Irenaeus

“ Irenaeus, who came about forty years after him, notices the same evasion in the adversaries of Christianity, and replies to it by the same argument: "But if they shall say, that the Lord performed these things by an illusory appearance (phantasiodos) , leading these objectors to the prophecies, we will show from them, that all things were thus predicted concerning him, and Strictly came to pass." (Iren. I. ii. c. 57.) ”

“ I calculate roughly that Irenaeus quotes directly 193 verses of the first Gospel and 73 of the fourth. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian must have quoted considerably more, while in the extant writings of Origen the greater part of the New Testament is actually quoted [Endnote 315:1] .
But more than this; by the time of Irenaeus the canon of the four Gospels, as we understand the word now, was practically formed. We have already seen that this was the case in the fragment of Muratori. Irenaeus is still more explicit. ”

“ Into their human, fleshly and perishable nature imperishable life is thereby engrafted; it has become deified, and death has been changed into immortality. In the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper it is the heavenly body of the God-man which is actually partaken of in the elements. This exposition by Irenaeus of the divine economy and the incarnation was taken as a criterion by later theologians, especially in the Greek Church (cf. Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus) . ”

“ Yet even Irenaeus, though removed but by one stage from the very Apostles, possessed (if we except a bare tradition) no other means of settling discordant readings than are now open to ourselves; namely, to search out the best copies and exercise the judgement on their contents. His locus classicus must needs be cited in full, the Latin throughout, the Greek in such portions as survive. ”

“ There must have been some reason for the secrecy with which “that presbyter’s” name is guarded. Irenæus may have scrupled to draw the wrath of the Gnostics upon any name but his own.] ↑ Rom. iii. 23. [Another testimony to the mercy of God in the judgment of the unevangelized. There must have been some reason for the secrecy with which “that presbyter’s” name is guarded. Irenæus may have scrupled to draw the wrath of the Gnostics upon any name but his own.] ”

“ It is the oldest catechism extant, and an excellent example of how Bishop Irenaeus was able not only to defend Christianity as a theologian and expound it theoretically, but also to preach it to laymen. ”

“ But at times he gives expression to very strange opinions. He is, for example, quite peculiar in imagining that our Lord lived to be an old man, and that His public ministry embraced at least ten years. But though, on these and some other points, the judgment of Irenæus is clearly at fault, his work contains a vast deal of sound and valuable exposition of Scripture, in opposition to the fanciful systems of interpretation which prevailed in his day. ”

“ To distribute these, i.e. to elucidate the rule of faith as set forth in the creed, and further to point out its agreement with the Scriptures, is the object of Irenaeus as a theologian. Hence he lays the greatest stress on the conception of God’s disposition of salvation towards mankind (oeconomia) , the object of which is that mankind, who in Adam were sunk in sin and death, should in Christ, comprised as it were in his person, be brought back to life. God, as the head of the family, so to speak, disposes of all. ”

“ This [15] [custom] , of not bending the knee upon Sunday, is a symbol of the resurrection, through which we have been set free, by the grace of Christ, from sins, and from death, which has been put to death under Him. Now this custom took its rise from apostolic times, as the blessed Irenæus, the martyr and bishop of Lyons, declares in his treatise On Easter, in which he makes mention of Pentecost also; upon which [feast] we do not bend the knee, because it is of equal significance with the Lord’s day, for the reason already alleged concerning it. ”

“ The elaborately varied readings of Matt. xi. 25-27 and Matt. xix. 16, 17 there can be little doubt are taken from the canonical text. They are both indeed found in a passage (Adv. Haer. i. 20. 2, 3) where Irenaeus is quoting the heretical Marcosians; and various approximations are met with, as we have seen, under ambiguous circumstances in Justin, the Clementine Homilies, and Marcion. But similar approximations are also found in Irenaeus himself (speaking in his own person) , in Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Epiphanius, who are undoubtedly quoting from our Gospels ”

“ For with the Father there is no degeneracy, unless perchance as in a great circle a smaller is contained, and within this one again a smaller; or unless they affirm of the Father, that, after the manner of a sphere or a square, He contains within Himself on all sides the likeness of a sphere, or the production of the rest of the Æons in the form of a square, each one of these being surrounded by that one who is above him in greatness, and surrounding in turn that one who is after him in smallness ”

“ Irenæus seems to have read αὐτούς instead of ἑαυτούς, as in the received text. ↑ 1 John iv. 1, 2. This is a material difference from the received text of the passage: “Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” The Vulgate translation and Origen agree with Irenæus, and Tertullian seems to recognise both readings (Adv. Marc., v. 16) . ”

“ This is the account of Irenaeus, not materially varied by any of the other early writers on heresy, with the exception of Hippolytus, who gives us a long account of the doctrine of Basilides and his son Isidore, which according to their own account they derived from Matthias, the Apostle who replaced Judas and who received it secretly from Jesus Himself [308] . ”

“ He gathered the apostles together, and preached the kingdom of heaven; gave light to the blind, and raised the dead; was seen in the temple, but was not held by the people as worthy of credit; was arrested by the priests, conducted before Herod, and condemned in the presence of Pilate; He manifested Himself in the body, was suspended upon a beam of wood, and raised from the dead; shown to the apostles, and, having been carried up to heaven, sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and has been glorified by Him as the Resurrection of the dead. ”

“ It is like emerging out of twilight into the broad blaze of day. There is really a greater disproportion than we might expect between the evidence of the end of the century and that which leads up to it. From Justin to Irenaeus the Christian writings are fragmentary and few, but with Irenaeus a whole body of literature seems suddenly to start into being. Irenaeus is succeeded closely by Clement of Alexandria, Clement by Tertullian, Tertullian by Hippolytus and Origen, and the testimony which these writers bear to the Gospel is marvellously abundant and unanimous. ”

“ Though he died a comparatively young man, if we may believe the gospel narrative, which makes him to have lived either to thirty-one or thirty-three years, though Irenaeus emphatically asserts that he lived to fifty years, we may most assuredly proclaim him a priest in the sense of elder, or leader of men. One whom schools of thought, represented by men so opposed as Mill, Renan, Matthew Arnold, Spinoza, Goethe, Napoleon and Rousseau, conspired to honour must have been indeed a "king of men". ”

“ They have also given names to [the several persons] in their system of falsehood, such as the following: he who was the first descendant of the mother is called Ialdabaoth; [315] he, again, descended from him, is named Iao; he, from this one, is called Sabaoth; the fourth is named Adoneus; the fifth, Eloeus; the sixth, Oreus; and the seventh and last of all, Astanphæus. Moreover, they represent these heavens, potentates, powers, angels, and creators, as sitting in their proper order in heaven, according to their generation, and as invisibly ruling over things celestial and terrestrial. ”

“ So Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 1, § 10, p. 51, Harvey: Ἔλαθεν οὖν, ὡς φασί, τὸν Δημιουργὸν ὁ συγκατασπαρεὶς τῷ ἐμφυσήματι αὐτοῦ ὑπὸ τῆς Σοφίας πνευματικὸς ἀνθρώπων [ἄνθρωπος] ἀρρήτῳ [adj. δυνάμει καὶ] προνοίᾳ. “It escaped the Demiurge, therefore, as they say, that the man whom he had formed by his breath was at the same time made spiritual by Sophia with unspeakable power and foresight.” So that, as Irenaeus says a few lines later, man has his soul from the Demiurge, his body from Chaos, his fleshly part (τὸ σαρκικὸν) from matter, and his spiritual man from the Mother, Achamoth [i.e. חכמת “Wisdom”] . ”

“ Those people of great age to
whom Irenaeus often appeals, have handed down to him as a saying of
Jesus the words, "in my Father's domains are many mansions." Besides
this, we learn from Jn. alone (xiv. 2) that Jesus made this statement,
and the conclusion is drawn that the "elders" also can only have become
acquainted with it from the Gospel. And since they have been referred
to by Irenaeus as people who speak not from a more recent age, but from
their own recollection of the distant past, the Gospel must already
have been in existence at a very early date. ”

“ It is not at all probable that he became the senior presbyter long before the middle of the second century. Irenaeus, indeed, tells us that he was constituted bishop of Smyrna by the apostles (lib. iii. c. 3, § 4) —a statement which implies that at least two of the inspired heralds of the gospel were concerned in his designation to the ministry; but as he was still only a boy of nineteen when the last survivor of the twelve died in extreme old age, the words cannot mean that he was actually ordained by those to whom our Lord originally entrusted the organization of the Church. ”

“ For works were not just by nature, but only by convention, in accordance with the enactments of the world-creating Angels, who by precepts of this kind sought to bring men into slavery. Wherefore he promised that the world should be dissolved, and that those who were his should be freed from the dominion of the world-creators. Irenaeus concludes his account by saying that this Antinomian teaching had its logical consequence in his followers, who lived licentious lives and practised every kind of magic. ”

“ Returning to Lyons, our author found that the venerable Pothinus had closed his holy career by a martyr’s death; and naturally Irenæus became his successor. When the emissaries of heresy followed him, and began to disseminate their licentious practices and foolish doctrines by the aid of “silly women,” the great work of his life began. He condescended to study these diseases of the human mind like a wise physician ”

“ His mother Sophia or Prunicos, disgusted at this, cried out that he lied, inasmuch as there was above him “the Father of all, the First Man and the Son of Man [184] ”; and that Ialdabaoth was thereby led on the counsel of the serpent or Ophiomorphus to say, “Let us make man in our own image [185] !” Here the Greek or older text of Irenaeus ends, and our only remaining guide is the later Latin one, which bears many signs of having been added to from time to time by some person more zealous for orthodoxy than accuracy. ”

“ Various conjectures have been made as to the original Greek of Irenæus; but the Latin answers every purpose of the author’s argument, and is fatal to the claims of the Papacy. Let me recur to the translation given, in loco, from a Roman Catholic, and this will be seen at once.
For he thus renders it:—
1. In this Church, “ever, by those who are on every side, has been preserved that tradition
which is from apostles.” How would such a proposition have sounded to Pius IX. in the Vatican Council? The faith is preserved by those who come to Rome, not by the Bishop who presides there. ”

“ But now as “he was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the abyss, and goes into perdition,” [260] as one who has no existence; so neither has his name been declared, for the name of that which does not exist is not proclaimed. But when this Antichrist shall have devastated all things in this world, he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple at Jerusalem; and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire ”

“ The possibilities are limited by the language, which confines our search to written documents. So far as we know there was, prior to the time of Irenæus, no Christian work which would treat the same subject in the same way, and would at the same time satisfy the conditions implied in the words, 'The elders, the disciples of the Apostles, say.' (3) The connection with a previous passage is highly important in its bearing on this question. In the thirty-third chapter of his fifth and last book Irenæus gives the direct reference to Papias which has been considered already [197:2] ”

“ There, under the “good Aurelius,” as he is miscalled (a.d. 177) , arose the terrible persecution which made “the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne” so memorable. It was during this persecution that Irenæus was sent to Rome with letters of remonstrance against the rising pestilence of heresy; and he was probably the author of the account of the sufferings of the martyrs which is appended to their testimony. [1] But he had the mortification of finding the Montanist heresy patronized by Eleutherus the Bishop of Rome ”

“ They are, on the contrary, abstruse, and portentous, and profound mysteries, to be got at only with great labour by such as are in love with falsehood. For who would not expend all that he possessed, if only he might learn in return, that from the tears of the enthymesis of the Æon involved in passion, seas, and fountains, and rivers, and every liquid substance derived its origin; that light burst forth from her smile; and that from her perplexity and consternation the corporeal elements of the world had their formation? ”