Among
the various voices that entered into conversation in the early development of
the church, Irenaeus offers a significant harmony. He is one of the post
apostolic fathers that has come to define the term orthodoxy and is one of the
earliest anti-heretical proponents. Our conversation will surround chapters
twenty-two and twenty-three of the third book which comprises his theological
treatise Against Heresies. Our
conversation will begin with a short introduction to the life and scope of
Irenaeus’s context, followed by a brief summary of the chapters we are
concerning ourselves with, proceeding with the variety of sub-themes Irenaeus
uses in arguing his main thesis of the incarnation and atoning work of Christ,
and concluding with an explanation of my personal appreciation of Irenaeus’s
works.
Irenaeus is the earliest anti-heretical author whose works
have survived. He was born in approximately 120 A.D. most likely in Smyrna.
Around 170, he settled in the city of Lyons, where he participated in the
community of believers by serving the Bishop of that see, Pothinus as a
presbyter.[1]
In 177, Irenaeus went to Rome where he found bishop and friend alike flocking
to the heretical movements of the Montanists and the Valentinians. This trip
was formative for Irenaeus in two ways: first, we can be almost certain that it
was this trip that spurred Irenaeus to pen his treatise, Against Heresies. Second, when he returned to Lyons, he found that
the bishop had been martyred and Irenaeus had been named successor to the see
of Lyons where he remained and served to the end of his days.[2]
As was stated before, it was while serving as Bishop, that
he wrote this treatise, Against Heresies,
primarily as a response to the writings and teachings of Valentinus, who was
the progenitor of the Valentinan Gnostic sect.[3]
According to Valentinus, or what can be pieced together as being Valentinus’
argument, Christ and Jesus are two different beings. Christ is a demiurge, who
descended upon the human Jesus at His baptism and left Him before His passion.
Christ’s mission was to bring humanity knowledge so that our spirits might be
freed from our bodies.[4]
While there were many flavours of Gnosticism floating around at the time,
Irenaeus felt need only to challenge Valentinus as he says, “it is not needful,
that one should drink up the ocean who wishes to learn that its water is
salty.”[5]
There are many theological themes that Irenaeus weaves together. It must be
understood that at Irenaeus’ point in time, there was no such thing as systematic
theology. Thus, what we have in Against Heresies, is not a systematized
explanation of theology proper, but is a refutation of an argument through
which we can determine an understanding of Irenaeus’ theological thoughts.
Therefore, we should be holding his theology loosely, more as a way of moving
away from heretical positions, rather than towards theological orthodoxy.
Although Irenaeus’ writings have indeed become a marker of orthodoxy. As such, there are a few themes we should
focus on in this paper: creation, theological method, the Imago Dei, the Virgin
Mary, Gnosticism, and the state of the church. Obviously, not all of these are
theological themes, but nevertheless, the historical context of a select
writing is always important.
In chapter xxii, Irenaeus is explaining what God has done in
Christ. His argument in this book and in this section is based primarily on the
witness of Scripture and the Tradition of the church. Irenaeus is saying that
we know these things because Scripture says so, and because of the tradition of
the church. Christ did inherit flesh from his earthly mother. For if He is not
made in our flesh, then Christ is not made in the image of God. If He was not
flesh, why would He have chosen to come down through Mary? He hungered, just as
we do. He wearied, just as we do. He wept and bled, just as we do. Therefore,
he must have been as we are. There is a connection between Christ and Adam,
where Adam was an animal creature, so Christ must have also been. Just as Christ
is the new Adam, Mary is the new Eve.
In chapter xxiii, Irenaeus moves from explaining what was necessary and proving that God
did what was necessary, that is becoming incarnate, to explaining why God did it this way. God became man
so that man no more should die, bringing His creation from death into newness
of life. God undid what Adam had done in submitting himself(Adam) to Satan, God
freed Adam and his descendants from the yoke of captivity to Satan. Satan had
tricked man into thinking that they could become as gods. God, recaptured
humanity and in so doing was loosed from the bonds of condemnation. We are from
Adam, therefore, we receive the same condemnation that Adam receives. If God
has saved us, through Christ, it would make sense that Adam too has been
liberated from captivity. Adam and Eve were not cursed directly. The ground was
cursed, and therefore Adam's work was cursed. Likewise, Eve’s labour in
childbearing and her relationship with her husband were cursed. Only the
serpent was directly cursed. Hell was not a creation intended for man, but for
the cursed. Those who like Satan and his angels do not repent of their sin
shall count themselves apart of those who apostatize. Cain is the first example
of the result of Adam’s disobedience. Cain is not only guilty of idolatry as is
the case with Adam and Eve, but also murder and false witness. It was not by
any means other than his own that Cain committed such a horrible offence
against both others and God. We see in Cain's attempt to beguile God that he is
unrepentant. Adam however, is a different case. For he offended God through the
temptation of another. The effect was for Adam to try and hide himself. Because
Adam felt unworthy to appear before God and to interact with Him. The guilt of
his sin led to repentance, in the form of clothing himself. As a result, God
shows mercy to Adam who is penitent. God's removing of Adam from the garden was
a mercy in the sense that God then made it impossible for man to go on sinning
forever. In so doing, God established a boundary for sin, so that man might die
to sin, and begin to live to God. He did this through Christ. Upon God's
victory over Satan, Adam received new life, and the last enemy, death, was
destroyed. Therefore, if Adam does not receive salvation, the whole human race
does not receive salvation.
It must first be stated and understood that the way in which
Irenaeus arrives at his conclusions are not in ways that would be immediately
accepted or assumed by theologians after the modern period. His method is one
of beginning with assumptions about divine realities and then providing a piece
of Scripture for his argument, what now would be considered proof-texting. As
an example we will briefly take into consideration his first point in this
brief excerpt of reading: Christ did indeed inherit flesh from his earthly
mother. His point in the point of this chapter rests not directly on the
transmission of humanity from Mary to Jesus, although, it will play a
significant role in the following arguments. His primary concern in point
3.22.1 is establishing the connection between Adam and Jesus. Since humanity’s
sin is in Adam, and humanity’s salvation is in Christ, if Christ has not
assumed image as well as the likeness of God that was given to humanity, then there
is no salvation in Christ for humanity. Ignatius then points to passages in
Matthew, Galatians, and Romans in support of his argument. Here we see Irenaeus
concerned mostly with his argument. This would be slightly problematic for us
to accept if the connection made between Adam and Jesus was one that only
Irenaeus was trying to make. The assumption of connection between Christ and
Adam is one that the church had already held. Thus Irenaeus is trying to argue
for the tradition of the church by using Scripture to support his arguments. We
must understand that at this point in time, the NT canon had not been formed
officially, and so the statements made by the church held more weight than the
propositions made by Scripture.
As was stated earlier in the paper, Irenaeus is concerned
with the defense of the church as a community of believers against heresies,
not the positing of theological ideas. Alister McGrath in his book, Christian Theology explains the
historical development of heresy and orthodoxy, “[T]he basic unity within the
early Christian churches did not seem to be located at the level of doctrines,
but at the level of relationship with the same Lord.” McGrath goes on to
explain that the terms orthodoxy and heresy developed as the churches began to
reject previously accepted ways of explaining the fundamentals of Christianity
in order “to find the best way of expressing the core themes of faith.”[6]
Irenaeus’ appeal to what the church had been saying for generations and to what
the majority of the churches still accepted to be true is his way of upholding
the best way of expressing the core themes of faith. As we get into a
conversation about Gnosticism, it will become evident why such a defense was
necessary, for now, let us begin to understand the arguments that Irenaeus was
defending from the Gnostic heretics.
Among the chief concepts that Irenaeus was concerning
himself with, the concept of recapitulation is of utmost importance for him. He
makes mention of the term three times in the course of our excerpts alone:
3.22.1, 3.22.2, and 3.23.1. Irenaeus is concerned with the idea of Christ acting as
the new Adam. What Christ has done through the atonement, he could only have
done as human. Only if Christ has also freed Adam from the captivity and
enslavement to Satan and his tyrannies, can we who are in Adam also be free.
What Adam and Eve have done through disobedience in believing Satan’s lies, is
undone through the obedience of Jesus and Mary. This idea is known as
recapitulation. Unfortunately, as Gonzalez points out, “[t]he term
‘recapitulation’ has various meanings in ancient writers, and Irenaeus himself
uses it in more than one sense.”[7]
However, the basic gist of the term means to place under a new head. Humanity
is no longer under the headship of Adam, but is now under the headship of
Christ. As such, as we continue to live under the headship of Christ, we grow
in likeness to him who is the image
of God. This brings us to the distinction Irenaeus makes between the image and the likeness of God.
The general title this conversation fits under is called the
“Imago Dei”, or image of God. This again is one of those theological themes
that has been altered over time by various periods of theological development,
needless to say that today, the concept of the image of God is different than
Irenaeus’ understanding of it. Paul Jewett in his book Who We Are: Our Dignity as Human, helps to explains that Irenaeus
is the first who attempts to answer the question of how we are to understand
humanity as having the image of God in light of our fallen nature. Jewett
explains that Irenaeus postulated a drastic difference between the image and likeness
of God in humanity, “On the one hand, the image bestowed in creation, he
argued, is unlosable. Even as sinners, all men and women are in God’s image. On
the other hand, the likeness to God
with which our first parents were endowed is lost in the Fall. It can be
restored only as we are sanctified by the Spirit of Christ.” Jewett goes on to
explain in a footnote that this distinction was argued against by the reformers
as they came to regard that this as an example of Jewish parallelism, that the
image and likeness of God are two ways of talking about the same thing.[8]
While the theme of the image of God in Irenaeus could easily be made into its
own paper, it is enough for us to understand this as a supporting argument for
Irenaeus’s concept of recapitulation in two senses: First, if Christ does not
assume the same image as Adam, that is our flesh, Christ cannot save that flesh
that is in Adam. Second, it was necessary for God to free humanity from our
slavery to death and corruption, because as the image of God, if we remain
conquered, God therefore also remains conquered.
The image of God is a necessary component to Irenaeus’
argument for He is ultimately arguing that Christ assumed God’s image in as
much as He assumed humanity in its totality. Therefore, Mary the mother of
Jesus is of penultimate concern, since it is from her that Christ receives His
humanity. We cannot overlook or overemphasize the importance of where Christ’s
humanity comes from. Irenaeus goes so far as to say, “by yielding obedience,
(Mary has) become the cause of salvation.”[9]
Just as Christ is the new Adam, Mary is the new Eve. Just as he makes the
connection between Adam and Christ, in that Christ becomes the new Adam and in
so doing we who are under Adam become now under Christ, Irenaeus also makes the
connection between Eve and Mary. Irenaeus exhorts us, if nothing else, that we
should make note of Mary’s faith, for through her faith came the possibility of
our salvation. Mary should by rights be included in our concept of
recapitulation, at least as far as Irenaeus is concerned. Irenaeus is not alone
as he uses this way of including Mary in theological conversation throughout
his work, rather he is very much in keeping with the tradition of how the
church had viewed Mary for some century and a half. In so doing, Irenaeus is challenging
his Gnostic opponents in two ways: First, by appealing to the tradition of the
church, he is drawing conclusions that have already been drawn, namely that
Christ was human and His humanity came from Mary. Second, the idea of a woman
playing a part in the economy of salvation would have been an absurdity, not
only because women held a less than important position in his point in time,
but also because women were seen as especially impure in the eyes of the
Gnostics. This concept will become more clear as we get into our conversation
about Gnosticism, for now it is enough to understand that it would not make any
sense for those outside the Tradition of the church to be understanding Mary in
such a pivotal way. Having a robust mariology is important when we consider
Irenaeus’ argument against heresies in trying to discredit Christ’s humanity.
But keep in mind, that Irenaeus does not call upon Mary as the central figure
in the divine economy, she is merely included in the conversation.[10]
We can imagine that since Irenaeus is so adamantly defending
the notion of Christ incarnate, that his opponent was arguing against Christ’s
humanity. And thus, we come to understand one of the greatest threats to
Christ’s gospel, the underplaying of his humanity. Gnosticism is as difficult a
term to define as the word Christian, because it means many things. The word gnosis literally means knowledge,
therefore we can make the association in our minds of Gnosticism having
something to do with coming to understand knowledge. As it would be, Irenaeus
has been known to be the first to use the term. While all religious groups and
philosophical thought have knowledge as an important aspect of their system of
beliefs, Irenaeus noted that “the Gnostics appeared to give it a major, central
and distinctive role in their understanding of reality and salvation.”[11]
With understanding the importance of knowledge within the Gnostic framework, we
can also make the connection with knowledge and the mind. If knowledge has
special importance, then the mind will also have special importance. For
Gnostics, the mind was superior and the body was what constrained the mind from
its true potential. Therefore, when thinking of Christ as the utmost spiritual
knowledge, the idea of Him having a body is almost offensive. Contrary to what
we might expect, Gnosticism is not a dead threat. Any thought that attempts to
view the spirit and body of a person as polemical entities or attempts to
downplay the humanity of Christ is in a sense a type of Gnostic vein of
thought.
By far the most powerful components
of Irenaeus’ work is his take on atonement. This theme dominates the entire
second chapter of our selected excerpts. Irenaeus naturally moves from discussing
the reality of Christ’s humanity to explaining why it was necessary for Christ
to assume that incarnation. For Irenaeus recapitulation is the means through
which Christ accomplishes what was fitting for Him to accomplish. God’s
recapitulation of humanity is the only way that God can recapture humanity from
the oppressive powers of Satan. This theme of victory or freedom from captivity
is a theme that has obvious images of violent military action, that is, if the
analogy is taken to its excessive conclusion. In his book Saving Power, Peter Schmiechen reminds us of the potential theme of
Christ’s atoning work being of violence done towards Satan, as though humanity
is a piece of land being fought over by opposing townships. Schmiechen reminds
us, “Irenaeus’s contention that the means of salvation used by God was not like
the violence of Satan, but a form of persuasion that was just and reasonable.”
Schmiechen continues, “It is difficult to understand Irenaeus’s point until we
actually see what he means by the just and gracious persuasion of God. It is
here that he launches into the praise of Christ’s suffering and the outpouring
of the Spirit, actions directed not toward Satan but toward us.”[12]
This concept of God focusing all of His efforts and actions
towards the securing of His creation for His purposes is significant to me in a
number of ways. Last semester I defended the concept of Christ’s atoning work
being that of victory over our Spiritual oppressors based on Gustaf Aulèn’s
classic work, Christus Victor, in
which he draws the connection between the theme of victory in the post
apostolic fathers as epitomized in Irenaeus to the theological work of Martin
Luther. The reason why Aulèn’s allusions resonate with me is because I am drawn
to Luther’s understanding of human conflict with God. When I read Luther, there
is an aspect of reality I see Luther interacting with in regards to sin and its
power over us as fallen humanity. In my mind language of victory over these
forces of which no human can free him/herself from is a powerful image, one
that promises a totality of separation from sin and an absolute union in
Christ. I may have a misunderstanding of the legitimacy in drawing a connection
from Luther’s comprehension of the true gravity of sin to Irenaeus’s image of
Christ’s victory over the tyrants, perhaps because it is such an emotional
theme. Although Aulen may have overstated the historical reality of the theme
of victory in the post apostolic fathers and in Luther, I cannot help but
observe the reality I see as highlighted in this language used for
understanding Christ’s atoning work. Irenaeus articulates for me realities I
earnestly hope for. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this theme for me is
the idea that the enemy of God is not us but the tyrants. Schmiechen underlines
my feelings well when he says,
In
Irenaeus, the inclusion of wondrous love is made without any regret. Having
started with the bold declaration of Christ’s victory over Satan, he concludes
with the praise of the self-sacrifice of Jesus for us, freely offered and
confirmed by the bestowal of God’s very Spirit.[13]
In so
doing, Irenaeus subverts the apparent dualism between the object and the
subject of God’s atoning work.
Irenaeus is a shining exemplary
figure in the history of the church and her theological development. Although
not the only source of orthodoxy, Irenaeus is a primary voice of what it means
to hold orthodox theological positions when understood within the context of
the chorus of voices participating in the worshipful business of the church.
Irenaeus provides us with language that enables us to understand the
significance of Christ’s incarnation and how the incarnation is intricately
concerned with the salvation of humanity by means of liberation from captivity
to Satan and his works to freedom in Christ.
[1] Philip
Schaff, The Apostolic Fathers with Justin
Martyr and Irenaeus, vol. 1 of Ante-Nicene
Fathers (Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1885), 834.
[2] Justo
Gonzalez, From the Beginnings to the
Council of Chalcedon, vol.1 of A
History of Christian Thought (Nashville: Abingdon press, 1987), 158.
[3]
Gonzalez, 134.
[4]
Gonzalez, 130.
[5]
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.19.8.
[6] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction
(West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, LTD., 2011), 113.
[8] Paul Jewett, Who We Are: Our Dignity as Humans: A Neo-Evangelical Theology (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans publishing company, 1996), 56.
[10] Tim Perry, Mary for Evangelicals: Toward and Understanding of the Mother of Our
Lord (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 2006), 132.
[11] Dictionary
of the Later New Testament & Its Developments
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), s.vv. “Gnosis, Gnosticism.”
[12] Peter
Schmiechen, Saving Power: Theories of
Atonement and Forms of the Church (Grand Rapids: WIlliam B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2005), 128.
[13]
Schmiechen, 128.
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