Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius was a bishop of Antioch in Syria who lived at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second. Little is known of his early life. According to tradition, he was a disciple of the apostle John, or of Peter and Paul, and was the second or third bishop of Antioch. He is also said to have been the child whom Jesus took in his arms in the Gospels, though this is a later legend. What is certain is that he was a leader in the church of Antioch, the city where believers were first called Christians.

During the reign of the emperor Trajan, around the year AD 107, Ignatius was arrested and condemned to death. The reasons are not given in detail, but it was probably because he was a Christian leader. He was sent under guard to Rome to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena. The journey was long and passed through Asia Minor. Along the way, he was greeted by delegations from the churches, and he wrote letters to them. Seven of these letters have survived. They are among the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament.

The letters were written to the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia and Smyrna, and to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. They deal with several themes. He warned against false teaching, especially the idea that Christ only seemed to have a human body. He insisted that Jesus was truly born, truly suffered and truly died. He urged the believers to be united under their bishop, with the elders and deacons, as a sign of the unity of the church. He was one of the first to use the word catholic for the church. He also called believers to love one another and to live holy lives.

His letter to the Romans is the most moving. In it he begged the Christians of Rome not to try to save him from martyrdom. He said that he longed to die for Christ and wished to be an imitation of the passion of his God. He wrote that he was God's wheat, to be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, so that he might be found pure bread of Christ. He described the way that he felt as a prisoner chained to ten soldiers whom he called leopards. These words have been read with wonder by many.

He was a man of passion and strong feeling, and some have been troubled by the intensity of his longing for death. Some modern readers think that he was too eager for martyrdom and that he spoke of the bishop in terms that were too exalted. They find in his letters a strong stress on the authority of the bishop that went beyond the New Testament. These are fair questions. But his love for Christ and his courage cannot be doubted.

He was taken to Rome and was put to death in the arena, probably around the year 107 or a little later. The details of his death are not recorded in any reliable source. A later account says that he was devoured by lions and that only a few bones remained, which were carried back to Antioch.

His life shows the faith of the church in the generation after the apostles. A bishop who faced death with eagerness, and who wrote letters full of Christ, left a witness that has strengthened believers for nearly two thousand years.