For an introduction to Ignatius and his letters, see Chapter 36 (pp. 463–68). In his letters Ignatius repeatedly warns against Christians who hold a docetic view of Christ. He directs his readers not to associate with these, but to follow the bishop. The following selection from his letter to the church in Smyrna illustrates these themes.
Ignatius, also called Theophoros, to the church of God the Father and the beloved Jesus Christ, which is blessed with every gift, filled with faith and love, deficient in no gift, most suited for divinity and clothed with holiness, to the church in Smyrna of Asia: may you rejoice most greatly in a blameless spirit and the word of God.
1:1 I glorify Jesus Christ, the God who has made you so wise. For I have observed that you are equipped with immovable faith, as if nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ in both flesh and spirit, and established in love by the blood of Christ, fully convinced concerning our Lord that he was truly from the line of David with respect to the flesh, son of God with respect to the will and power of God, truly born from a virgin, baptized by John so that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him, 2 truly under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch nailed for us in the flesh (of whose divinely blessed Passion we are some of the fruit), so that he might set up an ensign for all ages through the resurrection for his saints and believers, whether among Jews or among Gentiles, in the one body of his church.
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