Since beginning my preparation for this lecture on the second century teacher Irenaeus, his name has kept cropping up in interesting contexts. I want to begin by explaining three of the contexts in which I have come across Irenaeus, because they introduce us not only to the subject but the relevance of the subject.
First, I received my copy of the latest edition of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (Vol 50, No.2, June 2007). This (special anniversary) issue carries an article by Professor Donald Fairbairn of Erskine Theological Seminary in South Carolina on 'Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories'. In it, he takes issue with the traditional view that we can conveniently categorise the doctrine of salvation of the early church into East and West, Greek and Latin. The older model was that for the Greek-speaking fathers of the Eastern Church, salvation was to be thought of in terms of participation in God, while for the Latin-speaking fathers of the West, salvation was thought of in judicial, legal and forensic terms.
To counter this view, Professor Fairbairn goes to Irenaeus, whom he describes as 'the most important figure in second-century Eastern theology' . Although, according to Fairbairn, Irenaeus uses the language of participation, he does so, he says
In a decidedly personal way: through our union with the natural Son of God, we become adopted sons and daughters, and thus we share fellowship or communion with God. Sharing in God's qualities (such as incorruptibility) follows from this primarily personal way of looking at salvation. By using the idea of participation in God to refer to adoption and communion, Irenaeus plots what I call a personal trajectory, which part of the Church will subsequently follow in describing salvation.
So for Professor Fairbairn, Irenaeus is important because he has bequeathed to the church this emphasis on personal union with Christ.
Then, secondly, I was reading some new material on John Calvin in connection with some work that I have to do for the 2009 anniversary of Calvin's birth, and the name of Irenaeus kept appearing. In a footnote in his new book on Calvin as Pastor and Theologian, Randall Zachman writes: 'Calvin was clearly indebted to the instruction he received from other teachers of doctrine, especially Irenaeus, Augustine, Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, Zwingli and Bullinger' .
But it was not only that Calvin was personally indebted to these fathers -- and it is interesting that of the early fathers, Zachman mentions Irenaeus -- it was also the case that in order to justify the Reformation Calvin had publicly to demonstrate continuity with them. One of his first public appearances was in a debate before the Bernese city council, to which the Reformers Farel and Viret were invited, to present the case for reform. In his biography of Calvin, Alister McGrath describes what happened after Calvin, whom the other reformers had taken with them, intervened on 5 October 1536:
He turned the tide of the debate. A catholic speaker suggested that the evangelicals despised the fathers (that is, the Christian writers of the first five centuries), regarding them as possessing no authority in matters of doctrine. It seems that Calvin's immersion in the study of the fathers at Saintonge left an indelible impression upon him. Rising, he declared that this was simply not true: not merely did the evangelicals respect the fathers more than their catholic opponents; they also knew them better. Reeling off a remarkable chain of references to their writings, including their location -- apparently totally from memory -- Calvin virtually destroyed the credibility of his opponent.
While the details of the debate might be embellished in the telling, it is clear in the Institutes, for example, that one of Calvin's main lines of argument against the Roman theologians was their misuse of the church fathers. So, for example, in Book 1, Chapter 13 of the Institutes, where Calvin is dealing with the scriptural doctrine of one divine essence existing in three persons, he accuses the Roman scholars of betraying 'shameful ignorance, or very great dishonesty' in connection with 'the many passages which they collect from Irenaeus' (Inst, 1.xiii.27). In other words, Calvin, as part of his apologetic for the Reformation, felt it necessary to demonstrate that he was actually developing the patristic theology and not contradicting it. In studying this theme, Tony Lane has demonstrated that 'Calvin repeatedly cites Irenaeus. Mostly he makes general observations about the Adversus Haereses , but he also twice quotes from the work'. 'There is no question', he says, 'but that Calvin studied Irenaeus for himself'.
Allow me a third reference -- I came across an interesting article on the internet by Dave Moore, president of "Two Cities Ministries" and the author of The Battle for Hell. He runs a Christian radio interview programme to which Bishop John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey, had been invited for interview. The invitation came about after Moore picked up a copy of Spong's book Why Christianity must Change or Die, in which Spong presents his case for a completely secular Christianity.
Moore's initial reaction was outrage, but then he thought he should give some air time to Spong to explain his views. Hence the invitation, which was duly issued and duly accepted; further, several of Moore's friends thought it was a great idea. But Moore had qualms over the arrangement. He writes:
My reservations were solidified as I thought through the New Testament. Wouldn't Jesus treat Spong as he did the hypocrites of Matthew 23? Wouldn't Paul pronounce judgment on Spong as he did the false teachers in Galatians 1:6--8? It was about this same time that I remembered a story that Dr. John Woodbridge shared with us in a church history class at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
In Against Heresies, Irenaeus relates a story about the Apostle John. Polycarp, a disciple of John's, communicated this story to many others in the Church, and Irenaeus preserved it in his writings. As the story goes, John was going to bathe at Ephesus. Upon hearing that the heretic Cerinthus was in the bathhouse, John ran out exclaiming, "Let us fly, lest even the bathhouse fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within."
Let me quote a few more lines of Irenaeus because they show how deadly serious he and others of his time were about being guardians of the gospel. Marcion met Polycarp himself on one occasion and said, "Dost thou know me?" Polycarp replied:
"I do know thee, the first-born of Satan." Such was the horror which the apostles and their disciples had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth; as Paul also says, "A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself."
After reading the account of John's flight from the heretic Cerinthus, I was convinced that if interviewing Spong meant coming across as a non-peeved, affable radio guy?the kind of guy who'd have a friendly talk with Cerinthus?it was a betrayal of everything I hold dear?namely, the Christian faith. So I called Spong's secretary and said that I needed to cancel my interview with him.
That's a rather long introduction, I know, but what these three disparate references teach us is, first, that we can still learn about the nature of the gospel by reading Irenaeus, second, that it is doubtful whether we could have had Calvin without Irenaeus, since in many ways the Reformation was a return to and development of early Christian thought, and third, that the very issues which were central to Irenaeus -- the defence and propagation of the truth in the face of error -- are always with the church.
===Irenaeus' life and work===
A major study of Irenaeus was published in 2001 by Cambridge University Press. The author, Professor Eric Osbourne, Emeritus Professor of History at La Strobe University, Victoria, Australia, makes the point that we know little of Irenaeus' life: 'his birthplace remains uncertain. There is widespread disagreement on the date of his birth ... There is an uncertain tradition that Irenaeus died as a martyr'. Most histories give as the dates of his life c.130 -- c. 200.
There are two dates around which we can speak with certainty. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus' most famous work, he has the following reference to Polycarp:
But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles ... (3.3.4)
Polycarp was martyred at the age of 86, around the year 167. He had been acquainted with the apostle John, possibly for up to twenty years. He was a dominant influence on Irenaeus, who heard and saw Polycarp in Smyrna around AD 155/6. Irenaeus, it is believed, was in Smyrna in his mid twenties, and through Polycarp was only a step removed from the last of the apostles.
Later in his life Irenaeus had come to Lyons, in France, where he served alongside Pothinus, who had been sent to Lyons as a missionary. The church in Lyons was facing both internal and external danger: internally the peace of the church was being threatened by Montanism, while externally the Christians were facing continued hostility and persecution. Eusebius describes this in Book V of his Ecclesiastical History, where he speaks of the death of Pothinus in the following terms:
29. "The blessed Pothinus, who had been entrusted with the bishopric of Lyons, was dragged to the judgment seat. He was more than ninety years of age, and very infirm, scarcely indeed able to breathe because of physical weakness; but he was strengthened by spiritual zeal through his earnest desire for martyrdom. Though his body was worn out by old age and disease, his life was preserved that Christ might triumph in it.
30. When he was brought by the soldiers to the tribunal, accompanied by the civil magistrates and a multitude who shouted against him in every manner as if he were Christ himself, he bore noble witness.
31. Being asked by the governor, Who was the God of the Christians, he replied, 'If thou art worthy, thou shalt know.' Then he was dragged away harshly, and received blows of every kind. Those near him struck him with their hands and feet, regardless of his age; and those at a distance hurled at him whatever they could seize; all of them thinking that they would be guilty of great wickedness and impiety if any possible abuse were omitted. For thus they thought to avenge their own deities. Scarcely able to breathe, he was cast into prison and died after two days.
In the providence of God, while this persecution against the Church at Lyons was going on, Irenaeus was in Rome, in AD 177, delivering a letter to Eleutherus, Bishop of Rome on behalf of the Christians at Lyons. He thus escaped persecution in Lyons, though one wonders about the psychological impact of all of this on Irenaeus, taken out of the conflict when it was raging against his fellow-believers. He succeeded Pothinus as Bishop of Lyons, not least on account of the commendation from the martyrs in whose name he had travelled to Rome. Eusebius says that Irenaeus was 'well named' as a negotiator and ambassador for peace. However, the man with the name of peace would be to the fore in the intellectual conflict into which he was called.
===The intellectual world of the second century===
It is very clear that the early Christian church represented a movement which challenged many religious, moral and intellectual practices of their day. Many pagan religious practices flourished within the Roman Empire, but the Christians professed and preached that there was only one way to God, through believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. As followers of Christ they were also committed to a particular ethic, to live their lives in a way that would please God. While many around them could easily divorce or discard unwanted children or mistreat slaves, the Christian ethic was different.
And in the market-place of ideas, where Greek philosophy dominated much of the intellectual discussion, the Christian church proclaimed the truth as it is in Jesus, challenging many of the philosophical assumptions of the learning of the day. It is against this background that we find the early apologists working and writing to defend the Christian church and its message from the accusations and attacks of the pagan world.
The word apologist, and the related word apologetics, come from a Greek word apologia, which means the defence of a position that is under attack. The verb appears in the Septuagint of Jeremiah 12:1, where the prophet says 'I would plead my cause before you', and the noun is used famously in 1 Peter 3:15 -- 'in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you'. This is what the early apologists did -- they pleaded the cause of Christ before the competing worldviews of their day, defending their Christian hope against all the attacks of the world and the devil.
The movement which led Irenaeus to write his great work Against Heresies was Gnosticism; in the words of one writer, 'the Word of God first clashed with Gnostic myth in the second century, and nowhere more dramatically than in the work of Irenaeus'. Gnosticism, however, is remarkably difficult to define, having its roots in pagan mystery religions, but absorbing elements of Greek philosophy as well. The word 'Gnostic' comes from the Greek word 'gnosis' meaning 'knowledge'; salvation, fulfilment, spiritual wellbeing, was to have a certain level of knowledge of the divine.
It is easy to see how this movement as this, in its various forms, could appear attractive to many Christians, since according to the teachings of Jesus, eternal life is also related to having knowledge (John 17:3) of God. Gnosticism, therefore, was not merely an intellectual danger, but a spiritual threat to the church. What was the difference between the true church, which believed that knowledge of God was essential to salvation, and the Gnostics, who also maintained that one could find salvation through spiritual knowledge?
It is clear even in the New Testament that these threats were very real. Paul warns the Colossian believers about being taken captive 'by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ' (Col 2:8). He warns Timothy about 'irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called "knowledge"' (1 Timothy 6:20). John also warned the church against the false prophets who had gone out into the world (1 John 4:1).
So it was that Irenaeus came to address the Gnostic heresy in his great work Against Heresies. No doubt he was motivated by a pastoral concern; his church at Lyons was a target for Gnostic activists who would try to win converts from the Christian Church. His work was written originally in Greek, but has survived only in a Latin translation. It is available in the first Volume of the ten-volume set of Ante-Nicene Fathers.
Before we try to summarise this work briefly, we should remind ourselves that we are not flogging a dead horse here. Gnosticism is alive and well, and it is still a problem to us, for at least two reasons.
The first has to do with the revision of history. We are well used to the abundance of conspiracy theories which have sought to demonstrate that for its own purposes, the Church perverted the truth of the teachings of Jesus. In 1991 The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception argued that Paul's personal experiences led him to 'formulate ... his own highly individual and idiosyncratic theology, and then to legitimise it by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus'. The consequence is that Paul gives birth to a new religion called Christianity, which the Church then makes official, in spite of the truth that she knows.
More recently, we have had Dan Brown trying to persuade us that Jesus married and had a family, and, again, that the Church disguised the truth in the interests of her own power and hegemony. Part of the argument of The Da Vinci Code was that the Church had suppressed Gospels which were just as valid as those Gospels which portrayed a divine Christ, and had invented an orthodoxy which served her own interests.
Much of this was fuelled by the discovery in 1945 of some fifty ancient texts in Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, which we know as the Nag Hammadi Library. This library represents a collection of ancient Gnostics texts, including works with such titles as 'The Gospel of Thomas', 'The Gospel of Philip' and the 'Dialogue of the Saviour'. Scholars began to reason that now we could really know what early Christianity was like. Why should we believe Irenaeus, when all he wanted to do was destroy the Gnostic worldview? (Actually, we might ask, what would Irenaeus have to gain by distorting any of it, and leaving himself open to the charge of falsifying the evidence?). We should listen to the authentic Gnostic voice, and, when we do, lo and behold, it is much nearer Jesus' ethics of the Sermon on the Mount than Paul's doctrine of a crucified deity. So Sean Martin states that
far from being the 'first Christian heretics', the Gnostics were almost certainly closer to Jesus' original teachings than the official Church ever was. If anyone can be called the 'first Christian heretics' it is without a doubt the bishops who sat at the Council of Nicea in 325. In attempting to create orthodoxy, they instead created a monster which controlled people's minds and lives for nearly 2,000 years. Again, one wonders whether the discovery at Nag Hammadi was not only timely, but necessary, a feeling borne out by the Jungian analyst Murray Stein, who wrote that we are living in a culture that 'cannot accept difference without polarising it...'
We need to grapple with Irenaeus and the Gnostic threat precisely because the implications of the debate are much wider than the study of a historical character. If Nicea was the original Christian heresy, then Chalcedon was worse, and Westminster even more so, and we are found false witnesses of God.
But there is a second, more fundamental reason for dealing with this issue. Gnosticism is alive and well in all the religious therapies that promote healing from the centre of the self. It has been well said that for modern gurus of spirituality, the problem is 'out there' and the solution 'in here', whereas for the Christian narrative, the problem is entirely internal, and the solution entirely outwith ourselves. The Gnostics promised inner knowledge, and the promise is re-packaged over and over again for twenty-first century man. Everyone needs his or her therapist, his or her healing crystals, his or her inner peace. Irenaeus challenges the Gnostic myth precisely at this point:
For [they allege] that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but viv? voce .... so that, according to their idea, the truth properly resides at one time in Valentinus, at another in Marcion, at another in Cerinthus, then afterwards in Basilides ... every one of these men ... is not ashamed to preach himself (3.2.1)
Here is a fundamental issue for Irenaeus: the move towards subjective experience as the criterion for truth. The idea of Gnosis, of special knowledge around which all kinds of fanciful ideas arise, cuts the cord of objective revelation and absolute truth, and makes 'truth' depend on how we feel. Irenaeus asks us to turn up our noses at Gnosis.
He challenged Gnosticism, in part, in his great work On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis, commonly called Against Heresies. This appeared in the 180s, and was written in five books. I want to summarise the general outline of the work, and then identify its main emphases.
Book 1 identifies different Gnostic heresies, and singles out some of the leaders of the Gnostic movement. In particular, he introduces us to Valentinus, but also associates the Gnostic movement with Simon Magus, Cerinthus, and Marcion. Irenaeus begins with the views of the Gnostics regarding the origin of all things, and shows how they twist passages of Scripture to support their heresies. Irenaeus accuses the Gnostics of '...striving to adapt the good words of revelation to their own wicked inventions', and of adapting Scripture 'to their own figments' as a result of which they 'lead away captive from the truth those who do not retain a stedfast faith in one God, the Father Almighty, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God' (1.3.6). One of the most significant of these 'mutilators' of Scripture was Marcion, who declared the Old Testament God to be different from the God of the New, and, indeed, inferior. According to Irenaeus, he and his disciples 'are the disciples and successors of Simon Magus of Samaria'. This first book identifies such heresies, all of which have in common a cavalier attitude to Scripture.
In Book 2, Irenaeus gives more detailed consideration to the Scriptural doctrine of creation, and shows the absurdity of Gnostic reconstructions. The Gnostics, he argues, have perverted the theology of Genesis; 'weaving ropes of sand' (2.10.1). Irenaeus' method is summarised thus:
I have thought it well ... to put to them the following inquiries concerning their own doctrines, to exhibit their improbability, and to put an end to their audacity. After this has been done, I intend to bring forward the discourses of the Lord, so that they may not only be rendered destitute of the means of attacking us, but that ... they may see that their plan of argument is destroyed; so that, either returning to the truth and humbling themselves, and ceasing from their multifarious phantasies, they may propitiate God ... and obtain salvation; or that, if they still persevere in that system of vainglory which has taken possession of their minds, they may at least find it necessary to change their kind of argument against us (2.11.2).
This is an important methodological statement. As an apologist, Irenaeus wants to demonstrate the emptiness and illogicality of the Gnostics' position, and also present the truth with the hope that they will change their attitudes and their arguments.
Book 3 strikes that positive note by highlighting the doctrines of Scripture. The opening sentence is a striking example of Irenaeus' commitment to the authority of Scripture:
We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith (3.1.1).
In this third book Irenaeus argues that the heretics follow neither Scripture nor tradition, and also argues for a succession of bishops in the church from the early apostles. He names that succession, from the apostles to Polycarp of Smyrna, who, he says, 'taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true (3.3.4). For Irenaeus, therefore, departure from this received tradition is what constitutes heresy.
Throughout Book 3, Irenaeus reminds us of the teachings of Christ and the apostles, which were of a piece with those of the prophets. The one God, maker of all things, is the God revealed in the Bible.
Irenaeus is not beyond some speculation and fancy thinking. So convinced is he of the rule of faith in the Bible that he argues at one point that 'it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live [i.e. four points of the compass], and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the 'pillar and ground' of the Church is the gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars...' (3.11.8). This conjecture is a weakness in Irenaeus.
His argumentation in Book 3, however, is nonetheless a serious attempt to grapple with the Scriptural material in an exhaustive manner, in order to bring out its main emphases. In particular, he is careful to present a biblical doctrine of the Person of Christ. In many ways, this is the litmus test:
All therefore are outside of the [Christian] dispensation who, under pretext of knowledge, understand that Jesus was one, and Christ another, and the only-begotten another, from whom again is the Word, and that the Saviour is another ... such men are to outward appearance sheep, for they appear to be like us, by what they say in public, repeating the same words as we do; but inwardly they are wolves (3.16.8).
The Christian profession does not divide Christ in this way: 'he is himself the Word of God, himself the only-begotten of the Father, Christ Jesus our Lord' (3.16.9).
Some of this material is repeated in Book 4, but a large part of this Book is taken up with a study of the Old Testament material. For many Gnostics, the Old Testament was a major problem, with some arguing that a different God was present in it. Irenaeus begins with the doctrine of one God, revealed across the testaments. In both Old and New Covenants, it is the word of God that brings salvation, and faith in God's promise that saves. The history of Abraham, he argues, is important in this regard: 'Abraham, according to his faith, followed the command of the Word of God, and with a ready mind delivered up, as a sacrifice to God, his only-begotten and beloved son, in order that God also might be pleased to offer up for all his seed his own beloved and only-begotten Son as a sacrifice for our redemption' (4.5.4). In this way we find in Irenaeus the developing of a redemptive-historical approach to Scripture. This is summarised by Ligon Duncan in the following paragraph:
The Gnostics pointed to what they considered to be irreconcilable differences between the character of the god of the Old Testament and the god revealed by Christ; between the religion of the Old testament and Christianity. The contradictions between the writings of the Old testament and the Christian scriptures, they said, verified their dualistic theology. Irenaeus' task, then, was to refute the Gnostic doctrine, arguing for the unity of God and the unity of the old and new revelation. He did so by setting forth a theology of Redemptive History which maintained the essential continuity of God's plan (which began with Adam), while explaining the diversity which existed between the old and new. Irenaeus asserted that the history of redemption was covenantal. The complementary character of these covenants spoken of in the scriptures evinced the unity of the economy of God (and, of course, the unity of God himself) while the diversity in these covenants indicated the progress of redemption.
Indeed, in a subsequent publication, Dr Duncan asserts that 'the idea of covenant is of central importance to Irenaeus' response to the Gnostics in [Against Heresies]'. Dr Duncan highlights the view of Irenaeus' fellow Christians at Lyons who described him as 'zealous for the covenant of Christ'.
Interestingly, Irenaeus is an early witness to the Christian belief that the moral law of the ten commandments was never rescinded. The Decalogue was in order to life: 'preparing man for this life, the Lord Himself did speak in his own person to all alike the words of this Decalogue, and therefore in like manner do they remain permanently with us, receiving by means of his advent in the flesh extension and increase, but not abrogation' (4.16.4). Other commandments, however, 'laws of bondage', were given to Israel for instruction and judgement, abrogating them in the new covenant while giving to his adopted children a new desire to obey the ten commandments.
So Christ is the treasure hidden in the Scriptures, in types and parables which awaited the new covenant to give perfect understanding. In the church alone is true exposition to be found, while heretics, schismatics and hypocrites, offer strange fire in the their strange doctrines, on God's altars.
Book 5 deals with the general subject of why Christ took human nature. Here Irenaeus explores the implication of the incarnation, the nature of the atonement, and the meaning of resurrection. One of Irenaeus' favourite terms here is the term 'recapitulation' [14.1, 19.1, 21.1], which Irenaeus derives from Paul's statement in Ephesians 1:10 concerning God's purpose 'to unite all things' in Christ, 'things in heaven and things on earth'. For Irenaeus, this is key; Christ answers the problem of sin by being God's new point of contact, and therefore his new point of departure in his dealings with the human race. Christ is new Adam, in whose person and work the entire cosmos is united.
In a study of this theme, Trevor Hart suggests that there are two aspects to this concept of recapitulation in Irenaeus. The first is Christ as the New Man in whom the sinfulness of Adam is undone. Here, says Hart,
...can we see the theological force of Irenaeus' objections to Gnostic docetism; only thus can we see the theological force behind his insistence that in the incarnation Christ passed through every phase of human existence, sanctifying it in himself; only when we have grasped the fact that for Irenaeus, just as truly as for the Cappadocians, that which has not been taken up into the recapitulation in Christ remains estranged and fallen, that 'the unassumed is the unredeemed', will we see the fundamental point of his insistence that 'flesh is that which was of old formed for Adam by God out of the dust, and it is this that John has declared the Word of God became.
So against the Gnostic suspicion of flesh, and the problem of the humanity of Jesus Christ, Irenaeus sets us off on this important trajectory which emphasises the importance of the incarnation, not in the sense that incarnation alone effected atonement, but that it is the necessary requirement for it. The Son of God becomes man, the Logos becomes flesh, in order that we might be saved.
Secondly, the idea of recapitulation includes the element of representation: he is not just one of us, but he is in our place. The Creator is part of his creation; but that does not exhaust the glory of the incarnation. The one on the cross is one with God and one with us, homo-ousios in both directions, in order that he might represent us before God. Christ has 'in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam ... in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm of victory against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death' (5.21.1).
It is true that Irenaeus' position is liable to run to extremes; it is also true that some theologians have interpreted him as teaching an incarnational atonement. Yet it is clear that in Irenaeus there is a serious attempt to gather the biblical material together, in opposition to Gnostic heresies. By doing so he shows not only that he deserves to be called 'the first theologian of ecumenical stature' , but one can also justify Henry Chadwick's statement that 'With Irenaeus the shape of Christian theology became stable and coherent'. He therefore lays an important foundation for subsequent reflection.
In all of this, Irenaeus is writing as a pastor, and a deep thinker, challenging the accepted tenets of Gnosticism. Clearly he was aware of earlier attempts to defend Gospel teaching; clearly too he was aware of some of the Gnostics personally.
So what is he doing in these five books? Gerard Vallee, professor emeritus in Religious Studies at McMaster University, suggests that Irenaeus deliberately begins his polemic with an attack on the theological dualism in Gnosticism, in which the God who made the world ('the Demiurge') is to be distinguished from God the Father. Vallee suggests that this dualistic view of God affects the whole Gnostic worldview: it leads to a Christological dualism; 'we should not imagine,' says Irenaeus, 'that Jesus was one, and Christ another, but should know them to be one and the same' (3.16.2). It leads to a Scriptural dualism, in which a sharp distinction is to be made between the two testaments, and the God of each testament. It leads to an Ecclesiastical dualism in which those who adhere to the tradition of the apostles are viewed with suspicion by the heretics who bring strange fire to God's altar.
For Vallee,
these forms of dualism, detected and attacked by Irenaeus, can be seen as derived from the fundamental theological dualism dividing the divine or as diverse expressions of a metaphysical dualism opposing the world above to the world below, spirit to matter'.
For Irenaeus, the only antidote to Gnostic dualism is a return to Scriptural authority and to the apostolic succession:
True knowledge is [that which consists in] the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world, and the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place, and has come even unto us, being guarded and preserved without any forging of Scriptures, by a very complete system of doctrine, and neither receiving addition nor [suffering] curtailment [in the truths which she believes]; and [it consists in] reading [the word of God] without falsification, and a lawful and diligent exposition in harmony with the Scriptures, both without danger and without blasphemy; and [above all, it consists in] the pre-eminent gift of love, which is more precious than knowledge, more glorious than prophecy, and which excels all the other gifts [of God]. 4.33.8
Obviously one can see by this quotation how Irenaeus can be appealed to by Roman Catholic theologians, for example, who place tradition on the same level of authority as Scripture. Dominic Unger, for example, states that 'for Irenaeus, the main witnesses to the Truth are Scripture and tradition...' . This perhaps explains why men like William Cunningham give a negative critique of Irenaeus as 'illustrating the almost regularly progressive corruption of the church'. For Cunningham, this fact, together with 'some unwarranted speculations' and Irenaeus' involvement in controversies over the dating of Easter, leads us to say of Irenaeus as of the other early Fathers, 'how little reliance is to be placed upon any allegations of theirs as to the transmission of doctrines or appointments of the apostles by oral tradition, but also, more generally, how unsafe and uncertain a medium of transmission oral tradition is'.
That, of course, is true; and it is arguable that Irenaeus does give extra-biblical tradition too much emphasis. But in his defence we would have to say that for Irenaeus tradition simply meant passing on what the apostles taught; nowhere, I think, does he advocate that the tradition is an additional source of authority; he is in fact wanting to draw us back to Scripture all the time. This point is clearly made by Canon J.N.D. Kelly in his Early Christian Doctrines, where the importance of tradition for Irenaeus is its counter-balance to the Gnostic emphasis on inner knowledge:
... a careful analysis of his Adversus haereses reveals that, while the Gnostics' appeal to their supposed secret tradition forced him to stress the superiority of the Church's public tradition, his real defence of orthodoxy was founded on Scripture. Indeed, tradition itself, on his view, was confirmed by Scripture, which was the 'foundation and pillar of our faith'.
Bob Letham, for example, in assessing Irenaeus' contribution to Trinitarian theology reminds us that 'Irenaeus sets his face against ontological dualism. He roots this triadic view of God firmly in the Bible and in the history of salvation, in contrast to the philosophical speculation of his opponents'.
===What can today's evangelical church learn from all of this?===
There are, I think, at least four lessons we can learn from Irenaeus
(1) our indebtedness to the past. That, of course, is what this course of Autumn lectures
is about, and I am really only stating the obvious. But it is not so obvious to many Christians, whose interest in history is minimal, and very selective. How many of us had heard of Irenaeus before this lecture? How many of us have read him? How many of us have read the classics of early Christian literature, such as Augustine's Confessions?
We are all the product of our own history; in comparison with many other eras in the Christian church, we are spiritual and theological dwarves. We need to glean from the moral, spiritual and theological depth of the past. Yesterday, all over the country, we remembered our war dead, and said 'in the morning, and at the going down of the sun, we will remember them'. May we learn so to speak about the makers of our tradition and the theologians into whose inheritance we have entered as heirs of the tradition with which we must engage critically.
(2) Our continual danger. We are engaged in spiritual warfare, in which two kingdoms
are locked in mortal combat. Tares grow among the wheat, and an enemy has done it. What is more, the enemy is subtle, strong and dangerous, so much so that it requires the intercession of Christ to ensure that we are 'kept from the evil one' (John 17:15), and kept by the power of God (1 Peter 1:5). Moreover, Christ himself warned us that the enemy would not necessarily come against the church from the outside, but from within. Christ says 'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves' (Matthew 7:15), a point taken up by Paul when he says that 'from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them' (Acts 20:30).
Within the history of the church, the twin weapons Satan has used against the church have been persecution and heresy. The early church faced both; in times of persecution the disciples were scattered everywhere; persecution only had the effect of serving the interests of the Gospel. Many Christians throughout the world are facing the same attack.
We, however, are not; the church in the United Kingdom, at the present time at least, is free from persecution, yet Satan is not at rest. Everything is up for grabs -- we are being challenged to embrace new perspectives on God (witness the open theism debate), to draw on new images of the atonement (witness the widespread discussion following the publication of Steve Chalke's The Lost Message of Jesus), to revise the traditional understanding of justification (as in the discussion following James Dunn and NT Wright on Judaism, Paul and justification) . Just as with Irenaeus, the intellectual threat is an even greater danger to the purity of the church and its doctrine than the physical one. Interestingly, Hans Urs Von Balthasar opens his introduction to Irenaeus by stating that persecution 'posed far less of a threat to the Church's continuing purity and further development' than Gnosticism. If that was true in Irenaeus' time, it is equally true in our modern age, with its constant quest for spiritual enlightenment, and its refusal to accept that true peace and fulfilment can be found only by deferring to the text of Scripture and the Christ who is there.
(3) Our calling to defend the faith. Irenaeus is a primary witness for the defence in the
early days of the post-apostolic church. We are called to testify on the same side, although in different ways. That defence requires to be carried out on two levels. We cannot all hold high office or wear a large public profile as Irenaeus did, but we should support the men who can. We need men in our Colleges and Seminaries who are prepared to read the material that poses the greatest threat to the Christian Gospel, analyse it and defend the truth of the Bible against it. But we also need to be ready ourselves to give a reason for our Christian hope, and to 'prepare our minds for action' (1 Peter 1:13).
In a very important article entitled 'Heresy and Concession', B.B. Warfield made the point that if a person is prepared only to defend the minimum amount of truth, he will undervalue the 'undefended maximum'. More than that, says Warfield, 'a truth not worth defending very soon comes to seem to him not worth professing'. Warfield's analysis of heresy and truth is well worth studying; he too lived in an age which, like the age of the Gnostics and like ours, set the standards of men, whether in science, philosophy or literary criticism, in opposition to the whole truth of Christianity. Warfield's point is well taken:
We are 'orthodox' when we account God's declaration in his Word superior in point of authority to them ... we are 'heretical' when we make them superior in point of authority to God's Word.
(4) the need to know God through the Scriptures. For Irenaeus, the supreme authority
is the Word of God, and the Church can only appeal to the written testimony of the Bible. But to say that is not to justify a na?ve or shallow biblicism. Irenaeus recognises that the apostles, for example, appeal to the prophets to establish the unity of God's purpose of salvation in redemptive history. So for Irenaeus, 'if Christ and his apostles cited the old covenant writings as divine and authoritative for the Christian religion, and taught that the God of Israel is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, then this must be the case'. The Gnostics wanted to drive a wedge between the God of the Old covenant and the God of the New, and at the same time wanted to identify themselves with the religion of Christ. Irenaeus argues that they cannot have it both ways: the Bible itself builds a case as it reveals the working of the one God across the years of redemptive history. To quote Henry Chadwick:
Irenaeus perceived that the coherence of Christian doctrine depended upon the tradition of faithful instruction, and that the Gnostic heresies could only be successfully opposed if the scattered statements of scripture were drawn together within a system.
So it is not sufficient simply to appeal to a bare text: one must recognise, on the basis of scriptural interpretation, that a system of thought emerges from within the canonical Scripture. In other words, we need the twin disciplines of biblical theology, which trace the development of revelation along the timeline of history, and systematic theology , which brings the points along that line into a coherent whole.
But more than this, Irenaeus is an early witness not simply to the importance of systematic theology, but to the importance of nuancing that theology around the theme of the covenant. In patristic theology, no-one emphasises this more than Irenaeus. I find it ironic, and more than a little disturbing that Reformed theology is currently attempting to drop the word 'covenant' from its theological discourse.
Conclusion
Against Heresies 1.10:
1. The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father "to gather all things in one," and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, "every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess" to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send "spiritual wickednesses," and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.
2. As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world. But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shineth everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth. Nor will any one of the rulers in the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these (for no one is greater than the Master); nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression inflict injury on the tradition. For the faith being ever one and the same, neither does one who is able at great length to discourse regarding it, make any addition to it, nor does one, who can say but little diminish it.
