This will be a follow up to my last article where I deal with St. Ignatius. As everyone knows, there are seven early epistles of St. Ignatius to various churches in the Roman Empire. In his letter to the Church of Rome, he doesn’t address the bishop at the beginning of his letter. He addresses the bishop of the city in his other letters. Why didn’t he mention the bishop of the Church of Rome?
The best way to find out would be to ask Ignatius himself. There is a bit of a problem with that as he’s been dead for 1900 years. He also doesn’t explain why he doesn’t address the bishop in the letter. No other Church father mentions it because obviously its not a big deal. They didn’t have conspiracy theorists trying to torpedo the papacy in their day. This leaves us having to figure it out for ourselves. Basically anything we come up with is a guess. White and his fellow 19th century Protestant historians say that it was because there would not be a single monarchial bishop in Rome until the mid-second century. There is no evidence for the belief that the Roman Church at the time of this letter had anything but a monarchial bishop. Irenaeus and Eusebius clearly have lines of Roman bishops going back to the beginning.
So what do I think? If I had to guess, it would be because of the grand history of Christian persecution in Rome. There was massive persecution under Nero and Domitian and that was in very recent memory. Maybe it was to protect the identity of the bishop and other members of the Church of Rome. If this fell into the hands of Roman governors who wanted to persecute Christians, they’d have a list of the names they needed to hunt down. This would make torturing easier as they knew who they needed. Keep in mind that the epistle to Rome doesn’t mention any Presbyters or Deacons as well. In several of the other letters, St. Ignatius mentions presbyters and deacons by name. For example, in his epistle to the Magnesians he writes:
Since, then, I have had the privilege of seeing you, through Damas your most worthy bishop, and through your worthy presbyters Bassus and Apollonius, and throughout my fellow-servant the deacon Sotio, whose friendship may I ever enjoy, inasmuch as he is subject to the bishop as to the grace of God and to the presbytery as to the law of Jesus Christ.
– St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians, Chapter 2
He’s fully willing to mention the names and positions of several people in the Magnesian Church. Maybe it was safer to be a Christian in Magnesia than it was to be in Rome at the time? This would make sense as in Rome you’d be under the thumb of a pagan emperor as opposed to being in a far Eastern province of the Roman Empire.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is simply a guess. I would say it’s an educated guess but at the end of the day it’s just a guess. However, my guess actually fits in with the evidence from the early Church. This doesn’t do damage to the basic facts from Eusebius, the earliest Church historian who had access to many documents that are no longer available today. That’s what makes my guess far superior to this theory from James White and other 19th century Protestants that there was no monarchial bishop in Rome until the mid-second century.
Feel free to share your theories in the comments section.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.