The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Apostolic Age
Ignatius of Antioch
died c. 108Early Church
Wrote seven letters to churches while chained between soldiers on the road to Rome, where the lions were waiting.
Summary
- Lived died c. 108.
- Stood in The Apostolic Age (to AD 100).
- Hangs on The Fathers and The Martyrs.
- Tradition: Early Church.
The life
Ignatius was bishop of Antioch in Syria, the city where believers were first called Christians. He called himself Theophorus"God-bearer." He was condemned to die in the arena at Rome, probably during the reign of Trajan, around AD 108.
The Romans did not kill him at home. They chained him to a squad of ten soldiers"ten leopards" he called them, who only got worse when treated kindly, and marched him across Asia Minor toward the capital. Churches sent delegations to meet him along the road. At Smyrna, Polycarp received him. And as he went, Ignatius wrote.
Seven letters survive: to the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, and to Polycarp personally. Four were written from Smyrna, three from Troas. They are the letters of a man with weeks to live and no time for padding.
He hammers three things. First, that Jesus Christ was really born, really ate and drank, really was nailed under Pontius Pilate, and really rose, against teachers who said the Son of God only seemed to have a body. If his suffering was only an appearance, Ignatius asks, then why am I in chains?
Second, that the church must hold together around its bishop, its elders, and its deacons rather than splinter into private meetings. His letters give the earliest clear picture of a single bishop leading a city church, and they are the first place in Christian writing where the phrase "the catholic church" appears, meaning the whole church everywhere.
Third, that he wanted to die well. The letter to Rome is the hardest to read. He begs the Roman Christians not to use their influence to get him spared: "I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ." He was afraid the church's kindness would rob him of the one thing he had left to give.
For centuries his letters circulated in a padded, expanded form, and skeptics in the nineteenth century argued the whole collection was a forgery. J. B. Lightfoot's study of the manuscripts settled it: behind the long version lies a shorter, earlier set of seven letters, and that set is genuine. What we read is what he wrote.
The record of what happened at Rome is thin. Early tradition says he was thrown to the beasts in the amphitheatre and that Christians gathered what the animals left. Eusebius places his death under Trajan; some scholars push the date as late as the 130s. No eyewitness account of the arena survives.
What survives is the voice. A man in irons, walking to his execution across half an empire, writing letters to strengthen churches he would never see again.
Sources: The seven letters of Ignatius, in J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers; Eusebius, Church History III.36; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2; the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)"St. Ignatius of Antioch."
What was happening while he lived12 moments · to AD 100
- c. AD 34Saul of Tarsus meets Jesus on the Damascus roadCarrying arrest warrants for Christians in Damascus, Saul is struck to the ground by a light and a voice. A frightened local believer named Ananias is sent to lay hands on him. Saul is baptized, spends time in Arabia and back home in Tarsus, and does not become the church's most famous missionary for another decade (Acts 9; Galatians 1).
- c. AD 38–45The door opens to the nations, and Antioch names the movementPeter is sent to the household of Cornelius, a Roman officer in Caesarea, and watches the Spirit fall on uncircumcised Gentiles exactly as at Pentecost (Acts 10). In Antioch, the third-largest city of the empire, up the Syrian coast, believers begin preaching to Greeks as well as Jews, and the crowd there coins the nickname "Christians" (Acts 11:26).
- c. AD 46–48The first missionary journeyThe Antioch church sends out Barnabas and Saul, with young John Mark along. They cross Cyprus, then push inland to Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. At Lystra Paul is stoned and left for dead; he gets up and keeps going (Acts 13–14).
- c. AD 49The Jerusalem CouncilThe leaders meet to settle the question that could have broken the church in two: must a Gentile become a Jew in order to follow the Jewish Messiah? Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and James the brother of Jesus all speak, and the answer is no (Acts 15). Somewhere near these years the Roman writer Suetonius records that Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome, which is how Paul later meets the exiled couple Priscilla and Aquila in Corinth (Acts 18:2). Suetonius gives no date; the year AD 49 comes from the much later historian Orosius, and some scholars put the expulsion in AD 41 instead.
- AD 51–52Paul before Gallio in CorinthPaul spends about eighteen months in Corinth and is hauled before the proconsul Gallio, who throws the case out (Acts 18:12–17). A broken inscription found at Delphi fixes Gallio's year in office, and that stone is the firmest peg in the whole New Testament calendar, nearly every other date in this era is measured back and forth from it.
- c. AD 52–55Three years in EphesusPaul teaches daily in a rented lecture hall belonging to a man named Tyrannus, and the message spreads out along the roads of the province. It spreads far enough to hurt the trade in silver shrines of Artemis, and a silversmith named Demetrius starts a riot in the great theater (Acts 19).
- c. AD 57–62Arrest in Jerusalem, then Rome in chainsPaul is seized in the temple courts, held two years at Caesarea, appeals to Caesar as a Roman citizen, is shipwrecked off Malta, and finally reaches Rome. Acts ends with him under house arrest, chained to a soldier, still preaching to everyone who comes to the door (Acts 21–28).
- AD 62James, the brother of Jesus, is killed in JerusalemThe Jewish historian Josephus reports that the high priest Ananus used a gap between Roman governors to convene a court and have James stoned, and that fair-minded citizens in the city objected. Josephus calls him "the brother of Jesus who was called Christ," and that is an outside witness to a leader the New Testament also names (*Antiquities* 20.200).
- AD 64Fire burns Rome and Nero blames the ChristiansThe Roman historian Tacitus says Nero pinned the fire on a group "hated for their abominations," and describes them being torn by dogs, crucified, and burned as torches (*Annals* 15.44). Tradition, early and widely held, but tradition, puts the deaths of both Peter and Paul in Rome during these years, Peter crucified and Paul beheaded.
- AD 66–70Revolt, siege, and the destruction of the templeJudea rises against Rome; four years later the legions under Titus break into Jerusalem and the temple burns. Eusebius passes on a tradition that the believers there had already fled the city for Pella across the Jordan. The sacrificial system stopped that summer and has never restarted.
- c. AD 95–96A letter from Rome, and a vision from PatmosThe church at Rome writes to the church at Corinth to settle a leadership quarrel, the letter we call 1 Clement, one of the two oldest Christian writings we have outside the New Testament. The other is the Didache, whose date is disputed and may be earlier still. In the same decade, by the tradition Irenaeus reports, John is exiled to the small island of Patmos and receives the Revelation.
- c. AD 100The last apostle dies at EphesusIrenaeus, who as a boy had heard Polycarp, and Polycarp had heard John, says the apostle lived at Ephesus into the reign of Trajan, which began in AD 98. With John's death the generation that had seen and touched the risen Jesus is gone, and everything now depends on what they wrote and whom they taught.
In their own words
“None of these things is hid from you, if ye perfectly possess that faith and love towards Christ Jesus which are the beginning and the end of life. For the beginning is faith, and the end is love. Now these two, being inseparably connected together, are of God, while all other things which are requisite for a holy life follow after them. No man [truly] making a profession of faith sinneth; nor does he that possesses love hate any one.”
Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians · on 1 John 3:7
“Little children, let no one deceive you: The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as Christ is righteous.”
“Flee, therefore, the wicked devices and snares of the spirit which now worketh in the children of this world, lest at any time being overcome, ye grow weak in your love. But be ye all joined together with an undivided heart and a willing mind, "being of one accord and of one judgment," [Philippians 2:2] being always of the same opinion about the same things, both when you are at ease and in danger, both in sorrow and in joy.”
Epistle of Ignatius to the Philadelphians · on Philippians 2:2
“then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being united in spirit and purpose.”
“None of these things is hid from you, if ye perfectly possess that faith and love towards Christ Jesus which are the beginning and the end of life. For the beginning is faith, and the end is love. Now these two, being inseparably connected together, are of God, while all other things which are requisite for a holy life follow after them. No man [truly] making a profession of faith sinneth; nor does he that possesses love hate any one.”
Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians · on 1 Timothy 1:5
“The goal of our instruction is the love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and a sincere faith.”
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Ignatius of Antioch at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Hangs on The Fathers: The men who carried the faith out of the apostles' hands, and wrote down what they had received. Hangs on The Martyrs: The witnesses who paid with their lives, from the arena at Carthage to the present day, and the confessors who paid with everything short of their lives.
Standing beside himThe Apostolic Age · 4 on this stretch of wall
Wrote to the quarreling church at Corinth around AD 96, the oldest Christian letter we have outside the New Testament.
Taught by the apostle John himself; at eighty-six he told Rome he would not curse the King who had never wronged him, and they burned him.
Hunted down the men who had heard the apostles speak, and told us Mark wrote his Gospel from Peter's preaching.