Radu Cosmin Savulescu: "My archives are Jesus Christ": Saint Ignatius of Antioch on the historical Jesus

Lord Jesus Christ is the centre of the theological thinking of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, an affirmation supported, besides his doctrine, by the large number of occurrences of the different names of Christ in his epistles, too. The Christology of Saint Ignatius was considered a forerunner of that of the Council of Chalcedon. Ignatius’ Christology is built, first of all, on the indubitable historical reality of Jesus Christ. Ignatius demonstrates the reality of Christ’s body and of His sufferings and death. He affirms both the humanity and the divinity of Christ, his Christological thinking being closely related to the soteriological one. Ignatius lived in a period when the lively image of Christ was much more powerful than any writing and, consequently, he refuses to place the exegesis above the historical reality, as his opponents asked him. He is one of the first Fathers who emphasises not only the Resurrection of Christ, but also His birth, in order to prove His historical existence, which was denied by some groups.  Actually, for Saint Ignatius, above any Scripture is the reality of Christ and of the magnificent events of His life: “But for me, the archives are Jesus Christ, holy archives, His cross, death, His resurrection and the faith given through Him” (To the Philadelphians, VIII).  The Holy Father uses the sentence Ἐμοὶ δὲ ἀρχεῖά ἐστιν Ἰησοῦς Χριστός to express his belief that the source of the Christian faith is represented, first and foremost, by the Person of Jesus Christ, and not by a book or a collection of books. The reality of Christ was written on the heart of every person who met Him and was transmitted from generation to generation in a spiritual manner which is not dependent on physically written book. Saint Ignatius doesn’t want to quote books, to support his ideas, but he quotes historical realities, which cannot be altered by anyone. On the contrary, the Scriptures were susceptible of human intervention, so their accuracy in describing the reality could be questionable. Of course, this position of Ignatius was a normal reaction in a time when there was no general consensus on the canonicity of the various books that circulated in the Christian communities. But the core of his ideas is, actually, one of the distinctive elements of Christianity: the faith and the Church are not built on a Scripture – even on a divinely inspired one – but on a reality, the reality of Jesus Christ and of His birth, wonders, sufferings, death, resurrection and ascension.