Recapitulation: is salvation the Word's summing up of Adam's whole life in himself, so that man becomes what God is, or does this make the cross one episode among many?

Irenaeus of Lyons, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Irenaeus of Lyons answers

The question sets two things against each other that my books do not set against each other. Begin with what the Word sums up. He does not take some other material for his body. He sums up the very formation that was made in the beginning, so that nothing else need be called into being and nothing else need be saved, but the same creature gathered into him as it stood in Adam, the analogy kept.¹

The first man was taken from virgin earth by the hand of God, which is the Word of God; so the Word, gathering Adam into himself, took his birth from Mary, who was still a virgin.¹ If he had drawn his flesh from any other substance, he would not have summed up human nature in his own person, and he could not be called flesh at all.² What had perished had flesh and blood, and it was for its sake that the whole dispensation of the Lord's coming took place.²

Hence he saves in his own person at the end what had perished in Adam at the beginning.³ Now the pairs, for the argument lies in the correspondences. Eve was a virgin and disobeyed, and became the cause of death to herself and to the whole race; Mary, betrothed and yet a virgin, obeyed, and became the cause of salvation to herself and to all.⁴

In the Demonstration I say it the same way: Adam must be summed up in Christ, that mortality might be swallowed up by immortality, and Eve in Mary, that a virgin's obedience might undo a virgin's disobedience.⁵ Even the genealogy in Luke serves this: seventy-two generations connecting the end with the beginning, and Christ holding in himself all nations and tongues dispersed from Adam downward, with Adam himself.⁶

You ask whether this makes the cross one episode among many. I answer that the cross is where the summing up is completed. The trespass that came by the tree is undone by the tree of obedience, when the Son of man, hearkening unto God, was nailed to the tree.⁵ He did not merely pass through the ages of man and then die as an addition; the obedience of the one man is set against the disobedience of the one man, as sin entered by one and righteousness by the other.¹

And the blood is part of the same summing up. From Abel to Zacharias the blood of the righteous cries out, and the Lord points to the recapitulation in his own person of all the blood shed from the beginning; it could not be required unless it were capable of being saved, nor would he have gathered it into himself had he not become flesh and blood after the way of the original formation.³

The cross is therefore the point toward which the whole recapitulation tends. To treat it as a single stone among many is to read the pairs and miss that each of them, the virgin earth, the virgin womb, the two trees, ends in his death. As for man becoming what God is, I hold what my books hold and no more. The Word who is the Maker of all things formed beforehand the future dispensation of the human race, connected with the Son of God, and God predestined that the first man should be of an animal nature that he might be saved by the spiritual One.⁶

For the Saving One pre-existed, and what was to be saved had to be called into being, lest he who saves should exist in vain.⁶ The creature remains a creature, made, and the flesh is the very flesh of the first formation. What changes is what is given to it: mortality is swallowed up by immortality.⁵

The position in brief

The Word of God was made man and passed through every age and condition of the life that Adam lost, so that the whole long history of humanity is summed up in him and undone where it went wrong: a virgin's disobedience by a virgin's obedience, a tree by a tree, a defeated man by a victorious man.⁷⁸ The cross is the consummation of this, not an exception to it.

What is saved is man as God made him, soul and flesh, and the end is that man should become what the Son of God is, holding God and being held, which is what man was made for.⁹¹⁰

Sources

it was that there might not be another formation called into being, nor any other which should [require to] be saved, but that the very same formation should be summed up [in Christ as had existed in Adam], the analogy having been preserved.
Against Heresies, Book III
But if the Lord became incarnate for any other order of things, and took flesh of any other substance, He has not then summed up human nature in His own person, nor in that case can He be termed flesh.
Against Heresies, Book V
nor would the Lord have summed up these things in Himself, unless He had Himself been made flesh and blood after the way of the original formation [of man], saving in his own person at the end that which had in the beginning perished in Adam.
Against Heresies, Book V
so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race.
Against Heresies, Book III
For it was necessary that Adam should be summed up in Christ, that mortality might be swallowed up and overwhelmed by immortality; and Eve summed up in Mary, that a virgin should be a virgin's intercessor, and by a virgin's obedience undo and put away the disobedience of a virgin.
The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching
God having predestined that the first man should be of an animal nature, with this view, that he might be saved by the spiritual One. For inasmuch as He had a pre-existence as a saving Being, it was necessary that what might be saved should also be called into existence, in order that the Being who saves should not exist in vain.
Against Heresies, Book III
But as our Lord is alone truly Master, so the Son of God is truly good and patient, the Word of God the Father having been made the Son of man. For He fought and conquered; for He was man contending for the fathers, and through obedience doing away with disobedience completely: for He bound the strong man, and set free the weak, and endowed His own handiwork with salvation, by destroying sin.
Against Heresies, Book III
Now this [blood] could not be required unless it also had the capability of being saved; nor would the Lord have summed up these things in Himself, unless He had Himself been made flesh and blood after the way of the original formation [of man], saving in his own person at the end that which had in the beginning perished in Adam. 2.
Against Heresies, Book V
Proofs from the writings of St. Paul, and from the words of Our Lord, that Christ and Jesus cannot be considered as distinct beings; neither can it be alleged that the Son of God became man merely in appearance, but that He did so truly and actually. 1.
Against Heresies, Book III
These things, therefore, He recapitulated in Himself: by uniting man to the Spirit, and causing the Spirit to dwell in man, He is Himself made the head of the Spirit, and gives the Spirit to be the head of man: for through Him (the Spirit) we see, and hear, and speak. Chapter XXI.--Christ is the head of all things already mentioned.
Against Heresies, Book V

Where the argument is made

Against Heresies III.18-23 on the Word made flesh recapitulating Adam and on Mary's obedience untying Eve's knot
V preface, "become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself"
III.10.2, "He would become the Son of man for this purpose, that man also might become the son of God"
III.19.1 on the Word of God who "became the Son of man, that He might accustom man to receive God, and God to dwell in man"
V.16-21 on the obedience on the tree undoing the disobedience at the tree and the victory over the strong man
IV.38 on God making and man being made
II.22.4 on Christ passing through every age
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31-34

How the argument was received

The idea that organises the whole of Against Heresies, admired by later theology and faulted by some for making sin a child's error and the passion one step in an education.