The likelihood is that Ignatius had not been informed of
the situation in advance. The local bishop seems not to have been a person
easily disturbed (cf. Phd. 1.2) and may well have seen his authority in less
absolute terms than Ignatius thought appropriate. Even after the latter's visit
the opposition appears to have been welcome in the Philadelphian church (cf.
Phd. 11.1).
Moreover, Ignatius' two prophetic utterances (7.1, 2) are
so much part and parcel of what he always says about episcopal authority5 that
we can hardly doubt his sincerity. Ignatius traces his outbursts to God's
Spirit. He shared with many others in the Graeco-Roman world the belief that a
sudden loud utterance marked the inrush of the divine. The bishop clothes this
perception in traditional Christian language when he denies that "human
flesh" made the situation known to him (cf. Matt 16:17; Gal 1:16; 1 Cor
2:13) and in specifically Johannine terms when he describes the Spirit as
knowing whence it comes and whither it goes (cf. John 3:8). Here we have the
strongest possibility in Ignatius of a dependence directly on the Fourth
Gospel. Yet in the absence of other positive evidence of such dependence the
question must be left open. Moreover, the Johannine writings speak of knowing
the whence and whither of figures other than the Spirit, and this suggests that
we are dealing with a formula that could have been known to Ignatius apart from
the gospel. In any event, Ignatius appears before us here as one moved by the
Spirit (cf. Rom. 7.2), yet as one who also takes it for granted that the Spirit
speaks through and on behalf of established authority (cf. Phd. inscr). (William
R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of
Antioch [Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible;
Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1985], 205-6])
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