Coincidentally, as my friend Kevin Scull was presenting a paper on Ignatius (“Self-Effacement in the Letters of Ignatius and Paul”) at NAPS, the class he was teaching (“Earliest Christian Documents in Historical Context”) was scheduled to address Ignatius’ writings (the very same day, in fact!). Clearly, Kevin could not be in both Chicago and Los Angeles at the same time, even if it was the same topic that demanded his attention. I was honored that he requested I step in for him to lead his seminar of about a dozen students on the topic of Ignatius. I had a great time.

It was a three hour seminar that began with a writing exercise (the class fulfills a “Writing II Requirement” or a “W” course at UCLA) on word precision and verb tense–not as dry as it sounds! The students had to have their rough draft of their final paper completed by that class session, so, they had examples to share with their peers.

Then we switched to Ignatius, the students having read his letter to the Ephesians and to the Romans. They had done some background reading from Ehrman and a scholarly article dealing with why Ignatius was arrested (external persecution or internal strife?). We spent some productive time discussing the major themes that Ignatius cares about: martyrdom, bishops, unity, and false teachings. We tried to connect the dots between his concerns regarding bishops, unity, and false teachings (false teachings bring dissension, the bishop dictates the boundaries of unity, etc.).

We tried to discern what those false teachings might have been. They identified “flesh” as an important topic in Ephesians, but weren’t sure what to make of it. One student thought that this could have been something “christological,” but when I explained docetism to them, they didn’t seem convinced that the false teachings were solely docetism. They thought that Ignatius was emphasizing spirit just as much as flesh in his comments, so they thought it could go either way.

When I told them about the old view that there was a singular “docetic Judaizing” group that Ignatius was fighting against in all congregations, just about every student thought this was ridiculous–as their faces expressed. This was a group very suspicious of the work of “scholars.” They almost reminded me of the way the sixteenth century Anabaptists talked about “the wicked scribes.” But their distaste was less for religious reasons as it was for logical ones. To paraphrase one student, “It seems like these scholars just decide some things, which have very little evidence, sound like good ideas and everybody just goes along with it and bases more work on it.” Teaching the issues of historical scholarship, particularly in the ancient world, to undergrads often reminds one of the speculative house of cards we academics live in.

For the rest of the class session, we talked about how Ignatius compares and contrasts with Paul (including the theme of Kevin’s own presentation on self-effacement) and the nature of persecution of Christians in the early second century (they had also read the Pliny and Trajan exchange, and a comment from Tertullian on how Christians get blamed for everything).

I love my own classroom, but it was nice to take a step back from seventeenth-century absolute monarchy and teach Christian origins again. And for a great group of students, too. Every student contributed something valuable to the discussion. I could tell that Kevin had been helping these students through some very challenging terrain in a masterful way. In the end, though, it does make me somewhat sad that I will not get to teach next year–even if it means I’ll be more productive in my research. I’ve already been looking for ways to keep a foot in the pedagogical waters next year.