David J. Downs on Ignatius' Theology of the Then-Present Operation of the Holy Spirit

  

Ignatius does not speak of the Spirit with the same regularity with which he discusses the activity and identity of the Son, however. The bishop of Antioch sometimes draws together the work of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, as in Eph. 9.1, where readers are imaged as “stones of a temple, prepared for the building of God the Father, lifted up to the heights by the crane of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, using as a rope the Holy Spirit.” And the Spirit is involved in Jesus’ birth (Eph. 18.2), in teaching the prophets (Magn. 9.2), in establishing the bishop, presbyters, and deacons (Phld. Inscr.), in exposing things hidden (Phld. 7.1), and in empowering Ignatius’s prophetic speech (Phld. 7.2). (David J. Downs, “The Pauline Concept of Union with Christ in Ignatius of Antioch,” in The Apostolic Fathers and Paul, ed. Todd D. Still and David E. Wilhite [Paulin and Patristic Scholars in Debate 2; London: T&T Clark, 2017], 150)

 

 

Further Reading:

 

Jonathon Lookadoo on Ignatius, To the Philadelphians 7.1-2 and Ignatius Receiving Revelation from "the Spirit" (το πνευμα)

 

William R. Schoedel in Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians 7:1-2