Epistles of Ignatius 2-2

Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the holy church beloved by God the Father and Jesus Christ, which is at Tralles, elect and worthy of God, at peace in flesh and spirit through the passion of Jesus Christ our hope— through his cross and death and resurrection— which I also greet in the fullness, in the apostolic manner, and I wish abundant joy.

I. I have learned that you have a blameless and sincere mind in endurance, not as a matter of practice but of possession, as Polybius your bishop made clear to me, who came by the will of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ his Son, by the working of the Spirit, to Smyrna, and so rejoiced with me, bound in Christ Jesus, that I beheld your whole multitude in him.

Having therefore received your godly goodwill through him, I gave glory, finding you to be imitators of Jesus Christ the Saviour.

Be subject to the bishop as to the Lord; for he watches over your souls as one who will render account to God. Therefore you appear to me to be living not according to man but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, believing in his death through baptism, you might become sharers of his resurrection.

It is necessary, then— whatever you do— that you do nothing apart from the bishop, but be subject also to the presbytery as to the apostles of Jesus Christ our hope, in whom, walking, we shall be found in him.

And the deacons too, being ministers of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, must in every way be pleasing. For they are not ministers of food and drink, but servants of the church of God; therefore they must guard against accusations as against a blazing fire. Let them, then, be such.

And you, reverence them as Christ Jesus, of whose place they are guardians; as also the bishop is the type of the Father of all, and the presbyters are as the council of God and the band of the apostles of Christ. Apart from these there is no elect church, no holy gathering, no congregation of the saints.

And I am persuaded that you too are so disposed; for I received the model of your love and have it with me in the person of your bishop, whose very bearing is a great lesson, and whose meekness is power; whom I think even the godless reverence.

Loving you, I spare you from writing more pointedly, lest I seem to some to be harsh or in want. I am bound for Christ's sake, but I am not yet worthy of Christ; but if I am perfected, perhaps I shall become so.

I do not give commands as an apostle, but I measure myself, lest I perish in boasting. It is good to boast in the Lord. Even if I am sound in the things of God, I ought the more to fear and not to heed those who vainly puff me up; for those who praise me scourge me.

For I love to suffer, but I do not know whether I am worthy. For the zeal of the enemy does not appear to many, but it wars against me. I have need, then, of meekness, by which the ruler of this age, the devil, is destroyed.

Could I not write to you of more mystical things? But I fear lest I do harm to you who are infants; and bear with me, lest, not being able to take in the power of it, you be choked.

For even I, not because I am bound and am able to comprehend heavenly things— the angelic ranks and the differences of the archangels and hosts, the distinctions of powers and lordships, the variations of thrones and authorities, the magnitudes of the ages, the pre-eminences of the cherubim and seraphim, the loftiness of the Spirit and the kingship of the Lord and, above all, the incomparableness of God the Almighty— knowing these things, I am not on that account already perfected, nor am I a disciple such as Paul and Peter were; for I lack many things, that I may not fall short of God.

I exhort you, then— not I, but the love of Jesus Christ— that you all say the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected in the same mind and the same judgment.

For there are certain vain talkers and deceivers of minds, not Christians but Christ-mongers, who deceitfully carry about the name of Christ and adulterate the word of the gospel, mixing the poison of error with the sweet name, as those who blend hemlock with honeyed wine, so that the drinker, beguiled by the sweetest quality, may unguardedly be impaled upon death in his sense of taste. One of the ancients counsels: 'Let no one be called good who mixes good with evil.'

For they speak of Christ, not that they may proclaim Christ, but that they may set Christ aside; and they bring forward the law, not that they may establish the law, but that they may announce lawlessness. For they alienate Christ from the Father, and the law from Christ. They slander the virgin birth; being ashamed of the cross, they deny the passion and do not believe the resurrection. They introduce a God who is unknown; they suppose Christ to be unbegotten; and they do not even confess that the Spirit exists.

And some of them say that the Son is a mere man, and that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same; and that the creation is the work of God, not through Christ but through some other, an alien power.

Be on guard, then, against such men, lest you take a noose for your own souls; and make your manner of life unoffending to all men, lest you become a snare on the watchtower and like a net spread out. For he who does not heal himself in his own works is a brother to him who destroys himself.

If, then, you also put away conceit, arrogance, vanity, and disdain, it is possible for you to be inseparable from God; for he is near to those who fear him, and: 'Upon whom,' he says, 'shall I look, but upon the humble and quiet one who trembles at my words?'

Reverence also your bishop as Christ, just as the blessed apostles ordained for you. He who is within the sanctuary is pure; therefore he also obeys the bishop and the presbyters. But he who is outside is the one who does anything apart from the bishop and the presbyters and the deacons; such a one is defiled in conscience and is worse than an unbeliever.

For what is a bishop but one who, beyond all rule and authority, holds sway over all, so far as a man can hold sway, becoming according to his power an imitator of Christ the God? And what is a presbytery but a sacred body, counsellors and assessors of the bishop? And what are deacons but imitators of Christ, ministering to the bishop as Christ to the Father, and rendering to him a pure and blameless service, as Stephen the holy did to the blessed James, and Timothy and Linus to Paul, and Anencletus and Clement to Peter?

He, then, who disobeys these would be utterly godless and impious, setting Christ at nought and belittling his ordinance.

I write these things to you, not because I have learned that there are any such among you (indeed may God never permit such a thing to come to my ears, he who did not spare his own Son for the sake of the holy church), but, foreseeing the snares of the evil one, I secure you beforehand with these admonitions, as my beloved and faithful children in Christ, giving you to drink beforehand the preservatives against the pestilential disease of the insubordinate— a disease which you escape by the good pleasure of Christ our Lord.

You then, taking up meekness, become imitators of the sufferings of Christ and of his love, with which he loved us, giving himself a ransom for us, that by his own blood he might cleanse us from ancient impiety and grant us life, who were on the very verge of perishing through the wickedness within us.

Let none of you, then, hold anything against his neighbour; for 'forgive,' says our Lord, 'and you shall be forgiven.' Give no occasion to the Gentiles, lest because of a few foolish persons the word and the teaching be blasphemed. For 'woe,' says the prophet, as in the person of God, 'to him through whom my name is blasphemed among the Gentiles.'

Be deaf, then, when anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came of David, of Mary, who was truly born both of God and of a virgin, but not in the same manner; for God and man are not the same.

He truly took on a body; for 'the Word became flesh,' and he lived his life without sin; for 'which of you,' he says, 'convicts me of sin?'

He ate and drank truly, was crucified and died under Pontius Pilate; and he was truly, and not in appearance, crucified and died, while heavenly and earthly and subterranean beings looked on— heavenly as the bodiless natures, earthly as the Jews and Romans and the men present at that time when the Lord was crucified, subterranean as the multitude that rose with the Lord; for 'many bodies,' he says, 'of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, when the tombs were opened.'

And he descended into Hades alone, but ascended with a multitude; and he tore down the partition that had stood from of old and broke down its dividing wall, and rose again after three days, the Father having raised him; and having spent forty days with the apostles, he was taken up to the Father and sat down at his right hand, waiting until his enemies be put under his feet.

So then on the preparation day, at the third hour, he received sentence from Pilate, the Father permitting it; at the sixth hour he was crucified; at the ninth he breathed his last; before sunset he was buried. On the sabbath he remained beneath the earth in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathea had laid him; as the Lord's day was dawning he rose from the dead, according to what was said by him: 'As Jonah was in the belly of the sea-monster three days and three nights, so also shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.'

The preparation day, then, contains the passion; the sabbath the burial; the Lord's day the resurrection.

But if, as some who are godless— that is, unbelievers— say, he became man only in appearance, did not truly take a body, and only seemed to die when he did not really suffer, then for what reason am I bound and pray to fight wild beasts?

Then I die in vain; then I bear false witness against the cross of the Lord, and the prophet is superfluous who said: 'They shall look on him whom they pierced, and shall mourn over themselves as over one beloved.'

Then these themselves are no less unbelievers than those who crucified him. But I do not place my hopes in appearance upon him who died for me, but in reality; for falsehood is alien to truth.

Truly, then, Mary bore a body that had God dwelling within it; and truly God the Word was born of the virgin, clothed in a body of like passions with us. Truly he who fashions all men in the womb came to be in a womb, and he made for himself a body from the virgin's substance, except that it was without intercourse with a man. He was carried in the womb, as we also are, through periods of time, and was truly born as we also are, and was truly nursed with milk, and partook of common food and drink, as we also do.

And having lived thirty years, he was baptized by John, truly and not in appearance; and having preached the gospel three years and performed signs and wonders, he, the Judge, was judged by the false Jews and Pilate the governor, was scourged, struck on the cheek, spat upon, wore a crown of thorns and a purple robe, was condemned and crucified truly— not in appearance, not in fantasy, not in deceit.

He died truly and was buried and rose from the dead, just as he prayed somewhere, saying: 'But you, O Lord, raise me up, and I will repay them.' And the Father, who always hears him, answered and said: 'Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall take all the nations as your inheritance.'

He, then, the Father who raised him, will also raise us through him, apart from whom no one will have true life; for he says: 'I am the life; he who believes in me, even if he dies, shall live, and everyone who lives and believes in me, even if he dies, shall live forever.'

Flee, then, the godless heresies; for they are inventions of the devil, the arch-evil serpent who through the woman deceived Adam, the father of our race.

Flee also his evil offshoots: Simon his firstborn son, and Menander, and Basilides, and his whole crowd of wickedness, the man-worshippers, the Ebionites, whom also Jeremiah the prophet calls accursed.

Flee also the unclean Nicolaitans, the falsely named, the lovers of pleasure, the slanderers; for the Nicolaus of the apostles was not such a man.

Flee also the offspring of the evil one, Theodotus and Cleobulus, who bear deadly fruit, of which if anyone tastes, he immediately dies, not the temporal death but the eternal.

These are not the planting of the Father, but accursed offspring. For 'every planting,' says the Lord, 'which my heavenly Father did not plant, let it be rooted up.'

For if they were branches of the Father, they would not be enemies of the cross of Christ, but of those who killed the Lord of glory; but now, denying the cross and being ashamed of the passion, they cover up the lawlessness of the Jews, those fighters against God, those murderers of the Lord— to say but little, those murderers of the prophets.

But you, Christ calls to his own incorruption through his passion and resurrection, you who are his members.

I greet you from Smyrna, together with the churches of God present with me, whose leaders refreshed me in every way, in flesh and in spirit.

My bonds exhort you, which I carry about for the sake of Jesus Christ, asking to attain to God: remain in concord with one another and in prayer. For it is fitting for you, each one, and especially the presbyters, to refresh the bishop, to the honour of the Father and to the honour of Jesus Christ and of the apostles.

I pray that you listen to me in love, that I may not be a testimony against you by having written. And pray for me too, who need your love in the mercy of God, that I may be counted worthy of the lot which I am set to attain, lest I be found rejected.

The love of the Smyrnaeans and the Ephesians greets you. Remember in your prayers the church in Syria, of which I am not worthy to be called a member, being the least of those there.

Farewell in the Lord Jesus Christ, being subject to the bishop, and likewise to the presbyters and the deacons. And love one another, each one, with an undivided heart.

My spirit sanctifies you, not only now, but also when I attain to God. For I am still in danger; but the Father of Jesus Christ is faithful to fulfil my request and yours, in which may we be found blameless. May I have joy of you in the Lord.