March 17, 2006
Dr. John Romanides on "The Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch"
From Dr John Romanides' The Ecclesiology of St. Ignatius of Antioch:
By the victory of Christ over death and Satan he who believes in the flesh of Christ is restored to the communion of the life and love of God in union with his neighbors and loves "nothing but God only." (Ign. Eph. 9, 11; Mag. 1.) "It is therefore befitting that you should in every way glorify Jesus Christ, who had glorified you, that by a unanimous obedience you may be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same opinion, and may all speak the same thing concerning the same thing." ( Ign. Eph. 2.) For St. Ignatius the primary characteristic of Christians is their corporate and selfless spirit of love and their complete unanimity of faith. (Ign. Eph. 20; Tral. 12; Phil. sal.; Pol. 6.) Faith and love for each other is one identical reality, as well as the beginning and the end of life in Christ. (Ign. Eph. 14.) Unity with each other in love is "a type and evidence (of teaching) of immortality." (Mag. 6.) "All these things together are good if you believe with love." (Ign. Phil. 9.) Faith is to "be gathered together (synaxis) unto God." (Mag. 10. Therefore in your concord and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung." (Ign. Eph. 4.) Only in such a harmony of love can we know that we are partakers of God. (Ibid.) Therefore salvation and sanctification can be accomplished only by a unity of love with each other in the life of Christ. (Ign. Eph. 2.)
For Ignatius man does not have life of himself. Only God is self-life (autozoe). Man lives be participation. Because man is held captive in death by the devil his communion with God is of a distorted nature and ends in the grave. The act of restoration of permanent and normal communion between God and man can be accomplished only by a real resurrection of man by God Himself. (Ezek. 37:12ff.) "Who alone hath immortality." (I Tim. 6:16.) This immortality of God, however, is not to be separated in its bestowal upon creation, from God's energy of love. Therefore, "the drink of God, namely His Blood, ... is incorruptible love and eternal life." (Ign. Rom. 7.) The love of God is not a relationship (to pros ti) dominated by ulterior motivations. If God were within the realm of happiness and so dominated thereby, then all His relationships, if such could really exist, would be necessary. [ 6 ] The life of God the Father, however, who by essence generates the Son and projects the Spirit, is personal and selfless love, which by grace and in complete freedom through the Son and in the Spirit creates ex nihilo, sustains, saves, and sanctifies creation, not by created means, but by His own uncreated energy. Salvation is not a mere restoration of proper relations between God and man. On the contrary man is saved by being restored to life which is given to created beings only by God. Saving grace, therefore, is the very uncreated life-giving energy of God which vivifies and justifies man by defeating the devil. [ 7 ] The flesh of Christ is the source of life and justification [ 8 ] not as flesh per se, but because it is the flesh of God. It is for this reason that St. Ignatius can say, "I desire the drink of God, namely His Blood." (Ign. Rom. 7; also Eph. 1.) [ 9 ]
Moralistic doctrines of atonement whereby man is already in possession of an immortal soul, so that salvation is a matter of changing the disposition of God toward man, and man toward God, by balancing the business interest of each, are completely missing from the thought of Ignatius. Atonement is not a simple adjustment and rearrangement of divine and human psychologies. Neither is it an intellectual problem of identifying human concepts with the immutable prototypes of God's essence which all together comprise truth. It is not the proper relationship of two immortalities, that of God and man, that is at stake, but rather the restoration of a lost immortality now bound to death, and as a consequence morally corrupted. It is only by participation in the divine life and love of God in Christ through corporate love of neighbors that one may attain to immortality, be justified, and avoid death. (Ign. Eph. 20; Rom. 7; Smyr. 7.) It is exactly for this reason that those who live in Christ with selfless love for each other are "stones in the temple of the Father, prepared for the building of God the Father, and drawn up on high by the instrument of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, making use of the Holy Spirit as a rope... You, therefore, as well as your fell