apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE GENUINENESS. 373
was proclaimed imperator, and was associated in the tribunician power
(see below ii. p. 398). The exact day is not known ;
for we are only
told that all this happened three months before Nerva's death, which
took place on Jan. 25 or Jan. 27, a.d. 98 (see 11. p. 477). May we
not conjecture that the festival, at which Ignatius perished, was the
anniversary of this elevation of Trajan Inscriptions yet undiscovered
may perhaps throw some light upon this point.
(ii)
Theological Polemics.
A highly valuable test of date will be found in the theological
polemics of the author of these epistles.
The personal theology of a
writer is a very vague and uncertain criterion of date ;
being connected with his historical surroundings,
but his polemics,
afford a more solid
basis for an inference. The test will be \yNoio\d., positive and negative.
We shall have to consider alike what the author says and what he leaves
unsaid.
is
In the present case, as we shall see presently, the writer's silence
not less eloquent than his speech.
The
(i) positive side of the investigation yields results of real
importance. The author has before him a particular heresy or heresies
which he attacks relentlessly from all sides. Anticipating the issue, we
may say that the heresy is one, and that it is a type of Gnostic Judaism,
the Gnostic element manifesting itself in a sharp form of Docetism.
(a) This Gnostic or Docetic element is the chief object of attack,
and gives their predominant doctrinal colouring to these epistles. The
Docetism which is here assailed was thorough-going. For the man
Christ Jesus it substituted a mere phantom. The human descent, the
human birth, the baptism, the the trial, judgment, the crucifixion, the
passion, the resurrection, all alike were unreal, were phantasmal. Hence
'
He was
our author's emphatic repetition of the word truly {d\r]6m) ;
truly bom', 'He truly died', 'He truly ate and drank', and the like
[Trail 9, Smyrn. i, 2, 3, Magn. 11).
More especially he points to the
fact that Christ Himself after the resurrection invited the disciples to feel
and handle Him, so as to convince them that He was not an unsubstantial
ghost {Smyrn. 3).
These persons therefore denied the flesh and
blood of Christ ; they evacuated the passion ; they found a stumblingblock
in the cross (Ephes. 18, Magn. 9, Philad. 3, Smyrn. i, 5, 6).
The true believers are they who accept the reality of Christ's humanity,
who take refuge in His flesh, who rejoice in His passion, who are nailed
to His cross {Ephes. inscr. eV Tra^et dXrjdivio, Magn. 11, Trail. 2, 8,