Handle Me and See
Luke 24, the real flesh of Christ, as the early church confessed it
On Easter evening the risen Jesus did something no ghost could do: He showed His wounds, invited the disciples to touch Him, and ate a piece of fish. "Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." Within a generation, a heresy arose that denied exactly this, that said the Son only seemed to have a body, only seemed to suffer (the error we call Docetism). Against it stood Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop who had known the apostle John, writing seven letters on his way to be eaten by beasts in Rome (around AD 107). His refrain is a hammer-blow: Christ was truly born, truly crucified, truly raised in the flesh, and gives us that flesh in the Supper. His words below, with a plain restatement.
The Father's words are verbatim and attributed (Ignatius of Antioch, his genuine shorter epistles, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, public domain; selected from the running prose, footnote apparatus omitted). The box marked "In plain terms" is our own restatement, never the Father's words.
Luke 24:39 · KJVBehold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
"For I know that after His resurrection also He was still possessed of flesh, and I believe that He is so now. When, for instance, He came to those who were with Peter, He said to them, 'Lay hold, handle Me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit.' And immediately they touched Him, and believed, being convinced both by His flesh and spirit. For this cause also they despised death, and were found its conquerors."
St. Ignatius of AntiochIgnatius takes the Easter scene as bedrock: the risen Christ "was still possessed of flesh," and is so even now in glory. He repeats Jesus's own invitation, "handle Me," and draws out the consequence that matters most to a man walking toward the arena: because the resurrection was bodily and real, the disciples "despised death, and were found its conquerors." A real risen body means a real conquered grave, and that is what lets a martyr face the beasts unafraid.
1 John 4:2-3 · KJV…every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God…
"Stop your ears, therefore, when any one speaks to you at variance with Jesus Christ, who was descended from David, and was also of Mary; who was truly born, and did eat and drink. He was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate; He was truly crucified, and truly died… He was also truly raised from the dead."
St. Ignatius of AntiochJohn had already drawn the line: the test of a true spirit is whether it confesses "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." Ignatius, John's own disciple, hammers the word that does the work, truly: truly born, truly ate and drank, truly crucified, truly died, truly raised. Strip the reality out of any one of those and the gospel collapses, for a Christ who only seemed to suffer only seems to save. The flesh is not a detail of the story; it is the story.
John 6:55 · KJVFor my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
"They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again."
St. Ignatius of Antioch"…breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but which causes that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ."
St. Ignatius of AntiochFor Ignatius the Eucharist and the incarnation stand or fall together. The same heretics who denied Christ's true body also "abstain from the Eucharist," because they will not "confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour." If His flesh was real, then His gift of that flesh is real, "the medicine of immortality." The Supper is not a bare memory of an absent Christ but a feeding on the One who truly came, truly suffered, and was truly raised (see the bread of life and the Lord's Supper).
Where this stands among the traditions
On the core, this is undivided Christian ground, and Ignatius is one of its earliest and clearest witnesses: against the very first great heresy, Docetism, the church confessed that the Son of God truly took flesh, truly died, and truly rose bodily, and that this is the dividing line John himself drew. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant all stand here together, and they prize Ignatius as a near-apostolic voice (he had sat under John) who paid for the confession with his life. The one place traditions still differ is how fully to press his Eucharistic language: the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and Lutherans, hear in "the flesh of our Saviour" a real presence, while other Protestants read the Supper more symbolically; that conversation belongs to the Communion pages, and it is a family disagreement, not the Docetist denial Ignatius was fighting. The drift to resist is any quiet return of Docetism: a Christ who is an idea, a feeling, or a spirit but not a true man with real wounds; a resurrection "spiritualized" into mere inspiration; a Supper emptied of the One it proclaims. The old answer still holds out its hands and says, "handle me, and see." (See the resurrection, he emptied himself, and the wounds shown to Thomas.)
Patristic text from Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans (ch. 3, 7), Epistle to the Trallians (ch. 9), and Epistle to the Ephesians (ch. 20), in their genuine shorter recension, in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (public domain), selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. This passage in the Study Bible; Luke 24 at BibleHub.