On Saint Ignatius

I credit St. Ignatius of Antioch as being very instrumental in my becoming Orthodox, so I decided to write a blog post about why I feel that is.

 

Way back in 2006 or 2007 - I can't exactly remember the year, though I do know it was on Halloween - I became an Ordained Minister. It was from some church based in Georgia. There are a few reasons why I decided to become ordained; one reason is that I felt called to do so - my father and both grandfathers had been ordained and I felt called to do the same - and the second reason is that while doing military funerals I saw quite a few veterans who had no one save from the VA to show up, including a preacher. I didn't want these brothers in arms to not have anyone to at least say a few words over them before they were put in the ground.

Since I was ordained, I felt that it was my duty to "study to show myself approved" or basically learn what I could. Now, while growing up in various Baptist churches I had often heard that we needed to be like the Early Church - we needed to be like those Early Christians from whence we came.

Naturally, every single Protestant denomination that I had come into contact with said that they were the Early Church, or at least the continuation of the Early Church. This, of course included conspiracies that paganism had infiltrated the Church by the time of St. Constantine, and some other things that history proves untrue. The - now to me anyway - most laughable of these was the so called Trail of Blood.

 Why this is laughable to me now is that the groups that the Baptists claim to come from include heretics. Of course any Baptist worth his salt will say that those groups were keeping the True Faith and their so called heresies were made up by the Catholic Church. History also proves this false.

The chart itself is full of errors, for example it says that Mariolatry is dated to around AD500. However - their misunderstanding of veneration of the Theotokos aside - the earliest manuscript containing a prayer to Mary is dated circa AD250. I posted a blog article back in 2015 about this prayer. I also explained that the title of Theotokos was in use even earlier than AD250. Chances are that the hymn was already widespread well before the manuscript's date.

Another error in that chart is that it states that Church government was changed about AD300. Reading Saint Ignatius of Antioch showed me that this was not the case.

Since I grew up Baptist (Southern Baptist to be exact), I was somewhat familiar with the so called Trail of Blood. I had seen the chart in various books at the predominantly Baptist schools I went to - such as our history books and our Bible class books.

At this point in my life - when I was ordained and started studying - I was already pretty disillusioned with most of the mainstream Protestant churches. Of course, I was 19 or 20, married, and on my own (aside from my wife), so I thought that I knew a whole lot. 

But, I really felt like the Baptist church, and the other Evangelical type churches were not the True Church. I wanted to find the True Church, if it still existed. So, I started my studying from what I could tell were the earliest writings that we had, and this lead me to the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

I read a few of the other Fathers (including Clement of Rome, and St. Polycarp), but for some reason St. Ignatius stuck out to me the most. His writings spoke to me of a church that I did not know - knew of, sure, but I did not know this church.

I did not take his writings at face value, after all, I was a Protestant and had been told that these writings were forgeries. But after doing a bit of research, it was clear to me that according to scholars - biblical and otherwise - these letters written by St. Ignatius were authentic.

Once I learned this, that these letters were considered authentic by most in academia, my disillusionment with the mainstream Evangelical churches went to 11. But why?

Well, because St. Ignatius talks about Church governance and the Eucharist in a way that is foreign to the Evangelical churches. For example, in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians he uses the word "bishop" to describe the head of the Church at Ephesians. Now, this did not cause me to pause, because I knew that the word bishop comes from the Greek word Επίσκοπος - episcopos - meaning "overseer". But it was how Saint Ignatius later talks about the relationship between the Bishop and the Church that caused me to start rethinking things.

In the second chapter of the same epistle, right at the end of his letter St. Ignatius writes "and that, being subject to the bishop and the presbytery, ye may in all respects be sanctified."(Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 2, from my understanding you'll want the shorter forms of the letters).

Here I noticed that St. Ignatius was marking a difference between the Bishop and the Priest. Up to this point I had been taught that the words Επίσκοπος and πρεσβύτερος (episcopos and presbyter, respectively) were used interchangeably, and meant basically the same thing. But, if they meant the same thing why was St. Ignatius marking a difference between the two?

In chapter three we see St. Ignatius make a call for unity, 

"I do not issue orders to you, as if I were some great person. For though I am bound for the name [of Christ], I am not yet perfect in Jesus Christ. For now I begin to be a disciple, and I speak to you as fellow-disciples with me. For it was needful for me to have been stirred up by you in faith, exhortation, patience, and long-suffering. But inasmuch as love suffers me not to be silent in regard to you, I have therefore taken⁵¹¹ upon me first to exhort you that ye would all run together in accordance with the will of God. For even Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the [manifested] will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds [of the earth], are so by the will of Jesus Christ."(Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 3, yes I went ahead and posted the whole chapter).

This was something that I remember Jesus talking about (That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.[John 17:21 KJV]). We can clearly see that St. Ignatius is telling us the same thing that Jesus is here, to be united. But it seems that St. Ignatius is telling us to be united with our bishops as well.

I can not point to one Evangelical church that is united in belief completely with another Evangelical church. Even between different Baptist churches there is going to be some doctrinal disagreements. And, as every Baptist church is basically it's own Vatican the preacher has become the bishop of his congregation. I don't know too many people who are united to their preacher - in fact, I recall many people leaving one church to go to another because they disagreed with something the preacher said - either verses supposedly taken out of context, or just the preacher hurting their feelings. So it's not just the preachers who have been elevated to bishops, but the congregants as well. Protestants are going to protest; it's in the name.

Chapter 4 is where some more things kind of woke me up, so to speak (art though even awoken, broseph?).

"Wherefore it is fitting that ye should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also ye do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in your 51 concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. And do ye, man by man, become a choir, that being harmonious in love, and taking up the song of God in unison, ye may with one voice sing to the Father through Jesus Christ, so that He may both hear you, and perceive by your works that ye are indeed the members of His Son. It is profitable, therefore, that you should live in an unblameable unity, that thus ye may always enjoy communion with God."(Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 4, and yes, whole chapter again. I promise I'm not going to keep doing this... Maybe)

"Wherefore it is fitting that ye should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop." Huh.

"For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp." Huh.

So again, St. Ignatius is writing about being united to your bishop. And he's also talking about the presbytery (priests) being in unity to the bishops as well.

Again, I cannot think of one Evangelical church that is united to a bishop - either the laity or the preacher.

In chapter 5, St. Ignatius keeps going on about unity with the bishop!

"For if I in this brief space of time, have enjoyed such fellowship with your bishop —I mean not of a mere human, but of a spiritual nature—how much more do I reckon you happy who are so joined to him as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father, that so all things may agree in unity! Let no man deceive himself: if any one be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two possesses⁵¹⁸ such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church! He, therefore, that does not assemble with the Church, has even⁵¹⁹ by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, “God resisteth the proud.”⁵²⁰ Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God."(Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 5)

So we can clearly see that St. Ignatius considers our prayers to be more powerful with that of the bishop and the whole Church. He even plainly states that we should not set ourselves in opposition of the bishop so we may be subject to God. 

In chapter six, St. Ignatius implores us to respect the bishop as we would respect Christ. And remember, St. Ignatius has also marked a difference between the office of priest (presbyter) and the office of bishop.

I was starting to see that what I had been taught for almost all of my life was wrong. My disillusionment was deepening.

There is much more from Saint Ignatius, just click on any of those links to keep reading.

It became clear to me that in or around AD110 (possibly AD108), about a decade after the death of St. John the Apostle, that there was a church governance in place that I had been told was a later invention. And I point out the death of St. John so much because, 1. he died in about AD100, and 2. St. Ignatius was a disciple of St. John. So St. Ignatius, a disciple of St. John the Apostle was writing about a decade after St. John's death about a clear hierarchy in the Church that went from the Bishop to the Priest.

The chart for the Trail of Blood says that the Church had a change of governance around AD300, but history is telling us otherwise. History is clearly showing us - through the writings of Saint Ignatius - that there was an office of the Bishop that was distinct from the office of the Priest, and that to be in unity with the Church we had to be in unity with the Bishop. To be united in Christ we had to be united in the Bishop. This teaching is from the Early Church. This teaching comes from the disciple of an Apostle. 

So where are the bishops of the Evangelical churches? I couldn't find any. Well, there were a few people who called themselves bishops in different denominations, but it was clear that they didn't have unity between themselves.

If the Evangelical churches didn't have bishops then the Evangelical churches could not be the Early Church, or the remnants thereof. If the Evangelicals could not be the Early Church then who was the Early Church? Did the Early Church still exist?

I kept reading St. Ignatius. I was just absolutely enthralled by what he was writing. Then I stumbled upon his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans. Specifically, the seventh chapter of that Epsitle, which reads,

"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer,¹⁰¹⁶ because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death¹⁰¹⁷ in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect,¹⁰¹⁸ that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that ye should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of¹⁰¹⁹ them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved.¹⁰²⁰ But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils."(Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, Chapter 7)

 This chapter was also eye opening to me. The previous chapters St. Ignatius is talking about heretics and avoiding false doctrine. And then here he is talking about avoiding those who claim that the Eucharist (communion) is not the flesh of Jesus and abstain from taking communion. Speaking against the Eucharist incurs death. And again we are told to avoid division.

So the Early Church had a clear hierarchy in the Bishop - who should be respected as Christ. And the Early Church believed in the Real Presence of the Eucharist - that it truly is the Body and Blood of Christ. Clearly, the Evangelical churches were lacking.

The real clincher for me that the Evangelical churches were wrong was when reading St. Ignatius' Epistle to the Philadelphians. I'll quote from another blog here because they stated basically the same thing that I was going to say.

"His writings are important to the debate about whether the Church Fathers believed in Sola Scriptura for a couple of reasons:

1. Perhaps the most important reason is that he argues specifically against Sola Scriptura as it was being adopted by certain Jews in his time. Remember, he's writing at a time before the New Testament books were even widely recognized as Scriptural individually much less as a 27-book whole like we have today; for him and his contemporaries, the Gospel was almost completely oral Tradition. Here's what he says about those Jews who objected to the Gospel because they couldn't find it in Scripture:

   "I heard some [Jews] saying, 'If I do not find it in the ancient Scriptures, I will not believe the Gospel;' on my saying to them, 'It is written,' they answered me, 'That remains to be proved.' But to me Jesus Christ is in the place of all that is ancient: His cross, and death, and resurrection, and the faith which is by Him, are undefiled monuments of antiquity." - Epistle to the Philadelphians, 8

2. The second reason St. Ignatius' letters are important to this debate is that he is unequivocal about where authority is located in the Church, namely, in the Bishops who bear Apostolic Succession -- and what the state is of those who choose to break with or deny this authority. Here's a few relevant quotes:

   "See that ye all follow the Bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the Priests as ye would the Apostles; and reverence the Deacons, as being the command of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the Bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the Bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the Bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic Church. It is not lawful without the Bishop either to Baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid." - Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 8
   
   "... Continue in intimate union with Jesus Christ our God, and the Bishop, and the enactments of the Apostles. He that is within the altar is pure, but he that is without is not pure; that is, he who does anything apart from the Bishop, and Priests, and Deacons, such a man is not pure in his conscience." - Epistle to the Trallians, 7
   
   "It is well to reverence both God and the Bishop. He who honours the Bishop has been honoured by God; he who does anything without the knowledge of the Bishop, does [in reality] serve the devil." - Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 9
   
   "Give ye heed to the Bishop, that God also may give heed to you. My soul be for theirs that are submissive to the Bishop, to the Priests, and to the Deacons, and may my portion be along with them in God!" - Epistle to Polycarp, 6
   
   "As therefore the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united to Him, neither by Himself nor by the Apostles, so neither do ye anything without the Bishop and Priests." - Epistle to the Magnesians, 7"(Orthodox Apologetics: St. Ignatius of Antioch & Sola Scriptura)
   

I know that is a lot to read. But the author really summed up what I was about to write. St. Ignatius is clearly against Sola Scriptura. I've seen a few try to argue that this doesn't count as Sola Scriptura since the Jews clearly did not consider the New Testament to be Scripture. However, the Jews are doing the same thing Evangelicals are doing - stating that if it can't be found in the Scriptures then they will refuse to believe it. By the way, Jesus being the Messiah is clearly in the Old Testament.

Also, the New Testament as we know it did not come around for another 200 years or so after St. Ignatius was writing. Certainly the texts that became the New Testament were written and being circulated, but so were other texts such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, and others. Even texts that ultimately did not end up in the canon of the New Testament, but are still deemed worthy to be read were circulating, such as the Protoevangelium of James and the Shepherd of Hermas (and I know the latter was considered by some to be a part of Scripture). So the argument that this statement by Saint Ignatius in his Epistle to the Philadelphians isn't against Sola Scriputra falls flat.

Another wake up call for me. No bishops, no Eucharist, and relying on Sola Scriptura. Three strikes for the mainstream Evangelical churches.

But why was I so disillusioned, and even angry? Because I was learning that everything I had been taught was wrong - if not a blatant lie. Bear with me here.

One of the reasons that I started reading the Early Church Fathers is that from talks with various pastors and seminarians I learned that these were required reading. This includes the pastor of the church where I was attending right after I was married and started searching. I also lived in the parsonage of this church, so the pastor and I had quite a few talks. Knowing that they read the same things I was reading, but still kept on in their error made me question a lot of things. I know that they were taught that the Early Church Fathers were forgeries, false, or otherwise doctored to be more in line with Catholic teachings - but the consensus among biblical scholars from all walks of life (Evangelical, Catholic, other denominations, and even atheists) said that these works were authentic.

If these works are authentic, and Saint Ignatius tells us to avoid those who are preaching a false doctrine (as we are also told in the New Testament), it became clear to me that I should avoid the Evangelicals who were knowingly spreading false doctrine.

I also talked to a few people who left seminary and ultimately left their respective churches because they found out that everything they had been taught had been a lie, and they were left without faith. I know one former seminarian who became (or at least tried to) Jewish because he still had faith that a God existed, but he couldn't trust the Christian faith. I know another one who became Muslim because of the lies he discovered he decided that Christianity really had become corrupt, and the Jews were missing some things, so Islam was the way to go. I don't know where either of those men are now as I unfortunately lost touch with them.

But, I also know a few seminarians who became Orthodox. Though, that came later. I still had some studying to do.

I wanted to be studious, so I didn't rely solely on the writings of one man, after all, I didn't believe that aside from Jesus any one man could be infallible. 

From St. Ignatius I read a whole bunch of other Early Church Fathers, such as St. Justin Martyr, St. Polycarp, and a few more at least up until St. John Chrysostom. To be fair, I didn't read every single Church Father up to St. John Chrysostom, and I stopped (at first, for the time being) at St. John Chrysostom because he wrote in the later half of the 4th Century AD - after the time that St. Constantine supposedly took over the Church and implemented paganism, and after the supposed change in Church governance.

And do you know what I found? I found that these men were in agreement with St. Ignatius as far as the things I mentioned. They agreed that we should be united to the Bishop. They agreed that the Eucharist is really the Body and Blood of Jesus. And they agreed that Tradition is a very important part of the Church.

Now, I didn't go out and become Orthodox the next day. No, at that point I was still ignorant of the Orthodox Church for the most part. But what I did do was start looking for the True Church.

I considered my options. From the churches I was familiar with at the time, the ones I knew who had bishops, who believed in the Real Presence, and didn't rely on Sola Scriptura were the Anglicans, the Episcoplians, the Lutherans (which is funny since they are were we get Sola Scriptura from), and the Roman Catholics.

The first out were the Episcopalians, since they allowed women priests and even women bishops.

The Roman Catholics were almost out on account of the Pope being the head of the Church, and everything I had read thus far pointed to there being a group of bishops who were in agreement, not just one man over everyone else. And they were also out because I couldn't find any clear evidence of clerical celibacy - and as a married man who was ordained I wasn't willing to give up my wife or my ordination for something I wasn't 100% on.

I can't remember why I discarded the Lutherans. Perhaps it is because they came directly from the Roman Catholics and they are the reason that so many ascribe to Sola Scriptura these days (though, honestly, given that Lutherans have five Solas, perhaps what the Evangelicals follow should be called Solo Scriptura because they love to say they have no creed except the Bible [which by the way is a creed, therefore negating what they just said]). I'm not sure, but for some reason the Lutherans did not stay in my consideration.

The Anglicans were again kept in the back of my mind as a potential for being the True Church, but again, they split directly from Rome (with good reason, not just so an English King could get divorced and remarried). And there was the problem that I was trying to be uber Scottish, so anything English was almost immediately discarded. In fact, I teased a friend of mine who was also very Scottish (as far as Americans can be Scottish) when he became Anglican).

So if Rome was the correct Church, then I couldn't trust the off shoots because they are obviously wrong. If Rome was not the correct Church, then I couldn't trust the off shoots because if Rome was wrong then how well could the others be right?

This was something that stewed in the back of my mind for a few years. During that time, I had contacted the Bishop of the so called Celtic Christian Orthodox Church - assuming he had at one point in time been a Catholic (it wasn't until Orthodoxy was on my radar that I realized that he had been Eastern Orthodox instead, and he had only been a Reader, not a Priest or Bishop) - and I also started looking at others that claimed some kind of Apostolic succession from vagrant "Catholic" bishops to an Abbot at a Benedictine monastery in Ireland (this was when I was first separated from my ex and my enlistment would have been up during my upcoming deployment - yes, I was seriously considering becoming a Catholic monk by moving all the way to Ireland).

Also during this time, and during my parenthetical aforementioned deployment, I kept reading St. Ignatius. I kept coming back to him time and time again. And during my deployment, when it was getting close to time for us to go home, we had a lot of downtime. I spent this downtime researching. I was trying to find the True Church. And then I found an article talking about the Orthodox Church.

The more I read, the more I realized that I had known about the Orthodox Church, but had simply assumed that it was just another flavor of Roman Catholicism. I made the decision to visit an Orthodox parish when I returned home. My first visit to an Orthodox parish was very much like coming home.

Shortly after being Chrismated at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA I moved back to Tennessee. The closest parish to me was an Antiochian parish in Franklin, TN named after Saint Ignatius of Antioch.

That was almost like a sign that I had indeed made the right choice. But I'm not terribly given to signs, so maybe it was just a wonderfully divine coincidence that here I was attending a parish named after the saint who started me on my journey to Orthodoxy.

It was while I was attending St. Ignatius in Franklin that I became aware of the Evangelical Orthodox Church - of which St. Ignatius had been a part of until they were received into the Orthodox Church back in the 80s. The EOC started as the Campus Crusade for Christ, and they too started searching for the Early Church. They were persuaded by reading the Bible and such Early Church Fathers as Saint Ignatius that the Evangelical churches were not the true churches they claimed to be. They then started the Evangelical Orthodox Church, doing things very similar to the Orthodox Church, until most of what was the EOC was received into Holy Orthodoxy.

I find it truly amazing that Saint Ignatius has helped to lead so many people to the Orthodox faith. And he will always hold a special place in my heart.