Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/532

 (Mgn. 13 and 7). But the bishop represents the principle of unity in the church.

Sprintzl ingeniously argues (p. 67) that the supremacy of the bp. of Rome is taught by Ignatius, on the ground that, first, he teaches the supremacy of the Roman church over others (Rom. prooem.), and secondly, the supremacy of the bishop in every church. But the explanation of the passage in Romans is very doubtful, and the marked omission of any mention of the bp. of Rome seems inconsistent with any supremacy apart from the natural position of his church.

The emphatic terms in which these letters propose the bishop as the representative of Christ have always presented a stumbling-block to many minds, even apart from the question of date. But before we pronounce these expressions exaggerated, we must remember that obedience to the bishop is valued by the writer for the sake of unity, while unity is for him the only fence against the heresy to which small and disunited bodies are subject (Phil. 4., 8; Mgn. 1, etc). Identification of the position of the church ruler with that of the Lord would be more easy to a writer of an age very close to Christ than to one of later date. When the divine nature of the Lord and His elevation in heaven came through lapse of time to overshadow the remembrance of His life on earth, it seemed a superhuman claim on the part of any office to say that it represented Him. But it would naturally be otherwise when the recollection of His human intercourse with men was fresh; for why should not men represent one so truly man? Thus the strong expressions may really be a mark of early date.

IX. In Sm. 8 is first found the phrase Catholic church—an expression pronounced by Lipsius (iii.) to prove of itself the later date of the epistles. Such a decision is very precarious, even if, with Lipsius, we reject the testimony of the Martyrdom of Polycarp to the use of the expression. Sprintzl remarks that the phrase "Where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church" naturally follows upon the preceding statement of the relation of the bishop to the particular church: what the bishop is to it, that Christ is to the Catholic church at large. Thus to Ignatius the church of each place is a miniature of the church at large (Sm. 8) and its unity is guarded by all the sanctions of the Christian faith. The one faith is, in the Epistles, the bond of the church. "The gospel" is that which the apostles proclaimed (Phil. 5); not the four written gospels, but the substance of the message of salvation.

We find in the epistles the germ of the great ideas of worship afterwards developed in the church. The altar-idea and the temple-idea as applied to the church are there (Eph. 5; Mgn. 7; Phil. 4). The Eucharist holds its commanding place (Rom. 7; Phil. 4, and probably Eph. 5), though what its rites were at this early period is hard to answer from the letters. Ἀγάπη (Sm. 8) is applied to the Eucharist, and ἀγαπᾶν (Sm. 7) means to celebrate it. In Ignatian phraseology Εὐχαριστία is used where the blessing of Holy Communion is denoted, Ἀγάπη means the whole service of which the consecration is only a moment. In Sm. 7 those who speak against the gifts of God are plainly those who deny τὴν εὐχαριστίαν σάρκα εἶναι τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Christians observed the Lord's Day, not the Jewish Sabbath (Mgn. 8, 9).

X. As to the theology of the epistles, there have been great differences of opinion. The more significant theological statements are uncontroversial, though called out by heresies to which the writer opposes his conception of the nature of Christ. The originality and reality of the revelation in Christ is the great point with him. Hence follows the unreasonableness of Judaizing, which he sometimes presses in terms apparently inconsistent with the recognition of Jewish Christians as really believers. But probably, like St. Paul, he is treating the question from the Gentile standpoint alone. Prophets and the law are worthy of all honour in Christ; πάντα ὁμοῦ καλά ἐστιν ἐὰν ἐν ἀγάπῃ πιστεύητε. The prophets were Christians in spirit, and Christ raised them from the dead (Mgn. 9). They were believers in Christ; yea, even the angels must believe in His blood (Sm. 6). But for this practical and real salvation finding its expression in history the heretics would substitute a shadowy representation of religious notions in a merely apparent and unreal life of Christ. Therefore we find Ignatius constantly adding the word ἀληθῶς to his records of the acts of Christ (Sm. 3, 4; Tr. 10). Ἐν σαρκί is an equivalent phrase. The Blood is named with or instead of the Flesh to shew that the Lord had in death the same bodily constitution as in life, of which the faithful partake in the Eucharist. Being real flesh, Christ was the New Man, and the revelation of God in the earth (Eph. 18). He is an eternal Person, but He is God's Son, as born of Mary and of God. When the writer speaks of an outcoming of Christ from God, he means the Incarnation, and not anything previous. Though he uses the epithet ἀΐδιος with Λόγος, yet he does not seem to mean that it is as Λόγος that the Lord is eternal. It is as incarnate and as man that He is the Logos of God. His twofold nature furnishes the explanation of the opposite attributes ascribed to Him (Eph. 7; Pol. 3). Baur and Lipsius have discovered Patripassianism in the last-quoted passage. But this accusation is inconsistent with all the rest of the epistles, and seems, indeed, to have been since abandoned by Lipsius. In opposition to Baur's assertion that except in one suspected place there is no mention of Christ as Son of God, Zahn finds himself able to enumerate 29 such cases. The epistles lay vast stress upon the Godhead of the Lord; it is because of this that His birth is the entrance of the New Man, and His death the resurrection of the faithful. To them He stands in a personal and practical relation, which makes Him their God. His present invisible relation to them involves an increase of the activity of His Godhead, and of its revelation to men (ad Rom. 3; ad Eph. 15); but He was always God. Therefore Ignatius can speak of the blood and of the suffering of God (Eph. 1; Rom. 6). The τρία μυστήρια κραυγῆς, the three mysteries loudest in proclamation of truth to those who can hear, are the Incarnation, Birth, and Death of Christ, hid in their