. . . Ignatius underscores the fleshly constitution of
Jesus’s risen body by contrasting it with demonic “bodilessness.” This
juxtaposition is comparable to the Gospel of Luke’s contrasting Jesus’s body
with a “ghost” (πνεῦμα) (24:36), as well as the Letter of the Apostles’
explicit claim that the risen Jesus was neither a “ghost” nor a “demon” (11).
Ignatius joins other Christian writers in explicating Jesus’s resurrected
corporeality through its trans-corporeal comparison to other entities. Among
these witnesses, Ignatius’s condemnation stands out for its explicit invocation
of “bodilessness.” And yet, at first glance, it is difficult to determine what
exactly Ignatius means by “bodiless” demon. Are we to imagine that Ignatius’s
demons lack any kind of corporeality whatsoever, or, like the “uneducated”
mentioned by Origen in On First Principles . . . might Ignatius here be
using “bodiless” simply to designate a “thinner” type of existence that was not
as solid or tangible as human “flesh” (Interestingly, Orien, as part of his
discussion of why some thinkers in his day use “bodiless” to refer to entities
that lack a solid body, mentions a resurrection tradition identical to the one
quoted by Ignatius [On First Principes, pref. 8]) (Travis W. Proctor, Demonic Bodies and the
Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Church [New York: Oxford University
Press, 2022], 61)
. . . Ignatius also mentions demons in connection with his
condemnation of his Christological opponents. In Smyrnaeans 2, Ignatius
launches a direct attack against Christians espousing an alternative
Christology: “They are the ones who are only an appearance,” Ignatius
proclaims, “and it will happen to them just as they think: they will be without
bodies—and demonic!” Ignatius here censures his opponents by condemning them to
an afterlife that would be an imitation of the “bodiless” Jesus to which they
adhered. The problem for Ignatius, of course, would be that several early
Christian groups and texts ascribed a positive valuation to a bodiless
afterlife and located true salvation in the soul’s abandonment of its fleshly
vessel. . . . When we consider the remainder of the Ignatian corpus, it becomes
clear that this latter phrase (“flesh and spirit”) serves as a summation of
Ignatius’s understanding of ideal embodiment. In his Letter to the
Magnesians, for example, Ignatius prays that his recipients “experience the
unity of the flesh and spirit of Jesus Christ—our constant life” (1.2; LCL,
Ehrman; emphasis mine). When writing to the Romans, Ignatius greets his
audience: “I extend warmest greetings blamelessly in Jesus Christ, our God, to
those who are united in both flesh and spirit in his every commandment”
(pref; LCL, Ehrman; emphasis mine). In advising the Ephesians, Ignatius
emphasizes that they “abide in Jesus Christ both in flesh and in the spirit”
(10.3; LCL, Ehrman). In a final example, Ignatius informs Polycarp that his dual
nature is essential for his leadership role: “You are fleshly and spiritual for
this reason, that you may deal gently with what is visible before you” (2; LCL,
Ehrman). According to Ignatius’s anthropology, then, humans are composed of
both flesh and spirit, possessing a two-part makeup that enables them to
commune with the divine while also carrying out proper Christian roles in the
mundane world. Humanity’s flesh/spirit duality is in direct imitation of the
composition of Jesus, both before and after his resurrection. Through their
“fleshly” and “spiritual” makeup, Christians can maintain a kind of
trans-corporeal relation with Jesus, and thus participate fully in the
Christian community.
Ignatius’s condemnation of his
opponents to be a “bodiless” existence, therefore, threatens a severing of this
corporeal connection to Jesus and the Christian community. Since Ignatius
ostensibly equates “bodily” with a dual flesh-and-spirit makeup, his use of
“bodiless” is likely a reference to “lacking flesh.” Put another way, Ignatius
appears to belong to that group of Christians, described previously by Origen
as “uneducated,” who typically limited embodiment to those entities that possessed a solid “fleshly”
physiology similar to that of humans. Demons serve Ignatius well, therefore, in
attacking his Christological opponents, insofar as demons stand in as an
inversion of ideal embodiment, lacking the flesh that is required to have a
“true” human body and experience embodied fellowship with Jesus. (Ibid., 65, 67-68)
