εἷς ἰατρός ἐστιν, σαρκικὸς καὶ πνευματικός, γεννητὸς καὶ ἀγέννητος, ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ θεός, ἐν θανάτῳ ζωὴ ἀληθινή, καὶ ἐκ Μαρίας καὶ ἐκ θεοῦ, πρῶτον παθητὸς καὶ τότε ἀπαθής, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν.
There is one Physician — both fleshly and spiritual, born and unborn, God in human form, true life in death, from Mary and from God, first capable of suffering and then incapable — Jesus Christ our Lord.
REF There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible — Jesus Christ our Lord. (Schaff, ANF I, p. 52)
Notes & Key Terms 4 terms
Key Terms
Ignatius's preferred Christological metaphor — Christ as Physician of fallen humanity. The same image at Ign. Eph. 20:2 (the Eucharist as 'medicine of immortality, antidote against death') frames Christian sacramental life as therapeutic. The metaphor runs through patristic theology (Origen, Comm. Matt. 13:3; Augustine, Sermo 87) and into the modern Christian doctrine of salvation-as-healing (Christus Medicus tradition).
The pair that the Arian-Nicene controversy will eventually require dogmatic resolution of. Ignatius applies both to one subject (Christ); the Arians will deny this is coherent; the Nicene Creed will resolve via the γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα ('begotten, not made') distinction — preserving Ignatius's both/and but at the cost of distinguishing 'begotten' from 'made' as the Greek verb γεννάω had not.
The pair that anchors the patristic doctrine of communicatio idiomatum — Christ's divine nature is impassible, his human nature is passible, but the predicates can be applied to the one person of Christ in cross-attribution ('God suffered,' 'the eternal Logos died'). The dogmatic working-out runs through Cyril of Alexandria and is canonized at the Council of Ephesus 431.
The prepositional phrase Ignatius uses to specify the mode of the incarnation: ἐν (in, within) rather than μετά (with, alongside) or κατά (according to). The choice is theologically deliberate — it asserts inward indwelling rather than external accompaniment, which is what Chalcedon 451 will define as 'two natures... in one person.'
Translator Notes
- Lightfoot II.2, pp. 50-52 (Ign. Eph. 7:2); Schaff, ANF I, p. 52 (Roberts/Donaldson); accessed via newadvent.org/fathers/0104.htm. Ign. Eph. 7:2 is the most-cited single sentence in pre-Nicene Christology for the two-natures-in-one-person doctrine. The seven antithetical pairs — flesh/spirit, born/unborn, God/in-human, life/death, Mary/God, passible/impassible — are the conceptual seed of what Chalcedon 451 will canonize as the four 'withouts' (without confusion, without change, without division, without separation).
- γεννητὸς καὶ ἀγέννητος ('born and unborn') is the pair the Arian-Nicene controversy will turn on. The Arians read γεννητός narrowly ('begotten = created in time') and ἀγέννητος ('unbegotten = eternal') as mutually exclusive properties of two different subjects: the Father is ἀγέννητος, the Son is γεννητός, therefore the Son is created. Ignatius's both/and predication to one subject is theologically prior to the Arian distinction and is what the Nicene Creed must defend with the disambiguation γεννηθέντα, οὐ ποιηθέντα ('begotten, not made'). Cross-reference Justin, Dial. 61 (TCR /justin-dialogue/61) for the same γεννάω-verb under different exegetical framing.
- ἐκ Μαρίας καὶ ἐκ θεοῦ ('from Mary and from God') is the dual-source genealogy Ign. Eph. 18:2 (TCR /ignatius-ephesians/18#v2) will articulate at length. The two ἐκ-prepositions parallel Romans 1:3-4's κατὰ σάρκα / κατὰ πνεῦμα contrast. The simultaneous from-Mary and from-God origin is what the later Theotokos title encodes dogmatically.
- παθητός / ἀπαθής (passible / impassible) is the Greek philosophical-theological vocabulary for the capacity to be acted upon. Classical Greek metaphysics holds that the divine is by definition ἀπαθής (impassible). Christian doctrine of the incarnation requires that the divine subject was, in his human nature, παθητός (passible — could suffer). Ignatius's temporal sequencing (first capable of suffering, then incapable) holds the doctrine in narrative form: passion, then resurrection-glorification. Patristic-theological deployment runs through Tertullian's Adv. Praxean (the 'communicatio idiomatum' principle), Cyril of Alexandria's Twelve Anathemas, and the Council of Chalcedon's two-natures definition.
- Cross-reference Philo, Confusion of Tongues §146 (TCR /philo-conf/1/146): Philo's five-title catalog for the Logos (ἀρχή, ὄνομα θεοῦ, λόγος, ὁ κατ' εἰκόνα ἄνθρωπος, ὁρῶν Ἰσραήλ) is the methodological ancestor of Ignatius's seven-pair antithesis catalog. Both authors gather titles/predicates around a single subject; what changes in Ignatius is the move from listing titles to listing pairs-of-opposites — the move from descriptive multiplicity to dialectical unity-in-tension.