Father'(Smyrna 3:3). In His pre-existent being 'ingenerate': (the technical term reserved to distinguish the increate God from creatures), He was the timeless, invisible, impalpable, impassible one Who for our sakes entered time and became visible, palpable and passible (Ephesians 7:2; Polycarp 3:2). His divine Sonship dates from the incarnation.” (JND Kelly Early Christian Doctrines, p.92).
Kelly accurately described Ignatius’ belief that the “timeless” and “increate” “invisible” Spirit of God “entered time” to become subject to sufferings through “His “Sonship” which “dates from the incarnation.” In other words, although Ignatius believed that the Sonship was dated to the incarnation through the virgin (having a beginning in time), he believed that the timeless, eternal Spirit of God became the “divine Son” only in “the incarnation.” Hence, Ignatius did not believe in a timeless God the Son of a three person deity. Ignatius’ theology was clearly Modalistic, as the One Spirit of the One God became incarnate as the Son in “the incarnation.”
Trinitarian apologists and scholars often state that God the Father could not be seen while the Son could be seen as an angel in the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet Ignatius as a respectable leader of the churches in Asia Minor and Syria believed that Jesus existed as the invisible Spirit of God Who “for our sakes became visible” when God also became a man in the flesh. Hence, there are two irrefutable facts about Ignatius’ testimony of the appearance of Jesus.
Fact 1: Since Ignatius was received as a great leader of the earliest Christians of the first and early second century, the vast majority of the Christian believers who lived during the last days of the original apostles would have believed in the same theology of Ignatius which was clearly Oneness or Modalistic.
Fact 2: According to the testimony of the earliest Christians (AD 67-108), Jesus could not have had a visible form or image which could be seen with human eyes before the incarnation actually occurred. Therefore the words of Ignatius refute later Trinitarian eisegesis out of Philippians chapter two which falsely alleges that the divinity of Jesus could be visibly seen in a “form of God” prior to his birth as a distinct divine person from the Invisible Father. Since Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), he must be the image of the invisible Father’s Person who came to save us as a true human person (Heb. 1:3; Heb. 2:14, 17).
Kelly clearly described Ignatius’ theology as Modalistic rather than Trinitarian when he wrote,
“… the Father was not limited to His earthly sojourn, such as the formulae of greeting and farewell affixed to the letters, and Ignatius' requests to his correspondents to address their prayers to Jesus Christ. But the only hint he gives of the nature of this distinction within the unity of the divine spirit is that Christ is the Father's 'thought'.” (JND Kelly Early Christian Doctrines, p.93)
How could a coequal God the Son be “the Father’s thought” while still being coequal? There can be no doubt that Ignatius held a Oneness Modalistic Monarchian conception of God which even some Trinitarian historians and theologians have pointed out.
Trinitarian theologian Virginia Corwin (Ph.D.) stated that Ignatius of Antioch was a “Monarchian” rather than a Trinitarian,
“If one term must be chosen to indicate the tendency of his thought, Ignatius must be said to be Monarchian” (“St Ignatius and Christianity in Antioch” New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960, page 126.).
Church historians Kelly and Loofs concur in their description of the simple theology of Ignatius, and of the early second century Christians of Asia Minor (about 107-110 AD) who esteemed Ignatius as one of their greatest leaders. The apostle John had died only about a decade before Ignatius wrote his seven epistles. Therefore, it is most probable that Ignatius was repeating the simple theological teachings that he had received from the first century apostles themselves. Hence, the earliest Christian witness indicates that the first century C