One of the Apostolic Fathers (c. 35-c. 108), bishop of Antioch in Syria, and one of the earliest post-apostolic Christian writers. Tradition (though uncertain in details) holds that Ignatius was a disciple of the Apostle John; he served as bishop of Antioch (the church where the disciples were first called Christians, Acts 11:26) until being arrested during the persecution under Emperor Trajan and transported to Rome for execution by wild beasts in the amphitheater (c. 108). During the long journey from Antioch to Rome under military escort, Ignatius wrote seven letters that survive as authentic: to the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Rome (a remarkable letter begging the Roman Christians not to attempt to prevent his martyrdom), Philadelphia, Smyrna, and to Polycarp (the bishop of Smyrna). The Ignatian letters are theologically substantive: they affirm the divinity of Christ in unambiguous terms (Christ as our God); they articulate an early high-church ecclesiology with bishop, presbyters, and deacons as the three-fold ministry; they engage Docetic heresy (the denial of Christ's true humanity) directly; they witness to the apostolic preservation of orthodox Christology in the immediate post-apostolic period. Ignatius's eagerness for martyrdom (expressed in the Letter to the Romans in dramatic terms — I am God's wheat, and I shall be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread of Christ) is the supreme early-Christian model of the martyr's posture. The patriarchal-Reformed reader engages Ignatius's substantive Christological and ecclesiological witness with profit, while engaging with discernment the elements of his ecclesiology that the post-apostolic Catholic tradition would develop in directions the Reformation needed to correct.