7
CHAPTER THREE: IN THE EAST
Skipping back in time to the first century, we pick up the road to Nicea in the East. Life was
different on the Greek side of the Empire. The East had many more churches and many more
opportunities to hear different interpretations of Christianity. Also, politics played a much greater
role. Antioch and Alexandria, provided the fuel for the machinery that paved the road to Nicea.
Antioch
Our first stop is Antioch. We will meet four important characters in the trinitarian debate:
Ignatius, Theophilus, Paul of Samosata, and Lucian. As time passes the theology of this Syrian city
begans to veer more and more afield. Antioch was indeed a hotbed of theological thought.
21
The oldest person we meet along the road is the famous martyr Ignatius. His theology was
primitive and rudimentary, as one would expect for a first century bishop. However, Ignatius did
make passing reference to the trinitarian model three times in his letters.
22
While, on the one hand,
he does not equate the Holy Spirit with Christ, but only as God`s divine power, on the other hand
he does formulate a clearly paradoxical understanding of a two-nature Christology.
23
Unfortunately
in his letters, he does not explain how the flesh and the spirit interact or join in Christ. Ignatius also
21
Paul Woolley, Antiochene Theology, in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 2d ed., Walter A.
Elwell (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic a division of Baker Book House Company, 2001), 72-3;
Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 129, Kelly, 230.
22
The trinitarian model can be found in his letters to Ephesus, IX.1, and Magnesia, XIII.1;
XIII.2.
23
M. D. Goulder, Ignatius` Donatists`, Vigiliae Christianae, 53, no. 1 (1999): 30.