SOURCE: “Creation,” in Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus, translated by Ross Mackenzie, Muhlenberg Press, 1947, pp. 3-38.

[In the following essay, Wingren studies the significance of God's absolute power as Creator and of the relationship between Christ and man in Irenaeus's theology.]

GOD THE CREATOR

Our best starting-point for a full understanding of the concept of God in Irenaeus is the sovereignty of God—the absolute power of the Creator. The Gnostics' pessimism in regard to the world forced them into assuming a God who had nothing to do with the world, and they kept large parts of reality separate from God's sphere of influence. Against this, Irenaeus maintained that if God is held to be powerless in any respect, then that before which He is powerless is in point of fact God. We make certain deductions about the universe, deducing one proposition from another, but there is some point at which we have to stop, an already existing reality which cannot conceivably have originated from anything else, and it is this which we designate as “God.” But if we conceive of some substance, or matter, that is independent of God, then this independent substance is sovereign, and God is not, and it makes no difference however actively God may work and “create” with this substance as the basic stuff of His Creation, He is still not Creator, and what we ought consistently to call God is really matter, because the point at which we have stopped is that which does not require to depend upon any prior cause. But it is precisely this which characterises God, and which cannot be expressed about anything else except God, namely, that He cannot be deduced from anything.¹

By this it is implied that all things and all forms of life have originated from God. Whatever exists in heaven or on earth has had its origin in something else, but the matter from which everything has originated must in its turn have originated somewhere; but God has created the whole world from nothing out of His own unlimited power. The matter from which everything in Creation was to be formed must itself have been made from nothing, because it is only from God that Creation can originate, and because there is nothing greater than God and nothing equal to Him. It is only God who has a scheme for Creation and the will to create, and there is none to assist Him in His Creation other than His own “hands,” in other words God Himself. The hands of God are His Spirit and His Son, who are thus uncreated; they belong to the Creator, and are active in all Creation.² It is as impossible for us to state how the Son and the Spirit originated as it is to penetrate into the mystery of God's existence at all. God and his “hands” are inseparable.³

It may be stated at this point that the Son—and also, as we shall see, the Spirit—is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Now since the Son appears to us in Christ, it would be plausible to argue that belief in Him could only come with the Incarnation. But Irenaeus strenuously opposes such an interpretation, and in the Epideixis his opposition to this interpretation becomes almost tediously monotonous. Irenaeus frequently connects this with the statement in the Johannine Prologue about the Word which was in the beginning with God, and which became flesh in the birth of Jesus. “Because, for God, the Son was (as) the beginning before the creation of the world; but for us (He was) then, when He appeared; and before that He was not for us, who knew Him not.”⁴ The fact that we had not seen the Son or known about Him does not, therefore, mean that the Son did not exist. Irenaeus avoids the idea of a world which existed before the Son as studiously as he does speaking about matter which exists independently of God, for to maintain either of these propositions is to diminish the sovereignty of God, and to make as incredible the idea that God can work miracles upon the earth as that Christ will one day rule over the whole world.⁵ For a complete understanding of the theology of Irenaeus we must keep firmly in our minds from the very first the belief that God and His Son are before everything that has been created, and before any matter or any world they are.⁶

In the section that follows I propose to examine in particular the creation of man. Man is created in the likeness of God—God says to His Son and the Spirit, His own hands, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram). In the present section, where we are dealing with God as Creator in general, my purpose is to lay stress on the following proposition, namely, that the Son of God, who was made man in Jesus, exists before man, and, indeed, when man is created he is created through the Son and for the Son, so as to reach his destiny in the Son, his Saviour. Man's coming into being is something which occurs after the Son, and since the Saviour existed before man came into being, it was proper that something to be saved should come into being, lest the Saviour should exist by Himself alone.⁷ This point requires to be emphasised quite strongly, since the concept in primitive Christianity and in the early Church of the world as having been created in the Son has disappeared in modern theology. Oscar Cullmann holds, not without some justification, that the celebrated controversy between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner rests on the false alternative of the work of Creation (without Christ altogether) or the work of salvation (in Christ).⁸ Irenaeus holds, on the contrary, that everything is created in the Son, or the Verbum, the same Verbum which becomes flesh in Christ. In this fundamental premise he continues an early Christian line of thought.⁹

In point of fact the concept of pre-existence is often established on very inadequate Biblical foundations, creating only a variation of the un-Biblical separation of Spirit and matter. Matter as such is then held to be disclosed in reality and value—matter has an ideal pattern and is only a shadow of this eternal idea. The concept of pre-existence in early Christianity proceeds from God's sovereignty, that is, from God the Creator, who controls what is in existence, and who cannot be confounded by anything that originates from outside Himself, for nothing outside God has any existence. God does not, as it were, discover that there is something in existence farther forward in history, but rather, if anything new comes into existence, then it has come from the Creator, and therefore existed previously in Him. It follows that the question whether in its pre-existence it existed in a spiritual or a material way is irrelevant, and does not even need to be asked.¹⁰ There is a clear understanding of this concept of pre-existence, which is linked together with the idea of Creation, in Eph. ii.10, in which the writer speaks of “good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” For Irenaeus the whole of the history of salvation is a series of “works” done by God with the Son and the Spirit as his “hands,” and God has done them all in order that in them man might partake of Life. The power of God is, therefore, impeded neither by the Devil, God's adversary, nor sin, nor death, and the victory over these enemies of God, which is won through Christ, and which extends to their utter destruction in the Consummation, has been ordained by God from the very beginning, and exists in God as Creator. The existence of the Devil and his conflict with God in men does not involve for Irenaeus the same intolerable encroachment upon God's sovereignty as the existence of matter before God's creation of the whole universe. The Devil, too, has been created by God and has no life in himself, but has his existence by the power of God, and only for so long as the Creator and Father wills: his time is fixed by the decree of God.¹¹

Hence, if it is a characteristic of God to create, it is characteristic of man that he is created, i.e. that he is made, not that he is, but that he becomes, or increases.¹² And these two facts, God's creation and man's continual becoming, are identical—the same reality seen from two different aspects. At times the description in Irenaeus of man's increase has been represented as an instance of an almost modern theory of evolution, but Karl Prümm has justifiably insisted that this aspect of Irenaeus's thought has also first to be seen against its Gnostic background. The Gnostics proceeded from beneath, in differences, for instance, between certain aspects of the Old Testament and contradictory passages in the New Testament, and classified “God” in the categories of an Old Testament God and a New Testament God. It is against this disintegration in the idea of God that Irenaeus contends.¹³ God is one, but man becomes, and for him there are many stages of development.¹⁴ In both Testaments we encounter the same God, and it is only to be expected that, in spite of this fact, they contain differences, for God is the creating One, i.e. man is continually in process of becoming.¹⁵

Because of this relationship it is impossible for man to obtrude on God's existence. Any knowledge which man possesses of God is dependent on the active revelation of God, and where God has not revealed the mystery of His own person, man knows nothing. Irenaeus is decidedly averse to speculation, and frequently observes that Scripture does not tell us everything, but only what we need to know, in order that we may be able to have faith and obedience. There are blanks in our knowledge at several points, e.g. no one knows what God did before the creation of the world, and so no one can say how the Son proceeded from the Father; the period before the Last Day is and remains unknown, and the reason why certain created beings (man and the Devil) fell into sin is likewise hidden.¹⁶ Where there are blanks of this kind in our knowledge it is because they have to be, and it is futile for us to attempt to amplify our limited knowledge of God by our own thinking. Man may properly study what lies “before his eyes,” and what is clearly written in Scripture: both these ways lead to incontrovertible knowledge, although, of course, it is limited knowledge.¹⁷ However persistently we may try, we cannot reach any knowledge of what God is like in His majesty, in his magnitudo, despite the fact that God is so close to us, and that He never ceases to know everything that is in every man.¹⁸ When van den Eynde speaks about the simple “theology of faith” in the early Church as an expression of the common life of faith within the local congregations, and holds that the theology of Irenaeus, but not the theology of Alexandria, belongs to this less intellectualised theology of the early Church, we should note that the unwillingness of Irenaeus to employ la théologie savante is founded on principle,¹⁹ for Irenaeus could not have admitted either Gnostic or Alexandrian speculation without destroying the basis of his theology.

As we have just seen, our inquiry has to be directed not only at the unequivocal affirmations of Scripture, but at everything “before our eyes,” and the Gnostics proved deficient in both of these respects, for they had no interest either in a balanced exegesis of Scripture, or in the visible, external world. It is at this point that another aspect of Irenaeus's belief in the Creator presents itself. The Gnostics held (and here I am referring to sensual gnosis) that it was a necessity to experience everything, even what was evil; yet they were never known to take part in anything that required resilience or adaptability, but, being the sensualists they were, either devoted themselves to every kind of excess, or kept ascetically remote from the world. Irenaeus held that we ought by rights to be finding the Gnostics occupied on occasion with medicine, botany, painting, sculpture, or different types of handwork, agriculture, seafaring, and also gymnastics, hunting, the art of warfare, and politics—but in every one of these pursuits we look for the Gnostics in vain.²⁰ And yet it is the corruptible things, too, which have been made by God, and the whole earth is the Lord's, despite the fact that it is transitory and destined to pass away²¹—God the Creator is at work even in the least of His creatures which reproduce, and by so doing continue His Creation.²²

In this present connexion particular attention should be given to the statements in Irenaeus about the Roman Empire, and what God is doing for the benefit of mankind and the preservation of His world by using a pagan power such as this as His instrument. These statements of Irenaeus are given in great detail and lucidity, although they are infrequently mentioned in theological literature. His interpretation of Mt. xxii.7 is quite characteristic. The verse, “The king was angry: and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city,” is an allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army. The Roman armies are called God's armies—the king (God) sent his armies. And the Lord may speak thus “since all men belong to God.” Some lines farther on this theme is expanded: “Every man, as a man, is His creation, even though he may be ignorant of his God.”²³ Irenaeus puts the theme in question into its proper context by quoting in full three passages from Scripture, and his selection of passages is highly significant. The first is from Psalm xxiv: “The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof” (Ps. xxiv.1). The second is Paul's statement about the powers that be as the servants of God (Rom. xiii. 1-6), and the third is Mt. v.45, the passage about the sun and the rain on the just and the unjust.²⁴

Also of interest is the defence which Irenaeus attempts to make of the passages Ex. iii.21 f. and xii.35 f., the description of how, before the Exodus, the Israelites took jewels of gold and silver from the Egyptians. As Christians, he maintains, we act in a similar kind of way towards non-Christians around us, and make free use of what they produce for us by their efforts in giving the world peace, and creating the possibility of unimpeded intercourse and secure sea-communications.²⁵ It belongs to God's nature to give us such worldly gifts as these, although they come to us from the Creator through other men, and although these others have no knowledge of God.²⁶ The belief in Creation, which underlies passages such as this, sees man as being on the earth for God to make use of in the same way as he makes use of the fig-tree to give us figs—it is not necessary that it should first be converted or received into the congregation!

Of very great importance, however, is the extended analysis in Irenaeus of Lk. iv.6, the declaration of the Devil at the temptation of Jesus that he, the Devil, can give away all the kingdoms of the world, since he has power over them (A.h. v.24).²⁷ The whole of the exegesis of this passage forms part of a larger systematic context dealing with the Devil as Falsehood and the Lord as Truth (from v.21 onwards). When the Devil claims that he possesses the kingdoms of the world he is lying, because “the hearts of kings are in the hand of God.” It is not Satan who administers the kingdoms of this world, but God.²⁸ When Christ contradicts the Devil at every temptation with a word from the Old Testament, the word of the Law, He speaks the truth and declares which God His Father is, viz. the God of Creation and the Law.²⁹ The Devil is continually active, and never gives up his desire to embroil the whole of mankind in warfare and strife, but all that he is able to do by this is to disturb God's government of the world; it is an impossibility for him to get the whole of the created order into his control, for God rules.³⁰ When men sinned and began to destroy one another, God put a “fear of man” into mankind, because men no longer knew how to fear God. In subjection to the mastery of their fellowmen, and bound by their laws, men were to learn to be righteous at least in some measure. So men are forced into curbing one another and treating with respect the repressive control which confronts them. The laws of authority are “a garment of righteousness.” Severity checks sin,³¹ and new rulers continually gain power as new generations of men are born. In both of these the continuing work of Creation is discerned: “The One by whose command men are born commands also rulers to be appointed who are fit to govern those over whom they rule at the time.”³²

But the demand for obedience to authority is only one aspect of the fundamental view of kings as the servants of God. The other side is that all rulers, independently of whether or not they are Christian, are to be judged in the Last Judgement by the God who appointed them. The Judgement will be upon all without exception. And if the rulers have done anything contrary to the law, as tyrants do, it will inevitably bring upon them destruction and ruin.³³ The sun rises on the evil and the good now, but it will not always be so, and the God who is so long-suffering now to His Creation will some day cause His Judgement to come upon mankind.³⁴

There is a further point in the teaching of Irenaeus where his belief in Creation emerges in a precise definition in a comparable way, and that is his interpretation of Holy Communion. In more recent theology, and especially in Anglican quarters, the Holy Communion is regarded as “an extension of the Incarnation,” and in this definition there is something which was part of the theology of the early Church. But it is, in fact, an Anglican theologian who has pointed out that Irenaeus tended rather to connect Holy Communion with the belief in Creation: God has created the world through His Word, His Son, and in the Eucharist there is “an extension of His creative energy.”³⁵ Christ took the bread from Creation and said of it: “This is my body.” The wine too had been produced by the earth, and of it He said: “This is my blood.”³⁶ When the Gnostics took these gifts of Creation, they treated them as having been created by the Demiurge, a lower Creator-God, and not by the God and Father of Jesus Christ. It was a matter of astonishment to Irenaeus that the Gnostics could celebrate Holy Communion at all, using bread and wine as food and nourishment, and he could not see how they were able to relate the elements to Christ. A precondition for such a connexion as this is that in Christ we see the Son of the Creator of the world. Christ is the Word made flesh, He is the Verbum through which the vine bears its fruit, the springs flow, and the earth has strength to produce the stalk, the ear of corn, and the grain of wheat for bread.³⁷ The Creator has power to give life to the grain which is cast into the earth and is changed, and it is the same Creator who has power to nourish and feed us with Christ in the Eucharist, so that when we die and are buried in the earth we may await the resurrection from the dead. The bread and wine of the Holy Communion both testify that the Creator of the world is in Christ, and that our earthly bodies share in the life which the Creator wills to bestow upon mankind through the incarnate Son.³⁸ Farther on in our study we shall have cause to return frequently to this profound relationship between Creation, the Incarnation, the Church, and the resurrection of the body.³⁹

God is life; the Devil is death. Irenaeus regards all life as being in the hand of God, and death as a lost connexion with God, a lost contact with the source of life, and captivity to the enemy of God. He therefore held together in his understanding natural life and the Spirit, Creation and the Sacraments, and man's body and his communion with God. By the very fact of our being in the presence of life in all its countless forms we are confronted by a wholly divine activity in which God is directly at work in His Creation.⁴⁰ Whatever affects life adversely is wrong and contrary to the will of the Creator, but at the same time too it is death, something which destroys life like poison in the body. It is from God that man has proceeded, and so the only life he has is the one which he has received from God. But at this point let us leave the idea of Creation in general and turn our attention to the man whom God has put into His created world.

IMAGO AND SIMILITUDO

In Gen. 1.26 both image … and likeness … are mentioned together. These two substantives are rendered in Greek as ειχων and ομοίωsιs respectively, and in Latin as imago and similitudo. This combination of words occurs in a very large number of places in Irenaeus, mostly as a hendiadys. There are, however, passages where Irenaeus uses only one of the words, and there are other places where he makes a distinction in meaning between the two. The majority of the interpreters of Irenaeus's anthropology have concentrated on these latter passages, with some loss in the total understanding of their meaning. We shall have to examine the whole of this discussion when we come to deal with man and his faith in Christ, man in the Church, for by then we shall have drawn together all the necessary material for discussion. There are other problems too which we are unable to study at this particular point—the question of free will and of immortality, for example—and so we limit ourselves here solely to the relationship between the Son on the one hand (or, rather, the Son and the Spirit), and man on the other, as this relationship existed when man was created. This relation between the Son and man, having been established by God from the beginning of Creation, is an expression of the same truth as the statement that man is created in the imago and similitudo of God.

Prümm states that there is hardly any verse in the Old Testament which is more frequently quoted “in der alten Christenheit” than Gen. 1.26. The statement is true enough of Irenaeus, but otherwise it is somewhat of an exaggeration.⁴¹ It cannot be said that this quotation abounds in theological literature before Adversus haereses.⁴² In Irenaeus, on the other hand, repeated allusions are made to the verse in question, sometimes in reference to the Creation of man, at other times with allusion to Christ Himself, or again to Christ's dealings with men in the present, or even in connexion with some futurist or eschatological expectation, which man awaits in faith.⁴³ In regard to the points of contact in Irenaeus with contemporary thought it is of very great interest to note that the Gnostics—at least the Valentinian gnosis—also built on Gen. 1.26 f.⁴⁴ The Valentinians, it is true, were Irenaeus's chief opponents, but for this very reason we may well assume that they had a real influence on him, as indeed several scholars maintain.⁴⁵ It was a characteristic of this Gnosticism that, in accordance with the division into higher and lower which was applied to the whole of the Gnostic world-view, it made a sharp distinction between imago and similitudo. The exaggerated influence of Valentinian Gnosticism on Irenaeus is, however, closely bound up with the tendency which has been found recently of putting into the centre of discussion the relatively few passages in which Irenaeus appears to distinguish between imago and similitudo, in a manner which is reminiscent of the scholastic scheme of nature and supernature. But even among those who for reasons such as these over-emphasise the Gnostic influence there is nonetheless general agreement that the Valentinian interpretation of Gen. 1.26 f. exercised at the most a subsidiary influence, and was important only in that it impelled Irenaeus to take up the interpretation of the passage in earnest, but was not his basic reason for doing so. His interest in the passage was Biblical and Pauline.⁴⁶

At the same time, however, there is an obvious difference between the theology of Irenaeus and the Pauline theology in their general interpretation. In Rom. v.12-21 Paul compares Adam and Christ. Through Adam sin and death have come into the world, but through Christ has come righteousness and life. Paul focuses his attention on the defeat, the “fall,” of Adam.⁴⁷ By so doing he is not denying that Adam was created by God, but it is not this which, as an Apostle, he has to proclaim. The Gospel is about what Christ has done. And so in Paul's theology Adam and Christ are set over against one another. Irenaeus found himself involved in controversy with Gnostics who denied what was self-evident to Paul, namely that Adam was created in the image of God, as it is written in Gen. 1.26 f., and created by the God who sent Christ into the world.⁴⁸ The Gnostics likewise rejected the Law and the Old Testament which God the most high had given, and so Irenaeus was forced not only to try to demonstrate how both the Old and the New Testaments were derived from God, and how both the Law and the Gospel were addressed to men by the same God, but also to make it clear to his own period that Adam was created by God to live, body and soul, in accordance with His will. For this very reason it is important to speak of Adam's sin as a fall. Irenaeus also lays strong emphasis on the fact that Adam's defeat and Christ's victory are the extreme opposites of one another.⁴⁹ If, however, we examine what Adam was created for, what appears is not the contrast between Adam and Christ, Irenaeus maintained, but, on the contrary, the connexion between them.⁵⁰ And it is this connexion which we must first of all now define.

There is a suitable starting-point for our discussion in Loofs's analysis of a line of thought which appears in Irenaeus. Loofs isolates a special line of thought in Adversus haereses, according to which the historical Christ who lived on earth was the pattern which God had in His mind when he fashioned the first man. Christ was the man about to be, homo futurus, and the Creator, as it were, foresaw Christ. While the earth was being formed, Christ was in the mind of God, and matter took shape in the hands of God in accordance with this future pattern. In particular, Loofs links up this line of thought with a much-debated passage in Tertullian's De resurrectione carnis, where the Christological and anthropological concepts which I have just mentioned are quite prominent.⁵¹ In Tertullian, however, these ideas have no systematic significance, and the idea of Christ as homo futurus is one which comes up only for a time and then disappears.⁵² There is, however, one dominant idea in the main writing of Irenaeus, which Loofs was continually trying to split up into several parts, in which the line of thought of which I have just spoken would be fundamental.⁵³ It is characteristic of Loofs's interpretation of Irenaeus that this line of thought—the Christ yet to be—is set in sharp contrast to the idea of Christ as the pre-existent Son. The idea of pre-existence belongs to a quite different part of Adversus haereses, and it was solely on account of his general theological lack of depth, Loofs held, that Irenaeus as a compiler was able to attempt the task of joining together two such unrelated elements to form a unity which had to be forced.⁵⁴

It is easier to see the significance of Loofs's reasoning if we take a parallel from the history of dogma. On the question of election it is sometimes suggested that God elects, but that He does so on the basis of His foreknowledge of what course man is going to take. But if this foreknowledge is allowed to become the principal thing, then obviously the decisive factor will be man's free will—whatever takes place does so independently of God and in isolation from Him, while God is added on later as the One who foresees, but in an essentially passive way. The view which underlies Loofs's dichotomy between the idea of pre-existence and the idea of the future is just the same. Christ is a reality in the future; the Son is not with God from eternity, but rather the future, historic Christ is foreseen by God. In the preceding section, however, it was made clear that a deistic concept of God such as this was altogether alien to Irenaeus. Irenaeus maintained not only that God has foreknowledge of everything, but also that His foreknowledge is an element in His creation of all things, and before we see them emerging in history these things are already real in God.⁵⁵ It is an artificial contrast that Loofs makes between what is pre-existent and what is of the future. The affinity between these two ideas is natural and primary. Mankind's prototype is the Son, the Logos, the Verbum, who, in His future aspect as Saviour, existed in God. It is perhaps a matter of some doubt whether Tertullian looks at the matter in the same way, for his references to the subject are scattered, but as far as Irenaeus is concerned this inner connexion is certain.⁵⁶

“Man is created in the image of God, and the image of God is the Son, in whose image man was created. For this reason the Son also appeared in the fulness of time to show how the copy resembles Him.”⁵⁷ The Son was first, before Creation. Man, like every other thing, is created in the Son and the Spirit, i.e. he has been formed by God's own hands, but he is different from the rest of Creation in that in addition he was created in order to become like God—to become the very image of God. This is his destiny. Irenaeus does not say that he is this image, nor was this destiny wholly realised in Creation before sin entered into the world, because man was a child. This means, in part, that man has not arrived at his appointed destiny in Creation, because he is not the son of God in that sense, but it also means that, if he grew up to maturity without being confused by his adversary, he would reach the end which has been ordained for him by God. In our next section we shall look at the statements in Irenaeus about man as a child in Creation, and we shall postpone making references and offering a more detailed analysis till then, but this, at any rate, may be said in the meantime: a healthy, newborn child is unable to talk, for example, but it has every likelihood of being able to do so in the future, and provided only that the child grows, it will reach the stage of being able to talk. An injury to the child, however, may prevent it from ever beginning to talk. This is the situation of the first man. He is a child, created in the image of God, but he is not the image of God. That he lacks something, however, is not due to sin. No injury has yet happened to the child. He is uninjured, but he is just a child—he does not yet realise what he is to be. All the while, however, there is already in Creation one who is the image of God, the only-begotten Son.⁵⁸ There is nothing lacking in Him; He is more than man, and man, by being created “in the image of God,” is created and established in Him, who was at a future point in history to become incarnate.

And yet at the same time there is an absolute distance between God and man. The Son is God, and therefore Creator; but man is created in the image of God, and is and remains created.⁵⁹ This distinction between the Son and man is such that it may never be abolished, however man may become like the Son who is man's prototype. There is a passage in Irenaeus, in which he is emphasising this difference between Christ and man, where his very choice of words is significantly changed. Dealing with man, he states that having succumbed to his adversary man has become a captive of the Devil, and the question is, How shall anyone be able to overcome this adversary of mankind unless he is different from the man who has suffered defeat? But only the Son of God is stronger than man who has been created in the image of God, the Son in whose image man was created. The Son, therefore, was made man in the Incarnation in order to defeat man's adversary and to reveal the similitudo.⁶⁰ It is the Son's superiority to man which Irenaeus is emphasising here, and he demonstrates this distance by his statement that man was created in the likeness of the Son. The affinity between the Son and man and the distinction between them are part of the same reality, and both the distance between them and the bond which unites them are expressed by saying that man is created in the imago and similitudo of the Son; but it is a better definition simply to say that the Son is the imago and similitudo of God, and that man is created in God's imago and similitudo.

Man is created by God's hands, the Son and the Spirit, so as to become the very image of God.⁶¹ The fulfilment of the purpose of Creation implies accordingly that man should grow in conformity with the Son, and since the Son is Christ, this coalescence with Christ in the Church, which is the Body of Christ, means that Creation is moving towards its consummation. We shall have more to say about this farther on, but it should be stressed at this point that, since the Spirit is given in the Incarnation and is inseparably bound with the Body of Christ, the Spirit too is active in Creation as well as the Son. Irenaeus will refer to the Son or the Logos, the Verbum, as “God's hand,” but even more frequently he connects the Son with the Spirit and speaks of them together as “God's hands.”⁶² It is not only the Son, it is also the Spirit, who represents God's likeness. When man is formed after the image and likeness of God the Spirit too is active in that formation. This may be an appropriate point at which to mention some references to the Spirit as taking part in the formation of man, in spite of the fact that in so doing we are anticipating part of what is to follow.

There is a passage in the Epideixis which speaks of God as being triune in the following terms: “He is over all things as Father, He is with all things as the Word, since all things proceeded from the Father through the Word, but He is in us all as the Spirit who cries ‘Abba, Father,’ and forms man in the image of God.”⁶³ Immediately before this Irenaeus had made the traditional identification of the Son with the Word and the Spirit with Wisdom—the Spirit forms the flesh, and “the flesh forgets its own property and assumes that of the Spirit by becoming conformable to the Word of God,” i.e. to the Son.⁶⁴ In this last quotation the Spirit forms man in the likeness of the Son. There is a further related fact, which is that Christ's work of salvation consists in His bestowal of the Spirit: it is the Spirit which unites man with Christ.⁶⁵ Man's identity with the Son is not finally achieved until the resurrection from the dead, and in Irenaeus as well as in early Christianity the resurrection is connected with the Spirit which forms the body, and in forming the body takes possession of it, making it a soma pneumatikon. In faith man already possesses the Spirit as an earnest, but the full dominion of the Spirit in the resurrection will perfect man in accordance with the Father's purpose in Creation, and conform him to God's imago and similitudo.⁶⁶ The Son and the Spirit are one in the Church and the resurrection, but not only there: they are already one at the beginning in the work of Creation.⁶⁷ From them, as the hands of God, man proceeds.

There are certain statements in Irenaeus about Christ's work of salvation which are put in such a way that we may at the same time deduce from them something about man as he was destined to be in Creation. Among these are all his statements of how Christ re-established man through the Spirit and restores him to his original status, and annuls the harm wrought by the Fall. The point is frequently made in Adversus haereses that what man lost in Adam, namely his conformity to the image and likeness of God, is restored again in Christ, and it was for this very reason that the Son, who was always with the Father, was made flesh.⁶⁸ The divine decree at man's creation comes to fulfilment through what is realised by Christ in His Incarnation: God's Word emerges as an effective reality.⁶⁹ There is hardly any passage in Irenaeus of greater importance than the one in which he describes in detail how it is only the man who receives the Spirit that is truly man.⁷⁰ If a man rejects the Spirit he remains in the power of his adversary, and by being so held he remains in a state that is contrary to his nature. The man, however, who receives God's Word returns to his original state: “Those who are created after God's imago and similitudo gain man's original state.⁷¹ Accordingly, what is given in salvation is not a supernatural addition to what is purely human, as Roman Catholic theologians in particular frequently interpret Irenaeus to mean, but rather, the typical condition of mankind is his state of not being human—and what perverts man is his captivity to a power over himself—and Christ, by what He has done, frees man from his inhumanity and lets him become truly man.

The passage in Col. iii.10 about the new man who “is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” is an affirmation which Irenaeus finds of profound and particular significance. It implies that man, by faith in Christ, becomes a new man, becomes like Christ. And yet it was in the likeness of Christ, the Son, that man was created. The first creation, which was corrupted by sin, is begun again when man by faith is united with Christ who is the image of God.⁷² In the “new man” Christ is active, and in Christ the Creator is active. God has not given up the work which He began when He said, “Let us make man in our own image,” but in fact is active in creating man by His “hand,” that is, by Christ; and when Christ, God's “hand” and “mouth,” is accomplishing His work among men, the first creation is being brought to its fulfilment. These references in Irenaeus to the recreating power of Christ in the Incarnation are confirmed by similar statements about his view of Creation “in the beginning,” which bear out what we have already discovered: from the very beginning the Son is the imago and similitudo of God, while man is created in the imago and similitudo of God.

To reach an understanding of the concept of man in Irenaeus we shall have to avoid making distinctions between his various statements about Adam, the descendants of Adam, or man after Christ, etc.,⁷³ for Irenaeus would never have defined these different periods separately. In speaking of Adam he speaks of man, and in speaking of what Christ does for men he speaks of what Christ does for Adam; or again, in using the word Adam or the word man he is always in some way referring either to himself, or to those to whom he was preaching, to all men everywhere, that is, the dead as well as those yet to be born. There is a real difficulty, certainly, for us today in understanding such a view as this, only the difficulty is of a religious nature. As soon as we assume a view of man in himself as a creation of God, possessing nothing which has not come from God, and destined by the Creator for eternal life, we find that there are no insoluble difficulties connected with the concept of man which was held in the early Church. Certainly, we shall have to take time and trouble to understand it, but our whole understanding of man and everything connected with him is itself bound up with our belief in Creation. If we find that we are conceiving of man instinctively as being an isolated individual among other isolated individuals, we are proceeding on the assumption that the ground of his existence is something other than God. In this kind of individualistic view there is a difficulty in making any reference to Christ as Saviour.⁷⁴ The universal application of the work of Christ and its alteration of the status of the whole of humanity is a quite incomprehensible idea apart from the view of mankind as a unity, and the idea of man as having been created and destined for eternity. This understanding of man does not add any new difficulty to those which already exist in our comprehension of man, but is simply one of the assumptions which the Christian faith makes.

There is a helpful metaphor in Wilhelm Hunger where he says that Irenaeus regards mankind as a river—seen, however, not from the bank at a certain point in its course, and later seen again at another point from the bank, but seen at a glance from the source right down to the river-mouth, the same river all the way, and the same water with the same name.⁷⁵ The history of Adam is fulfilled only at the Consummation.⁷⁶ This aspect of the Irenaean anthropology will become a little clearer when we examine the statements in which he refers to a man as a child.

“A CHILD”

Both in the Adversus haereses and the Epideixis Irenaeus declares that man, as God created him, is a child. … His statements have frequently been noted, without any great importance being attached to them. These passages, however, are directly connected with a concept which is fundamental in Irenaeus, the concept of man “growing,” of man as one who is constantly developing, or who ought to be so. By trying to discover what it means to speak of man as a child in Creation we shall succeed in avoiding a hard-and-fast attitude in the analysis of the term recapitulatio. It is clear from what we have already seen above that Irenaeus conceives of recapitulation, or Christ's work of salvation, as a restoration of Creation, a return to man's original state. Against this, however, a number of different statements have been adduced from Irenaeus in which he maintains that Christ completes Creation, making it into something better and richer than it had ever been from the beginning. There would appear, then, to be an inconsistency between this perfectionist view, and the kind of statement which is frequently repeated in Irenaeus, that what we lost in Adam we recover in Christ.⁷⁷ It is difficult to reconcile the pattern of loss and recovery with that of imperfect beginning to perfection, and it is only too clear that one cannot lose what one has never possessed. It was at this particular point, the double aspect in the concept of recapitulation, that H. H. Wendt put a wedge into the theology of Irenaeus, a wedge which was intended to prove to Irenaean scholars conclusively that the theology of Irenaeus consisted of at least two disconnected parts.⁷⁸ Perhaps the assumption must be that it was only in the nineteenth century that this dichotomy was revealed! Two distinguishable parts there are indeed in the Irenaean concept of recapitulation, but the unity which unites the two parts consists of the concept of child and the concept of growth.

If we take as an example a child's power of speech, it is not in the least illogical to argue that one may lose what one has never had. An accident may deprive a child of the power of speech before it has reached the age when it occasionally spoke a few words. If, however, the child which suffered from such a defect were cured by medical skill, the recovery of its health would be evidenced by the fact that it spoke, by doing something, that is, which it had never done before the accident occurred. The child recovers its power of speech which it never had. In this phrase “power of speech” there is a certain variation of meaning, but it is exactly this kind of variation which is characteristic of Irenaeus, and which is a quite different thing from maintaining that Irenaeus's thought proceeds on two different lines.⁷⁹ The same thing happens when Irenaeus deals with the concept of growth, and attempts to demonstrate that the full-grown man is exactly the same being as the undeveloped man, and yet is something completely different, because he has grown and become something different. In Irenaeus the thought vacillates between identity and change, and is continually fluctuating between the two.⁸⁰ The historian of dogma who, in dealing with this kind of problem, merely states that there is a general confusion, is justified in saying so provided that he himself clearly demonstrates how man's growth is to be interpreted, for what Irenaeus was attempting to undertake was nothing less than the interpretation of words such as grow, growth, and so on, terms which, for an interpretation of man, are central to the New Testament.⁸¹

Bonwetsch points out that Irenaeus never speaks of man as being “perfect” in his “original state,”⁸² and while he is quite correct in what he says, I think it would be better to give up this rigid scheme with its three or four “states” which was so characteristic of later Scholasticism, both on the Roman Catholic and the Protestant side.⁸³ A theology of man's “original state” does not emerge before the controversy between Augustine and Pelagianism, and before that time we find hardly any account of the first paradisiacal world and its perfect man.⁸⁴ When Irenaeus refrains from saying that the man whom God created was perfect, he has no intention of repudiating any elaborate theory of perfection, and consequently no suggestion that there was any weakness, want, or mortality in Adam.⁸⁵ The line is clear: death came through sin—every hurt in the life of man has its source in mankind's primal adversary, in evil, and disobedience. But on the other hand the yielding to temptation and defeat is so intimately associated with Adam that the only remaining contribution of the first man to the human race is his Fall, and his introduction of death into the world of men. Mortality thus is characteristic of original man, without itself having been created by God. Mortality is not of itself involved in the concept of son, but is a work of sin and the Serpent against the Commandment of God.⁸⁶

This point is made clear in the Epideixis, in which it is maintained that the first two human beings were sinless and child-like, and were so because they had been created by God.⁸⁷ But having said this, Irenaeus goes on immediately to stress that there is a gulf which separates man from God, a gulf which has been made by the Creator Himself; and that in contrast to God man has a Lord over him, and a Will imposed upon his own. One expression for the dominion which the Creator has over His created child is the Commandments of God. At once, therefore, the ethical factor comes into the foreground at this point, in the sense of a regulated conduct of life from man's side, namely the Law.⁸⁸ From the very first Irenaeus connects life, that is, the physical factor, with the Commandments, the ethical, and continues to do so throughout his thinking. If man were to live in accordance with the Commandments he would continue in the state in which he once was, that is, he would be immortal, for obedience and life belong together.⁸⁹ Had he violated God's Commandment he would become subject to death and be resolved into dust, for sin and death belong together. Man is free, and can acquire any power at all, life as well as death. If “mortality” means that the possibility of death as well (through sin) remains open, then man is mortal from the time he leaves God's hand, since Irenaeus is always firm in maintaining that man is free and created free through the power of God.⁹⁰ Irenaeus, however, does not usually refer to this as mortality, but, on the contrary, man plunges into mortality when he yields to the temptation of disobedience. The man who chooses evil, says Irenaeus, or who gives up the struggle between good and evil, destroys himself in his inner man—“latenter semetipsum occidit hominem.”⁹¹

We may now note here in parenthesis that just as the physical and the ethical are connected in relation to life or death for mankind in Creation, the same combination recurs in recapitulation. Christ defeats death by resisting temptation in the wilderness and on the Cross. The “physical” resurrection proceeds from the “ethical” death on the Cross. But Christ's ethical purity is consequent also on the fact that God dwells in Him. Christ's ethical works have their source in the physical Incarnation. And the man who receives the Spirit gains thereby an attitude to his neighbour which is induced by God, and which corresponds to the Commandment, and he gains everlasting life in the resurrection from the dead. The Church is to be understood as a creative ethical force in the non-Christian society simply because it is Christ's martyred Body which awaits the resurrection of the dead, the physical miracle. The Christian believer's participation in Christ consists as much in the willingness of the mind to obey Christ's commandment of love, as in the enjoyment which the body has in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. If the sharp distinction between physical and ethical, which was at one time customary in the history of dogma, is applied to Irenaeus, the result does not tend to clarify, but rather to confuse. All this, of course, is by the way,⁹² and we may now return to what Irenaeus has to say about man as a child.

It is significant that in his description of the Fall of Adam Irenaeus can co-ordinate two separate expressions: one, that the first man lost through sin his natural character and his child-like mind, and the other, that he lost the garment of holiness which he possessed by the Spirit.⁹³ The same thing is expressed in both of these statements. The gift of the Spirit is child-likeness. When Irenaeus deals later with the concept of the Church there is, therefore, an indissoluble connexion between the Spirit and sonship. The Spirit, bestowed by Christ, makes us anew the children of God. It is, therefore, hardly correct to speak, as Brunner does, of man, in the view of Irenaeus, as being sealed by his condition as a “child” in such a way that his distinctive mark is innocence, not righteousness.⁹⁴ If we set innocence and righteousness over against one another, then we must necessarily think of righteousness as being the sum of a series of righteous works. But righteousness is rather the unbroken receiving of life from the “hands” of the Creator; it is man's acquiescence in his own creation and not his self-willed resistance to God. Righteousness is involved in man's status as a child, for righteousness can scarcely be anything other than the “garment of righteousness,” which the child possesses “by the Spirit.”⁹⁵ God's act of creation and His continuing activity among men are implied in the concept of νμπιοs.

We have just seen that for Irenaeus man's growth is an immediate consequence of God's act of creation. The cessation of man's growth would be the same as the cessation of God's creativity, and we should be left with a powerless, passive and unmoved God. A direct corollary of the concept of sonship is the concept of growth. It is a distinctive characteristic of the child that he grows and becomes. This is exactly the same idea as the one which we saw above: man is created in the imago and similitudo of God, but he is not God's imago and similitudo—only the eternal Son is that, and only He possesses the whole of God's fulness in Himself. Man is created for the Son, and he attains to his perfection in the Son. His destiny was realised only when the image of God took human life in the Incarnation and took up into Himself the man who had been created in the image of God. The Incarnation and its benefits had no reality when man was first created: man, therefore, is a child, a son, whose goal and objective is full growth. In this idea of growth, however, we are not to discern any trace of the suggestion that man's initial condition, his life as a child, was in any way inherently sinful; it was characterised simply by the fact that man is created, and being created he lacks the divinity and perfection of the Son.⁹⁶

Since Irenaeus sees man's goal lying in his conformity to the image of God, that is, to Christ, a conformity to which man attains only in the eternal Kingdom, the whole of the Christian life becomes a pilgrimage towards this goal. That which God presents to man through Christ is perfect in itself, but the man who receives it and incorporates it into himself is imperfect and in the process of growth. Whatever man may be given, and however high and holy may be everything that the Church bestows on him, yet, anything that man takes into himself is eo ipso limited and finite—man is “on the way,” not at his destined goal. It has to be clearly remembered throughout that in the Irenaean concept of growth there is first and foremost an emphasis on the smallness of man and the greatness of God—but on the greatness of God as Creator, that is, the bestower of inexhaustible gifts. Man's growth has its source in the power of God. There is a gulf fixed between God and man, but this gulf is transformed into an increasingly close relationship, not because man is what he is, capable of increase and growth, but because God is what He is, good and powerful. The modern concept of a growth that is entirely from within the growing self, while benefits are bestowed from outside, is alien to Irenaeus. His concept of growth is well conveyed by the words which Paul uses of the grain: “But God gives it a body as he has chosen” (1 Cor. xv.38). Any growth from the grain is the creation of God, the gift of God. The power to bestow growth lies beyond man and beyond the grain of wheat, in “God who gives the growth” (1 Cor. iii.7).

Man's growth is thus not simply a work, a consequence of God's act of creation, but actually is God's act of creation, exactly the same reality as God's creation, though seen from a different angle.⁹⁷ When theologians of a later period speak of man's spiritual growth, his inward progression is generally understood as a development of the latent powers of the personality, and the consequence of this particular view is the conception of old age and death as being, by their own evidence, the cessation of this growth. Irenaeus speaks of death in this simple and natural kind of way as standing somewhere in the middle of man's growth, in his exposition of the adoption as sons which is given to us through Christ. There is nothing of an idealistic development of personality in this expression of Irenaeus: the personality dies, man dies, just as the grain in the earth dies in order to “grow,” to rise, to be created by God, and as Christ was crucified and put to death in order that He might rise from the dead as the Prince of Life. Irenaeus conceives of man's growth, that is, as a growing together with Christ, who is the image of God. By this he does not imply that there is any imitation of the life which Christ led and His development of the life He lived within the compass of the years He spent on earth. Rather, Irenaeus would have us keep our attention fixed on the two quite definite points of Christ's death and His Resurrection, the two points which have shattered the modern immanent and romantic idea of Jesus, and which transfer man's goal from the development of his personality to the resurrection of the dead. For this reason, therefore, growth takes place at the time of martyrdom, when Christians are torn in pieces by wild animals or burned to ashes. It is at the point of martyrdom that man is formed in the imago and similitudo of God, brought into communnion with the dead Christ, and his participation in the Body of Christ becomes a reality.⁹⁸

In the view of growth which we have here put forward there are several conceptions, the examination of which we must put off till later, since there is involved in them the idea of the growth which sinful and fallen man resumes again because of the sustenance he derives from Christ, the Incarnate one. It would, however, be appropriate even at this point to say a few words about this whole idea, since only so will the significance of the concept of “child” become perfectly clear. But the point at issue is that as long as man had not yielded to the Serpent's temptation to disobey God, there was no sin in the world, and therefore no death. In this section, however, we are dealing only with the starting-point of growth in God's Creation, with man as an innocent, though at this initial stage living, child.

In order that we may have some understanding of what follows later, there is one other subject which we must at least mention, and that is one aspect of Irenaeus's doctrine of freewill. The essential principle in the concept of freedom appears first in Christ's status as the sovereign Lord, because for Irenaeus man's freedom is, strangely enough, a direct expression of God's omnipotence, so direct, in fact, that a diminution of man's freedom automatically involves a corresponding diminution of God's omnipotence. This fundamental emphasis in Irenaeus's doctrine of freedom is bound up with his attack on the Gnostic classification of men, according to which the “pneumatics” are saved, while the “hylics” are destroyed, on the basis of their respective substances—God is powerless before this predestination from below, and can only watch passively while man's substance divides itself according to its own inherent quality into worldly and unworldly, spirit and matter. This Gnostic heresy provides us with the background of Irenaeus's characteristic statements about freedom, by which he makes man's freedom a direct expression of God's saving power, God's power of using man's freedom to break through all classifications of men and in Christ to free every man who believes. But this main aspect of freedom must not occupy our attention here, for it is another side of freedom with which we are concerned at this point, namely freedom as a condition for temptation and defeat.

Man is free because he has been created by the power of God to be free. He cannot be driven to take one course of action or another by some external, mechanical force or compulsion, as though he were simply an object or a creature, but has rather to will what he does from inside himself; in so far as he does so he resembles God, his Creator, whose nature is freedom. This human freedom corresponds closely to God's dealings with men both through the Commandment which was given at the very beginning of Creation, and through the Gospel which was given at the Incarnation, and which, before Christ, existed in the form of the promise. The intent of the Law is free obedience, while the intent of the Gospel or the promise is free faith, and also obedience to God's will. But man's freedom is also expressed in the possibility that he may reject both the Commandment and the promise in his disbelief or disobedience.⁹⁹ Time and time again we find the stress in Irenaeus on the fact that whole of God's revelation has this open and unconditional character. It is a revelation to all Creation, and on the day of Judgement, when the whole world, in spite of the fact that God's revelation has been disclosed to all, is divided and assigned to blessing or to curse, those who have rejected His revelation will be held responsible. In this regard there are consequently two related ideas involved in Irenaeus's concept of freedom, first, the idea of revelation for all in the time of grace—whether it is in Creation, in Moses, or in Christ, God's revelation is everywhere open and has been universally proclaimed—and second, the Last Judgement, in which every man will be judged by the clear revelation which God granted to him, whether that revelation was complete or limited. God's judgement is just because man is free, and man's disobedience involves guilt. His ultimate destiny is not determined from within himself by his inalienable substance.

We might well look at the comparisons and problems which Irenaeus avoided, such as, for instance, the contrast between free will and grace, and his attempt to detail their respective contributions in the deliverance of man from the power of his superior enemy. Man is held captive by the Serpent, and Christ alone bruises the Serpent's head. Besides this, Irenaeus has also refrained from putting the speculative question of how the Fall might have originated, and then solving the problem with the help of free will. As we saw earlier on in describing the omnipotence and inscrutability of God, Irenaeus quite clearly and expressly avoids putting the problem in this way. He proceeds from man's actual temptation and establishes as a fact man's actual defeat, and farther on proceeds from man's actual bondage to Satan and establishes his actual deliverance through Christ. Man who falls and is delivered has been created by God. He is a free man. He was not forced, mechanically, into sin, but rather allowed himself to be dragged into sin; nor is he forced, mechanically, out of his imprisonment by the victory of Christ, but rather is freed from his bonds and can now go anywhere he wants—out into freedom in Christ, or back into bondage to the Devil. But since through all that happens to him, from Creation to the Last Judgement, he remains man, he has the responsibility for everything that he does from first to last. However he may deprive himself, God retains His power. God alone possesses power, and this is demonstrated by the fact that at the moment man turns from being the child of God to being the captive of the Devil he moves from life to death. Man's new lord is stronger than himself, but he is not strong enough to be able to create. He has only one thing to offer—death.

Notes

1. See the whole discussion in A.h. from ii. i. 1 to ii. xxii. 5 (Stier. ii. i. 1-xvii. 11). The passage ii. x. 2 (Stier. ii. x. 4) deals with matter: “Attribuere enim substantiam eorum quae facta sunt virtuti et voluntati ejus qui est omnium Deus, et credibile et acceptabile et constans et in hoc bene diceretur: quoniam quae impossibilia sunt apud homines, possibilia sunt apud Deum; quoniam homines quidem de nihilo non possunt aliquid facere, sed de materia subjacenti: Deus autem quam homines hoc primo melior, eo quod materiam fabricationis suae cum ante non esset ipse adinvenit.” Cf. ii. xlvi. 1-4 (Stier. ii. xxx. 1-5) and the important argument for the resurrection of the body in v. iv (Stier. v. iv. 2). The proposition that God is the source of all things occurs also in the Epideixis, e.g. in Epid. 4. There are two monographs on the concept of God, one by Johannes Kunze, Die Gotteslehre des Irenaeus, Leipzig 1891, which has a commendable emphasis on God's creative power, but which decidedly overestimates the philosophical aspect in Irenaeus. The other book is the longer God in Patristic Thought, London 1936, a textbook of liturgical study by G. L. Prestige, which also deals with Irenaeus. See, e.g., the discussion in this work on p. 46 f. of God as agennetos and agenetos in Irenaeus, and cf. on the whole discussion Bonwetsch, Theologie des Irenäus, pp. 53-5.

2. “Nec enim indigebat horum Deus ad faciendum quae ipse apud se praefinierat fieri, quasi ipse suas non haberet manus. Adest enim ei semper Verbum et Sapientia, Filius et Spiritus, per quos, et in quibus omnia libere et sponte fecit,” A.h. iv. xxxiv. 1 (Stier. iv. xx. 1). See also iv. xiv (Stier. iv. vii. 4), and cf. Joseph Barbel, “Christos Angelos,” in Theophaneia, vol. iii, Bonn 1941, p. 64.

3. In Loofs, Theophilus von Antiochen, pp. 16 ff. this “pre-temporal Trinity” is treated as a concept unknown to Irenaeus himself, but see Montgomery Hitchcock in J.T.S., 1937, pp. 131-4.

4. Epid. 43, St Irenaeus, The Apostolic Preaching, ed. J. Armitage Robinson, pp. 108 ff. Cf. Epid. 52, and several other references from 40 to 52. Another important New Testament reference to this is Col. i.15 f.

5. The thought of the Son as being the first-born before the whole of Creation, and the One in whom everything has been created, is inseparably linked with the idea that everything is to be judged by the Son. See Epid. 48.

6. Cf. E. Scharl in Orientalia, 1940, p. 387, and Adolf Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th edn., Tübingen 1909, vol. i, p. 584, Eng. trans. of 2nd German edn., History of Dogma, London 1899, vol. ii, p. 263.

7. “Cum enim praeexisteret salvans, oportebat et quod salvaretur fieri, uti non vacuum sit salvans,” A.h. iii. xxii. 1 (Stier. iii. xxii. 3). This passage has been the cause of a lively discussion which I propose to deal with in a different connexion. Cf. iii. xix. 1 (Stier. iii. xviii. 1), iv. xi. 5 (Stier. iv. vi. 7), and the important passage on Christ as in universa conditione infixus in v. xviii. 2 (Stier. v. xviii. 3).

8. Cullmann, Earliest Christian Confessions, p. 51.

9. Loofs, Theophilus von Antiochien, pp. 347 f., 393, holds that the idea of the pre-existent Logos-Son, belongs to “Irenaeus selbst” and is not characteristic (p. 444) of early Christianity. Ernst Barnikol makes a determined attempt to eliminate the concept of pre-existence from the New Testament in his Apostolische und neutestamentliche Dogmengeschichte als Vor-Dogmengeschichte, 4th edn. Halle 1938, pp. 57 ff. The relevant passages in Irenaeus are carefully scrutinised and stated by Bonwetsch, Theologie des Irenäus, pp. 62-6.

10. Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. i, pp. 797-806; R. Liechtenhan, Die göttliche Vorherbestimmung bei Paulus und in der posidonianischen Philosophie, henceforth cited as Göttliche Vorherbestimmung, Göttingen 1922, pp. 17-24, 122-4; and Cullmann, Christ and Time, e.g. pp. 70, 91. See Epid. 67 (beginning).

11. “Nihil enim in totum diabolus invenitur fecisse, videlicet cum et ipse creatura sit Dei, quemadmodum et reliqui angeli. Omnia enim fecit Deus,” A.h. iv. lxvi. 2 (Stier. iv. xli. 1). There is a general reference to the power of God in comparison with the power of the creature … A.h. v. v. 3 (Stier. v. v. 2). On the idea of the risen Christ as still awaiting the hour appointed by the Father, cf. Epid. 85.

12. “Facere enim proprium est benignitatis Dei: fieri autem proprium est hominis naturae,” A.h. iv. lxiv. 2 (Stier. iv. xxxix. 2). Cf. Louis Escoula, “Le verbe sauveur et illuminateur chez Saint Irénée,” in Nouvelle revue théologique, henceforth cited as N.R.T., 1939, pp. 393 ff.; see further A.h. iv. xxv. 1-2 (Stier. iv. xiv. 1-2) and esp. iv. xxi. 2 (Stier. iv. xi. 2).

13. K. Prümm, “Göttliche Planung und menschliche Entwicklung nach Irenäus Adversus haereses, in Scholastik, 1938, p. 208; cf. p. 350.

14. A.h. iv. xix. 2 (Stier. iv. ix. 3) and iv. xxxiv. 6-7 (Stier. iv. xx. 6-7).

15. A.h. iv. xliv. 2 (Stier. iv. xxviii. 2).

16. A.h. ii. xli. 4 (Stier. ii. xxviii. 3) and ii. xlii. 3-xliii. 2 (Stier. ii. xxviii. 6-7).

17. … A.h. ii. xl. 1 (Stier. ii. xxvii. 1); cf. ii. xli. 4 (Stier. ii. xxviii. 3).

18. A.h. iv. xxxiii (Stier. iv. xix. 2-3). This fundamental “hiddenness” is not given a clear enough emphasis in Friedrich Böhringer's analysis of the doctrine of the Devil in Irenaeus, Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen, henceforth cited as Kirche Christi, 2nd edn. Stuttgart 1873, vol. ii, pp. 476-8. Cf. in this connexion Herrera, S. Irénée de Lyon exégète, pp. 139-46.

19. For the distinction between these two types of theology, see Damien van den Eynde, Les Normes de l’enseignement chrétien dans la litérature patristique des trois premiers siècles, henceforth cited as Normes de l’enseignement, Gembloux and Paris 1933, pp. 132-41. Cf. Lietzmann, Church Universal, p. 214 f.

20. A.h. ii. xlix. 1 (Stier. ii. xxxii. 2). Cf. Andreas Bigelmair, Die Beteiligung der Christen am öffentlichen Leben in vorconstantinischer Zeit, Munich 1902, pp. 296-8, 327. Note too the original illustration of the unpractised wrestler who is booed by the audience. A.h. v. xiii. 2 (Stier. ibid.).

21. A.h. iv. vi-vii (Stier. iv. iv. 2-3).

22. A.h. ii. xlvii. 2 (Stier. ii. xxx. 8). Creation is not finished but still continues. There is a more exhaustive treatment of the belief in Creation in my essay “Skapelsen, lagen, och inkarnationen enlight Irenaeus” (“Creation, the Law, and the Incarnation according to Irenaeus”), in S.T.K., 1940, pp. 133 ff.

23. “… et propter hoc ait: Mittens exercitus suos: quoniam omnis homo, secundum quod est homo, plasma ipsius est, licet ignoret Deum suum”, A.h. iv. lviii. 8 (Stier. iv. xxxvi. 6).

24. A.h. iii. xxxix, God as the One who directs all men and gives His counsel to the leaders of the heathen (Stier. iii. xxv. 1). The destruction of Jerusalem took place according to the will of God, and the fall of Jerusalem and the beginning of the Church are two stages in the same process, the supersession of the old Covenant by the new.

25. A.h. iv. xlvi (Stier. iv. xxx). This does not prevent Irenaeus from applying the principles of the Apocalypse to the State, but in negative statements of this sort he is not concerned with what the heathen State produces from the good of the earth. Jahveh gave His own people jewels of silver through the Egyptians who were evil, and from whose power His people were on the point of being liberated. The Church now is Israel. Linked up with this is a double view of the surrounding heathen State.

26. “… non quasi mundus alienus sit a Deo, sed quoniam hujusmodi dationes ab aliis accipientes habemus, similiter velut illi ab Aegyptiis qui non sciebant Deum,” A.h. iv. xlvi. 3 (Stier. iv. xxx. 3). The attack on the narrative in Exodus came from the Gnostics who were looking for signs of the discreditable nature of the Old Testament demiurge.

27. The figures in Harvey and Stieren coincide in this chap.

28. A.h. v. xxiv. 1. He cites passages from Prov. and Rom. xiii.

29. A.h. v. xxi. 2-v. xxiii. 2. This important combination of ideas is unfortunately neglected by Jean Rivière in Le dogme de la rédemption, Études critiques et documents, henceforth cited as Dogme de la rédemption, Louvain 1931, in which he attempts to establish what Irenaeus means by saying that the Devil is defeated juste, pp. 137-41. See iii. xxxii. 2 (Stier. iii. xxiii. 1).

30. A.h. v. xxiv. 3.

31. A.h. v. xxiv. 2. It is continually stressed that God and the Devil are the two protagonists, and mankind lies between these two.

32. A.h. v. xxiv. 3.

33. “Et propter hoc etiam ipsi magistratus indumentum justitiae leges habentes, quaecumque juste et legitime fecerint, de his non interrogabuntur, neque poenas dabunt. Quaecumque autem ad eversionem justi, inique et impie et contra legem, et more tyrannico exercuerint, in his et peribunt; justo judicio Dei ad omnes aequaliter perveniente, et in nullo deficiente,” A.h. v. xxiv. 2; cf. v. xxiv. 3 and also Epid. 8.

34. A.h. iii. xl. 3 (Stier. iii. xxv. 4).

35. Montgomery Hitchcock in his above-named work, Irenaeus of Lugdunum, p. 278, and the same author's forthright article “The Doctrine of the Holy Communion in Irenaeus,” in the Church Quarterly Review, henceforth cited as C.Q.R., 1939-40, p. 213, in which he represents Irenaeus as a good Anglican receptionist, pp. 220 f., 225. See the criticism even in J. Werner, Der Paulinismus des Irenaeus, p. iii f.

36. A.h. iv. xxix. 5 (Stier. iv. xvii. 5).

37. Cf. A.h. iv. xxxi. 3 (Stier. iv. xviii. 4), and see also the unusual passage in Epid. 57 with its exuberant imagery.

38. See A.h. v. ii (Stier. v. ii. 2-3) and cf. H.-D. Simonin, “A propos d’un texte eucharistique de S. Irénée,” in Revue des sciences philosophique et théologique, henceforth cited as Rev. des sciences, 1934, pp. 286 f., and A.h. iii. xi. 9 (Stier. iii. xi. 5) and iv. li. 1 (Stier. iv. xxxii. 2).

39. See Anders Nygren, Den kristna Kärlekstanken genom tiderna, Stockholm 1936, vol. ii, pp. 190-205, Eng. trans. Agape and Eros, London 1953, vol. ii, pp. 276-88.

40. Cf. A.h. v. iii. 3 (Stier. ibid.).

41. Karl Prümm, Christentum als Neuheitserlebnis, Freiburg-im-Breisgau 1939, p. 64.

42. Gen. 1.26 is not often quoted in the Apostolic Fathers; for other literature of the early Church see the commentary on Die apostolischen Vater, ed. K. Bihlmeyer, vol. iii, Hans Windisch, Der Barnabasbrief, Tübingen 1920, p. 328 (Barn. v. 5), and Montgomery Hitchcock in Z.NT.W., 1937, p. 56. Later on we shall have the opportunity of mentioning a passage in Tertullian and two in the Apostolic Fathers.

43. Cf. F. Vernet's article “Irénée” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. vii, pt. ii, Paris 1923, p. 2452 f. and the excellent discussion by Wilhelm Hunger, “Der Gedanke der Weltplaneinheit und Adameinheit in der Theologie des hl. Irenäus,” in Scholastik, 1942, pp. 167-76.

44. A.h. i. i. 10 (Stier. i. v. 5); cf. i. xi. 2 (Stier, i xviii. 2).

45. Prümm in Scholastik, 1938, p. 213 and Emil Brunner, Der Mensch im Widerspruch, 3rd edn. Zürich 1941, p. 523, Eng. trans. Man in Revolt, London 1939, p. 503 f. (a description of A. Struker's book which I do not have available, Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen in der urchristlichen Literatur der esrten zwei Jahrhunderte, 1913). Cf. Klebba, Anthropologie des hl. Irenaeus, p. 23 f.

46. So also, for example, Bousset, Kyrios Christos, p. 437; see however p. 443 with its interpretation of Paul that was characteristic of that period. More recently E. Käsemann, Leib und Leib Christi, Tübingen 1933—see pp. 81 ff, 147 ff., 163 ff.—admittedly has maintained that in his use of the term eikon and related words Paul came under the Gnostic influence. On the question of speculation in general within Gnosticism on primitive man see W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, Göttingen 1907, pp. 160-203; and C. H. Kraeling, Anthropos and Son of Man, New York 1927, pp. 17 ff; and also Jonas, Gnosis, pp. 344-51. With regard to Paul cf. Ernst Lohmeyer, Die Briefe an die Philipper, an die Kolosser und an Philemon, henceforth cited as Briefe, Göttingen 1930, pp. 55, 140 (On Col. i. 15 and iii. 10).

47. See Nygren, Pauli brev till Romarna, Stockholm 1944, pp. 214-19, Eng. trans. Commentary on Romans, Philadelphia 1949, pp. 218-24, 232 f. Against this background the individuality of Irenaeus stands out with the greatest clarity. He takes up for discussion a subject which in the N.T. is a subsidiary one. Cf. Franz Stoll, Lehre des hl. Irenäus, pp. 40, 51.

48. See Heinrich Schlier, “Vom Menschenbild des Neuen Testaments” in the volume of essays entitled Der alte und der neue Mensch, Munich 1942, p. 25, and Edmund Schlink, “Gottes Ebenbild als Gesetz und Evangelium” op cit., pp. 79 ff.; cf. p. 83 where Irenaeus is mentioned with others as one who laid a theological foundation in his doctrine of imago and similitudo. Brunner's massive work of Christian anthropology, Man in Revolt, London 1939, which first appeared (in German) in 1937, had probably both a positive and a negative influence on this compilation referred to—in both books the idea of imago occupies a prominent place. It is remarkable that this important Pauline concept is left completely unexamined in a volume which appeared three years before Brunner's, Walter Gutbrod's Die Paulinische Anthropologie, Stuttgart 1934.

49. E.g. A.h. v. xxi. 1-2 (Stier. ibid.).

50. Ibid. See also A.h. iii. 30 (Stier. iii. xxi. 10).

51. Tertullian, Opera, ed. E. Kroymann, pt. iii, De resurrectione carnis, Bonn 1906, p. 33. Loofs has a detailed exegesis of the text, “Das altkirchliche Zeugnis gegen die herrschende Auffassung der Kenosisstelle,” in Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1927-8, pp. 44 ff.; note that Loofs punctuates the text differently from Kroymann, which is also of importance for the theological explanation of the passage in question. Tertullian is here expounding Gen. i. 26 f., among other passages. The same passage was referred to for illustration by Irenaeus in Klebba, Anthropologie des hl. Irenaeus, p. 25. Similar passages are found in Hippolytus and in two other places in the writings of Tertullian.

52. Cf. Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. ii, p. 283, n. 2, where the passage referred to in Tertullian is similarly touched on.

53. Loofs, Theophilus von Antiochien, pp. 135, 253 f.

54. Op. cit., pp. 288, 446 f. On “Irenaeus selbst” as the mechanically operating co-writer, see p. 355. Loofs's view of pre-existence in the N.T. appears on p. 444 f., n. 2. Cf. too his lengthy article mentioned above in Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1927-8, pp. 3 ff. on Phil. ii. 5-11.

55. On this idea in general cf. Liechtenhan, Göttliche Vorherbestimmung, pp. 114-16, and with ref. to Irenaeus see Escoula in Nouvelle revue théologique, 1939, where, however, he accentuates the idea of predestination with all the emphasis on one side, pp. 387 ff., 395. If we are to represent Irenaeus correctly, the characteristic of sin as disobedience to God must not be obscured. The Irenaean view cannot be satisfactorily described if we do not bear in mind that according to Irenaeus there are certain matters of which we do not have any knowledge. Among these is the reason for the Fall. It can be demonstrated pragmatically that sin is a positive reality, an act of resistance which is defeated by God in Christ.

56. Scharl makes this clear in Orientalia, 1940, pp. 390-2; cf. Hugo Koch in Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1925, p. 211.

57. Epid. 22. Cf. Epid. 11 and 55.

58. See A.h. iii. xxxi. 1 (Stier. iii. xxi. 1) and iii. xxxii. 1 (Stier. iii. xxii. 3), and also iv. xi. 5 (Stier. iv. vi. 7), where Irenaeus lays stress on the fact that from the very beginning of Creation it is through the Son that God acts and reveals Himself. On the textual variants of the last-quoted passage see Loofs, Theophilus von Antiochien, p. 381, n. 1.

59. Cf. A.h. ii. xlii. 2 (Stier. ii. xxviii. 4) and—even more pronouncedly—v. iii. 1 (Stier. ibid.). See Bonwetsch, Theologie des Irenänus, pp. 104-7.

60. “Quomodo autem eum qui adversus homines fortis erat, qui non solum vicit hominem, sed et detinebat eum sub sua potestate, devicit, et eum quidem qui vicerat vicit, eum vero qui victus fuerat hominem dimisit, nisi superior fuisset eo homine qui fuerat victus? Melior autem eo homine qui secundum similitudinem Dei factus est, et praecellentior quisnam sit alius nisi Filius Dei, ad cujus similitudinem factus est homo? Et propter hoc in fine ipse ostendit similitudinem, Filius Dei factus est homo, antiquam plasmationem in semetipsum suscipiens,” A.h. iv. lii. 1 (Stier. iv. xxxiii. 4). Cf. A.h. iv. xxii. 1 (Stier. ibid.). In the quotation given here the simple similitudo is quite typically used as being synonymous with imago et similitudo.

61. A.h. iv. Pref. iii (Stier. iv. Pref. iv) and iv. xxxiv. 1 (Stier. iv. xx. 1) Cf. v. xv. 2-xvi. 1 (Stier. v. xv. 2-xvi. 2) and v. xxviii. 3 (Stier. v. xxviii. 4) where he also speak of the manus Dei, but where it is God's acts through the Son or the Spirit in the Incarnation and the Church which are referred to.

62. Of the passages referred to in the previous note, v. xv. 2 ff., e.g., refers to God's hand (the Son) whereas the other passages speak of God's hands (the Son and the Spirit).

63. Epid. 5. Cf. on the whole of this question Bonwetsch, Theologie des Irenäus, pp. 66 ff., and Scharl in Orientalia, 1940, p. 389; but see too p. 407: the subject of the verb recapitulare is always the Son, not the Spirit or the Father.

64. “… caro a Spiritu possessa oblita quidem sui, qualitatem autem Spiritus assumens, conformis facta Verbo Dei,” A.h. v. ix. 2 (Stier. v. ix. 3); cf. v. ix. 1 (Stier. ibid.).

65. See Paul Gächter, “Unsere Einheit mit Christus nach dem hl. Irenäus,” in Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, henceforth cited as Z.K.T., 1934, p. 526.

66. A.h. v. viii. 1 (Stier. ibid.). Note how Irenaeus consistently avoids saying that man is the image of God. The resurrection is also the perfection of the body, which reaches its fulfillment only then.

67. See lastly in this connexion A.h. iv. xiv. (Stier. iv. vii. 4); and cf. on this much debated passage Léon Froidevaux, “Une difficulté du texte de S. Irénée,” in Revue de l’orient chrétien, 1931-2, pp. 441-3. In this passage the Spirit is called God's figuratio, by which is meant God's creative power. Loofs, Theophilus von Antiochien, p. 14, n. 2, provides the most reliable interpretation of the text.

68. “… ut quod perideramus in Adam, id est, secundum imaginem et similitudinem esse Dei, hoc in Christo reciperemus,” A.h. iii. xix. 1 (Stier. iii. xviii. 1). Cf. iii. xxxii. 2 (Stier. iii. xxiii. 1) and v. i. 1 (Stier. ibid.), and the last lines of v. xiv. 1 (Stier. ibid.).

69. “… neque vere nos redemit sanguine suo, si non vere homo factus est, restaurans suo plasmati quod dictum est in principio, factum esse hominem secundum imaginem et similitudinem Dei,” A.h. v. ii. 1 (Stier. ibid.).

70. A.h. v. ix. 1 (Stier. v. ix. 2). Only from this can v. vi. 1 (Stier. ibid.) be understood. Those who make a distinction in Irenaeus between the natural and the supernatural always fail to interpret these passages satisfactorily.

71. A.h. v. x. 1-2 (Stier. v. x. 1).

72. “Et in eo quod dicit, Secundum imaginem conditoris, recapitulationem manifestavit ejusdem hominis, qui in initio secundum imaginem factus est Dei,” A.h. v. xii. 4 (Stier. ibid.).

73. Klebba, Anthropologie des hl. Irenaeus, approaches Irenaeus with this fundamental misunderstanding, which explains his frequent complaints that Irenaeus “mixes up” various things—see e.g.p. 22 f., 34. In referring to Irenaeus we should not even use the term “original state,” since it tends to suggest a static scheme.

74. Cf. Nygren in Corpus Christi (En bok om kyrkan), Stockholm 1942, p. 18 f., on Adam and Christ as the two by whom the destiny of mankind is determined.

75. Scholastik, 1942, p. 170.

76. Hunger, op. cit., pp. 171, 173, 176. The solidarity of all mankind in every age resides in men's common origin in God (Creation), and their common destiny (the Last Judgement), and therefore in both origin and destiny. Modern individualism is a direct consequence of the conception of man as a creature who exists for a certain length of time between birth and death, and no more. Individualism therefore concentrates on this period of time alone, this “life” which is held to have had a purely accidental origin and which comes to nothing at its end, but in doing so, individualism makes man into a creature existing wholly for himself.

77. Cf. above, note 68.

78. H. H. Wendt, Die christliche Lehre von der menschlichen Vollkommenheit, henceforth cited as Christliche Lehre, Göttingen 1882, pp. 26 ff. This is the source of all subsequent division of the theology of Irenaeus and his writings. Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. ii. p. 272 f., follows Wendt, and many more follow in Harnack's footsteps.

79. Irenaeus himself does not use the metaphor of power of speech, but it casts light on the Irenaean terminology as a whole. One might have chosen any of the abilities which a child possesses or does not possess. The full meaning of the language used by Irenaeus will not be seen until we have brought man's Fall into the discussion—the blow which strikes the child and injures it. We shall return to the point in the later chapter on Satan and man's defeat.

80. The dominion of sin is the interruption of man's growth, a contravention of nature, and death.

81. E.g. Eph. ii. 21, iii. 16, iv. 15 f., Col. ii. 19; these passages should be connected with the idea of “growing together with Christ” in Rom. vi and the other related passages; and also i Jn. iii. 2, which proceeds from the concept of son, and ii Cor. iv. 16-18, and also ii Cor. iii. 18. The growing likeness to Christ in death and resurrection of Phil. iii. 10 f., and iii. 21 is an integral part of the same complex of New Testament ideas upon which Irenaeus worked vigorously.

82. Bonwetsch, Theologie des Irenäus, p. 74.

83. Klebba, Anthropologie des hl. Irenaeus, pp. 27 ff. takes this approach. Seven Silén, Den kristna människouppfattnigen intill Schleiermacher, Stockholm 1938, pp. 70-3, adopts the theories of division propounded by Wendt and Harnack in his view of Irenaeus.

84. Cf. Antoine Slomkowski, L’État primitif de l’homme dans la tradition de l’église avant Saint Augustin, henceforth cited as État primitif, Paris 1928, in his summary on p. 143. This book does not go very deeply in its details, but is right in its main thesis. Cf. also O. Zöckler's more apologetic work, Die Lehre vom Urstand des Menschen, Gütersloh 1879, p. 41, an exposition which otherwise has as its dogmatic basis an unconcealed belief in evolution. See also Brunner, Man in Revolt, p. 84, n. 1; broadly speaking, Brunner's picture of Irenaeus is built on Klebba's book published in 1894.

85. Neither in A.h. iv. lxii-lxiii (Stier. iv. xxxviii) nor in Epid. 12 does Irenaeus think of death as being a part of God's Creation. When he says that man lacks perfection he is simply giving expression to the fact that man is created, and therefore he “grows,” he “becomes,” but he does not create like God. We must also take into account the fact that when Irenaeus speaks about Adam he is sometimes referring to fallen Adam, Adam who was conquered by the Devil, since there was nothing much that could be said about what Adam had done before the Fall: his first significant act was sin. See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, London 1944, vol. i, p. 296, and A.h. iv. xxiii. 2 (Stier. ibid.). But in so far as man's destiny is fixed by sin, passages like these say nothing about Creation—Creation, that is, which is intact, and which has its source in God.

86. This is obscured in Hugo Koch's description of Irenaeus's view in Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1925, pp. 209 ff. (cf. p. 201, n. 1), which in other respects contains some of the best material ever written on Irenaeus.

87. Epid. 14. On the term child cf. Epid. 46 and the beginning of 96.

88. Epid. 15.

89. Cf. Hermann Jordan, Armenische Irenaeusfragmente, Leipzig 1913, p. 129 f.: life and death are thought of as being in continual conflict. Jordan's compilation of fragments consists of a series of hypotheses with some useful observations interspersed among assumptions which he does not substantiate. On the continued discussion on his book cf. W. Ludtke, “Bemerkungen zu Irenäus,” in Z.NT.W., 1914, pp. 268 ff. and W. Durks, “Eine fälschlich dem Irenäus zugeschriebene Predigt des Bischofs Severian von Gabala,” in Z.NT.W., 1922, pp. 64 ff., which continues without very much evidence an idea suggested by Jordan, op. cit., pp. 190 ff.

90. Epid. 11.

91. This passage comes into the context of A.h. iv. lxiv.1 (Stier. iv. xxxix. 1) abruptly, and is somewhat obscure; cf. v. i. 1 (Stier. ibid.) with its assertion that God, in His dealings with man, must also preserve his freedom, and v. viii. 1-2 (Stier. v. viii. 2) on the resemblance of the wicked man to the animal. Strangely enough this passage on self-destruction is seldom expounded; cf., however, J. A. Robinson's suggestions, “Notes on the Armenian Version of Irenaeus' Adversus haereses,” in F.T.S., 1931, p. 377.

92. On the problem of physical and ethical in the early period in general see Brunner, Der Mittler, 2nd edn. Tübingen 1930, pp. 219-33, Eng. trans. The Mediator, London 1934, pp. 249-64, in which Irenaeus is specially dealt with, Folke Boström, Studier till den grekiska teologins frälsningslära, pp. 1-97, and in particular Ragnar Bring, “Till kritiken av Harnacks syn på den gammalkyrkliga frälsningsuppfattningen,” in S.T.K., 1933, pp. 232 ff., in which a penetrating criticism of both Brunner and Boström appears.

93. “… quoniam indolem et puerilem amiserat sensum, et in cogitationem pejorum venerat … Quoniam, inquit, eam quam habui a Spiritu sanctitatis stolam amisi per inobedientiam,” A.h. iii. xxxv. 1 (Stier, iii. xxiii. 5). On the struggle against the flesh see the parallel in v. ix. 2 (Stier. ibid.).

94. Brunner, Man in Revolt, p. 84, n. 1. Compare, however, the meaning of child in Epid. 96.

95. The statements in A.h. iii. xxxv. 1 are sometimes understood as an extenuation of the Fall, as though Adam were not wholly responsible. Irenaeus does not attempt to diminish Adam's guilt, but what he tries to show is that Adam is not unrepentant. The final destruction will fall on the Serpent, but not on Adam. Cf. Stoll, Lehr e des hl. Irenäus, pp. 11 ff., 25.

96. … A.h. iv. lxii (Stier. iv. xxxviii. 1). On the text, however, see Karl Holl, Fragmente vornicänischer Kirchenväter, Leipzig 1899, pp. 64 ff. The concept of νωπιοs is introduced here from the contrasting ideas of Creator and created, a concept which later on in this chapter of A.h. is of primary importance. Irenaeus passes at once to growth and to Christ. Cf., however, Hugo Koch in Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1925, p. 201, where the contrast between natural and supernatural somewhat obscures the line of thought, and also Karl Prümm in Scholastik, 1938, p. 221, where the term plasma in Irenaeus and the idea of growth are investigated (see too p. 222); Prümm shows how closely held together these concepts are in the New Testament. Cf. also A.h. ii. xxxvii. 3-xxxviii (Stier, ii. xxv. 2-4) and ii. xli. 1 (Stier. ii. xxviii. 1) on man as created and continually coming into being.

97. “Et hoc Deus ab homine differt, quoniam Deus quidem facit, homo autem fit: et quidem qui facit, semper idem est: quod autem fit, et initium, et medietatem, et adjectionem, et augmentum accipere debet. Et Deus quidem bene facit, bene autem fit homini. Et Deus quidem perfectus in omnibus, ipse sibi aequalis et similis; totus cum sit lumen, et totus mens, et totus substantia, et fons omnium bonorum; homo vero profectum percipiens et augmentum ad Deum. Quemadmodum enim Deus semper proficiet ad Deum. Neque enim Deus cessat aliquando in benefaciendo, et locupletando hominem: neque homo cessat beneficium accipere, et ditari a Deo,” A.h. iv. xxi. 2 (Stier. iv. xi. 2, wrongly numbered in Stier.). In the passage immediately before this Irenaeus based the idea of growth on Gen. i. 28: Crescite et multiplicamini. We find the same relation between God and man in Epid.; cf. L. T. Wieten, Irenaeus' geschrift ‘Ten bewiize der apostolische prediking,’ henceforth cited as Irenaeus' geschrift, Utrecht 1909, p. 184 f. On the idea of continued growth and “training” in the Son's Kingdom after the resurrection of the just, see A.h. v. xxxv. 1 (Stier. ibid.). Cremers in Bijdragen, 1938, pp. 60 ff., tries to maintain that this “millenarian” idea is incompatible with what Irenaeus says elsewhere. See, however, Hugo Koch's comparison (which he made as early as 1925) of Irenaean passages on the “training” in Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1925, p. 199 f., n. 1. In Theophilus von Antiochen, published in 1930, Loofs can occasionally reveal great understanding of how the idea of growth unites different aspects of Irenaeus's thought which are otherwise difficult to harmonise (see, e.g., p. 59 f., n. 3, where Loofs is fairly positive in his criticism of Koch's interpretation), while at other times he directly opposes such an understanding of Irenaeus (see e.g. p. 284, n. 2, and p. 372). It may be that these and similar discrepancies are found in Loofs because of the fact that his work was published posthumously.

98. Cf. A.h. iv. lxiii. 3 (Stier. iv. xxxviii. 4), in which Irenaeus interprets Ps. lxxxii. 6-7, with A.h. v. xxviii. 3 (Stier. v. xxviii. 4), which deals with the significance of martyrdom, and with iii. xx. 3 (Stier. iii. xix. 3) on man's death and resurrection in the Body of Christ as His body in the resurrection. We must bear these passages in mind when we are evaluating the statement in v. xxix. 1 (Stier. ibid.): Creation is made for man's sake, not man for Creation's—a passage which is otherwise easily misinterpreted. Man has been created for eternal life: this is his distinctive characteristic in Creation. This is the primary concept, and from it we may also understand quite readily A.h. iv. viii (Stier, iv. v. 1) and iv. xxv. 3 (Stier. iv. xiv. 3), passages into which we might otherwise be inclined to read the later doctrine of a special “supernature”—a doctrine which is not to be found in Irenaeus; cf. what Irenaeus says about the destruction of Jerusalem in a parallel passage in A.h. iv. v (Stier. iv. iv. 1) which helps to clarify the point at issue. There has been a lengthy discussion on the question of the place of man in the theology of Irenaeus, and whether he was given a place in the centre of Creation that competed with God. It is better to start from A.h. iv. xxxiv. 6-7 (Stier. iv. xx. 6-7). I hope to be able to take up the examination of this discussion later on. For the present all we need do is to emphasise the fact that man's growth is not a development of his personality within this world, but that his essential moments in time are death and resurrection (cf. Rom. vi and Phil. iii). The superficial and optimistic description of growth which we find, e.g. in Montgomery Hitchcock, Irenaeus of Lugdunum, pp. 52-64, is in any case wrong.

99. Many historians of dogma have held that the Irenaean doctrine of freedom is a deviation from Paul, and they have unfavourably criticised it. See, e.g., Ernst Luthardt, Die Lehre vom freien Willen, Leipzig 1863, pp. 15 f.; Klebba, Anthropologie des hl. Irenaeus, pp. 137 ff.; Dufourcq, Saint Irénée, p. 167; and Aleith in Z.NT.W., 1937, p. 72 f. The following passages in A.h. are important for a proper treatment of this question: iv. vii (Stier. iv. iv. 3), iv. xi. 2-5 (Stier. iv. vi. 3-7), iv. xxvi. 2 (Stier. iv. xv. 2), in which Irenaeus maintains that freedom is the ground of justice in God's judgement; and iv. xlv (Stier. iv. xxix), a passage on Pharaoh's hardness of heart, with Irenaeus's insistence that nonetheless God is not the author of evil; iv. lx-lxi (Stier. iv. xxxvii. 2-7), in which he denies emphatically God's use of force, and of which the most important passage is iv. lxi. 1 (Stier. iv. xxxvii. 6) with its striking introduction: “Qui autem his contraria dicunt, ipsi impotentem introducunt Dominum …”; and also iv. lxiii. 3 (Stier. iv. xxxviii. 4) on free will as the basis of growth and therefore as being synonymous with the status as child; iv. lxiv. 3 (Stier. iv. xxxix. 3-4) and v. xxvii. i-xxviii. 1 (Stier. ibid.) with its echo of the passage on judgement and faith in Jn. iii. 18 f., but also v. xxviii. 2 (Stier. ibid.) on Antichrist as one who acts by his own free will, and yet who has been sent by God who has foreknowledge of all things and who governs all things. Cf. Epid. 11 and 55. On this main problem see Nygren, Commentary on Romans, pp. 368-70, and especially what is said on p. 369 on “predestination from below.” Lastly in this connexion, cf. Wolfgang Schmidt, Die Kirche bei Irenäus, Helsingfors 1934, p. 159.