The Work of God

Irenaeus of Lyons participation by human beings in the glory of God. Connecting a passage from Isaiah, regarding the gathering of the posterity from the four corners, of 'everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for glory, whom

I formed and made' (Isa. 43:6–7) to the enigmatic words of Christ, he concludes:

Inasmuch, then, as 'wheresoever the carcase is, there shall also the eagles be gathered together' [Matt. 24:28], participating in the glory of the Lord, who has both formed us and prepared us for this, that when we are with him, we may partake of his glory. (haer. 4.14.1) The economy of God, which is 'for the sake of the human race' (haer. 1.10.3), thus begins with the glory that the Word has with the Father in eternity and culminates in the gloriﬁcation of Christ by the Father, a glory in which the disciples, by beholding it, participate. 'The glory of God is the living human being, and the life of the human being is to see God' (haer. 4.20.7).

THE WORK OF GOD

Fashioning human beings The arc of economy thus moves, as we have seen, from Adam to Christ, from the human being animated by a breath of life to the spiritual human being viviﬁed by the Holy Spirit, with the beginning and the end being understood in terms of each other. The economy is 'for the sake of the human race' and leads from the preliminary sketch to the perfect and complete living human being. That this is indeed the work of God is shown, for Irenaeus, by the manner in which Christ healed the man blind from birth ( John 9). It was not merely by a word that he was healed, but 'by an outward action, doing this not without purpose or by chance, but that he might show forth the Hand of God that had at the beginning moulded the human being' (haer. 5.15.2). So, just as 'the Lord took mud from the earth and formed the human being' (Gen. 2:7), Christ spat on the ground and made mud, smeared it upon his eyes, 'pointing out the original fashioning, how it was effected, and manifesting the Hand of God to those who can understand by what [Hand] the human being was formed out of the dust' (haer. 5.15.2). As, in Christ's words, the man was born blind not because of his own sin or that of his parents, 'but that the works of God should be manifest in him' (John 9:3), so Irenaeus sets this particular work within the intentionality of the economy as a whole:

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

For that which the artiﬁcer, the Word, had omitted to form in the womb, he then supplied in public, that the works of God might be manifested in him, in order that we might not seek out another hand by which the human being is fashioned, nor another Father, knowing that this Hand of God which formed us in the beginning, and which does form us in the womb, has in the last times sought us out who were lost, winning back his own, and taking up the lost sheep upon his shoulders, and with joy restoring it to the fold of life. (haer. 5.15.2; cf. Luke 19:10, 15:4–6)

If all of this was done so that 'the works of God should be manifest in him', Irenaeus concludes that 'the work of God is fashioning the human being'

(haer. 5.15.2, opera autem Dei plasmatio est hominis). By putting the healing of the blind man together with the formation of the human being as described in Genesis, Irenaeus can focus Christ's words about 'the works of God' speciﬁcally upon the formation of human beings, which is, in fact, the only creative work that the ﬁrst chapter of Genesis describes as being

God's own project: 'Let us make a human being in our image and likeness'

(Gen. 1:26).

The paradigmatic description of the fashioning of the human being in the opening chapters of Genesis, now seen as the beginning of an arc culminating in Christ, is used by Irenaeus to understand Christ's own birth from the Virgin.

And just as the ﬁrst-fashioned Adam had his substance from untilled and yet virgin soil, 'for God had not yet sent rain, and there was no human being to till the ground'

[Gen. 2:5], and was fashioned by the Hand of God, that is, by the Word of God, for 'all things were made through him' [ John 1:3], and the Lord took mud from the ground and fashioned the human being [Gen. 2:7], so also, when the Word himself, recapitulated Adam in himself, he rightly received from Mary, who was as yet a virgin, that generation which was the recapitulation of Adam. If then the ﬁrst Adam had a man for his father, and was born from male seed, they would be right to say that the second Adam was begotten of Joseph. But if the former was taken from the mud, and fashioned by the Word of God, so the Word himself, when bringing about the recapitulation of Adam within himself, ought to have the likeness of generation itself. Why then did God not once again take mud, rather than work this fashioning from Mary? So that there should not be another fashioning, nor that it should be another fashioning which would be saved, but that the same thing should be recapitulated, preserving the similitude. (haer. 3.21.10)56

Preserving the pattern of Adam's formation, yet not being a new beginning of a new formation, Christ's virgin birth, rather than undermining

56 Cf. haer. 1.9.3; 3.18.7, 21.9, 22.1; 5.1.2, 12.4, 14.1–3.

Irenaeus of Lyons the genuineness of Christ's humanity, in fact guarantees it. By recapitulating the ancient formation of Adam, Christ preserves both our own substance, the mud from which we are made, and the manner in which Adam came to be.

In the Demonstration, Irenaeus expounds further on the action of God taking mud from the earth to fashion his handiwork. After the opening chapters, in which he presents the rule of truth and various matters pertaining to angels, Irenaeus begins his discussion of God's work this way:

But he fashioned the human being with his own Hands, taking the purest, the ﬁnest

<and the most delicate> [elements] of the earth, mixing with the earth, in due measure, his own power; and because he <sketched upon> the handiwork his own form, in order that what would be seen should be godlike, for the human being was placed upon the earth fashioned <in> the image of God; and that he might be alive,

'he breathed into his face a breath of life' [Gen. 2:7]: so that both according to the inspiration and according to the formation, the human being was like God.

Accordingly, he was free and master of himself, having been made by God in this way, [in order] that he should rule over everything upon earth. And this great created world, prepared by God before the fashioning of the human being, was given to the human being as [his] domain, having everything in it. (Dem. 11)

Irenaeus strikingly combines both creation accounts together: there is no distinction between the 'making' ( Å Ø) of Genesis 1:26 and the 'fashioning' (º Ø) of Genesis 2:7, as there would be for other writers.57 It is the mud taken from the earth that is itself fashioned into the image of God. Irenaeus adds to the text of Genesis a supplementary action of God, that of 'mixing his own power' into the earth. This should probably be understood in terms of the creative activity of God, whose strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).58 In haer. 5.3.1–3, commenting on 57 For instance, Philo, Opif. 46.134, who distinguished between Gen. 1:26, the creation of the ideal human, neither male nor female, created in the image, the true human being or F, and Gen. 2:7, the mud fashioned into the sensible and corruptible body. Origen ( Jo. 20.182) seems to make a distinction between a descending gradation of 'create' (Œ Ç Ø), 'make' (Ø E), and 'mould' (º Ø): 'Because, therefore, the ﬁrst man fell away from the superior things and desired a life different from the superior life, he deserved to be a beginning neither of something created nor made, but "of something moulded by the Lord to be mocked by the angels" [ Job

40:19, LXX]. Now, our true substance [ æÅªıÅ Æ Ø] too is our being according to the image of the Creator, but the substance resulting from a cause [ K ÆN Æ] is in the thing moulded [º ÆØ], which was received from the dust of the earth.'

58 On the basis of what Irenaeus says elsewhere regarding baptism, that the dry earth cannot be made into a body or bear fruit unless it receives 'the willing Rain from above' (haer.

3.17.2), some have suggested that the 'power' spoken of in Dem. 11 is the 'Spirit of God' mentioned in Gen. 1:2, understood as an anima mundi rather than a 'Personal Spirit'. Cf.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

these words of Christ to Paul, he notes that the ﬂesh, which was skilfully formed by God in the beginning, will be raised from the dead by the same power. Irenaeus describes with awe how the bones, the nerves, the veins, and the rest of 'the arrangement [NŒ Æ] of the human being' have come together by the power of God: this is for something more miraculous than bringing them back together in the resurrection. So he concludes:

One cannot enumerate all the harmonious structure of the human being [B ŒÆa e ¼Łæø ºØÆ],59 which was not made without the great wisdom of God. Whatever participates in the art and wisdom of God also participates in his power. The ﬂesh, therefore, is not without part in the art, the wisdom and the power of God, but his power, which produces life, is made perfect in weakness, that is, in the ﬂesh. (haer. 5.3.2–3) Whatever is worked upon by God is the recipient of his power, and this is especially so in the case of the human being, who is, as we saw earlier, 'the vessel of the workings of God and of all his wisdom and power' (haer.

3.20.2). God took dust from the earth and fashioned (ºÆ ) it, so that it, receiving his creative power and wisdom, becomes ﬂesh, the 'handiwork'

(º Æ) of God. In previous chapters, we have seen how Irenaeus uses this term plasma to refer to the 'fabrication' created by his opponents from the Scriptures read according to their own hypothesis. Here, now, the same term refers directly to the human being, as the 'handiwork' of God.

The term emphasizes both the essentially, and profoundly, earthy character of the human being—skilfully fashioned mud—and, at the same time, the literally hands-on immediacy of God's creative work, who as an artist or potter fashions the mud in his hands.60

Antonio Orbe, Antropologı´a de San Ireneo, BAC (Madrid: BAC, 1969), 59–61; Andia, Homo vivens, 76–8.

59 The term ºØÆ is rare; LSJ attests it only in the sense of 'making a melody', but, as Rousseau (SC 152, p. 218) notes, the context strongly suggests º in the sense of 'members' or 'limbs'. Nevertheless, given Irenaeus' frequent deployment of musical imagery, for instance, that God has 'harmonized the human race to the symphony of salvation' (haer.

4.14.2), the allusion to melody-making here is probably not accidental.

60 The background here is clearly Isa. 45:9 and Rom. 9:20. For Irenaeus' use of the term plasma, see Godehard Joppich, Salus Carnis: Eine Untersuchung in der Theologie des hl. Irena¨us von Lyon, Mu¨nsterschwarzacher Studien, 1 (Mu¨nsterschwarzach: Vier-Tu¨rme, 1965), 49–55.

See also Orbe, Antropologı´a, 527–8, who would characterize Irenaeus' anthropology as 'sarcology', compared with the 'pneumatology' of the Gnostics and the 'psychology' of Origen. See also Henry, Incarnation.

Irenaeus of Lyons In the passage from Dem. 11 cited above, before turning to the second part of Genesis 2:7, the animation of the handiwork by the breath of life,

Irenaeus turns to Genesis 1:27 to specify in what form it is that God has fashioned this mud—that is, in his own form, for the human being was set upon the earth 'in the image of God'. We have already seen a passage, cited above, in which Irenaeus states explicitly that it is 'the ﬂesh that was moulded after the image of God' (haer. 5.6.1). Irenaeus is emphatic that an image must have a form, and can therefore exist only in matter, not in an immaterial part or aspect of the human being.61 An image must reveal that of which it is an image, and so the human being, who is in the image of God in his very ﬂesh, points forward to Christ, as we have seen when examining Paul's description of Adam as a 'type of the one to come'

(Rom. 5:14). As Irenaeus puts it: '"For <I made> man <in> the image of God" [Gen. 9.6 LXX] and the image of God is the Son, according to whose image was man made; and for this reason, he appeared in the last times, to render the image like himself ' (Dem. 22).62 The distinction that Irenaeus makes between the human being made in the image of God and Christ who is the image of God (cf. Col. 1:15) is clearly related to his understanding of Adam as the 'type' of Christ, stamped, as it were, to be an impression of the seal. Being inscribed in the very ﬂesh of human beings, their being 'in the image' of God is indelible.63 Alongside being in the image, the human 'godlike' existence is shown by his being 'free and master of himself ', which Irenaeus elsewhere describes as indicating his

'similitude' with God.64 This freedom includes the freedom of faith (cf.

61 Cf. haer. 2.7, 19.6; J. Fantino, L'Homme, image de Dieu chez saint Ire´ne´e de Lyon (Paris: Cerf,

1984), 87–9.

62 Cf. Fantino, L'Homme, 145–54. Tertullian also makes the same point: 'Whatever [form] the clay expressed, in mind was Christ who was to become human (which the clay was) and the Word ﬂesh (which the earth then was). For the Father had already said to his Son, "Let us make the human being unto our image and likeness; and God made the human being", that is the same as "fashioned" [cf. Gen. 2:7], "unto the image of God made he him" [Gen. 1:26–7]— it means of Christ. And the Word is also God, who "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God" [Phil. 2:6]. Thus that clay, already putting on the image of Christ, who was to be in the ﬂesh, was not only the work, but also the pledge of God.' Res. 6

(modifying the translation of Evans).

63 Passages such as haer. 3.18.1, which speak of what we lost in Adam, that is, being in the image and likeness of God, we regain in Christ, are often taken to mean that human beings lost the status of being 'in the image' (e.g. Grant, Irenaeus, 52); yet it is the possession of both that is said to be lost; Irenaeus never asserts that the human being stopped being 'in the image'.

64 e.g. haer. 4.37.4: 'Because man is possessed of free will from the beginning, and God is possessed of free will, in whose similitude man was created, advice is always given to him to keep fast the good, which is done by means of obedience to God.' Fantino (L'Homme, 110–18)

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

haer. 4.27.5), and, as the basis for our response towards God, it too has always been preserved intact by God (cf. haer. 4.15.2). The ﬁnal aspect of the passage from Dem. 11 cited above is the second divine action in Genesis 2:7, animation with the breath of life, so that 'both according to the inspiration and according to the formation, the human being was like

God'. The typological relation in which Adam stands to Christ pertains both to his bodily character as 'image', and also to their respective modes of life, as we have considered fully in the previous section: the animation of the handiwork preﬁgures the viviﬁcation of the same handiwork by the Holy Spirit in the last times.

There are three further actions of God described in the opening chapters of Genesis that ﬁgure in Irenaeus' account of the work of God in Christ that fashions living human beings. The ﬁrst is that, having fashioned his handiwork, God prepared a place, better than this present world, to provide suitable 'nourishment' for the human being who, as newly created, was but an 'infant' needing to grow to reach full development

(Dem. 12).65 So beautiful and good was this garden, that 'the Word of God was always walking in it; he would walk and talk with the human being, preﬁguring the future, which would come to pass, that he would dwell with him and speak with him and would be with humankind teaching them righteousness' (Dem. 12). The future that is preﬁgured here is clearly the Church, so that Irenaeus can in turn say that 'the Church has been planted as a garden [paradisus] in this world', and interpret the instruction to eat of every tree in the garden as a direction to 'eat from every Scripture of the Lord' (haer. 5.20.2; Gen. 2:16). Before examining further Christ's establishment of the Church, and its own preﬁgurative aspect, the second action of God, which, as we will see, is related to the Church, is the convincingly argues that the Latin translation of Against the Heresies uses the word similitudo to render both ›ØÅ, where it speaks of human free will making the human being like or similar to God, and the › ø Ø of Gen. 1:26. The latter term, not repeated in Gen. 1:27 to describe what God 'made', has, for Irenaeus, an eschatological character, and will be further considered below.

65 It is for this reason that the human being, although intended to be the lord of the earth with the angels appointed as his servants, was only 'secretly' established as their Lord (Dem.

12). It is important to note that Irenaeus never characterizes or assimilates the human being or life to the angelic: it is the becoming fully human of both God and the handiwork that is the goal of the economy, according to Irenaeus. On infancy of Adam and Eve, probably deriving from Theophilus of Antioch (Autol. 2.25), see M. C. Steenberg, 'Children in Paradise:

Adam and Eve as "Infants" in Irenaeus of Lyons', JECS 12/1 (2004), 1–22, and Irenaeus on Creation: The Cosmic Christ and the Saga of Redemption, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 91

(Leiden: Brill, 2008), 142–5.

Irenaeus of Lyons formation of a partner for the human being. In Dem. 13, Irenaeus paraphrases and extends Genesis 2:18–23:

And he decided also to make a helper for the man, for in this manner, 'God said "It is not good for man to be alone, let us make him a helper ﬁt for him,"' since among all the other living things no helper was found equal and like to Adam; and God himself 'cast a deep sleep upon Adam and put him to sleep', and, that a work might be accomplished out of a work, sleep not being in Paradise, it came upon Adam by the will of God; and God 'took one of Adam's ribs and ﬁlled up ﬂesh in its place, and he built up the rib which he took into a woman and, in this way, brought [her] before Adam'. And he, seeing [her], said, 'This at last is bone of my bones, and ﬂesh of my ﬂesh; she shall be called "woman", for she was taken from her man.' (Dem. 13) Irenaeus follows the scriptural text, but adds an intriguing explanatory comment regarding God's act of putting Adam to sleep so as to form the woman, noting that, as sleep did not yet exist in paradise, God suspended, as it were, Adam's existence so as to 'accomplish a work from a work'.

Irenaeus clearly wants to emphasize the point that, as taken from his side, Eve belongs to the same formation as Adam, the unity of the work from the work.66 Irenaeus does not explicitly relate this 'sleep' of Adam, resulting in the emergence of Eve, to the Passion of Christ and the Church, as others in this period would do.67 The ﬁnal action of God is to give the newly created infants, Adam and Eve, the commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for, on the day that you do so, you will die (cf. Gen. 2:16–7). Irenaeus interprets this commandment, as we have already seen, in terms of needing to recognize that they have 'as their lord the Lord of all' (Dem. 15), the lesson learnt by Jonah and by all human beings through their own death.

Christ's work of recapitulating the whole economy to bring about the perfect or complete 'living human being' does not encompass, however, only the initial actions of God, but also actions of the human beings themselves,

66 Cf. Theophilus, Autol. 28: 'so that no one might suppose that one god made man and another made woman, he made the two together. Moreover, he formed only man from earth so that thus the mystery of the divine unity might be demonstrated. At the same time, God made woman by taking her from his side so that the man's love for her might be greater.'

67 e.g. Tertullian, An. 43.10: 'As Adam was a ﬁgure of Christ, Adam's sleep shadowed out the death of Christ, who was to sleep a mortal slumber, that from the wound inﬂicted on his side might be ﬁgured the true Mother of the living, the Church.' The Church, which came from the side of the cruciﬁed Christ (referring to the blood and the water, cf. John 19:34), is foreshadowed by the formation of Eve from the side of Adam when he was asleep, the sleep which foreshadowed Christ's own sleep in death. Thus while Eve was certainly called the mother of the living (Gen. 3:20), it is really the Church that is this.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

and in so doing reverses their effects. As Adam and Eve were newly created, they were but infants, inexperienced and untrained in divine ways, and so immediately gave way to the seduction of the Devil, losing the 'strength' of the breath and becoming subject to death. The Word of God became human, therefore, 'in order to undergo temptation' (haer. 3.19.3). While Adam was defeated through disobedience, Christ, in recapitulating these temptations, was obedient and emerged victorious. The parallels between the temptations of Adam in the garden and Christ in the desert are worked out in great detail in haer. 5.21–2. Drawing upon Scripture in his replies to the Devil, 'casting down the apostasy by means of these sayings', Christ 'overcomes the strong man by his Father's voice', confounding the adversary by nothing else than the commandments of his own Father (haer. 5.22.1; Matt. 12:29).68 Likewise, while Adam was disobedient with respect to the tree, Christ demonstrated his obedience by meansof the tree (haer. 5.16.3; Phil. 3:8): 'So, by means of the obedience by which he obeyed unto death, hanging upon the tree, he undid the old disobedience occasioned by the tree' (Dem. 34; Gal. 3:13). And again, waging war against the enemy in his work of recapitulation, Christ also recapitulated the enmity between the woman and the serpent, and between their offspring (Gen. 3:15): and therefore does the Lord profess himself to be the Son of Man, recapitulating in himself that original man out of whom woman was fashioned, in order that, as our race went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life again through a victorious one, and as through a man death received the palm [of victory] against us, so again, by a man we may receive the palm against death.

(haer. 5.21.1)69 Christ's work of recapitulating Adam's defeat is thus twofold: 'For he fought and conquered; for, on the one hand, he was human contending for the fathers, and through obedience doing away with disobedience completely; and on the other hand, he bound the strong man, and set free the weak, and endowed his own handiwork with salvation, by destroying sin' (haer. 3.18.6; Rom. 5:19; Matt. 12:29). The liberation of human beings from the tyranny of the Devil is thus effected by Christ, who, as human, fought the enemy and untied the knot of disobedience through his obedience, and, as God, destroyed sin, set free the weak, giving salvation to his handiwork. So, Irenaeus continues:

68 For the image of Christ binding the 'strong man', see haer. 3.18.2, 6, 23.1; 4.33.4; 5.21.3,

22.1; Dem. 31.

69 Cf. haer. 4.40.3.

Irenaeus of Lyons Therefore, as I have already said, he attached and united the human being to God.

For unless the human being had overcome the enemy, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. And, again, unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely. And unless the human being had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and humans

[1 Tim. 2:15], by his kinship to both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and to bring it about that God would take the human to himself and that the human would give itself to God. For in what way could we be partakers of the adoption of sons, unless we had received through the Son participation in himself, unless his

Word had not entered into communion with us by becoming ﬂesh? Therefore he also passed through every stage of life, restoring all to communion with God . . . It behoved him who was to put sin to death and redeem the human being under the power of death that he should himself be made that very thing which he was, that is, human, who had been drawn into slavery by sin and held bound by death, so that sin should be destroyed by a human being, and that the human being should go forth from death. For just as through the disobedience of the one human being, who was fashioned ﬁrst from untilled soil, many were made sinners and lost life, so it was necessary that by the obedience of one human being, who was the ﬁrst born of the Virgin [qui primus ex Virgine natus est], that many should be made just and receive salvation [cf. Rom. 5:19]. Thus, then, was the Word of God made human, as Moses also says, 'God, true are his works' [Deut. 32.4]. But if he seemed to be ﬂesh, not having been made ﬂesh, his work was not true; but what he seemed to be, that he also was: God, recapitulating in himself the ancient formation of the human being, that he might kill sin, deprive death of its power, and vivify the human being; and therefore his works are true. (haer. 3.18.7)

Recapitulating the ancient formation of the human being, and therefore also passing through every stage of human life,70 by his obedience unto death Christ undoes the slavery of sin and the bondage in death, into which Adam, fashioned from the untilled soil, had drawn the human race, and in doing so Christ viviﬁes the human being. By recapitulating in himself the whole economy preﬁgured, and conquered, in Adam, Christ

70 Cf. haer. 2.22.4: 'He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants, a child for children, a youth for youths, and an old man for old men, offering to each an example appropriate to their age.' That Christ became an 'old man' is shown, for Irenaeus, by the Jews' question, 'You are not yet ﬁfty years old, and you have seen

Abraham?' ( John 8:57), which, he argues, is applicable only to one who has passed the age of 40, and is not yet 50; so, he concludes, ten years must have passed between Christ's baptism and death (haer. 2.22.6). Similarly, as he was born about the forty-ﬁrst year of the reign of Augustus

(haer. 3.21.3, starting from 44 BCE), but cruciﬁed under Pontius Pilate, 'the procurator of Claudius Caesar' (Dem. 74), he would have been in his forties when Claudius began his reign

(41–57 ce). As Grant puts it (Irenaeus, 50), Irenaeus is 'convert[ing] grammar into theology'.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

accomplishes the economy, becoming himself the human being, 'the ﬁrst born of the Virgin'. In recapitulating in himself the economy of the human formation, Christ establishes himself as the new head of the human race.

This is a further dimension of the term 'recapitulation', brought out well by Thomas Holsinger-Friesen:

To press the language a bit, one might say that humanity, originally 'capitulated' by virtue of its relationship to its 'head', has found itself 'de-capitulated' (or decapitated). What is needed is a re-capitulation wherein the original connection between creation and Creator is restored, thus replacing death with life.71

In the head of the human race, Adam, the human being, turned from God and so lost contact with the source of life, becoming 'dead in Adam'.

Through Christ's salviﬁc work, the human being is brought back to God, given a new head, and so ﬁnds life in him.

Christ himself, as we have seen repeatedly, is the ﬁrst human being, strictly speaking, of whom Adam was but a foreshadowing. He is the ﬁrstborn of the Virgin, and is himself the image of God. As such, it was not simply because he was inexperienced, as a newly created infant, that Adam was disobedient, nor because the breath of life is 'weaker' than the Spirit, but because, even though he had been created 'in the image', the one who is the image had not yet appeared. As Irenaeus puts it:

For in times long past it was said the human being was made in the image of God, but it was not shown [to be so]; for the Word was as yet invisible, after whose image the human was created; and because of this he easily lost the likeness. When, however, the Word of God became ﬂesh, he conﬁrmed both of these: for he both showed forth the image truly, himself becoming that which was his image, and he re-established the likeness in a sure manner, by co-assimilating [ ı Ø Æ] the human being to the invisible Father through the Word become visible. (haer. 5.16.2)

The Word was as yet invisible, or, as we have seen, the cruciﬁed Christ was hidden under the veil of Scripture, in types and prophecies not yet understood. And so, as Irenaeus puts it in the Demonstration, 'Christ, by being embodied in the same manner as Adam, became the human being, who was written in the beginning, "according to the image and likeness of God".'72 The 'likeness' that the human race lost in Adam is not the Spirit,

71 Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and Genesis, 128; cf. pp. 87–8, commenting on 5.14.2: 'Its particular rendering of original "capitulation" and "decapitulation" (the introduction of death into human ﬂesh) points to an interpretation of Christ's salviﬁc work as "re-capitulation".'

72 Dem. 32, for which Rousseau (in a retroversion that he kindly supplied to me) suggests:

ŒÆd ªÅÆØ › ª ªæÆ K IæåBﬁ ¼Łæø.

Irenaeus of Lyons for the Spirit was then present, bestowing the breath of life, and continuously thereafter, together with Christ, preparing the human race to be perfected in Christ and by the life-giving Spirit. Nor is it that the human race lost life, waiting for life to be restored in Christ, for, as we have seen, the arc of the economy moves from animation to viviﬁcation, two distinct modalities of life. Nor, ﬁnally, is it simply that human beings became mortal; for they always were mortal, that is, capable of death, even had they retained the 'strength' of the breath and had not died. What happened to the human race in Adam is, speciﬁcally, that it became subject to mortality, caught in sin and death, unable to escape from the strong man who had beguiled them under 'the pretext of immortality'. They lost, as the passage cited above suggests, the ability to live like God, for the Word as yet had not shown himself and his life in this world. Yet, when

Christ does so, it is in fact by using death to conquer death. 'Likeness' to God is thus manifest in the way that human creatures live the life given to them, if, that is, they do so in the manner revealed by Christ, by laying down their life, rather than trying to preserve their own life (of the breath) in perpetuity. Since this had not yet been clearly shown, though with hindsight, as we have seen, the Law and the Prophets speak of this throughout, Adam, though a model of the one to come, had as yet no one on whom to model himself, and so lost this 'likeness'.73

The Church and the Virgin, Baptism and Eucharist It is, however, in this very way, by death, that human beings in Adam now enter into the fullness of humanity manifested in Christ: 'Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?' (Rom. 6:3). Although Irenaeus knows of baptism as given 'for the remission of sins',74 for him the primary function of baptism is the 'regeneration' of the human being as an adopted son of 73 James Barr (Garden of Eden, 21) makes a similar point in his reading of the Genesis account of Adam and Eve: 'Adam and Eve were not immortal beings who by sin fell into a position where they must die; they were mortal beings who had a remote and momentary chance of eternal life but gained this chance only through an act of their own fault, and who because of that same act were deprived of that same chance.' Irenaeus would add, however, that, starting with the work of Christ in his Passion, this disobedience and death are incorporated within the arc of the economy, to become the means by which the creature learns to receive and live the divine life.

74 The connection is made explicit only in Dem. 3 and haer. 3.12.7, where he comments on Acts 10:43. In haer. 5.14.3, Irenaeus writes of the 'remission of sins' of those who have been reconciled to the Father by being incorporated into the righteous ﬂesh of Adam, but no

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

God.75 Thus Irenaeus deﬁnes baptism as 'the seal of eternal life and rebirth unto God, that we may no longer be sons of mortal men, but of the eternal and everlasting God' (Dem. 3). This 'new generation' is intimately connected with the Christ's own formation as 'the ﬁrst born of the Virgin'

(haer. 3.18.7, cited above). As Irenaeus asks of the Ebionites: how can they be saved unless it was God who wrought their salvation upon earth?

Or how shall the human being pass into God [åøæ Ø], unless God has passed into the human? And how shall he escape from the generation of death [mortis generationem], if not by a new generation [in novam generationem], given in a wonderful and unexpected manner by God as a sign of salvation, that which is from the Virgin, they being regenerated through faith [quae est ex Virgine, per ﬁdem regenerentur]? Or how shall they receive adoption from God, remaining in that generation which is according to the human being in this world? . . . And for this reason in the last days he exhibited the 'likeness', the Son of God being made human, assuming the ancient handiwork into himself, as I have shown in the preceding book. (haer. 4.33.4)76 The new generation from the Virgin is manifested by Christ's own arrival in this world, but it is no less a new birth for all believers regenerated through faith. Similarly, a few paragraphs later, Irenaeus says:

There are those who say that 'He is a man, and who shall know him?' [ Jer. 17:9]; and, 'I came unto the prophetess, and she bore a son, and his name is called

Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God' [Isa. 8:3, 9:6]; and those who proclaimed the Immanuel, born of the Virgin [Isa. 7:14]: declaring the union of the Word of God with his own handiwork, that the Word would become ﬂesh, and the Son of God the Son of Man, the pure one opening purely that pure womb which regenerates human beings unto God and which he himself made pure, having become that which we are, he is 'God Almighty' and has a generation which cannot be declared.

(haer. 4.33.1) Becoming human, Christ opens the pure womb, the womb by which human beings are also regenerated unto God. The background for this idea is a scriptural verse that Irenaeus set before the theologian in haer.

1.10.3: that 'the children of her who was desolate are more than her who is married' [cf. Isa. 54:1; Gal. 4:27]. The 'barren woman', who as a result of Christ's Passion (the suffering servant described by Isaiah in the previous explicit mention in made of baptism. Cf. A. Houssiau, 'Le Bapteˆme selon Ire´ne´e de Lyon',

ETL 60 (1984), 45–59.

75 Cf. haer. 1.21.1; 3.17.1; Dem. 7.

76 See also haer. 3.19.1; 5.1.3, cited above.

Irenaeus of Lyons chapter, Isa. 52:13–53:12) now has many children, is the Church who now gives birth to those adopted in Christ by themselves being regenerated in the same pure womb.77

Irenaeus thus understands Mary, as the pure Virgin, in terms of a larger scriptural thematics, extending the dynamism of typological parallelism that we have seen between Adam and Christ to include the Virgin. The most important passage for this is haer. 3.22.4, which follows on directly from Irenaeus' comment on Adam as 'the type of the one to come', the one who therefore pre-exists as Saviour.

Consistently, then, also the Virgin Mary was found to be obedient when she said,

'Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word'

[Luke 1:38]; but Eve was disobedient, for she did not obey when she was yet a virgin. Just as she, having a husband yet still being virgin ('for they were both naked', in Paradise, 'and were not ashamed' [Gen 2:25], because they had recently been made and had no knowledge about generating children; for they had ﬁrst to grow up and then multiply [cf. Gen 1:28]), was disobedient, and became the cause of death for herself and the entire human race, so also did Mary, though having a man destined for her beforehand, and still a virgin, by being obedient became the cause of salvation for herself and the entire human race. And on this account, does the law call her who is espoused to a man, though she is still a virgin, the wife of him who espoused her, pointing out thereby the recircling [recirculationem]78 from Mary to Eve, because in no other way is that which is tied together loosed, except that the cords of the tying are untied in the reverse order, so that the ﬁrst cords are loosed by [loosening] the second; in other words, the second cords release the ﬁrst. And so it happens that the ﬁrst cord is untied by the second cord, and the second cord serves as the ﬁrst's untying. With this in view, the Lord said, the ﬁrst will be last, and the last ﬁrst [cf. Matt. 19:30; 20:16]. The prophet, too, pointed out the same thing: 'in place of your fathers, sons were born to you', he said [Ps. 44 (45):17]. For the Lord, who was born 'the ﬁrstborn of the dead' [Col. 1:18], receiving the ancient fathers into his bosom regenerated them to the life of God, having become the beginning of those who live, as Adam had become the beginning of those who die. (haer. 3.22.4)

It is as 'the ﬁrst born of the dead' that Christ was born from the Virgin, so himself becoming the beginning of life for all those who are regenerated in his own new generation. Christ's birth from the Virgin cannot be

77 We will see this again in the last section of this chapter, on the martyrs, especially in The Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, which is almost certainly by Irenaeus himself. For further reﬂection on this, see Behr, Mystery of Christ, ch. 4, 'The Virgin Mother'.

78 As SC. The alternative reading in the MSS, recircumlatio, is followed by Steenberg, who translates it as 'return-circuit'. Rousseau suggests IÆŒŒºÅ Ø as the underlying Greek. More generally, see Matthew C. Steenberg, 'The Role of Mary as Co-Recapitulator in St Irenaeus of Lyons', VC 58 (2004), 117–37.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

separated from the Passion, indeed it is already understood in terms of it; his recapitulation of the human being is speciﬁcally of those who have sacramentally died in baptism; and the life he gives those who are incorporated in him is a pledge of the resurrection to come.

Born again in the Church, believers receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is set again in a typological relationship with the breath of life:

It is to the Church itself that this gift of God has been entrusted, as was the breath to the handiwork, for this purpose, that all the members receiving it may be viviﬁed; and in it [the Church] is deposited the communion with Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, the pledge of incorruptibility, the means of conﬁrming our faith, and the ladder of ascent to God. (haer. 3.24.1)

As the Church is the locus of the Spirit, Irenaeus continues: 'Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace, and the Spirit is truth.' The Church is, as we have seen, 'planted as a Paradise in this world', in which we can

'eat from every Scripture of the Lord', but not with an uplifted mind or touching any heretical discord, lest we be cast out of the 'Paradise of life', into which the Lord has introduced those who obey his proclamation, 'recapitulating in himself all things which are in heaven, and which are on earth' [Eph. 1:10]; but the things in heaven are spiritual, while those on earth are the arrangements concerning man. These things, therefore, he recapitulated in himself, uniting the human being to the Spirit and making the Spirit to dwell in the human, becoming himself the head of the Spirit, and giving the Spirit to be the head of the human being: through him we see and hear and speak. (haer. 5.20.2)

In the paradise that is the Church, newly regenerated human beings can be trained to follow the Word and bear the Spirit.

According to Irenaeus, at his baptism Jesus was anointed by the Father with the Spirit, to be the Christ, so that human beings might also share in the abundance of his Unction (haer. 3.9.3). The Spirit thus initially became accustomed to dwell in the human race in Christ, 'working the will of the Father in them and renewing them from oldness to the newness of Christ'

(haer. 3.17.1; cf. Dem. 6). But after his Passion and resurrection, the same Spirit was bestowed at Pentecost upon all the disciples, uniting them together, opening the New Covenant, and bringing them all to life, so that with one accord they could praise God in many languages, thus reversing the divisions introduced at Babel.79 This same Spirit now

79 haer. 3.17.2, and for what follows. For water imagery applied to the Spirit, see also haer.

4.14.2, 33.14, 36.4, 39.2; 5.18.2, and Andia, Homo vivens, 205–23.

Irenaeus of Lyons works through the waters of baptism, so that, 'as a lump of dough or loaf of bread cannot be made from dry ﬂour without water, so neither could we, being many, be made one in Christ Jesus without the Water from heaven'. Likewise: 'Just as dry earth, unless it receives water, does not fructify, so also we, who formerly were dry wood, would never have borne, as fruit, life without the willing Rain from above [cf. Ps. 67:10

LXX]'. In this way, the baptized also receive the 'living Water' promised by Christ to the Samaritan woman (cf. John 4:14), which the Lord received as a gift from the Father but which now 'wells up to eternal life' in the believer.

However, just as Jesus received this Unction at the time of his baptism, yet it was, nevertheless, not until his Passion, his death and resurrection, that 'the paternal light' fell 'upon our Lord's ﬂesh' so that his ﬂesh rendered fully incorruptible radiates his glory to us (cf. haer. 4.20.2), so also what believers have received of the Spirit through baptism is but a 'pledge' of what is to come.

For now we receive a certain portion of the Spirit towards perfection and preparation for incorruptibility, being slowly accustomed to contain and to bear

God, which the Apostle called 'a pledge', that is, a part of the honour which God has promised us, saying, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, 'In him you also, having heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation and believing in him, have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise, which is the pledge of our inheritance' [Eph. 1:13–14]. This pledge, therefore, thus dwelling in us, renders us spiritual even now, and the mortal is swallowed up by immortality, for he declares, 'you are not in the ﬂesh, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you' [Rom. 8:9], and this is not by a casting away of the ﬂesh, but by the communion of the Spirit, for those to whom he was writing were not without ﬂesh, but those who had received the Spirit of God, 'in whom we cry Abba, Father'

[Rom. 8:15]. If then now, having the pledge, we cry 'Abba, Father', what shall it be when rising again we behold him face to face, when all the members shall burst forth in an exuberant hymn of exultation, glorifying him who raised them from the dead and gave them eternal life? For if the pledge, gathering the human being together into himself, makes him now say 'Abba, Father', what shall the full grace of the Spirit, which shall be given to human beings by God, effect? It will render us like unto him, and perfect the will of the Father: for it shall make the human being in the image and likeness of God. (haer. 5.8.1)

It is but a 'certain portion [partem aliquam]' of the Spirit that believers now receive through baptism, working towards their perfection and preparing them for incorruptibility, when they will be able to contain and bear God.

Believers are made spiritual even now, able to call upon God as 'Abba

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

Father', not by the rejection of the ﬂesh, but by the ﬂesh beginning to be viviﬁed by the Spirit. Its fullness remains for the time when, 'rising again', that is, after death, the ﬂesh is fully viviﬁed, inherited by the Spirit, so that the human being may behold the Father 'face to face' and, by the full grace of the Spirit, be made 'in the image and likeness of God'.

Regenerated in baptism, receiving the pledge of the Spirit, believers are adopted as sons of God. According to Irenaeus, the term 'son of God' can be taken in various senses. One of his predecessors observed that the term

'son' has two different meanings: according to nature or according to teaching (haer. 4.41.2–3).80 In the ﬁrst sense, it applies to both an 'offspring' or a product of a creator, the ﬁrst being begotten, the latter being created.

As created, all human beings can therefore be called sons of God. However, in the second sense, that of teaching, only those who remain in obedience to God and adhere to true belief can be called sons of God; if they turn away from this ﬁlial relationship, joining instead the apostasy of the Devil, by doing his works they become sons of the Devil. Elsewhere,

Irenaeus distinguishes three different relations between God and his handiwork: while he is the God of all, to the Gentiles God is the Maker and Creator (sons as created by their Maker), to the Jews he is the Lord and Lawgiver (sons by virtue of the Law), but 'to the faithful he is as Father, since "in the last times" he opened the testament of the adoption of sons' (Dem. 8). This relationship of the believer to God is thus more than that of being created, or that of obeying the Law, but that of a son to the Father. Incorporated into Christ by baptism, regenerated in the Virgin, believers share in the sonship of the Son of God, 'for it was for this that the Word of God was made human, and the Son of God, the Son of Man, that the human being, having been taken [commixtus] into the Word, and receiving adoption, might become a son of God' (3.19.1). Becoming

'sons of God' in this manner, believers can themselves be called 'gods':

'"God stood in the congregation of gods, he judges in the midst of the gods" [Ps. 81.1 LXX] [this text] speaks of the Father and the Son and those who have received the adoption, for they are the Church' (haer. 3.6.1).81

This new status of believers as 'sons of God' and themselves 'gods' is manifest, paradoxically, in an increased subjection to God. As sons, they

80 Irenaeus does not name his source, though one might reasonably conjecture Polycarp.

I have followed Rousseau (SC 100, pp. 283–5) in giving preference to the Armenian version of haer. 4.41.2. A similar point is made by Origen in his Hom. on Jer. 9.4.

81 This passage is referred to in haer. 4.Pr.4: 'I have shown that there is none other called

"God" by the Scriptures, except the Father of all, and the Son, and those who possess the adoption.'

Irenaeus of Lyons are no longer subject to the law of slavery, the pedagogue that led us to Christ (cf. Gal. 3.24), for this has been cancelled by Christ in 'the new covenant of liberty' (haer. 4.16.5).82 In annulling the laws of slavery imposed upon Israel when they turned to the golden calf in the desert,

Christ has not abrogated the natural precepts of love for God and justice towards one's neighbour planted in the heart, the free and willing keeping of which justiﬁed those before the Law, but has 'extended and fulﬁlled them' (haer. 4.13.1)83: the Law prohibited adultery, Christ forbade lust

(Matt. 5:27–8). It is not the internalization of the commandments that is of interest to Irenaeus, for, as we have seen, he says very little about 'interiority' altogether, but rather the greater subjection to God that this demonstrates: the glorious liberty of the sons of God is thus manifest, for Irenaeus, in the higher degree of their subjection to God. If the primary relationship between God and his handiwork is that 'God makes and the human being is made' (haer. 4.11.2), then the more that the handiwork subjects herself or himself to the creative activity of God, the more God can in turn fashion him or her.84

Having passed through the waters of baptism and receiving the pledge of the Spirit, believers are now nourished by eating from the Scriptures, as Adam was to eat from every tree, and, as Israel was fed by manna, so now believers are fed by the Eucharist. As the Body and Blood of Christ are themselves a union of ﬂesh and spirit, they provide us with a taste of incorruptibility and the hope of resurrection:

For we offer to him his own, ﬁttingly proclaiming the communion and union of the ﬂesh and the Spirit. For just as the bread from the earth, when it has received the invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread, but Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly and heavenly, so also our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection. (haer. 4.18.5).

The ﬂesh of believers is nourished, even now, by that for which they are being prepared—that is, the reception of incorruption. As the Eucharist itself is no longer common bread, by partaking of the Eucharist, the bodies of believers are no longer corruptible ﬂesh, but, just as the Eucharist is both earthly and heavenly, so do their bodies have the 'hope of the 82 The whole section haer. 4.9–16 is a reﬂection on the Law and the Gospel, and the growth from one to the other. Cf. M. F. Berrouard, 'Servitude de la Loi et liberte´ de l'Evangile selon saint Ire´ne´e', LV 61 (1963), 41–60.

83 Cf. haer. 4.13.2–4, 16.4–5; Dem. 96.

84 Cf. Julie Canlis, 'Being Made Human: The Signiﬁcance of Creation for Irenaeus'

Doctrine of Participation', SJT 58/4 (2005), 343–54.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

resurrection', so that believers proclaim 'the communion and union of the ﬂesh and the Spirit'.

Nourishing believers in this way, the Eucharist is the paradigm of what will happen to them in and through their own death, when the pledge of the Spirit blossoms into its fullness, just as the Unction by which Christ was baptized transﬁgured his body through his Passion such that it became resplendent with the paternal light (cf. haer. 4.20.2). This connection between the Eucharist and the death and resurrection of the believer is treated in haer. 5.2.3. He begins by emphasizing that, just as the ﬂesh of believers 'has grown and strengthened' by the 'mixed cup and manufactured bread', which, having received the Word of God, is the Body and Blood of Christ, so also their ﬂesh is capable of receiving eternal life from God. Moreover, if the Apostle speaks of believers as 'members of his body and of his ﬂesh and of his bones' (cf. Eph. 5:30), he is speaking not of ﬂeshless spiritual beings, 'for a spirit has neither ﬂesh nor bones' (cf. Luke

24:39), but of a genuine human being, made of ﬂesh and blood, and nourished by Christ's Body and Blood. He then continues:

Just as the wood of the vine, planted in the earth, bore fruit in its own time, and the grain of wheat, falling into the earth and being decomposed, was raised up manifold by the Spirit of God who sustains all, then, by wisdom, they come to the use of human beings and, receiving the Word of God, become Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ, so also, our bodies, nourished by it, having been placed in the earth and decomposing in it, shall rise in their time, when the Word of God bestows on them the resurrection to the glory of God the Father, who secures immortality for the mortal and bountifully bestows incorruptibility on the corruptible [cf. 1 Cor. 15:53), because the power of God is made perfect in weakness [cf.

2 Cor. 12:9], in order that we may never become puffed up, as if we had life from ourselves, nor exalted against God, entertaining ungrateful thoughts, but learning by experience that it is from his excellence, and not from our own nature, that we have eternal continuance, that we should neither undervalue the true glory of God nor be ignorant of our own nature, but should know what God can do and what beneﬁts the human, and that we should never mistake the true understanding of things as they are, that is, of God and the human being. (haer. 5.2.3)

The parallelism between the processes that lead to the Eucharist and to the resurrection of the believer is intertwined in a dynamic manner. By receiving the Eucharist, as the wheat and the vine receive growth from the Spirit, believers are prepared, as they make the fruits of the earth into bread and wine, for their own resurrection effected by the Word, through which, as the bread and wine receive the Word to become the Body and Blood of Christ, the Eucharist, so also the bodies of believers will receive

Irenaeus of Lyons immortality and incorruptibility from the Father. The distinctively human activity of preparing the fruits of this earth,85 which then receive the invocation (K ŒºÅ Ø, haer. 4.18.5) and the Word to become the Body and Blood of Christ, corresponds to their preparation, through receiving the Eucharist, for the bestowal of immortality in the resurrection effected by Christ. In a very real sense, then, the whole of the divine economy, ordered towards and culminating in the death and resurrection of Christ and believers in him, can be seen as the Eucharist of the God and Father.

Moreover, in a very characteristically Irenaean fashion, all of this has been arranged with a purpose, an intentionality structured by Christ's words to Paul that his strength is made perfect in weakness. As with the 'Sign of Jonah' considered earlier, by undergoing the experience of weakness to its ultimate point, becoming dust in the earth, the human being simultaneously learns the strength of God and so comes to the true knowledge of things as they are—that is, of God and the human being, and so is able to remain continuously thankful thereafter to God who in this way fashions the living human being, who we can now add is a 'eucharistic' being.

The completion of creation Although members of the Church are dispersed throughout the world

(haer. 1.10.1; 4.36.2), the Church is located in the Spirit (3.24.1), just as believers, having passed through the waters of baptism, have received a 'pledge' of the Spirit and now are fed by Scripture and the Eucharist, but have not yet been inherited by the Spirit nor entered the Promised Land.

Their regeneration in baptism is but a prelude of what is to come—that is, the 'second generation [secundam generationem] after their dissolution into the earth' promised in the prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel by the one

'who at the beginning created the human being'.86 As the patriarchs learnt to follow the Word, but did not enter the Promised Land before their death, so too their descendants, the followers of Christ, do not receive the fullness of the promise until their resurrection; and, as it was speciﬁcally

85 Nicholas Cabasilas (A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty (London: SPCK, 1960), iii. 4), points out that human beings alone are cooking animals: 'We call human that which belongs to the human being alone. Now, the baking of bread to eat and the making of wine to drink is peculiar to the human being. That is why we offer bread and wine.'

86 haer. 5.15.1, citing Isa. 26:19, 66:13–14; Ezek. 37:1–14. The connection between the ÆºØªª Æ (not translated in the RSV) and the kingdom is made in Matt. 19:28. Cf. Orbe,

Teologı´a, ii. 7–8.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

land that was promised to the patriarchs, so it will be in a transﬁgured, but fully material, world that the righteous are raised. The object of the economy of God is, as we have seen, the ﬂesh moulded, animated, and ultimately viviﬁed by the Hands of God, and the economy has been arranged in such a way as to acquaint the handiwork with its weakness, that it is ﬂesh, so that the human being can simultaneously come to know, in this way, the strength of God deployed in the ﬂesh. As such, the economy culminates not in a mystical union of the soul with God, but with the perfecting of the mud in the image and likeness of God. Conditioned as this may have been by Irenaeus' reaction to the teaching of his opponents, it is nevertheless integral to his understanding of the single and complete economy of God, as revealed in Christ, and is therefore articulated by him in an uncompromising and unparalleled manner.87 Irenaeus' teaching on the last times is not, therefore, an aberrant appendage to his work, but shows him to be, as Christopher Smith puts it, 'a consistent creationist'.88

As Irenaeus turned to the opening chapters of Genesis to understand Christ's work, so too he looked to the opening verses to understand the last times: for 'this is an account of what happened, as it happened, as also it is a prophecy of what is to come' (haer. 5.28.3). As a day of the Lord is as a thousand years (cf. 2 Pet. 3:8), if God ﬁnished his work on the sixth day and rested on the seventh (cf. Gen. 2:2), creation is completed in six thousand years, when there is inaugurated the seventh thousand-year period, which will be that of the kingdom of the Son, in which the just will reign with him in a renewed earthly Jerusalem. The period before the resurrection and the coming of the kingdom is a time of tribulation and martyrdom, in which the wheat will be separated from the chaff. This era culminates, before the return of Christ, with the coming of the Antichrist, who will devastate all things in this world, recapitulate all error, evil, and apostasy, and, for three years and six months, attempt to be worshipped as God in the Temple in Jerusalem.89 Recapitulating in himself all apostasy, error, and iniquity, the whole apostasy, summed up together in him, can

87 As Hans Urs von Balthasar (Glory of the Lord, ii. 93) puts it: 'In his eschatology Irenaeus produces an important counterweight to the ﬂight from the world and the failure to take seriously the resurrection of the ﬂesh which marks the Platonizing Christian eschatologies of a later period and indeed the average Christian consciousness.'

88 Christopher R. Smith, 'Chiliasm and Recapitulation in the Theology of Ireneus', VC 48

(1994), 313–31, at 320.

89 Cf. haer. 5.25–6, 28–30. The three years and six months (5.30.4) probably refer to the 'half week' of Dan. 9:27.

Irenaeus of Lyons be consigned to the eternal furnace.90 Christ will cast the Antichrist into the lake of ﬁre (Rev. 19:20), when he comes in the glory of the Father to bring the just into the seventh-day rest of the kingdom (haer. 5.30.4). In dealing with the judgement that Christ brings, Irenaeus emphasizes that the Son comes to all alike, with the express purpose of judging, granting life, and communion with himself to all who are willing to receive it. The meaning of the term 'judgement' is separation, and, as everyone has been created with free will and understanding, the choice whether to join the just or the judged rests with them, not with God who 'makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good' (haer. 5.27.1; Matt. 5:45). It is, therefore, not the light that has blinded the judged, but rather that they have preferred the darkness, and so God's 'judgement' is an acknowledgement of their own freely chosen separation: 'he inﬂicts that separation from himself which they have chosen of their own accord' (haer. 5.27.2).

When he comes, Christ will raise the just to reign with him in his kingdom. In one passage, a large part of which is preserved only in Armenian, Irenaeus describes this period of the kingdom as being the seventh thousand-year period:

John, therefore, foresaw precisely the ﬁrst resurrection of the just [cf. Luke 14:14,

Rev. 20:5–6] and the inheritance of the earth in the kingdom, and the prophets have also prophesied concerning it in the same terms. For this is what the Lord also taught, promising to drink the new mingled cup with his disciples in the kingdom [cf. Matt. 26:29], {and again when he said, 'the days are coming when the dead in their tombs will hear the voice of the Son of Man and those who have done good will rise to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil will rise to the resurrection of judgement' [cf. John 5:28–9], saying that those doing good will be raised ﬁrst, going to the rest, and then those who are to be judged will be raised, just as the Book of Genesis has the completion of this world on the sixth day, that is, the sixth thousand-years, and then the seventh day of rest, of which David says,

'this is my rest, the just shall enter into it' [cf. Pss 131:14, 117:20 LXX], that is, the seventh thousand-years of the kingdom of the just, in which the just shall grow accustomed to incorruptibility, when the whole of creation will be renewed for those who have been preserved for this.} The apostle, also, has confessed that the creation shall be set free from the bondage of corruption for the glorious liberty of the children of God [Rom. 8:21]. (haer. 3.36.3)91

90 Cf. haer. 5.25.1, 5; 28.2; 29.2; 30.1. The number of the Antichrist, 666, also recapitulates the apostasy that had taken place at the beginning, the middle, and the end of the six thousand-year periods (haer. 5.30.1).

91 The words in curly brackets {} are found only in Armenian (TU 35.2, 244.23–5.2).

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

The just are now raised to enjoy the land promised to the patriarchs and drink the fruit of the vine with Christ as he promised to his disciples (haer.

5.33.1; Matt. 26:29). In expounding this eschatological banquet, Irenaeus draws upon the tradition of the elders who saw John as reported by Papias, who taught that:

The days will come, in which vines shall grow, each having ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in each one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give twenty-ﬁve metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another shall cry out, 'I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me'. In like manner [the Lord declared] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear should have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, ﬁne ﬂour; and that all other fruit-bearing trees, and seeds and grass, would produce in similar proportions; and that all animals feeding

[only] on the productions of the earth, should [in those days] become peaceful and harmonious among each other, and be in perfect subjection to man. (haer. 5.33.3)

Isaac's blessing on Jacob (Gen. 27:27–9), is extended to the ﬁeld of the world (cf. Matt. 13:38), and so the blessing foreshadows the kingdom, when 'creation, also, having been renovated and set free, shall fructify with an abundance of all kinds of food, from the Dew of heaven and from the fertility of the earth' (haer. 5.33.3). This time of the kingdom, life in a liberated and fruitful creation, also provides a further occasion for the human being to be trained in divine ways and become accustomed to bear

God, to partake of his incorruptibility, and to receive the glory of the Father (haer. 5.32.1, 35.1–2).

After Christ's kingdom comes the general resurrection and judgement, when 'the book of life' is opened and the dead judged according to their works and 'cast into the lake of ﬁre, the second death', Gehenna or the eternal ﬁre (haer. 5.35.2, Rev. 20:12–15). John's words immediately following this, 'Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth', together with Isaiah's prophecy that 'there shall be a new heaven and a new earth', are understood by Irenaeus in terms of Paul's words that 'the fashion of this world shall pass away'.92 The passing-away of the fashion of this world happens when 'the new Jerusalem shall descend, as a bride adorned for her husband, and this is the tabernacle of God in which God will dwell with human beings' (haer. 5.35.2; Rev. 21:2–3). The earthly Jerusalem is an 92 haer. 5.35.2, citing Rev. 21:1, Isa. 65:17, and 1 Cor. 7:31.

Irenaeus of Lyons image of the new Jerusalem, and of this tabernacle Moses received a pattern on the mountain. Regarding the new creation, Irenaeus emphasizes that 'nothing is able to be allegorized, but all things are steadfast and true and substantial, having been made by God for the enjoyment of the righteous' (haer. 5.35.2). It is the 'fashion of this world' that passes away, that is 'that in which the transgression occurred, for the human being has grown old in them', while 'neither the nature nor substance is not destroyed, for true and ﬁrm is he who has established it' (haer. 5.36.1).

When the human being shall be 'renewed and ﬂourishing in an incorruptible state', then there shall be the new heaven and the new earth, 'in which the human being will remain always holding fresh converse with God'

(haer. 5.36.1). When this 'fashion' has passed away, 'the human being is renewed and ﬂourishes with incorruptibility, as no longer able to grow old; "there shall be a new heaven and a new earth" in which the new human being will remain holding converse with God in an always new manner' (haer. 5.36.1). The 'many mansions' of the Father's house provide a continual mode of ascent towards God (haer. 5.36.2; John 14:2). With death, the 'last enemy', thus destroyed, the Son will yield up his work to the Father, that he might be 'all in all' (haer. 5.36.2; 1 Cor. 15:24–8).

Irenaeus concludes his work with two sentences, the ﬁrst emphasizing that the whole economy, as one economy, manifests one God, the Father, and the second recapitulating the work of Christ, bringing his handiwork to existence as the image and likeness of God:

And in all these things, and by them all, one and the same God the Father is shown, fashioning the human being and promising the inheritance of the earth to the fathers, giving it93 in the resurrection of the just and fulﬁlling the promises in the kingdom of his Son, then bestowing paternally those things which neither the eye has seen, nor the ear has heard, nor has [the thought] arisen within the heart of the human being [1 Cor. 2:9].94 And there is one Son, who accomplished the Father's will, and there is one human race, in which the mysteries of God are wrought, 'which the angels desire to see' [1 Pet. 1:12], not being able to search out

93 Following the Armenian, with Rousseau, rather than the Latin eduxit illam.

94 As to what is bestowed 'paternally' at this point, Irenaeus does not speculate.

Undaunted, Orbe (Teologı´a, iii. 628–33, 646–51) analyses this statement in terms of the vision of God with corporeal eyes. haer. 4.20.5, with its threefold modes of seeing God (prophetice, adoptive, paternaliter), might suggest that there is a vision of God directly, but it is also qualiﬁed by Irenaeus' assertion that God has manifested himself in (and only in) Christ, who preserves the visibility of the Father so that we might always have something towards which we can advance, and it is 'incorruption for eternal life that comes to us from seeing God'.

Likewise, in haer. 5.36, he does not speak so much of seeing God directly, but rather of ﬂourishing in incorruptibility and holding ever-new converse with God.

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