Irenaeus

If, then, … we leave some questions in the hands of God, we will keep our faith from injury and will continue without danger.

A Patristic Treasury: Early Church Wisdom for Today, edited by James R. Payton, Jr.

All quotes are from Irenaeus.  This will be long; he is full of wisdom worth contemplating.

With this opening quote, I come back to some of the details that have divided Christians even in the earliest centuries.  In some ways, it seems to me that the Church quickly lost this wisdom.

I recall a friend once saying something like: “If God really wanted us to fully understand in detail [fill in the blank of the many controversies that divide Christians], then He probably would have spelled it out.”

Of course, some controversies cannot be ignored.  But it is advice that I have kept to heart since.

Summarizing our Faith

God the Father, uncreated, beyond grasp, invisible, one God the creator of all… the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord… all things whatsoever were made through Him. …the Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied, the patriarchs learned about God, the righteous were led in the path of justice….

Thus, without the Spirit there is no seeing the Word of God, and without the Son there is no approaching the Father.

The Church dispersed throughout the whole world to the ends of the earth has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith:

He then describes: God, the Father, Almighty Maker of heaven and earth; Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the works of God.  Further, the advents, the birth from a virgin, the Passion, the Resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus.

[The Church] believes these points of doctrine as if she had only one soul, and one and the same heart.  The Catholic Church posses one and the same faith throughout the whole world….

It can be said that this is true (if one takes the doctrines as outlined here by Irenaeus as the summary) of many traditions and denominations even today.

The faith always remains one and the same: the one who is able to expand on it at great length does not add anything to it, and the one who can only say a little does not thereby diminish it.

Count me in that second group, and, therefore, hold me accountable this much.

But, returning to the opening quote: perhaps sometimes we have complicated things too much.

The Trinity

So “the Word became flesh” in order that sin might be destroyed by means of that same flesh through which it had mastered and seized and dominated humanity.

I know that Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, dismiss a trinitarian understanding of these opening verses from John – or maybe they dismiss the entire passage as an addition.  In any case, here is it cited by someone quite early in the Church.

…that He would be in figure human, but in power God…

It isn’t clear to me that anyone who is “in power God” can be anything other than God.  But I cannot stand strongly on my statement; I am not sure about the logic of it.  Just a thought, I guess.

God

It is necessary to believe God in all things, for God is truthful in all things.

Just believe – do what He says.  When we do this, I think we discover what Jesus meant when He said His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

…with God what is approved and determined to be is counted as already having happened.

I am coming to scratch the surface of what it means that God is outside of time, time being part of creation.  I am so limited in how much surface I have scratched that it is better that I not say more on this.

God needs nothing… He created and made all things by His Word.

He is a simple, uncompounded being, without separate parts, and entirely like and equal to Himself. … He is above all these properties, and therefore indescribable. 

This comes to part of the reason why I suspect one who is “in power God” can only be God.

Christ Jesus

Rich in mercy, God the Father sent the creative Word… He loosed the prison bonds.  His light appeared and dispelled the darkness of the prison, and He sanctified our birth and abolished death, losing those same bonds by which we were held.

Through obedience He completely did away with disobedience….

By His Passion, our Lord also destroyed death, dispersed error, put an end to corruption, and destroyed ignorance, while He manifested life, revealed truth, and granted the gift of incorruption.

This idea of incorruption – physical incorruption in the resurrection – is seen in many of these early writings: the body, once again made whole after the bodily resurrection.  Perhaps this focus helps explain the willingness of the martyrs to go to death. 

He did not despise or evade any human condition. … He sanctified every stage of human development by participating in it Himself. … This is also why He passed through every stage of life, restoring all of them to communion with God.

I have touched on this topic before, in a one-off post reviewing why Jesus had to take on all that we are in order to heal all that we are – ass all that we are requires healing.  It was based on work by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, so I am sure this topic will come up at least once more in this series.

If anyone asks, “How was the Son produced by the Father?” we reply that no one understands the production, or generation, or calling, or revelation, or whatever term may be used to describe His generation: it is utterly indescribable.

Perhaps best left as this mystery.

The Word of God became one with flesh by a physical and hypostatic union….

Creation

If, therefore, even with respect to creation, there are some things only God knows, while others come within the range of our knowledge, why should we complain if, in regard to those things we investigate in the Scriptures (which are thoroughly spiritual), we are able by the grace of God to explain only some of them, while we must leave the rest in the hands of God….

Do we have to understand everything and be able to explain (in scientific or historical terms) everything in order to believe everything?  Whatever God has revealed to us has meaning; meaning doesn’t just come through physics or geography or biology.

So, for instance, if anyone asks, “What was God doing before He made the World?” we reply that the answer to such a question is hidden within God Himself.

Going back to my “God is outside of time” point.  I don’t think God can have a before or an after.  He just is.

We have learned from the Scriptures that God holds the supremacy over all things.  But Scripture has not revealed to us the way He produced it….

The Fall

Since we were all implicated in the first formation of Adam, and we were bound to death through disobedience….

Adam’s sin continues in us – all of us.  Whatever language one wishes to use to describe this (original sin, total depravity), we are bound to death because of this.

He goes on to note: at least Eve resisted for a time – and this resistance against the serpent.  Adam?  No resistance – and this while not facing the serpent but the woman.  “…an indication of the utmost stupidity and weakness of mind on his part.”

While it is not an easy thing for a soul under the influence of error to repent….

This is as true a statement as any.

The Scriptures

We have learned the plan of salvation from no one else than the ones through whom the gospel has come down to us.  At first, they proclaimed it in public, but later on, in accordance with God’s will, they handed it down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.

Irenaeus goes on to list only the four gospels, the ones that we now have in the New Testament. 

What would we do if the apostles had not left us writings?  Would it not be necessary, in that case, to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those whom they committed the churches?

Yes, but they did leave us writings….

Apostolic Succession and Tradition

When we refer them to the tradition which originated from the apostles, which has been preserved through the succession of the presbyters in the Churches, they object to tradition…

We can list all those whom the apostles instituted as bishops in the churches, and the succession from them down to our own times.

The faith they [the apostles] preached to humanity has come down to our time through the succession of bishops.

The body of Christ is clearly manifest by the succession of bishops…

We need to view with suspicion those who turn from the primitive succession and assemble themselves together elsewhere, for they are either heretics of perverse minds, schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or hypocrites who act this way for money or vainglory.

…the Church possesses the sure Tradition from the apostles.

He writes of Polycarp, speaking of his conversations with the apostle John, “all in harmony with the Scriptures.”

I highlight all of these, even thought they are quite similar – merely variations on the theme.  I can perhaps accept that within a couple or few generations (to include Irenaeus’s time) something approaching what Jesus taught the apostles was still taught and practiced.  Yet, even Irenaeus identifies that this tradition is “handed it down to us in the Scriptures.”

But I have a hard time believe 2000 years of consistent teaching and practice absent Scripture.  I played the telephone game when I was a kid; I know how this works.

I accept tradition; just not above Scripture.

Baptism

This is what faith does for us, as the elders, the disciples of the apostles, have handed down to us: first of all, it admonishes us to remember that we have received baptism for the remission of sins….

Christian Living

For what use is it to know the truth in words, only to defile the body and perform evil deeds?  Or what real good at all can bodily holiness do, if truth is not in the soul?

As Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  To be a Christian is not merely an intellectual exercise.

…but in the exercise of His grace, He will grant eternal life to the righteous and holy (those who have kept His commandments and persevered in His love, some from the beginning of their lives, but others from their repentance) and will surround them with everlasting glory.

I find the “others from their repentance” part comforting.

…we should not cast away the firm and true knowledge of God by scurrying after a multitude of contradictory responses to questions. 

The parts of Scripture that are easily understood are already sufficient for a lifetime of devotion, learning, and practice.

But fellowship with God is to know God and to enjoy His goodness.

Our Lord Jesus Christ…through His transcendent love became what we are, that He might make us to be what He is.

And if that isn’t difficult enough to internalize, try this:

As long as anyone has the means of doing good to his neighbors and does not do so, that person shall be reckoned a stranger to the love of the Lord.

Heresies

Error is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being this exposed, it should immediately be detected for what it is.  It is craftily decked out in attractive dress, so that, by its outward form, it might appear to the inexperienced – ridiculous as the expression may seem – truer than true itself.

And this is my fear, which I touched on as the epilogue in my post on Justin Martyr.  I find many of the inter-Christian debates as secondary, or not meaningful when it comes to how we are to live.  But am I making these differences too trivial?  I pray not.

The language of these deceivers resembles ours, but what they mean with it is very different.

Other Comments

Life does not arise from us, or from our own nature; it is granted by the grace of God.

It is necessary to obey the presbyters who are in the Church.

As by means of a tree we were made debtors to God, so also by means of a tree we may obtain the remission of our debt.

The business of the Christian is nothing else than to be ever preparing for death.

Biography

Irenaeus (c. 130 – 202), born in Asia Minor, is considered the greatest theologian of the second century.  As a young man, he listened to the sermons and teaching of Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John.  He eventually went to Lyon, to serve as the bishop there.