The Epistles of Ignatius and His Life's Story

They are the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch, written around AD 108 as he was carried under armed guard across Asia Minor to be thrown to the wild beasts at Rome. Addressed to various churches and to Polycarp, they urge unity, warn against false teaching, and pour out Ignatius's own longing to die faithfully for Christ — among the earliest and most vivid Christian letters after the New Testament.

Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch in Syria at the beginning of the second century, one of the Apostolic Fathers, said to have known the apostles. Condemned to death for his faith, he was taken to Rome to be martyred in the arena, and wrote these letters along the way — making him one of the earliest Christian voices we possess after the apostles, and a martyr whose words carry the weight of his impending death.

As Ignatius travelled toward his execution, a prisoner in chains being escorted by soldiers to Rome. Along the road churches sent representatives to greet him, and he wrote back to them and ahead to Rome. The shadow of the arena hangs over every letter, giving them extraordinary intensity — the words of a man facing death for Christ, and embracing it.

Faithful martyrdom. Famously, he begs the Roman Christians not to intervene to save him, longing to be 'ground like wheat' by the beasts and so to become truly Christ's. His desire is not morbid despair but a burning devotion — to imitate the suffering of his Lord and to attain to God through a faithful death, so that his letters glow with a startling love for Christ.

He urges the churches to hold firmly together around their bishop, elders, and deacons, and to avoid division and false teaching. Ignatius stresses unity in doctrine and love as the church's safeguard against the errors threatening it, and his letters are an early and important witness to the developing structure of church leadership and the value placed on unity.

Chiefly forms of early error that denied the reality of Christ's humanity — teaching that he only seemed to have a body and to suffer. Against this Ignatius insists, with great force, that Christ was truly born, truly suffered, and truly rose; his own coming real death for Christ made the reality of Christ's real death all the more precious to him.

Because they give a vivid, first-hand glimpse of the church, its faith, and its leadership at the very start of the second century, and because they are the moving testament of a martyr on his way to die. Read for history or devotion, they convey both the concerns of the early church and the burning love for Christ of a man facing the beasts.

With any of the seven letters, since each is short and complete, though reading them together conveys the fuller picture of Ignatius's mind and journey. The letter to the Romans, with its passionate plea to be allowed to die for Christ, is often the most striking place to start, and reveals the heart behind all the rest.