Irenaeus of Lyons

c. 130 - c. 202 CE · Greek (Smyrna), bishop of Lyons in Gaul · Patristics, Anti-Gnostic Polemic, Biblical Theology

For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God.

Irenaeus (c. 130 – c. 202) heard Polycarp of Smyrna as a boy, and Polycarp had known John. That single fact governs everything he wrote: he is the last man in the Church who could say that he had the apostles' teaching at one remove, and he spent his life defending it against people who claimed to have something better. He left Asia Minor for Gaul, served the church at Lyons as a presbyter, carried its letter on the Montanist question to Rome in 177 while his own congregation was being tortured in the amphitheatre, and came back to find the bishop Pothinus dead and the see his.

Topics Irenaeus of Lyons addresses

• recapitulation
• the rule of truth
• apostolic succession and the church of Rome
• the fourfold Gospel
• the Valentinian system of aeons
• the Demiurge and the Pleroma
• knowledge falsely so called
• Marcion and the two gods
• the one God, Creator and Father
• the Word made flesh
• Mary's obedience and Eve's disobedience
• the tree and the tree
• the infancy of Adam and the growth of man
• the image and likeness of God
• the glory of God is a living man
• the divine economy
• the Spirit and the flesh in salvation
• the Eucharist as pledge of resurrection
• the millennium and the renewed earth
• Antichrist and the number of the beast
• the two hands of God
• the unity of the Old and New Testaments
• the Logos and the prophets
• Polycarp and the eyewitness tradition

Questions to put to Irenaeus of Lyons

Recapitulation and the New Adam

• What do you mean when you say the Word 'summed up' in himself the whole history of humanity?
• How does Mary's obedience to the angel undo what Eve's disobedience did?
• Why did the Word have to pass through every age of human life, rather than simply dying for our sins?
• What is the difference between the image of God and the likeness of God, and how does Christ restore both?
• Does the cross fit into recapitulation as its goal, or is it just one episode among many?

The Rule of Truth and Apostolic Succession

• What is the 'rule of truth,' and where does a Christian first receive it?
• How does a list of bishops going back to the apostles settle a dispute about what Scripture means?
• Why do you single out Rome when you say every church must agree with its faith?
• If someone claims the apostles passed on a secret teaching alongside their public preaching, how do you answer them?
• Where the Church is, there is the Spirit — but how do you tell which community is the true Church?

Against the Gnostics: Knowledge Falsely So Called

• How did you get access to the Valentinians' own writings, and do you think you've described their system fairly?
• What's wrong with a God who didn't directly make the material world but delegated it to a lesser power?
• You compare Gnostic Bible reading to someone who breaks up a mosaic of a king and rearranges the pieces into a fox — what exactly is the mistake they're making?
• Why can there be exactly four Gospels — no more, no fewer?
• What's the difference between the kind of allegory you use and the kind the Gnostics use?

Creation, the Fall, and the Infancy of Adam

• Why do you say Adam and Eve were created as children rather than as fully formed adults?
• If Adam's fall was the mistake of an inexperienced child, does that mean it wasn't really a serious sin?
• How do you understand free will continuing in human beings after the fall?
• What do you mean when you call the Son and the Spirit the two hands of the Father in the work of creation?
• Why does it matter so much to you that the flesh is not the enemy of salvation but its object?

Resurrection of the Flesh and the Millennium

• How does the Eucharist serve as a pledge that this physical flesh is capable of rising from the dead?
• What happens during the thousand-year reign of the just on a renewed earth, and why does it come before the final state?
• Why shouldn't the prophets' promises of abundance and earthly blessing be read as symbols of something purely spiritual?
• How do you respond to the worry that expecting a literal earthly kingdom is too crude a hope for the resurrection?
• What are the 'degrees of dwelling' the Father prepares, and how do different people end up in different ones?

The Economy of Salvation and the Vision of God

• What do you mean by the 'economy' of salvation — why do you use that word for God's plan?
• Why did God choose to educate humanity slowly over centuries rather than simply restoring what Adam lost at once?
• What does it mean for a human being to 'behold God,' and is that something we can begin now or only at the end?
• How is the glory of God a living man — what's the argument behind that claim?
• You refuse to speculate about how the Son is generated from the Father — why is that a question to leave alone?

Converse with Irenaeus of Lyons on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Irenaeus of Lyons's own writing, cited to the page.