Church unity and obedience: Ignatius on the Trinity

This week at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in San Antonio, I'll be presenting a paper entitled "Ignatius of Antioch's Trinitarian Foundation for Church Unity and Obeying Spiritual Leaders." In the abstract I write:

While on the road to stand trial and face martyrdom in Rome, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch (d. ca. 110) authored seven letters—five to Asian churches, one to Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, and one to the church at Rome. Providing rich insight into the issues of the second-century church in Asia, the letters also reveal a good bit of Ignatius’ theology, including his thoughts on ecclesiology, martyrdom, Judaism, heresy, and the Trinity. In this paper, I suggest that Ignatius’ pleas for church unity and obedience to the bishop—arguably the strongest themes in his letters—were founded on his understanding of the Trinity and that his ecclesiology depended on this developing Trinitarian thought.

---