Audio download:
http://www.cantus-firmus.com/Audio/20180414-DidtheEarlyChurchBelievethatJesusIsGod.mp3
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I’m doing a series right now on early 2nd century church father Ignatius of Antioch’s letters on my Patreon podcast (https://www.patreon.com/cantusfirmus) and thought it might be useful to pull together some of the data about how this early church father looked at Jesus and thought about His divinity. There’s this notion that the earliest Christians didn’t see Jesus as divine and that the idea of His divinity crept in slowly over a long period of time. Some have even argued that it came about through the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., almost 300 years after Jesus died! Well, Ignatius of Antioch was a major figure in the early church and wrote a series of letters in the first decade of the 2nd century (or early 100s A.D.) to churches as he was on his way to be martyred in Rome. He tries to persuade them of a number of ideas (for instance, that they should not follow Jewish practices, that they should obey their bishop, even that they shouldn’t interfere with his martyrdom), but whenever he speaks about Jesus’ divinity, it’s always something he mentions matter-of-factly as if they all just believed it. The video includes five important citations about the divinity of Jesus from Ignatius of Antioch.
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