5.6 Why God Created Humankind: Haer. 4.14.1 (Gen 2:7)
chapter 5 5.6
Why God Created Humankind: Haer. 4.14.1 (Gen 2:7) In Haer. 4.14.1, Irenaeus' primary goal continues to be the unity of both testaments, and in this section he discusses the question of God's primordial activity. This is not a subject Irenaeus considers with any regularity, but in reaction to the extensive speculations of the heretics, Haer. 4.14.1 is one of a few instances where he contemplates God's motivation for creation.33 For Irenaeus, God's creative impulse is the ultimate glorification of humanity as an outworking of the mutual glorification of the Father and the Son. Irenaeus begins Haer. 4.14.1 by explaining how God did not form Adam out of necessity, echoing Gen 2:7, but so that God might confer the blessing of glorification upon him.34 Irenaeus' vision of God's aseity imagines the eternal perfection of the inter-trinitarian relationship that eliminates any dependence whatsoever upon creation; the Creator "stands in need of nothing and no one."35
Irenaeus supports the nature of this unilateral relationship between God and creation in Gen 2:7 with a collection of texts linked through parallel language and concepts of preexistence, creation, and glorification including:
John 15:16, John 17:24, Isa 43:5–7, and Matt 24:28.36 These texts are bound by verbal associations and set in context by a narratival focus. The intention of God from creation is the glorification of the human person through divine fellowship and service of God. God is, contra the Marcionites and Valentinians, the Creator of Adam in Genesis and the Father of Jesus. In the manner of an "architect" (architectus), God sketches out the "construction of salvation" ( fabricationem salutis) that unifies the trajectory of salvation history recorded in scripture.37 Just as the Word formed Adam in Gen 2:7 so that he might confer blessing upon him, so also, citing the dominical saying of John 15:16, did Christ choose the disciples to follow him. Likewise, Christ does not need his disciples, but his disciples are glorified when they are in fellowship with the Son.
The disciples did not choose to follow Christ any more than Adam chose to be created. He alludes to John 17:24 in order to explain how the disciples, when
33 Orbe, Teología IV, 189. According to Rousseau Haer. 4.14.1 is really a continuation of the argumentation in Haer. 4.13.4. He frames Haer. 4.13.4 into two sections. The first section includes SC 100:534.79–536.103, while the latter section spans SC 100:536.104–546.65 and includes Haer. 4.14.1–2.
34 Haer. 4.14.1.
35 Bingham, "Christianizing Divine Aseity," 55.
36 The key passage for Christ's preexistence is John 8:58 cited in Haer. 4.13.4.
37 Haer. 4.14.2. Behr, Asceticism, 53. Bacq suggests this is an allusion to the construction of the Ark in Gen 6:13–16. Bacq, De l'ancienne, 117.