Learning Christ

1. Scripture and Economy

27 1 scrIpture and econoMy The Philadelphia Incident Led through Asia Minor in the summer of a.d. 113 on the way to his martyrdom in Rome, Ignatius of Antioch stopped in the city of Philadelphia (modern Alaşehir, Turkey), where he was allowed to visit the local church and its bishop.1 During his stay Ignatius found that some members of the community had fallen under the sway of teachers who were “interpreting Judaism” to them, that is, marshaling exegetical arguments for a Judaized form of Christianity. It is not clear exactly which Jewish practices these teachers were insisting on, but circumcision does not seem to have been one of them (Phld. 6:1). Possibly they were convening a weekly assembly on the Sabbath to rival the “one eucharist” that was celebrated with the authority of the “one bishop” each Sunday.2 In any case, they were “schismatics” who had caused a “division” in the community with their “evil doctrines,” and this brought them into inevitable conflict with the bishop of Antioch.3 Writing to the Philadelphians from Troas some weeks after his visit, Ignatius recalls what seems to have been a brief and 1. Ignatius informs us that he wrote to the Romans from Smyrna on “the ninth day before the calends of September” (August 24), but unfortunately fails to mention the year (Rom. 10:3). Eusebius (Historia ecclesiastica 3:36) places Ignatius’s martyrdom within the reign of Trajan (a.d. 98–117), and most scholars since Lightfoot accept this as providing a reliable approximate date (cf. J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, part 2, S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, 3 vols., 2nd ed. [London: Macmillan, 1889], 2.435–72). Stevan L. Davies proposes a plausible scenario whereby Ignatius’s arrest and journey may be fixed more precisely to a.d. 113 (“The Predicament of Ignatius of Antioch ,” Vigiliae Christianae 30 [1976]: 175–80). I have adopted this date merely for the sake of convenience and to supply a touch of verisimilitude. My interpretation of Ignatius’s letters does not in any way depend on such exactitude. 2. Phld. 4:1; cf. Magn. 9:1. 3. Phld. 3:3, 2:1. 28 scrIpture and econoMy inconclusive dialogue between himself and some members of this Judaizing faction. I exhort you to do nothing out of factiousness but according to the learning of Christ. For I heard some say, “If I do not find it in the archives, I do not believe it in the gospel.” And when I said to them, “It is written there,” they answered me, “That is the question.” But to me Jesus Christ is the archives. The inviolable archives are his cross, death and resurrection, and the faith that comes through him. It is by these, through your prayers, that I wish to be justified. (Phld. 8:2) The “archives” or “original documents” (ἀρχεῖα) to which the Philadelphian Judaizers appealed as their final authority were the Jewish Scriptures or Old Testament (presumably in Greek translation), while “the gospel” here probably refers to the Christian proclamation as represented by whatever combination of authoritative written texts and oral traditions was circulating in Asia Minor in the early second century, along with Ignatius’s own teaching.4 For those who “interpreted Judaism ,” the more ancient sacred writings of Israel trumped the novelties of the gospel. While in Philadelphia Ignatius “did [his] part as a man constituted for unity” to secure the community’s submission to the threetiered hierarchy of bishop, presbyters, and deacons, insisting above all that the Philadelphians “do nothing apart from the bishop.”5 But when the Judaizers were unable to find this and other elements of Christian teaching in the Old Testament, they felt justified in rejecting them. Ignatius must have found himself in an awkward position in Philadelphia . He was filled with anxious concern for his own episcopal see in Syrian Antioch, which for the time being had to manage without a visible shepherd (Rom. 9:1), and he may have had no way of knowing how he would be received by the churches in Asia Minor. Philadelphia was the first stop on Ignatius’s itinerary of which we have any knowledge, and his letter to that church contains several hints that the reception he had there was not unanimously enthusiastic. He found it necessary to come to the defense of the godly but taciturn bishop of Philadelphia, 4. On the semantics and interpretation of this difficult text, see William R. Schoedel, “Ignatius and the...