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The letter is also the earliest recorded evidence of the use of the term "Catholic Church.” Saint Ignatius, who wrote some 900 years before the Great Schism , uses the term "Catholic" to mean the "Universal Church" (as the term “Catholic” comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning “universal”).
Specifically, it is a letter sent by the church in Smyrna to the church in Philomelium but was meant to be circulated to all the congregations in the region. [2] The letter abides by the following structure: an initial greeting and blessing (1.1-2), followed by the body of material about the story of Polycarp's death (5.1-18.3), and a closing ...
The Church of Smyrna was also one of the Seven Churches of Asia, mentioned at the New Testament, Book of Revelation, written by John of Patmos. [1] In ca. 110 AD, Ignatius of Antioch wrote a number of epistles among them to the people of Smyrna and its bishop, Polycarp .
The second letter, written many years later, would constitute the bulk of the epistle (Chapters 1–12). Harrison named this letter the Crisis Letter, [1]: 33 because it seems to have been written in response to a crisis in the Philippian church, in which its presbyter Valens was removed from his post for "covetousness" (Chapter 11).
Polycarp (/ ˈ p ɒ l i k ɑːr p /; Greek: Πολύκαρπος, Polýkarpos; Latin: Polycarpus; AD 69 – 155) was a Christian bishop of Smyrna. [2] According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, he died a martyr, bound and burned at the stake, then stabbed when the fire failed to consume his body. [3]
A Christian church and a bishopric existed there from earliest times, probably originating in the considerable Jewish colony. It was one of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation. [12] Saint Ignatius of Antioch visited Smyrna and later wrote letters to its bishop, Polycarp.
[9] He is of the opinion that the letters have a prophetic purpose disclosing the seven phases of the spiritual history of the Church. Other writers, such as Clarence Larkin, [10] Henry Hampton Halley, [11] Merrill Unger, [12] and William M. Branham [13] also have put forward the view that the seven churches preview the history of the global ...
Scholars such as Pearcy Neale Harrison have argued that Ignatius must be referring to some sort of schism in the Antiochene church which had recently been resolved. [5] Ignatius then asks Polycarp to send a letter to the church in Antioch, congratulating and encouraging them for having resolved their schism: