Presides in Love

In the salutation of To the Romans, Ignatius greets the Roman church with two phrases built on the verb προκαθ- (“to preside”): she “presides in the country of the region of the Romans” (προκάθηται ἐν τόπῳ χωρίου Ῥωμαίων) and is “presiding over love” (προκαθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης). These few words are among the most contested in early Christian literature, read by the Roman tradition as the earliest non-Roman avowal of Roman primacy and by the Orthodox and much critical scholarship as a primacy of honor and charity rather than of universal jurisdiction. This file sets out the Greek, the translation, and both readings with their sources, without adjudicating between them.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostolic Father)

The Phrases and Their Greek

The disputed words stand in the prescript of To the Romans, embedded in the longest and most laudatory salutation of the seven letters (see The Letter to the Romans). In the middle-recension Greek, the relevant clause reads: “ἥτις καὶ προκάθηται ἐν τόπῳ χωρίου Ῥωμαίων, ἀξιόθεος, ἀξιοπρεπής, ἀξιομακάριστος, ἀξιέπαινος, ἀξιεπίτευκτος, ἀξίαγνος καὶ προκαθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης” (Ignatius, To the Romans, salutation). Two forms of the same verb frame a row of six honorific compounds: the finite προκάθηται (“presides”) with the locative phrase “in the country of the region of the Romans,” and the participle προκαθημένη (“presiding”) governing the genitive τῆς ἀγάπης (“of love”).

Lightfoot renders the whole as an address to the church “even unto her that hath the presidency in the country of the region of the Romans, being worthy of God, worthy of honour, worthy of felicitation, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy in purity, and having the presidency of love” (Ignatius, To the Romans, salutation; trans. Lightfoot). Other translators give the second phrase as “presiding over love,” “presiding in love,” or “pre-eminent in love,” and the first as “which has the chief place in the district of the region of the Romans” (Ignatius, To the Romans, salutation; trans. Srawley) or, in the public-domain Roberts–Donaldson version, the church “which presides in the place of the region of the Romans” (Ignatius, To the Romans, salutation; ANF 1). The verb προκάθημαι with a genitive of the thing means “to preside over” or “to be set at the head of”; with the locative ἐν τόπῳ it means “to hold the presidency in (a place).” Both senses are uncontroversial as grammar; what divides interpreters is the kind of presidency Ignatius means and the force of pairing it, in the second phrase, with ἀγάπη rather than with a place or a body of churches.

The Crux

Two features of the prescript drive the debate. First, the doubling of προκαθ-: the Roman church is said both to “preside” in a geographical sense and to “preside over love.” Does the repetition signal a single, weighty claim of ecclesial pre-eminence, or are the two phrases doing different work — one locating the church, the other praising its charity? Second, the object of the second verb is ἀγάπη, a word that in Ignatius and the early church can mean the theological virtue of love, the bond of the Christian community, or concretely the love-feast (the agapē) associated with the eucharistic assembly (Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 8.2; trans. Lightfoot). Whether “presiding over love” names a rank of authority or a primacy in charity turns in part on which sense of ἀγάπη is heard. Because the letter nowhere mentions a Roman bishop and addresses the Roman church rather than its head (see The Letter to the Romans), the prescript supports more than one coherent reading, and the two great traditions have read it in two stable, divergent ways.

The Disputed Reading

[Disputed: (A) The Roman-primacy reading holds that προκάθηται / προκαθημένη denotes a genuine presidency or primacy of the Roman church, so that the prescript is an early external witness to Rome’s pre-eminence. Johannes Quasten, surveying the patristic evidence, calls Ignatius’s address to the Romans “the earliest avowal of the Primacy of Rome that we possess from the pen of a non-Roman ecclesiastic” (Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, p. 68). Adrian Fortescue likewise reads the prescript’s language of presiding — and especially “presiding over love” — as testimony to Rome’s recognized headship among the churches (Fortescue, The Early Papacy). On this reading the doubled προκαθ- is cumulative: the Roman church “presides” not merely in its own district but, in the second and climactic phrase, “presides over love” — that is, over the whole communion of charity that is the church — and the unmatched density of honorifics in this prescript, found in no other Ignatian letter, marks Rome out as occupying a unique place. The reading is developed in modern Catholic scholarship and apologetics, which note that Ignatius, himself a bishop of an apostolic see, addresses Rome with a deference he shows no other church, and that the letter elsewhere credits Rome with having “taught others” (Ignatius, To the Romans 3; trans. Lightfoot; see The Letter to the Romans).

(B) The Orthodox and much critical reading holds that ἀγάπη here is not a title of jurisdiction and that “presiding in love” expresses a primacy of honor and charity — a presidency within the communion of love — rather than a primacy of universal governance. On this reading several features of the text tell against the jurisdictional construction. Ignatius nowhere in the letter names or mentions a bishop of Rome, and he addresses the Roman church, whereas his characteristic ecclesiology of obedience and headship is always stated in terms of the local bishop (Ignatius, To the Magnesians 6; To the Trallians 3; see Monepiscopacy); he does not here ascribe to Rome the teaching-and-governing authority over other churches that he ascribes to each local bishop within his own church. The genitive τῆς ἀγάπης is read by many as Rome presiding in love — in works and bonds of charity — or even as presiding in the AGAPE, the community’s love-feast, rather than ruling over the churches; and the first phrase is read as a presidency among the churches “of the region” of the Romans, the Roman territory, rather than as a universal claim. Nicholas Afanasiev built an entire ecclesiology on this phrase: his essay “The Church Which Presides in Love” argues that Ignatius witnesses to a real precedence of the Roman church within the fellowship of love, grounded in priority of witness and charity, but not to the later juridical primacy of the papacy (Afanasiev, “The Church Which Presides in Love,” in The Primacy of Peter, ed. Meyendorff). The volume in which that essay appears collects the standard Orthodox treatments of the question and frames Rome’s early standing as a primacy of honor among equals rather than of jurisdiction over them (Meyendorff et al., The Primacy of Peter). On this reading Ignatius is a genuine and important early witness — but to Rome’s honored precedence within the communion, not to universal jurisdiction.]

The Philology, Stated Fairly

The lexical facts do not by themselves settle the dispute, and honesty requires laying them out without slanting them. The verb προκάθημαι is a compound of κάθημαι (“to sit”) with the prefix προ- (“before, in front”), and it means “to sit before,” hence “to preside” or “to be set at the head of.” With a genitive of persons or things it regularly means “to preside over” them; Ignatius uses cognate language elsewhere of the bishop who “presides” in the place of God and of the presbytery (Ignatius, To the Magnesians 6; trans. Lightfoot; see Monepiscopacy), which shows that the verb can carry a clearly hierarchical sense in his vocabulary. That observation cuts toward reading (A): when Ignatius says a body “presides,” he can mean it governs.

But the same vocabulary cuts the other way as well. In the bishop-passages the one presiding is a person set over a community; in the Roman prescript the second phrase makes the object of presiding not a community but ἀγάπη — “love” — which is not a body that can be ruled but a virtue or a bond, so that “presiding over love” reads more naturally as pre-eminence in love than as rule over churches (Ignatius, To the Romans, salutation; trans. Lightfoot). The genitive τῆς ἀγάπης is grammatically ambiguous between “presiding over (the community of) love” and “foremost in love,” and the ancient versions and translators divide accordingly: Srawley’s note glosses the church as having “the chief place in love,” explaining that Rome held precedence of rank among the churches around it and was likewise foremost among them in works of charity (Ignatius, To the Romans, salutation; trans. and note Srawley). The philology, in short, permits both a strong and a modest sense of “presiding,” and the choice between them is made on grounds beyond the grammar — on how one reads the silence about a Roman bishop, the meaning of ἀγάπη, and the wider second-century evidence for Rome’s standing (see Modern Scholarship).

What Both Traditions Grant

For all their divergence, the two readings share more common ground than polemic usually allows, and stating it is part of treating the dispute fairly. Both grant that Ignatius addresses the Roman church with a deference and honor he extends to no other community in the corpus, and that the prescript’s piled honorifics are not accidental (Ignatius, To the Romans, salutation; trans. Lightfoot). Both grant that he credits Rome with having taught others and with a recognized standing in the early communion (Ignatius, To the Romans 3; trans. Lightfoot). And both grant that he says nothing, here or elsewhere, about a Roman bishop exercising authority over other churches — the letter’s claims are made of the church, not of its head. The disagreement is over the inference: whether this honored precedence is the seed of, and evidence for, a universal jurisdiction later articulated in the papacy, or whether it is a primacy of honor and charity within a communion of churches that remained, in Ignatius’s own ecclesiology, each ordered around its own bishop (see Unity around the Eucharist).

A Live, Dated Dispute

The reading of προκαθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης is not a settled philological problem with one correct answer but a live theological dispute, and it has been read differently along confessional lines for a long time. Quasten’s Patrology, a standard mid-twentieth-century Catholic reference, states the maximal reading plainly (Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1, p. 68); Afanasiev’s mid-twentieth-century essay, foundational for Orthodox eucharistic ecclesiology, states the minimal reading just as plainly and takes its very title from the phrase (Afanasiev, “The Church Which Presides in Love,” in The Primacy of Peter, ed. Meyendorff). The Orthodox conclusion is that Ignatius witnesses to a real honor and precedence of Rome within the communion of love — a primacy of honor among the churches — but not to the later papal claim of universal jurisdiction, and that the prescript is genuinely read differently in the two traditions (see Pre-Schism Church; Church Fathers). The methodology of this collection requires both positions to be set out with their own sources and without triumphal adjudication (see METHODOLOGY, §4); the phrase remains one of the durable cruxes between East and West, and the most that can be said neutrally is what is said above: the Greek permits both senses, the surrounding text underdetermines the choice, and the two traditions have made it in two consistent and opposing ways.

References

Ignatius of Antioch. To the Romans, salutation and ch. 3. In The Apostolic Fathers, Part II: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, ed. and trans. J. B. Lightfoot, 2nd ed., 3 vols. London: Macmillan, 1889. Greek text and English translation of the middle recension. Online: https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/ignatius-romans-lightfoot.html
Ignatius of Antioch. To the Romans, salutation. Trans. J. H. Srawley, The Epistles of St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 2nd ed. London: SPCK, 1919, with note on “the chief place in love.” Online: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/srawley/romans.html
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1885. (ANF 1.) Roberts–Donaldson translation of To the Romans. Online: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0107.htm
Holmes, Michael W. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. Greek-English edition of To the Romans with introduction.
Quasten, Johannes. Patrology. Vol. 1: The Beginnings of Patristic Literature. Utrecht/Westminster, MD: Spectrum/Newman Press, 1950. On To the Romans as “the earliest avowal of the Primacy of Rome that we possess from the pen of a non-Roman ecclesiastic” (p. 68).
Fortescue, Adrian. The Early Papacy: To the Synod of Chalcedon in 451. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1920. The Roman-primacy reading of the Ignatian prescript.
Afanasiev, Nicholas. “The Church Which Presides in Love.” In The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church, ed. John Meyendorff. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, rev. ed. 1992. The Orthodox eucharistic-ecclesiology reading of προκαθημένη τῆς ἀγάπης.
Meyendorff, John, ed. The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, rev. ed. 1992. Collected Orthodox treatments of Roman primacy and the Ignatian phrase.