Those Who "Ignorantly Deny Him": The Opponents of Ignatius of Antioch

The debate about the opponents of Ignatius of Antioch has produced no consensus, in part because of a lack of attention to questions of method. This essay applies to three letters of Ignatius a method for identifying opponents which focuses on individual letters. This method bases its identification of a letter's opponents on explicit statements about them, using other statements within a letter only when they relate to issues raised in these explicit statements. This method further evaluates a text's usefulness for identifying opponents on the basis of the type of context in which it appears. The result of applying this method to Ignatius' letters to the Smyrneans, Philadelphians, and Magnesians is that three different types of situations emerge: In Smyrneans we find docetists who seem to be absent from the bishop's Eucharist. In Philadelphians Ignatius opposes some who understand differently and grant more autority to the Hebrew Scriptures than he does. They also seem to see a different sort of relationship between Christianity and Judaism than Ignatius does, but do not advocate taking up any Jewish practices. In Magnesians Ignatius does not face opponents in the sense that there is a group which actively opposes him or his teaching. There are some, however, who do not submit to the bishop's authority as he thinks they should, but they do not seem to be an organized party. Taking each letter on its own, these letters indicate that Ignatius found different problems, not a single heresy, in the churches of Asia Minor to which he writes.