Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch — the city where the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). He was, according to tradition, the second bishop of the city, after Peter himself.

Around AD 108, during the reign of the emperor Trajan, Ignatius was arrested and sent to Rome to be executed. He was not a fugitive, and he was not surprised. He wrote seven letters on the way, and in them he expected to die.

The Seven Letters

The letters are addressed to the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, and to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. They are the earliest Christian documents outside the New Testament, and they are saturated with references to the New Testament writings and to the structure of the church.

The most remarkable is the Letter to the Romans, in which Ignatius begs the Roman church not to intervene on his behalf.

This is not the language of a man who doubts what he is dying for. It is the language of a man who is certain, and who does not want his friends to save him from a death he believes will bring him into the presence of Christ.

The Historical Question

The seven letters are accepted as authentic by the great majority of scholars. They are preserved in multiple manuscripts and were cited by Eusebius and Origen. Their theology is close to that of the New Testament and earlier than any other Christian writing outside it.

The details of Ignatius’ death are recorded by Eusebius (Church History 3.36) and in later martyrologies. The core fact — that he was arrested, sent to Rome, and executed there around 108 AD — is universally accepted.

What He Established

Ignatius is the bridge between the apostolic age and the second century. He was not an apostle, but he was a bishop in a church founded by the apostles. He had personal contact with the apostolic tradition, and his letters show how the church understood itself immediately after the New Testament period.

He died for the same claim the apostles had died for. He asked the Roman church to let him die. And when the sentence was carried out, the church at Antioch preserved the memory of his witness as a model for the generations that followed.