How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus' Divine Nature—A Response To Bart Ehrman

by Michael F. Bird

THE BISHOP: IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH I bid you farewell always in our God Jesus Christ; may you remain in him, in the unity and care of God. I greet Alce, a name very dear to me. Farewell in the Lord. (Ignatius, To Polycarp 8.3, trans. M. Holmes). Ignatius was the bishop of Syrian Antioch (died ca. 110 CE). He wrote a series of letters to several churches while being escorted to Rome en route to his execution. In these letters he makes several striking affirmations about Jesus as God and intimately related to the Father. In some cases, the language seems liturgical, hymnic, and overtures later creedal christological statements (e.g., Eph. 7.2; 18.2; 19.3; Rom. 3.3; 6.3; Smyrn. 10.1; Trall. 7.1). There is repeated reference to Jesus Christ as “our God.” In the letter to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, the refrain is mentioned in the closing greeting as if it were completely normal for a Christian bishop to talk that way about Jesus. According to Thomas Weinandy: “Ignatius effortlessly and spontaneously wove within his understanding of the relationship between the Father and the Son the simple and unequivocal proclamation that Jesus Christ is God.”