Valerius Bito, accompanied by Fortunatus, send them back
EpIstLE TO THE CoRINTHIANS
64. And now may the all-seeing God and Master of spirits and Lord of all flesh,' who chose the Lord Jesus
Christ and us through Him to be a people set apart for Himself, grant to every soul that invokes His transcendent and holy name—faith, fear, peace, patient endurance and long-suffering, self-control, holiness, and sobriety, so that they may be well-pleasing** to His Majesty through our
High Priest and Ruler, Jesus Christ, through whom be to Him glory and greatness, power and honor, both now and forever and evermore. Amen.
65. As for our representatives Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito, accompanied by Fortunatus, send them back to us at an early convenience, full of peace and joy, that they may without delay bring tidings of peace and concord—the object of our most ardent desires—and that we in turn may without delay rejoice in your tranquillity.
2 May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and with all that have anywhere in the world been called by God and through Him, through whom be to Him glory and honor and power and majesty and everlasting dominion, from eternity to eternity. Amen.
CLEMENT's First EPIsTLE TO THE CorINTHIANS **4
ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH
EPISTLES
a Se oy hy nat \
INTRODUCTION
It is a refreshing experience for any religious-minded person of today to shut his eyes for orice to the many complex, and in some degree unpleasant, aspects of religious life and look into the soul of a great man who succeeded in reducing this complexity to one or two engrossing facts or ideas and putting them in the centre of his everyday life.
One such man was St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria at the beginning of the second century, and one such soul was that which he mirrored in his epistles addressed to several
Christian communities in Asia Minor. "God" and " Jesus Christ" were the absorbing interests that dominated the world of Ignatius. Here we find a unified Weltanschauung, one pivoted on "God" and " Jesus Christ." Here we see portrayed an otherworldliness that was carried to its utmost consequences. And, since in addition to this objective fact we are made aware by the reading of these epistles that their author exhibits charming traits of character, it is small wonder that his epistles are the most beautiful pearls of our extant early Christian literature.* Our information regarding the life of Ignatius is extremely meagre.
Besides what the letters themselves reveal of the man, we have only scanty notices preserved by contemporary and some later writers, such as St. Polycarp, St. Irenaeus,
Origen, Eusebius, and St. Jerome. Ignatius refers to himself as "also called Theophorus "—that is, " God-bearer "—pre- "sumably to indicate that, in the words of St. Paul, his only ey)
Icnatrus oF ANTIOCH "boast " was " God" and " Jesus Christ."* 'There is a pretty legend to the effect that he was the little Jewish child whom, on a certain painful occasion (Matt. 18.1), Christ singled out to serve His Apostles as a model of childlike simplicity.
_ Others have inferred from his name that he was a native of _ Syria and a pagan who in his later years embraced Christianity. He is also believed to have been an auditor of the Apostle St. John.* It is certain that he was the third bishop of Antioch, being the second successor to St. Peter} After the dispersion of the Apostles from Jerusalem, it was ih the capital of Syria that the Church's missionary activity among the pagans was given a vigorous impetus. Here St. Barnabas,
St. Paul, and St. Peter exercised their apostolic zeal; here, doubtless, surrounded by the edifying lives of many early converts, Ignatius imbibed his ardent love for Christ; here he
'witnessed admirable examples of a faith that made him immune against the voluptuousness of the Syrian metropolis.
The fact of his martyrdom in the great Flavian Amphitheatre_ at Rome, known as the Colosseum, is well attested. This took place about the year 1 ito during the reign of the emperor
_ Trajan.
Since the séven epistles were written as he was 'being taken under guard-from Antioch to Rome, they are
; { ex i"
CA I> ~ to be cherished as the last utterances of "a condemned man," as he himself says, or, as we should say, of a holy man who could see no more fitting climax to his discipleship than " to be crunched by the teeth of wild beasts" for Christ's sake.
The Western Church keeps the feast of this athlete of Christ on February 1, the Eastern, on December 20.
- There is no space in this sketch for all the details of the literary controversy upon the genuineness of the Ignatian epistles. They have come down to us in a longer anda shorter — form; besides, in the Middle Ages there were no less than
INTRODUCTION
seventeen letters which claimed Ignatian authorship.
Unfortunately, the literary problems became involved in the theological controversies that were waged especially in England, in the seventeenth century, and the dispute was carried on with heat and bitterness. The great stumbling block in the way of a more peaceful settlement was the outspoken insistence of Ignatius on the strictly hierarchical constitution of the Church. He continually speaks of " bishops, presbyters, and deacons" as men to whom obedience was due, and of the laity who were bound to obey. 'The long line of scholars who engaged in this controversy extends from Scultetus, Ussher, Dallaeus, and Pearson down to Zahn,
Lightfoot, Harnack, Funk, and many others.* At present competent scholarship on both the Catholic and the Protestant side accepts the seven epistles, on which this translation is based, as genuinely Ignatian.
¢ The letters of Ignatius are addressed to six Christian communities: the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, the (
Romans, the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, and to St. | Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna.' Ephesus, known to us particu- ) larly from the Acts and the epistles of St. Paul, was the capital of the Roman province of Asia." From here, it is conjectured, St. Paul made missionary excursions to the neighboring cities of Magnesia by the Maeander, Tralles, and Philadelphia. The first four of these letters were penned or dictated by Ignatius during his stay at Smyrna, where his
Roman guards allowed him a brief respite on his toilsome journey. Here delegates from several cities met Ignatius to pay him their respects and to offer him such comforts as the trying circumstances of his captivity permitted.
Ignatius made use of his leisure to write the first three of his letters to thank his friends for their sympathy, to strengthen them in
Icnatius oF ANTIOCH their faith, and, above all, to warn them against dangers from certain heresies that must have been rampant at that time in that part of Asia Minor. A fourth letter, written to the Church of the Romans, is markedly different in tone. Here his chief concern is to beg his Roman friends, some of whom were doubtless prominent Christians, not to interfere with his heart's desire by obtaining a stay of the Roman governor's mandate. He touchingly pleads with them not to show him any "unseasonable kindness" by averting the sentence of death. In glowing language, which at times rises to exalted lyrical heights, he declares his readiness to die for Christ and thus prove himself an authentic " disciple." Christ's words recorded in Matt. 10.24 and Luke 14.26 had evidently made a deep impression on him. From Smyrna Ignatius was taken to Troas in the north-west corner of Asia Minor, where he wrote to the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, and to the bishop of the latter, Polycarp. He instructs the addressees to send a delegation of prominent Christians to his beloved
Church at Antioch, where in the meantime the persecution had come to an end and his flock enjoyed a period of peace.
From 'Troas he took ship for Neapolis, then passed through Macedonia and Illyria, and after another voyage by sea probably landed at Brundisium, whence the rest of the journey was made by land.
There is no call here to expatiate upon the doctrinal value of the Ignatian epistles. 'They must convey their own lessons direct and fresh from the lips of their writer. Was Ignatius— and the same query is applicable to Clement—a theologian?
Yes, and no. He was not a speculative theologian. He did not, for example, bring the force of reason to bear upon the great Christian Mysteries, as that of the Blessed Trinity, or the Hypostatic Union. What he did was something more
INTRODUCTION
substantial: he is a witness of the first rank to the acta S teachings | of historical Christianity. To keep tl these intact in their original purity is his chief endeavor; to warn against tampering with the body of Christian truth handed dean by the Apostles, who in turn had received them from Christ—__ such was his main concern. His interest_is_in_the
'Christianity. Traditional Christianity—or, what John Henry of Newman, when still an Anglican, called "the Catholic
System ' pee what Ignatius lived and died for. There is not _ a paragraph i in his letters but reminds us of St. Paul's admonition to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11. 2): ' Uphold your traditions just as I have handed them on to you." 'This insistence
'on tradition gains new significance from the fact that th letters were written about a.p.
110, that is, only Het fifteen or twenty years after the ae of the last Apostle._|
Was this short space of time long enough to allow wholesale innovations to spread all over Asia Minor and take such firm root among the Christians that Ignatius could appeal to them as the traditions of the Apostles? ° His whole concern is to safeguard the depositum fidei against the inroads of the two then rampant heresies, Judaism and Docetism.' The former. is familiar to us ee the writings of St. Paul.
Ignatius's : burning words are levelled against such converts from the Synagogue as continued to live "like Jews" after accepting the faith. A more subtle heresy was Docetism, which claimed that the human nature of Christ and, consequently, His birth, Passion, and Resurrection, were not real facts, but outright make-believes.
A word remains to be said about the tone of the subjoined English translation. The style of Ignatius* is so compact, so succinct, and so highly individual, that the reader of this translation who wishes to enjoy the additional luxury of
IcnatTius oF ANTIOCH tasting all the Ignatian flavor must of necessity go to the original. Translations are not made for the benefit of the scholar, but address themselves in the first place to a reader not conversant with the intricacies of Greek diction. What he looks for in taking up a translation is not merely accuracy, or fidelity to thought, but also readableness. He wants to know—of course in as few words as possible—what the Greek writer meant to say; he is anxious to grasp the sense without being compelled to turn to a footnote explaining it. A translation is, therefore, not deficient just because the number of its words exceeds that of the Greek. To give one illustration: In Trallians 4. 1, Ignatius says: TloAAd Ppovd év Ged.
This is an extreme case of the general Greek, and the special Ignatian, penchant for brachylogy. To cling to the Greek wording and render: " I think many things in God," is to tax the reader with a puzzle. What Ignatius means to say is:
— "If I take God's view of things (for this sense of dpovd, see \ Mark 8. 33: "You do not take God's view of things, but | man's"), many thoughts pass through my mind." This is at once intelligible and smoothes the way for the next statement: " yet, I restrain myself " ("I do not allow myself to be puffed up," etc.). Note, also, in the sentence just quoted,
| Ignatius's passion for what seems to us an excessive straining _ of certain Greek prepositions; as, for example, év. There is
_ here, no doubt, an echo of St. Paul's favorite expression ép Xpwo7rd: "in Christ"; that is, "in union with Christ ";
"acting as a member of Christ's mystical body." Unfortunately for the translator, év was capable also of several other pregnant uses. On the whole, it will be found, I trust, that, while I have emulated the Ignatian brevitas, I have avoided his obscuritas.
INTRODUCTION
The text here used is that of F. X. Funk, revised by K.
Bihlmeyer, Die Apostolischen Viéter, 1.
Teil (Tubingen 1924).
Other modern translations may be found in the following works, some of them mentioned in the Notes:
Kriiger, G., in E. Hennecke's Neutestamentliche Apokryphen (ad ed., Tubingen 1924) 518-35.
Lake, K., The Apostolic Fathers 1 (Loeb Classical Library, London 1930).
Lightfoot, J. B., The Apostolic Fathers. Part 2: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp 2 (London 1889).
Srawley, J. H., The Epistles of St. Ignatius (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London 1935).
Zeller, F., Die Apostolischen Vater (Bibliothek der Kirchenvater, 2d ed., Kempten-Munich 1918).
For the Epistle to the Trallians, cf. also:
Moffatt, J., " An Approach to Ignatius," Harv. Theol. Rev.
29 (1936) 24-31.