How the Church’s Care for the Vulnerable Reveals the Health of Its Theology
“Something Divine Mingled Among Them”: Care for the Parentless and the Poor as Ecclesial Apologetic in the Second Century: Part 3 of 5
Part 3 of a paper presented at the 2021 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting, in Fort Worth, Texas. Read part 2 here.
“Just as we become aware of a meteor only when … it blazes briefly through the atmosphere before dying in a shower of fire, so it is with Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria,” Michael Holmes has reminded readers of the apostolic fathers. Sometime in the early second century, Ignatius was sentenced to die for his faith. A contingent of ten soldiers escorted him to Rome to die. Along the way, the bishop penned seven letters that survive as an eloquent testament of his faith and of his care for the churches.
It is Ignatius’ letter to the church of Smyrna that is most relevant for this research. Speaking to the church of Smyrna against heretics who claimed that Jesus had suffered in appearance only (Smyrneans 2:1), Ignatius declared that anyone who makes such claims is contrary to “God’s way of thinking” (“γνώμη του θεού,” 6:2). This contrariety to the mind of God is not, however, a mere matter of thinking or believing. These heretics’ disbelief in the physical sufferings of Jesus resulted in a lack of care for the physical needs that surrounded them. Those who “hold heretical opinions about the grace of Jesus Christ” are those who—according to Ignatius—also “have no concern about love, nor about the widow, nor about the orphan, nor about the oppressed, nor about the prisoner or the one released, nor about the hungry or thirsty” (6:2).
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