Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (127 page)

This strong rejection of both
and
shows Julian’s allegiances. For Hagedorn he was a “true-blood Arian”—specifically a disciple of Aetius or Eunomius. Since arguments over the term
did not appear until some thirty years after Nicea, starting with the Synod of Sirmium in 357
CE,
this work must date sometime after that. And since, in his view, the neo-Arians did not survive the purge of Theodosius and the Council of Constantinople (381
CE
), the work probably dates somewhat earlier. Hagedorn suggests a date between 357–365 and argues that the work was produced in Syria.
⁵²

This date works well for the forgery of letters in the name of Ignatius of Antioch as well. But several caveats are in order. For one thing, it is—as already intimated—inordinately difficult to get a handle on the theological views presented in the Pseudo-Ignatian letters themselves, in no small measure because so many nuances are involved with their language. Moreover, if we accept the identity of authorship among the three works of Julian, this does not mean he has expressed exactly the same views in all three. In no small measure that is because authors’ views often shift over a period of time, especially in a period where theological niceties were being thrashed about and refined, and borders were constantly shifting between what was acceptable and what was execrable. At no time was that more true than in the period between the second quarter and the end of the fourth century. As two extreme cases from opposing ends of the spectrum, there is Arius, who at the end of his life claimed to support the decisions of Nicea, and Marcellus of Ancyra, who retracted many of his most distinctive views once they could not stand up either to criticism or the test of time.
⁵³
We should not, in short, simply assume that if Julian wrote both the Commentary to Job and the Pseudo-Ignatian forgeries, the theology between the works will be identical. In fact, there are many similarities, as the forged works embrace some kind of “Arian” perspective and attack views endorsed by Marcellus and his followers who supported a miahypostatic (to use Lienhard’s phrase) view. But there are differences as well, and it is important not to suppose that the author was strictly neo-Arian at the time he produced his works.
⁵⁴
On the contrary, as we will see, the Pseudo-Ignatians appear to take several stances that run counter to traditional neo-Arian views.

Possibly the most important aspect of the Pseudo-Ignatians has been almost entirely overlooked by previous scholars interested in learning the motivation
behind the forgeries (and interpolations). This investigation has always proceeded by looking carefully at the nuances of the author’s theological affirmations, to see whether he can best be described as a Nicene, Apollinarian, “semi-Arian,” neo-Arian,
⁵⁵
and so on. These affirmations are then set down in categories provided by systematic theology. This approach, however, has almost always missed the forest for the trees. In particular, scholars have worked hard to identify the author’s theological alignments without asking why he may have wanted to create the forged materials in the first place. Thus, for example, the justly great Light-foot, who argues that Pseudo-Ignatius cannot be located precisely: the author has some Arian leanings but is not exactly Arian, he is somewhat Apollinarian, but not really. Yet Lightfoot, in the end, never asks why the letters were forged. This is a question, in fact, that has scarcely ever been raised.

It is important to recognize that these letters were not meant to be a set of theological treatises, produced in the way modern systematic theologians produce theirs. As we will see, the letters are largely polemical, ostensibly, though not really, addressed to certain people and in almost every instance dealing with situations of conflict. This is widely known. But what has not been sufficiently appreciated is that the letters do not explicitly attack positions of the author’s own day. They instead appear, on the surface, to be directed to theological aberrations of the second century, aberrations that the forger—incorrectly, as it turns out—seems to have thought were already a problem in the early years of that century, in the days of Ignatius. The targets of all the explicit polemic are such Christological heresies as psilanthropism (where Christ is not divine but a “mere man”); Gnosticism and Marcionism (with the claim that the unknown God did not create this world and that Christ is not the son of the creator); the related, but not coterminous, problem of docetism (where Christ is not a human at all, but is fully God); and Sabellianism (where Christ and God the Father are not separate beings but one being in two modes of existence).

It is true that the proto-orthodox attacks against these various second-century heresies, in the works, say, of Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian, were replicated in the fourth century, as enemies of various theological persuasions accused their adherents of following tenets long denounced as heretical. Marcellus, for example, was regularly and roundly charged with being a kind of Sabellius redivivus, and accusations of psilanthropism were mutually leveled by heresiologists against one another.
⁵⁶
But the striking feature of Pseudo-Ignatius’ denunciations of heresies in nearly all of his explicit polemic is that, at least on the surface, they are phrased not in the sophisticated language of fourth-century Arian controversies, but in language that was, for the most part (though not entirely) appropriate two hundred years earlier. No wonder Hannah could think that the interpolations, at least, were roughly contemporaneous with Ignatius’s own generation; on the surface they sound as if they are.

At the same time, there are places where the author used coded language that was sufficiently nuanced to express some of his key theological views. He evidently did so because he wanted to provide support for his own perspective and to show the genealogical lines of the tradition that could be traced back to a known postapostolic person—one known to the apostles—whom Eusebius indicates was the second bishop of Antioch after Euodius. The author forged these letters to show what Ignatius would have said as a leading heresiologist of his time, but more than this, as a reputed authority, both as the bishop of a major see, and above all as one of the first known Christian martyrs. As a concerned church leader, “Ignatius” naturally opposes false teaching, and this forger thinks, wrongly, that he knows what those teachings would have been in Ignatius’s day. In some cases, he is off by several decades. Of equal importance, however, is that in the course of constructing this picture of Ignatius the martyr-heresiologist, the author slips in, here and there, theological views that are his real and ultimate point. These are subtle and hard for us to track, but they are in there, embracing some kind of “Arian,” or at least dyohypostatic (again, Lienhard’s phrase) understanding of the godhead. The other heresies that are explicitly attacked, in other words, serve as “covers” for the real issues that the forger wants this authority to address.

And so, the solution to the dilemma of the Pseudo-Ignatian forgeries (including the interpolations) is to see the ostensible polemic as a smoke screen, used by a highly trained and intelligent author who sought to establish, explicate, and support his own theological position by putting it on the lips of a great proto-orthodox leader of the faith, the famed martyr bishop Ignatius. By having Ignatius attack heresies thought to be from his own day, the author afforded himself the opportunity, in other places, to express his real theological agenda, by having Ignatius proclaim a theology that was, in fact, the forger’s own.

Several subsidiary points need to be made before proceeding to a more detailed analysis. First, the author is clearly engaged, consciously, in the act of forgery, as is made clear both by all of his attempts at verisimilitude, some of which we will examine shortly, and by the fact that he altered in highly significant ways the authentic letters of Ignatius, in effect putting his own words on the pen of an author living more than a century and a half earlier. Moreover, the forger is not only concerned with theology and with conveying his particular Christological views under the authority of Ignatius. As is true of most authors, he has multiple interests.
⁵⁷
These other interests include emphasizing the preeminence of the bishop, the ability of young men to serve as bishops, the importance of the church structure, the social relations of Christians, the relationship of church and state, and a large range of ethical issues, including opposition to rigorous asceticism.

I will not be able to provide an exhaustive examination of all the important features of the forger’s work. A full analysis, however, is long overdue, and a full critical commentary on the Pseudo-Ignatians (including the interpolations) is a major desideratum in the field.

It is clear, in any event, that the author has gone out of his way to make his work believably Ignatian through the myriad verisimilitudes he provides. Thus, for example, we have the opening statement of the letter to the Tarsians: “From Syria even unto Rome I fight with beasts, not that I am devoured by brute beasts … but by beasts in the shape of men … I therefore the prisoner of Christ, who am driven along by land and sea, exhort you” (
ch. 1
).
⁵⁸
Or the opening statement of the letter to the Antiochians, “The Lord has rendered my bonds light and easy since I learnt that you are at peace”; or its postscript “I write this letter to you from Philippi”; or from a passage in medias res, “What I spoke to you while present I now write to you” (
ch. 7
). The letter to Hero, as might be expected, given its subject matter, is especially full of examples: “I hand over to thee the Church of Antioch…. The bishops Onesimus, Bitus, Damas, Polybius, and all they of Philippi (whence also I have written to thee), salute thee in Christ…” (
chs. 7
–
8
). “Salute Cassian, my host, and his most serious minded partner in life, and their very dear children…. Salute by name all the faithful in Christ that are at Laodicea. Do not neglect those at Tarsus…. I salute in the Lord Maris, the bishop of Neopolis…. Salute thou also Mary my daughter …” (
ch. 9
). Especially profligate in this respect is the letter to Mary, where “Ignatius” waxes eloquent on the competing merits of writing as opposed to speaking face-to-face, and in a later section where he pretends to be under military guard (
ch. 4
), although here, evidently, he is imagined as being under house arrest in Antioch (whence he can fulfill her request) rather than en route to Rome. Verisimilitudes are not lacking to the additional comments of the interpolation, as seen, for example, in Ephesians 12, “I am the very insignificant Ignatius, who have thrown my lot with those exposed to danger.”

All the verisimilitudes in the world cannot compensate for the author’s occasional slips, however, as noted earlier, both in his delineation of false teachers who came after Ignatius’ day in Tarsians 11 and in the list of minor church offices, some of which are otherwise unattested until the second half of the fourth century (subdeacons, readers, singers, doorkeepers, laborers, exorcists, confessors; Antiochenes 12).