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Ignatius of Antioch
The bishop who wrote seven letters on the road to martyrdom, and who first used the phrase ' the catholic church.'
Ignatius was the third bishop of Antioch in Syria, one of the oldest and most important Christian communities. He called himself Theophoros — “God-bearer” — a title that speaks both to his devotion and to his conviction that he carried Christ with him wherever he went.
Around AD 107, during the reign of Trajan, Ignatius was arrested and sent to Rome to be executed. He wrote seven letters on the journey, addressing churches in Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, Smyrna, and to Polycarp of Smyrna.
The Letters
The seven letters are passionate, urgent, and deeply concerned with unity and orthodoxy. Ignatius repeatedly warns against “Judaizing” and against docetism — the belief that Jesus only seemed to have a body. He emphasizes the reality of Jesus' flesh and blood, the importance of the Eucharist, and the authority of the bishop.
His letters are the earliest surviving Christian documents to use the phrase “the catholic church” (Smyrnaeans 8.2). They are also the earliest documents to clearly articulate a threefold ministry of bishop, presbyter, and deacon as the normative structure of the church.
Martyrdom
Ignatius' most famous words come from his letter to the Romans, where he expresses a desire for martyrdom that has puzzled and inspired readers for centuries: “I am God's wheat, and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread of Christ” (4.1).
He was thrown to wild animals in the Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome, traditionally on 20 December AD 107. His letters we're preserved by the churches he wrote to, and they circulated widely in the early church.
“ I am God's wheat, and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread of Christ.”
Ignatius, Romans 4:1“ Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.”
Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 8:2Sources
- Ignatius, Letters, trans. Michael W. Holmes, in The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed. (Baker Academic, 2007).
- Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.36.
- William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch (Fortress, 1985).
- Christine Trevett, A Study of Ignatius of Antioch in Syria and Asia (Edwin Mellen, 1992).