apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

414 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
classical and ecclesiastical writers alike ; e.g.
'
'
catholic history ',
a
catholic truth', 'the catholic resurrection', where we should say 'universal
history', 'an absolute truth', 'the general resurrection'. A few
examples are gathered together in my note on the passage (ii. p. 310
sq), where also I have discussed fully its meaning as employed by
Ignatius. It is clear that in this sense the word might have been used
at any time and by any writer from the first moment when the Church
began to spread, while yet the conception ot its unity was present to
the mind. The idea involved in the epithet 'catholic', so employed,
is as distinct in S. Paul's Epistles as it is in the ages of Tertullian and
Origen, and— of Athanasius and Basil ; the word itself being in common
use from the first—it is a wholly unimportant matter, as a chronological
test, whether a writer does or does not express the idea by this epithet.
{2) But at a later date 'cathoHc' came to connote other ideas.
The Catholic Church in this sense has a technical meaning. It implies
orthodoxy as opposed to heresy, conformity as opposed
to dissent.
How it came to acquire this sense, I have explained elsewhere (11. p.
311). In this later meaning a community in a particular city
or district
is called the Catholic Church in that locality, as distinguished (for
example) from a Gnostic or Ebionite community there. In this sense,
and this only, has the term Catholic Church any value as a chronological
note.
Now clearly in the passage before us {Smyrn. 8) the word is used in
the former sense. Jesus Christ is here said to stand to the universal
Church, in the same relation as the bishop to the particular Church.
Similarly elsewhere {Magn. 3) the Father is styled 'the Bishop
over all'
(o TravTwi/ k-rridKOTroi), as contrasted with Damas the bishop over the Magnesians.
Here then ' the Catholic ' or ' Universal Church ' is
opposed
to the Smyrnrean Church, the particular community over which Polycarp
presides.
But in the later sense of the term ' catholic ' such a contrast would
have been impossible.
In the passage from the Martyrdom of Polycarp
for instance, which has been quoted already (assuming for a moment that
the reading is correct'), the Church in Smyrna over which Polycarp presides
is itself styled the ' Catholic Church '. It is so called in distinction
to the heretical or separatist bodies which had sprung up meanwhile.
Thus the two passages present a direct contrast, the one to the other,
in the use of the term.
1
This point will be discussed in a later chapter on the Letter of the Smyrnseans;
see also 11. p. 311.