In his book,
based on his doctoral dissertation for Oxford University, Thomas Gaston wrote
the following about Ignatius of Antioch’s Christology:
Trinitarian?
It is generally recognized that there are
three apparent Trinitarian formulas in the Ignatian letters, though their significance
is debated.
In his metaphor of the construction of the
temple (Ign. Eph 9:1), the temple is
for the Father. The other metaphors are assigned as follows: stones =
believers, crane = cross, cable = Spirit, hoist = faith, and path = love. This
passage is ‘trinitarian’ in the sense that Father, Jesus and Spirit are
mentioned together, but the passage is not strictly triadic (more than three
things are mentioned). The passage is of soteriological, not ontological,
significance it “adds nothing to our understanding of his views of distinct
functions within the godhead”. The metaphor illustrates how through faith and
love believers come near to God but it is through the action of the Spirit and
especially the cross of Christ that believers are elevated to a position within
the temple of God. Were we to force a ontological significance, we would
necessarily assume that the Father alone is God (the object of the temple),
whilst both Jesus and the Spirit function are intermediaries.
The two other apparent Trinitarian formulas
both occur in Magnesians 13. The
first is a series of couplets: “ . . . that you may prosper in everything you
do in flesh and spirit, in faith and love, in the Son and the Father, and in
the Spirit, in the beginning and end” (Ign. Mag
13:1). The Spirit stands alone in the passage, separated by the previous
couplet by εν. The
inclusion of the Spirit disrupts the rhythm of the text, leading to the
suspicion that it is not original. If the words are authentic then two opposing
conclusions are possible. Either the Trinitarian formula was so significant to
Ignatius that he included it “even when by doing so the rhythm was destroyed”,
or since his rhetorical purposes took precedence the triad was “of secondary
importance to him”. Perhaps a better conclusion is that the passage doesn’t
witness to an established Trinitarian formula, but does witness to conviction
that the Spirit is of sufficient significance for it to be listed and listed
alongside Father and Son.
Later in the passage, Ignatius writes about
submission to bishops citing the examples of Jesus’ submission to the Father
and of the apostles “to Christ and to the Father [and to the Spirit]” (Ign. Mag 13:2). This text is textually
difficult; the words “and to the Spirit” are omitted in the Armenian and Arabic.
The passage appears to present a hierarchy of Father-Christ apostles, which is
disturbed by the addition of the Spirit. The suspicion must be that this was “an
addition made in the interest of trinitarianism”.
In negative, it is recognized that Ignatius
does not include triadic formula in passages where they might be expected. For
example, in Tral 3:1 Ignatius
parallels the three church offices—deacon, bishop, presbyter—with Jesus, the
Father, and the apostles respectively. Similarly, in Eph 5:1 we find a triad of church-Jesus-Father in “symphonic union”.
On the other hand, passages speaking regarding unity do not appeal to the unity
of three divine persons, where later writers might have done so (cf Ign. Phild 4:1; Ign. Mag 8:2). From this evidence, it must be concluded that (what was
to become) the Trinity was of little significance to Ignatius.
Subordination
Schoedel writes “there are a number of
passages that have a ‘subordinationist’ ring, but appearances are probably
deceiving in this regard”, but it is not clear what reason we have to suspect Ignatius
of being misleading. He exhorts the Philadelphians to be “imitators of Jesus
Christ as he is of the Father” (Ign. Phild
7:2), the Smyrneans to follow the bishop “as Jesus Christ follows the
Fathers” (Ign. Symr 8:1), the
Magnesians to do nothing apart from the bishop “as the Lord did nothing apart
from the Father” (Ign. Mag 7:1) and
to be submissive to the bishop “as Jesus was to the Father according to the
flesh” (Ign. Mag 13;2). This last
phrase needs some comment as the phrase “according to the flesh” might imply
that Jesus was only subordinate during his time on earth, an idea contradicted
by the two former citations which both has the present tense. Schoedel thinks
that this phrase “looks suspiciously like an addition made by an interpolator
bent on eliminating any suggestion of subordinationism in the text”.
This subordinationism also seems apparent in
the metaphors used to describe Christ’s relationship to God. Christ is the door
altar, mouth, word, and will of God. Jesus Christ is the means by which believers
gain access to God; he is, in this sense, as intermediary. Jesus “always stands
in a place secondary and inferior” to God. This is not how you would expect a
Trinitarian to write. (Thomas Edmund Gaston, Dynamic Monarchianism: The Earliest Christology? [2019], 183-86)