Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Thomas Gaston on Ignatius' Subordinationist Christology


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)