Ignatius of Antioch: Who Reads Him in Context?

Ignatius of Antioch and the Problem of Reading the Fathers in Context

In this series of videos, I would like to provide you with a contrast between the kind of handling of the early church fathers that is rampant amongst Roman Catholic apologists and what I hope to be the appropriate handling of these same materials as I have presented in the past on the Dividing Line webcast.

Specifically I want to look at the writings of Ignatius, specifically his epistle to the and the text that is so frequently used by Roman Catholic apologists to try to promote the idea that Ignatius himself believed in the concept of transubstantiation and things like that.

I will contrast the comments of Steve Ray made on Catholic Answers with a presentation I made a number of years ago on the Dividing Line webcast. It was during a period of time when I was teaching for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, I was teaching a class, a special studies class on patristics.

And so we're going to go through the text, I'm going to put the text on the screen for you so you can take a look at it. And also on my blog I'm linking to the CCEL URL where you can look at both the English and Greek there as well.

But I want to provide this opportunity of contrast because you see Roman Catholics I really don't believe can handle the early church fathers in an accurate fashion without letting dogma get in the way.

If they keep dogma out they're going to end up contradicting their own dogma. If they allow dogma to come in they're going to end up misrepresenting the early church fathers. Only really Protestants can handle the early church fathers in an appropriate way because we don't have to turn them into something other than what they were.

They were the early church fathers. They did not look like me, they certainly didn't look like what Roman Catholics look like today. Even though you'll hear Ray make that claim that he had to become a Roman Catholic because they were clearly Catholic.

And yet none of these apostolic fathers believe what Ray believes about Mary, what Ray believes about transubstantiation, what Ray believes about the papacy. His standards are completely upside down and incoherent which is why these folks struggle so much to debate these issues.

But especially the examination of the actual text of Ignatius. It's going to take me a couple of videos to get it all in because it took me a while to.

Cover it.

Steve Ray on Catholic Answers and the Apostolic Fathers

But I hope you'll find this to be useful. But we need to first start with what Ray claims himself. Here is his claims from Catholic Answers Live.

I wanted to ask you in terms of the apostolic, to what degree did they influence you in your journey of faith toward eventually believing in the reality?

They had a huge impact and this is why when you read the Bible you can make, evangelicals can make a case, although flimsy it is, as it is against the real presence and that it's not a sacrifice and this kind of thing.

Which I used to do in fact. I used to argue against Catholics with many of the tired, trite old arguments. But when you go to the apostolic fathers and you say, okay, the apostles taught and lived a certain way.

They don't tell us everything about the Eucharist or about the liturgy on Sunday morning. We know very little about it. Actually we know just the Corinthians already knew how to celebrate the liturgy.

They knew what to do on Sunday because Paul showed them when he lived there. And they got it screwed up a little bit so Paul had to write a few letters to correct.

Them.

But in those letters they were never meant to be manuals or complete or even what happens to the bread and the wine. But when you go to the first Christians that followed them who celebrated the Eucharist with them on Sunday morning and you read their writings like Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Rome and Polycarp and these guys, you find out that they believed in the real presence of Christ from the very beginning.

And even in the Didache which is written prior to maybe some of the New Testament books being completed, you see there also that this is a very reverent thing and they said to go to confession before you go to celebrate to the sacrifice, before you bring your sacrifice in the morning, make sure that you first go and confess your sins.

And I said to myself, wait a minute, what church does that? My Baptist church doesn't do that. The Catholic church does that. It has openings every Saturday afternoon where you can go confess your sins so that you have a righteous sacrifice the next morning.

The early church thought of it as a sacrifice. My goodness, this was all new to me. And then I read people like Ignatius of Antioch who said, beware of those who are heretics who do not, who avoid the Eucharist, who avoid the Eucharist because they will not admit it's the very same blood and body of Jesus that died on the cross.

And Justin Marger who said, we bring forth bread and water and wine every Sunday, not once every quarter like we did in my Baptist church, but every Sunday we bring bread and water and wine and the priest prays over them and they change, they are no longer bread and wine, but we are taught that they become the body and blood of Jesus.

How can I stay a Baptist when I realized that the very first Christians did not believe the same thing I did? I found from reading the Apostolic Fathers especially, but as you go on into the later Fathers as well, but the Apostolics were the important ones to me because they were the hinge, they knew the Apostles.

And if they were screwed up that early on, we were all in trouble. But the fact is they believed and taught what the Apostles taught. And as I read them, I realized that as an evangelical, I was practicing a different religion than they were.

And even the book I mentioned earlier from the Moody Institute Fundy who wrote it, he said that these guys were not evangelicals. So the more I read them, Father, the more I realized that I was on the wrong boat.

I had to get on the right boat of the Catholic Church. And it wasn't just the Eucharist, it was also their views on baptism and their views on Mary and their views on how one is saved, all of these things.

I realized that what the Catholic Church taught, teaches today in the Catechism was already being practiced and taught in the first century. I had to get my act together and I converted to the Catholic Church.

Ignatius, the Eucharist, and Alleged Early Catholic Consensus

For example, I'm just going to read you, I'm going to do this very quickly because I know we don't have a lot of time, but Ignatius of Antioch who died in 107, he wrote this on his way to Rome when he was getting eaten by lions.

He knew the Apostles, they're the ones who trained him. In fact, John Chrysostom says that he was ordained when the hands of the Apostles laid on his sacred head. And it says, Make certain, therefore, that you observe one common Eucharist, for there is but one body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup of union in his blood, and one single altar of sacrifice, even as there's one bishop with his.

He says, look to these men who have perverted notions about the grace of Jesus Christ which has come down to us and see how contrary to the mind of God they are. They even abstain from the Eucharist and from the liturgical prayers, the prayers, because they will not admit that the Eucharist is the same body of our Lord Jesus Christ that suffered on the cross.

Because they reject God's gift, they are doomed and they're disputatious. Obey your bishop and clergy with undivided minds. Share in one common breaking of bread, the medicine of immortality and the sovereign remedy by which we escape death and live in Jesus Christ.

Now, I don't know how you can get much clearer on the Eucharist than that as far as the Catholic position.

Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, which means one who bears God in his body, to the church of God the Father and the beloved Jesus Christ at Smyrna in Asia, mercifully endowed with every spiritual gift, filled with faith and love, not lacking in any spiritual gift, most worthy of God, bearing holy things, heartiest greetings in a blameless spirit, and the word of God.

Sounds a lot like Paul to me. I pointed out in class that it's interesting, even though Ignatius is most closely tied with the Apostle John, he uses a tremendous amount of Pauline language as well, which would seemingly indicate to us that the apostolic message was a unified message, not like many people seem to assume it today that, well, if you only knew John, then you only got John's element of things, things like that.

By the way, for those of you who are not familiar with this, Ignatius is on his way to his martyrdom.

In Rome.

He knows he's going to die there. In fact, when he writes to the Romans, he asks that they do not interfere so that he may do so, and that certainly gives some context to what is being said. Section number one, I glorify Jesus Christ, the God who made you wise, who made you so.

Wise.

Please note Ignatius refers to Jesus Christ as Hatheos, God, numerous times. If you'd like to see a discussion of how the Watchtower Society has massacred that fact, go to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society section of our website.

There is a fairly lengthy paper there that you might find useful. I glorify Jesus Christ, the God who made you so wise, for I observe that you are established in an unshakable faith, having been nailed as it were to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in both body and spirit.

Now, I'd just stop for a moment, and if you've read Ignatius, you know that Ignatius likes to use this kind of language. He's not speaking literally. He's not saying that the church at Smyrna has nailed itself to crosses.

He is talking in a very metaphorical and allegorical way, but his meaning is very, very clear. He's talking about unshakable faith. Having been nailed as it were to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in both body and spirit and firmly established in love by the blood of Christ.

Okay, firmly established in love by the blood of Christ. Now are we talking, have we gotten to Eucharist here? Have we gotten to sacraments here? No, we're talking about the love that the believers in Smyrna have for one another, and he attaches this to the blood of Christ.

Well, how is this? Is this some sacramental thing, or is he talking about the fact that these individuals, because they have been washed in the blood of Christ, because that is the common confession of all believers, that there is this love that exists because of their common confession in the sacrifice of Christ.