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Ignatius to the Magnesians / Chapter 6

Ignatius to the Magnesians 6

1 verses • Lightfoot Greek (Apostolic Fathers, 1885)

Translator's Introduction

What This Chapter Is About

Ignatius articulates the threefold-ministry doctrine in its earliest extant formulation. The bishop 'presides in the place of God,' the presbytery 'in the place of the assembly of the apostles,' and the deacons are entrusted with the διακονία ('service / ministry') of Jesus Christ. The chapter pairs this hierarchical-ecclesiology with the eternal-pre-temporal relation of the Son to the Father: the bishop is to be revered as the Father, the presbytery as the apostles, the deacons as Jesus Christ — but the underlying ontological grounding is that Christ 'was with the Father before the ages and at the end appeared.' Ignatius is the foundational pre-Nicene witness for the bishop-presbyter-deacon polity that becomes universal in third-century Christianity.

What Makes This Chapter Remarkable

Ign. Magn. 6 is the load-bearing patristic text for episcopal-monarchical ecclesiology — one bishop, one presbytery, one body of deacons, all in liturgical and disciplinary unity. The chapter explicitly grounds church polity in trinitarian relation: the bishop ↔ Father, presbytery ↔ apostles (i.e., the human-witnessing-of-the-Word community), deacons ↔ Jesus Christ. The polity is not merely organizational but iconic — the church's visible hierarchy is to be the visible icon of the divine economy. Future Pillar III doctrinal-index entry candidate on 'Apostolic Succession + Threefold Ministry.' The chapter is one of the most-cited Ignatian passages in Catholic-Orthodox ecclesiology and a major focus of Anglican-Reformed disagreements over polity.

Translation Friction

Modern Reformed and free-church traditions read the chapter as describing one possible (early Catholic) ecclesiology rather than as binding apostolic polity. The interpretive question is whether Ignatius is describing what already obtains in the early second century or prescribing what ought to obtain. Schoedel 1985 reads it as Ignatius's idealized polity, possibly more developed in his rhetoric than in actual practice in all the Asian churches he addresses; Lightfoot 1885 reads it as descriptive of established second-century polity. Modern Catholic ecclesiology treats Ignatius as definitive evidence for apostolic-origin episcopal polity; modern Reformed ecclesiology treats him as evidence for a developing-but-not-yet-universal practice.

Connections

Ignatius to the Magnesians 7-8, 13 (continuation of the same ecclesiological argument); Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 8 ('where the bishop is, there let the multitude be... wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church' — TCR /ignatius-smyrnaeans/8, to be authored in Step 6b); Ignatius to the Trallians 3 (parallel three-office structure — TCR /ignatius-trallians, future verse); 1 Timothy 3:1-13 (the pastoral-epistle qualifications for bishops and deacons); Titus 1:5-9 (Paul's parallel discussion of bishop-presbyter offices); Acts 6:1-6 (the apostolic appointment of the Seven — proto-deacon origin); 1 Clement 42, 44 (parallel and slightly later apostolic-fathers ecclesiology); Cyprian, On the Unity of the Catholic Church 4-5 (the developed mid-third-century articulation); future Pillar III doctrinal-index entry: 'Apostolic Succession and the Threefold Ministry.'

Ignatius to the Magnesians 6:1

παραινῶ ἐν ὁμονοίᾳ θεοῦ σπουδάζετε πάντα πράσσειν, προκαθημένου τοῦ ἐπισκόπου εἰς τύπον θεοῦ καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων εἰς τύπον συνεδρίου τῶν ἀποστόλων, καὶ τῶν διακόνων τῶν ἐμοὶ γλυκυτάτων πεπιστευμένων διακονίαν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.

I urge you: be zealous to do everything in God's harmony — your bishop presiding as a type of God, the presbyters as a type of the apostles' assembly, and the deacons (who are most dear to me) entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ.

REF I exhort you to be eager in doing all things in the harmony of God — your bishop presiding as a type of God, and the presbyters as a type of the assembly of the apostles, with the deacons, who are most dear to me, entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ. (Schaff, ANF I, p. 61, paraphrased)

Notes & Key Terms 4 terms

Key Terms

τύπος typos
"type / iconic representation" — a stamp, impression, model; in Pauline-patristic theology, an iconic-representative correspondence between a person/thing and a divine reality

The Pauline technical noun (Rom 5:14, 1 Cor 10:6, 11). Patristic typological theology builds on Paul's usage. Ignatius's deployment for the bishop's relation to God is one of the strongest pre-Nicene articulations of the type-as-genuine-representation principle that will later anchor Christian iconography (Nicaea II, 787) and Eucharistic-realism theology.

ἐπίσκοπος episkopos
"bishop" — overseer, supervisor; in Christian ecclesiology, the single chief minister of a local church

NT-Pauline vocabulary (Phil 1:1, 1 Tim 3:1-2, Titus 1:7) for the overseer office. In Pauline-pastoral texts, ἐπίσκοπος and πρεσβύτερος appear to be functionally interchangeable (Acts 20:17 + 20:28; Titus 1:5-7). By Ignatius's time the offices are sharply distinguished — one bishop above the presbytery — which has been read either as Ignatius's polity innovation (Schoedel 1985) or as Ignatius's acknowledgment of an already-established Asian-church polity (Lightfoot 1885).

πρεσβύτεροι presbyteroi
"presbyters / elders" — elders; in Christian ecclesiology, the council of senior ministers under the bishop

NT vocabulary (Acts 14:23, 20:17, 1 Tim 5:17, 1 Pet 5:1, Jas 5:14). Ignatius's distinction between bishop (one) and presbytery (plural) is the polity-clarification that Pauline-pastoral texts had left ambiguous. The English noun 'priest' (and Latin presbyter) derives from this Greek root.

διάκονος diakonos
"deacon" — servant, minister; in Christian ecclesiology, the third office, with liturgical and charitable functions

NT vocabulary (Phil 1:1, 1 Tim 3:8-13, Rom 16:1 — where Phoebe is a διάκονος of the church at Cenchreae). The διακονία ('ministry / service') of Jesus Christ that Ignatius entrusts to deacons signals their primary liturgical role as servers of the Eucharist and of the bishop. The same διακονία noun ties the deacons to the apostolic-acts pattern of Acts 6:1-6.

Translator Notes

  1. Lightfoot II.2, pp. 119-121 (Ign. Magn. 6:1); Schaff, ANF I, p. 61; accessed via newadvent.org/fathers/0105.htm. The single most-cited Ignatian text for the threefold-ministry doctrine. The three offices — bishop / presbytery / deacons — are each typologically grounded in the divine economy: bishop is εἰς τύπον θεοῦ ('as a type of God'), presbytery is εἰς τύπον συνεδρίου τῶν ἀποστόλων ('as a type of the assembly of the apostles'), deacons are entrusted with διακονίαν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ('the ministry of Jesus Christ').
  2. τύπος ('type') is the Pauline-patristic technical noun for an iconic-representative correspondence. Same word at Romans 5:14 (Adam as τύπος of Christ), 1 Corinthians 10:6, 11 (OT events as τύποι for the church). The bishop-as-type-of-God claim is not metaphorical: in patristic-iconographic theology, the τύπος bears genuine sacramental representation of what it types. This is the conceptual ground for the eventual Christian iconographic theology that the seventh ecumenical council (Nicaea II, 787) will defend against iconoclasm.
  3. ὁμόνοια ('harmony, like-mindedness') is one of Ignatius's signature ecclesiological values — appearing 25+ times across the seven letters. The same noun appears in Greek-classical political theory (Aristotle, Plato) for the civic concord that makes a polis function. Ignatius transfers the political-philosophical term to the ecclesial body: the church functions when the threefold ministry operates in ὁμόνοια θεοῦ. Cross-reference Ign. Magn. 7 (TCR /ignatius-magnesians/7) for the worked-out application.
  4. συνέδριον τῶν ἀποστόλων ('assembly of the apostles') is Septuagintal-political vocabulary. συνέδριον is the technical Greek noun for a deliberative council (the Sanhedrin in Jewish-political usage). Ignatius's typological mapping presbytery ↔ apostolic synedrion is theologically dense: presbyters represent the deliberative-witnessing function of the apostolic college, distinguished from the bishop's representation of the Father (the source) and the deacons' representation of the Son (the sent one).
Chapter 5 Report an error Ignatius to the Magnesians index Chapter 7