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By Root 2448 0

as bishop at the end of the first century, according to church tradition. First Clement, a letter from Rome to Corinth weakly attributed to Clement, is usually listed with the Apostolic Fathers. It tries to settle the issue of the nature of resurrection by means of an ambiguous phrase, “immortal knowledge”: “Through him the Master has willed that we should taste immmortal knowledge” (1 Clem. 36: 1-2).16 This terminology is a clever attempt to bridge the growing gap between religious experience and ecclesiastical authority. As an attempt to formulate the nature of Christ’s immortality, the term “immortal knowledge” was shortly to become even more suspect than the problem it was designed to resolve. Here the immortal knowledge is specified as the apostolic tradition:

The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. (1 Clem. 42)17

The resurrection guaranteed the truth of the apostolic tradition as much as the other way around. At the same time, 1 Clement emphasizes the resurrection of believers.

First Clement does not describe the resurrection body; but 2 Clement does:

And let no one of you say that this very flesh shall not be judged nor rise again. Consider ye in what [state] ye were saved, in what ye received sight, if not while ye were in this flesh. We must therefore preserve the flesh as the temple of God. For, as ye were called in the flesh, ye shall also come [to be judged] in the flesh. As Christ, the Lord who saved us, though He was first a Spirit, became flesh, and thus called us, so shall we also receive the reward in this flesh. (2 Clem. 9)18

Unhappily, 2 Clement is likely written by yet another writer, taking us rather far from the historical Clement. But the progression does clarify issues otherwise left ambiguous in 1 Clement. Christians receive salvation in the flesh just as Christ himself was carnal and was himself resurrected in the flesh. It is therefore appropriate that the future reward shall also be in the flesh. Paul’s pneumatology is combined with the notion of resurrection in such a way as to yield a justification for the continued importance of the church of the faithful and, indeed, the apostolic succession. It is not hard to perceive a real enemy behind this polemic. There were many in the Early Church who denied that the resurrection was fleshly or literal. Foremost among them were the “Gnostics,” but also any other extreme interpreter of Paul, docetist or Platonist.

Ignatius

PHYSICAL RESURRECTION, martyrdom, angelic status, and heavenly exaltation continued to be seen together in orthodox Christian writings.19 In a church that faced the terrible choice of martyrdom or apostasy, the encouragement to martyrdom shortly became an issue in and of itself.20 To explain this crisis, the church could rely on Luke’s tradition of the martyrdom of Stephen and his subsequent exaltation in Acts 7.

It is Stephen’s role as the first church martyr that Ignatius emulates:

Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather entice the wild beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body; so that when I have fallen asleep [in death], I may be no trouble to any one. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body. Entreat Christ for me that by these instruments, I may be found a sacrifice [to God.] (I. Rom. 4)21

The image of falling asleep, Luke’s phrase used for Stephen’s death, in order