Gregory VAIL. Learning Christ: Ignatius of Antioch and the Mystery of Redemption. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2013. Pp.400. $34.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8132-3478-6. Reviewed by Maureen BEYER MOSER, Greenwich Academy, Greenwich, CT 06830.

Gregory Vail’s book, a close examination of Ignatius of Antioch’s theology, argues that he is a serious and sophisticated theologian, with detailed Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.  Vail sets out to show that Ignatius is often inappropriately underestimated by scholars.  His reading of Ignatius provides an important contribution to early Christian studies and also highlights what an early systematic theology looks like.

Vail describes his project as using “not a hermeneutic of suspicion, but one of understanding and empathy.”  He takes Ignatius’ faith and perspective on God as the end in an exitus-reditus scheme as foundational for any reading of his theology.  With this lens, he examines Ignatius’ thought with respect to Scripture, Christ, the Trinity (which is, naturally, not very developed), flesh-spirit anthropology, redemption, ecclesiology, and eschatology.  He explores Ignatius’ understanding of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.  And he looks carefully at Ignatius’ understanding of Christ as mystery and as teacher.

Vail intentionally sets himself apart from some of contemporary Ignatian scholarship by asserting that Ignatius was a sophisticated theologian, both in his thinking and in his writing style.  He considers Ignatius’ relationship to the gnosticism(s) of his day, though acknowledging that he is not himself a scholar of gnosticism.  His general conclusion is that Ignatius “drew upon currents of thought, both biblical and nonbiblical, that were, at about the same time, contributing also to the early development of gnosticism.”  Vail does not think that Ignatius’ use of gnostic language negatively impacts “the horizontal-temporal dimension” of his theology.    

The book's title, Learning Christ, highlights Ignatius’ central idea that redemption is, ultimately, revelation, or Christomathia.  This learning of Christ, for Ignatius, is learning the person of Christ, rather than just doctrine about him.  Christ the Word is both the way to the truth and the truth itself.  Language relating to Christ as Word, however, is complicated.  Vail discusses in detail the way the paradox of word and silence reflects Valentinian language and also brings up anachronistic questions of later Trinitarian understandings.  The discussion is worth reading and connects Christology to redemption and to ecclesiology.  The silent bishop, who “must imitate the mildness and silence of Christ while learning to ‘say much with few words’” is an ideal that Ignatius tried to be with his own life, as well as with his words.   

This centrality of learning and living in Christ colors all of Ignatius’ letters.  Vail’s sympathetic reading of Ignatius allows him to provide an interesting and important exposition of a very early theologian, whose work addresses so many of the questions of theologians of any time period.  This book, though of course a very close reading of Ignatius’ letters, could also serve as an entry point to patristic theology for a newcomer.  Vail’s own writing style as well as clear contextualization of Ignatius’ work provide a helpful opening to the questions and faithful answers of earliest Christian thinkers.