Ignatius was an overseer in the city of Antiochos, in Syria around the turn of the century (I/II CE). If the letters ascribed to him are authentic, then Ignatius was emprisoned for his beliefs and taken to Rome, where he was martyred. During the journey, Ignatius wrote several letters, with the letter to the assembly at Smyrna seeming the most interesting. The letter is often dated to the first quarter of the second century (c.112), and Ignatius is presumed to have died c.116.
Ignatius' chief opponents at the time of the writing of this letter were the Docetists, who claimed that Jesus could not both have been God and suffered as a human being. Ignatius believed that Jesus was both human and God, and here he finds himself defending not Jesus' divinity but his humanity. The Docetists accepted Jesus as God, but their beliefs took them to the conclusion that he merely appeared human while on earth. In fact, he was a ghost or apparition, or so they believed. Ignatius wrote to assure his readers that Jesus was indeed human: that he ate, drank, suffered, and died, just as humans do, and that when he was raised from his dead, his resurrection was a bodily one.
Ignatius also provides us with a snapshot of a changing Christianity. First of all, gentiles were starting to dominate Christianity, and it was very easy for them to envision a Jesus who was both human and deity. Human gods dominated the Greco-Roman religious scene. Jesus was beginning to be worshipped as God, and different schools of thought were developing as to exactly what kind of God-human he was.
Another matter was the structure of the assembly-at-large. Whereas before the fall of Jerusalem there had been no structure per se, and the envoys took great pains to ensure that what responsibilities there were did not become positions, in the post-temple period, the positional idea was becoming firmly entrenched (see also the letter of Clement of Rome to the Korinthians). Ignatius urges his readers to do nothing without the Overseer's approval. He equates the honor due such uninspired people as their Overseer, Servants, and older people with the honor they might give the envoys and prophets. We see an institution forming which places less importance on what prophets there might be and more importance on elected officials. These people appear to have wrested control from the assembly as a whole. Ignatius goes so far as to say that anyone who does anything without the Overseer's knowledge is serving Satan!
Read the Letter of Ignatius to the assembly at Smyrna
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