'After every reasonable allowance made for the possibility of mistakes in details, the language (of Irenæus) from a man standing in his position with respect to the previous and contemporary history of the Church leaves no room for doubt as to the early and general diffusion of episcopacy in the regions with which he was acquainted.'
Yet it is by fastening upon alleged 'mistakes in details,' and through counter-conclusions with respect to some of the passages quoted, that Dr. Harnack affirms that 'from the words of Irenæus there is absolutely nothing gained in regard to the origin of the episcopate and its spread during the period between a. d. 90 and 140.' His method is somewhat vexatious. He takes, for example, the list of the Bishops of Rome, and he says, 'Irenæus communicates this list, and declares that the Apostles had ordained Linus as Bishop of Rome;' and he adds, 'that this is false can be proved, and is not denied even by Lightfoot.' The marvellous part of this statement is, that Irenæus says nothing of the kind. The word 'ordination' does not occur in the passage in question. The sentence is far from faithfully translated by the Bishop of Durham:[82] Linus 'was entrusted with the office of the bishopric' by the Apostles. Again, what is 'false'? the whole list, or the statement as regards Linus individually? Neither is false when rightly understood, and no denial is therefore forthcoming from the Bishop of Durham, or required for what is not questioned. But Dr. Harnack—not satisfied with having refuted an imaginary foe—next proceeds to ask, 'What reliance then can we have in the statement of Irenæus, that Polycarp was ordained a bishop by the Apostles'? It might be answered, 'Your first premiss was wrong, and until that be mended, further argument is unnecessary.' But examine the question on its own merits—viz. that due to 'an appreciation of the position' of Irenæus—and its veracity is beyond question.
The Bishop of Durham supports the language of Irenæus by the testimony of Polycrates, of Ephesus, his contemporary, if junior; but without dwelling upon that and other passages of more general reference, we can come nearer to the time of Ignatius by reference to his contemporary, Polycarp. We assume, with Bishop Lightfoot, that the testimony of Irenæus to Polycarp is of the highest value; but that assumption is no rash one. Every one can verify the value of the testimony by perusing the Bishop's interesting pages on the subject. The relation of Polycarp to the Apostles has been given above. It is to his language about episcopacy that we wish to refer. In Polycarp's letter to the Philippians, the Bishop of Smyrna speaks at length about the duties of presbyters, deacons, widows, &c., but he makes no mention either of the bishop, or—in other parts where it might have been expected—of obedience due to him. This is naturally explained on the supposition that the see was then vacant, or that ecclesiastical organization was not fully developed at Philippi. How rash, however, it would be to affirm the non-existence of episcopacy, or to raise objections to it such as would render incredible the statements of Ignatius, may be inferred from the 'Letter of the Smyrnæans,' which, speaking of 'the glorious martyr Polycarp, who was found an Apostolic and prophetic teacher in our own time, a bishop of the Holy Church which is in Smyrna,' attests at once the respect paid to the office by the writer of the Letter and to the title by which Polycarp himself was usually called.
Other contemporaries of Polycarp's were Clement of Rome and Papias. Do they give no testimony to the development of monarchical episcopacy in the later years of the Apostolic Age? Polycarp, if not acquainted with Clement personally, was yet intimately acquainted with his genuine letter, the first Epistle to the Corinthians. In this letter there is no mention of episcopacy properly so-called. With St. Clement, as in the New Testament, bishop and presbyter are convertible terms. He even drops all mention of his own name though bishop of the Church in Rome. There is not even the 'I' of Polycarp, but a 'we,' which defines that the letter is written in the name of the Church and speaks with the authority of the Church. The name and personality of the individual are absorbed in the Church of which he is the spokesman.[83] The same phenomena are observed in the letter written by Ignatius to the very Church—Rome—in which alone they are noticed as occurring. The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans—save for the mention of his own rank—contains no indication of the existence of the episcopal office, inculcates no obedience to bishops, and says not a word about a bishop of Rome. A like phenomenon is to be noticed in the next (chronologically speaking) document, emanating from the Church of Rome—viz. the Shepherd of Hermas. What does this contrast throughout mean, but that where—as in Asia Minor—false doctrine and schismatical teachers prevailed, there episcopacy was a safeguard; where these were absent—as in Rome—there the episcopate had not yet assumed the same sharp and well-defined monarchical character as in the Eastern churches: and what does this contrast tend to disprove but the opinion of Dr. Harnack?—'Apart from the Epistles of Ignatius we do not possess a single witness to the existence of the monarchical episcopate in the churches of Asia Minor so early as the times of Trajan or Hadrian' (i. e. a. d. 98-138).
Turning to the other point—the Theological Polemics—disputed by Harnack, Bishop Lightfoot has dealt with the subject on its positive and negative sides respectively. The positive side yields results of real importance in attestation of the date of the letters. The heresy combated by Ignatius is a type of Gnostic Judaism, the Gnostic element manifesting itself in a sharp form of Docetism. This marked type of Docetism, far from being a difficulty, is an indication of early date, since the tendency of Docetism was to mitigation, as time went on. The negative side is educed by cross-questioning the writer's silence. There were certain controversies which rent the Church in the middle and latter half of the second century. These were such as, first, the Paschal controversy (the proper day and mode of celebrating the Paschal festival); secondly, the controversy about Montanism, the theatre of which was the very region with which these Epistles are concerned. Yet, not a word, not a hint is there, that the writer felt any interest in, or was disturbed by, anxieties about either. A similar silence points to the same conclusion, when we consider the absence of allusion to the three great heresiarchs, Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus. Give to the first a period of notoriety conterminous with the reign of Hadrian (a. d. 117-38), yet there is not the slightest allusion in Ignatius to the tenets of the leader or his followers. Place Marcion some years before the middle of the second century. Remember that he was a native of Asia Minor and taught at Rome that there he was denounced by Polycarp as the 'first born of Satan;'[84] and that he enjoyed a world-wide reputation for evil (according to some), for good (according to others). Yet in the Ignatian letters there is not the faintest aquaintance with the man or his teaching. Valentinus also taught at Rome (c. a. d. 140-60), and his strange theories about Æons and Ogdoads, about spiritual, psychical, and material men, or any other fantasy of his speculative mythology, were not thought beneath the criticism of an Irenæus, a Clement of Alexandria and a Tertullian. Yet no hint is there in the Seven Epistles that these thoughts were familiar to the writer. At one time an exultant Daillé found in his reading of 'Magn.' 8 an attack on Valentinianism, and consequently a welcome anachronism which proved the writer of the letters a forger. The discovery of the true reading has been followed not only by the collapse of the objection, but also by the adhesion to the belief, that the writer's use of certain expressions is a testimony to his existence in a pre-Valentinian epoch, when language had not been abused to heretical ends.
Dr. Harnack has little to say against the Bishop of Durham's conclusions from the negative side of the investigation of these theological polemics; but he has much to say against the Bishop's deductions from the positive aspect of them. Though, says Bishop Lightfoot,
'in the Trallian and Smyrnæan letters the writer deals chiefly with Docetism, while in the Magnesian and Philadelphian letters he seems to be attacking Judaism, yet a nearer examination shows the two to be so closely interwoven that they can only be regarded as different sides of one and the same heresy.'
Not so Dr. Harnack. To him
'the identification of the Judaists and Gnostics in the Ingnatian Epistles is quite inadmissible. Ignatius combats the Doketists in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Trallians, and the Smyrnæans, while in the Epistles to the Magnesians and Philadelphians he warns against the Ebionistic danger. In the last-named Epistle he warns against other tendencies which threatened the unity of the Church.'
In fact, it is this Epistle to the Philadelphians which, in his opinion, has led scholars astray. No one he thinks would have misunderstood 'the fact—that the Judaists in the Epistle to the Magnesians were certainly not Doketists, and the Doketists described in the Epistles to the Ephesians, Trallians, and Smyrnæans were not Judaists—had the Epistles of Ignatius come to us without the Epistle to the Philadelphians.' It would be beyond the province of this Review to enter into an examination of the arguments adduced on each side; it would also be an injustice to the disputants to infer that each selects or presses what tells most of his view, but certainly a calm and dispassionate inspection of these arguments will lead most men to think Uhlhorn, Lipsius, and Lightfoot more correct in their unanimous verdict, that but one heresy is attacked in the Ignatian letters, than Hilgenfeld and Harnack in their preference of two distinct heresies—Ebionism and Docetism. This latter conclusion can only be reached by treating the Letters of Ignatius as Hilgenfeld has treated St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians; the former is attained by critical methods defining the Judaism and Gnosticism observable to be but web and woof of one and the same fabric.