the
lions during the Saturnalia festival in December at the Circus Maximus. Although grueling and violent, the lions were
apparently quick and thorough leaving only a few bones behind at the end of
their meal. Schaff writes, “His faithful
friends who accompanied him to Rome dreamed that night that they saw him standing
next to Christ covered in sweat as if he had just come from great labor.” This dream gave them the joyful confidence their
bishop was with the Lord and they
carried his remains (or should I say leftovers) home for burial in Antioch.
Recently Pope Benedict XVI wrote that Ignatius is a ‘doctor
of unity’ because he teaches the church that unity comes by common faith in
Christ but also our devoted efforts to one another because we are part of a
common body. To this I add the summation
of Michael Holmes: “Just as we become
aware of a meteor only when, after traveling silently through space for untold
millions of miles, it blazes briefly through the atmosphere before dying in a
shower of fire, so it is with Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria.” As we recall the brave witness of this early Christian bishop, truly a brilliant light is still seen by all
in the skies of winter.
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| Circus Maximus in Rome today where Ignatius was killed |
Sources
Ferguson, Everett. Church History vol. 1 : From Christ to the
Pre-Reformation. (Grand Rapids :
Zondervan, 2013).
Frend, W. H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early
Church. (Cambridge : James Clarke
and Co. Ltd., 2008)
Ignatius. Letter to
the Ephesians, Letter to the Romans. The Early Christian Fathers. Bettenson, ed. (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1984)
“Ignatius of Antioch”
Cyclopedia of Biblical,
Theological, and Ecclesiological Literature.
McClintock and Strong eds.
(Grand Rapids : Baker, 1981)
“Ignatius of Antioch”
Encyclopedia of Ancient
Christianity. Angelo di Berardino
ed. (Downers Grove : Intervarsity, 2008)
Jefford, Clayton N. The Apostolic Fathers : An Essential
Guide. (Nashville : Abingdon Press,
2005)
Pope Benedict XVI. The Fathers.
(Huntington : Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 2008)
Saint of the Day:
Lives, Lessons, and Feasts. Foley
and McCloskey O.F.M. eds., rev.
(Cincinnati : St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2001)
Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church Vol. 2. (Grand Rapids : Eerdmans, 1994)
The Apostolic Fathers
in English. Michael W. Holmes,
translator and ed. ( Grand Rapids :
Baker Academic, 2006)
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