The Concise Word

Irenaeus of Lyons opponents' description of it as the realm of a cruel god or the product of an inferior demiurge resulting from a disturbance within and exclusion from the divine realm. Beginning with the Passion of Christ, the climax of the work of God and the crux of his account, Irenaeus does not at all minimize or overlook the reality of evil and death within creation, but rather sees it as embraced and transformed by that work of Christ. If Christ's work had not touched everything, there would be an aspect of creation that does not lie within God's Hands. Death may well not have been created by God, but it would be a failure of the ﬁrst order not to see it as transformed by the work of God, and indeed as the very instrument of that transformation, for the starting point for understanding the whole economy is nothing other than the Passion of Christ—that is, his victory over death by his death. Not only would an account of the economy that does not embrace and transform everything have failed to understand how God, as the Creator, is the Lord of all, but it would also have failed to understand the divine life, as Christ has shown it to be, that of the sacriﬁce of love, and so failed to provide an answer to our deepest human concern regarding our mortality.

THE CONCISE WORD

Irenaeus opens his own exposition, beginning in book three of Against the Heresies, with an emphatic statement regarding the basis of his hermeneutics:

For the Lord of all gave to his apostles the power of the Gospel, through whom also we have known the truth, that is, the doctrine of the Son of God; to whom also did the Lord declare: 'he who hears you, hears me; and he that despises you, despises me, and him that sent me' [Luke 10:16]. We have learned from none others the economy of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the pillar and foundation of our faith.3

The focus of Irenaeus' exposition is the 'economy of salvation'. The term 'economy' (NŒ Æ, dispositio, dispensatio) originally referred to the ordering or regulating of a household, but it had come to mean an administration or arrangement more generally, and, in rhetorical and literary

3 haer. 3.Pr.-1.1, following Rousseau in taking the last sentence of the preface together with 3.1.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

theory, it was used to refer to the arrangement of a poem or the purpose of a particular episode within it.4 As such, the term could be used to denote both the action of arranging matters generally or a speciﬁc act for a particular purpose, as well as the arrangement or design itself, relating either to a particular act or to the comprehensive plan overall. Many theologians had used the term 'economy' to refer to particular acts of God, such as the Incarnation or the Passion, and Irenaeus himself could readily speak of such things in the plural, such as the 'economies of God' spoken of in his canon of truth (haer. 1.10.1). His opponents seem to have used the term also in the singular, to speak more comprehensively, referring to a plan of salvation undertaken to free the spiritual element lodged within some of the material bodies created by the Demiurge but unknown to him.5 Irenaeus, in contrast, used the term with a truly universal sense, to bring together all the various aspects of God's work, creation as well as salvation, into one allembracing and singular divine plan. This economy can be viewed both synchronically, seen synoptically in the scriptural mosaic of the king (haer.

1.8.10), and diachronically, in the symphony of salvation effected throughout history as the creature made from mud is gradually fashioned by the Hands of God to the point that created human eyes can rest upon the uncreated God.

As Irenaeus makes clear in the statement quoted above, however, the economy of salvation is not known simply from reading the Scriptures, but only from the preaching of the apostles—that is, as we shall see, the Gospel proclaimed 'in accordance with the Scriptures', so providing a 'concise word'. Their proclamation was made both through their preaching and through their writings, now to be counted as Scripture, and it is this that Irenaeus identiﬁes, using words with which Paul had spoken of the Church (1 Tim. 3:15), as the basis and support of the faith. This opening statement is followed by a short account (haer. 3.1) describing the composition of the four Gospels, relating Mark to Peter and Luke to Paul, and an excursus (haer. 3.2–4) arguing that this preaching has been preserved publically by the successions of presbyter-bishops in the various churches, pre-eminently in Rome. Irenaeus' point is that the content of this apostolic tradition is identical to that handed down by the apostles in 4 For the various terms used in the Latin and Armenian translation of Irenaeus, and the semantic range of the word in Irenaeus, his predecessors, and his opponents, see Jacques

Fantino, La The´ologie d'Ire´ne´e: Lecture des E´critures en re´ponse a` l'exe´ge`se gnostique: Une approche trinitaire (Paris: Cerf, 1994), 85–126. For the literary and rhetorical background of the term, see Meijering, Literary and Rhetorical Theories, 177–81.

5 Cf. Fantino, The´ologie, 98–101.

Irenaeus of Lyons writing, so that, on the one hand, his opponents, who claim possession of a secret oral tradition by which they then interpret the Scriptures differently in fact follow neither Scripture nor tradition, and, on the other hand, those 'barbarians' who are not able to read nevertheless preserve the ancient tradition written in their hearts, believing in one God who created all things by his Son, Christ Jesus. After stating this to be the case, Irenaeus then begins his principal task of exposition that will occupy him for three further books:

Since, therefore, the tradition from the apostles does thus exist in the Church, and is permanent among us, let us revert to the demonstration from the Scriptures provided by those apostles who wrote the Gospel [reuertamur ad eam quae est ex scripturis ostensionem eorum qui euangelium conscripserunt apostolorum], in which they recorded the doctrine regarding God, pointing out that our Lord Jesus Christ is the truth, and that no lie is in him. (haer. 3.5.1)

What counts for Irenaeus is not simply an appeal to the Church or tradition, but the apostolic demonstration from the Scriptures, and this he identiﬁes with the Gospel. The Gospel, in other words, is not simply a liberating message independently proclaimed on its own terms; rather, the very shape and terms in which it is proclaimed by the apostles, to whom 'the power of the Gospel' has been given, are drawn from the Scriptures. Irenaeus speaks here of the 'Gospel' in the singular: he is not referring to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in which we can see recourse to numerous texts from the Scriptures, ﬂeshing out, as it were, the Gospel. Rather, the Gospel itself, in the singular, is understood to be already cast within the terms of Scripture, as expounded by the apostles.

Complementing his image of Scripture as a mosaic depicting the king (haer. 1.8.1), Irenaeus applies Christ's words about the treasure hidden in a ﬁeld to elucidate further the hermeneutics at work in this apostolic demonstration, and much more, in a remarkable passage that, although lengthy, deserves to be quoted in full:

If anyone, therefore, reads the Scriptures this way, he will ﬁnd in them the Word concerning Christ, and a foreshadowing of the new calling. For Christ6 is the 'treasure which was hidden in the ﬁeld' [Matt. 13:44], that is, in this world—for 'the ﬁeld is the world' [Matt. 13:38]—[a treasure] hidden in the Scriptures, for he was indicated by means of types and parables, which could not be understood by human beings prior to the consummation of those things which had been

6 Following the Greek preserved in the Catena in Matt. (cf. SC 100, p. 712); the Latin simply has 'Hic', and similarly the Armenian.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

predicted, that is, the advent of the Lord. And therefore it was said to Daniel the prophet, 'Shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the consummation, until many learn and knowledge abounds. For, when the dispersion shall be accomplished, they shall know all these things' [Dan. 12:4, 7]. And Jeremiah also says, 'In the last days they shall understand these things' [ Jer. 23:20]. For every prophecy, before its fulﬁlment, is nothing but an enigma and ambiguity to human beings; but when the time has arrived, and the prediction has come to pass, then it has an exact exposition [KªÅ Ø]. And for this reason, when at this present time the Law is read by the Jews, it is like a myth, for they do not possess the explanation [KªÅ Ø] of all things which pertain to the human advent of the Son of God; but when it is read by Christians, it is a treasure, hid in a ﬁeld, but brought to light by the Cross of Christ, and explained, both enriching the understanding of human beings, and showing forth the wisdom of God, and making known his economies with regard to the human being, and preﬁguring the kingdom of Christ, and preaching in anticipation the good news of the inheritance of the holy Jerusalem, and proclaiming beforehand that the human being who loves God shall advance so far as even to see God, and hear his Word, and be gloriﬁed, from hearing his speech, to such an extent, that others will not be able to behold his glorious countenance [cf. 2 Cor. 3:7], as was said by Daniel, 'Those who understand shall shine as the brightness of the ﬁrmament, and many of the righteous as the stars for ever and ever' [Dan. 12:3]. In this manner, then, I have shown it to be, if anyone read the Scriptures. (haer. 4.26.1)

It is Christ himself who is hidden in the Scriptures and brought to light by the Cross. Or, as he puts it elsewhere, commenting on Christ's words that Moses 'wrote of me' ( John 5:46), Christ is 'sown' throughout the Scriptures.7 He is hidden, as the previous chapters of Against the Heresies make clear, in the prophecies and types, the words and deeds, of the patriarchs and the prophets, which preﬁgure what was to happen to Christ in his advent as preached by the apostles. The patriarchs and prophets 'disseminated the word concerning Christ' preparing the ﬁeld for the harvest reaped by the Church (haer. 4.25.3). They 'preﬁgured our faith and disseminated throughout the earth the advent of the Son of God, who and what he should be', so that the posterity 'might easily accept the advent of Christ, having been instructed by Scripture' (haer. 4.23.1). Those, therefore, who 7 haer. 4.10.1: Christ said this, 'no doubt, because the Son of God is implanted everywhere throughout his writings [inseminatus est ubique in Scripturis eius Filius Dei]: at one time, indeed, speaking with Abraham; at another time with Noah, giving him the dimensions [of the Ark]; at another enquiring after Adam; at another time, bringing down judgement upon the Sodomites; and again, when he becomes visible, and directs Jacob on his journey, and speaks with Moses from the bush. The occasions are innumerable in which the Son of God is shown forth by Moses.'

Irenaeus of Lyons are familiar with Scripture (Irenaeus gives the example of Joseph and the Ethiopian eunuch) are ready to be instructed in the advent of the Son of God, needing only to be told of whom Scripture speaks, whereas those who do not know these Scriptures present a harder task, and for this reason, Irenaeus claims, Paul can justly say, 'I laboured more than the rest'

(haer. 4.24.1; 1 Cor. 15:10).

However, such things are only prophecies and preﬁgurations; what they foreshadow is not yet known. They could not be known, Irenaeus claims, as in fact they were not, prior to their consummation, that is, 'the advent of the Lord', or as he puts it, when they are 'brought to light by the Cross of Christ'. So, for those who read Scripture without this vantage point, the Scriptures are nothing but ambiguities and enigmas, myths and fables; the book remains shut, as the prophet Daniel had said, waiting till the last times to be opened. Yet now that the book has been unsealed, those who read the same Scripture with an understanding of its proper exegesis are themselves transﬁgured to become like Moses in his descent from the mountain after his encounter with God, themselves shining with the glory of God.

Scripture and Gospel There are a number of points here which must be carefully and clearly noted, so as not to miss the force of what Irenaeus is saying. First, and most striking, is that it implies a way of reading Scripture, and indeed what constitutes a text as sacred Scripture, very different from our modern assumptions. After the last couple of centuries of scriptural scholarship, we have become accustomed to reading Scripture primarily in historical terms, debating what we believe to be 'historically true', what was the historical context in which it was written and redacted, and its reception by the initial readers, and, if we still think of it as 'sacred', its inspiration will probably be understood as an interaction between God and the author in their own historical context. The task of exegesis thus becomes to expound the 'meaning' of the text, either within its historical context, or, as more recent scriptural scholarship has argued, within its canonical or rhetorical context. Irenaeus, however, is not concerned with any of this. Instead, as the image of the mosaic already indicates, he sees Scripture as being, as it were, a compendium or 'thesaurus', that is, a 'treasury', of images, words, and reports, which gives ﬂesh to the Christ proclaimed by the apostles, who in turn reveals the work of God deployed throughout the whole economy described in Scripture.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

As odd as it may seem to us, the approach of Irenaeus in fact exempliﬁes what James Kugel identiﬁes as 'four assumptions about Scripture that characterize all ancient biblical interpretation'.8 The ﬁrst is that Scripture is 'a fundamentally cryptic text'. If it were not cryptic, if it did not need explanation, it would not be Scripture. This point is abundantly clear in the passage from Irenaeus cited above. The second assumption is that Scripture is 'a fundamentally relevant text'. Scripture is not written simply to inform us about events that happened in the past, but rather written for us, now: as the apostle put it, 'now these things [what happened in the desert] happened to them as a type [ıØŒH], but they were written down for our instruction upon whom the end of the ages has come'

(1 Cor. 10:11). The translation by the RSV of the word ıØŒH by 'as a warning' obscures the grounding of Irenaeus' 'typological' reading in the apostle himself. Not only is the account given in Scripture to be understood 'typologically', but this is done for our beneﬁt, for those, that is, who stand 'at the end of the ages', or 'the last times' in Jeremiah's words quoted by Irenaeus, as the point at which the types and prophecies are fulﬁlled and the books opened. The third assumption is that 'Scripture is perfect and perfectly harmonious'. If it is cryptic, but opened in the last times, then it will be found to speak of the one who opens the books. Or, as Irenaeus put it, it is Christ himself who is disseminated throughout

Scripture. It is the act of opening the Scriptures by Christ that enables them to be read synchronically, as a mosaic depicting himself, and diachronically, as the economy of God unfolded throughout time, culminating in Christ. This third presupposition, together with the ﬁrst one, is dramatically depicted in the account of the appearance of the risen Christ to his disciples on the road to Emmaus, when he opens the Scriptures, which to this point had been cryptic, and 'beginning with Moses and all the prophets interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself ' (Luke 24:27). Kugel's fourth assumption is that Scripture 'is somehow divinely sanctioned, of divine provenance, or divinely inspired'.

Kugel makes the further important point that it 'would be a mistake, in my view, to assume that this fourth assumption stands behind the other three', if for no other reason than that the divine inspiration of the whole of Scripture appears to have developed later than the other three assumptions. More directly to our point would be that Irenaeus' account of how

Scripture is to be read assumes that the divinely inspired content of 8 James Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as it was at the Start of the Common

Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 15, and 15–19 for what follows.

Irenaeus of Lyons Scripture is not known until the books are opened by the Cross of Christ, and so their 'inspiration' cannot be separated from the act of opening nor, for that matter, from the inspired reading: the 'inspired' writing of Scripture cannot be separated from the 'inspired' reading, and both, together, turn upon the act of opening the Scriptures by the one of whom they speak, or, in reverse, the one who speaks in them.9

As Kugel makes clear, these assumptions were operative for all readers of Scripture in antiquity. 'Reading' the present in terms drawn from the past, from the Scripture, is, moreover, something that we can see at work even within the Scriptures themselves. The writers of Israel had long since been using the events and ﬁgures of earlier Scripture to understand, explicate, and describe the events and ﬁgures at hand. For example, Isaiah

(or 'Second-Isaiah') draws upon the image of Abraham to encourage Israel in exile. However small the remnant has become, there will nevertheless be a national renewal if only they imitate Abraham's action and return to their ancestral land: 'Recall Abraham your forefather and Sarah who bore you: for he was one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him numerous' (Isa. 51:2). Abraham thus becomes a type for a new exodus, and this in turn is based upon an earlier typology already inscribed in the earliest level of the Abrahamic traditions, describing his migration to and exodus from Egypt in terms drawn directly from the description of the exodus under Moses (cf. Gen. 12): in this way, as Michael Fishbane puts it,

'in all these various forms Abraham came to serve as the prototype of Israel for later generations'.10

Paul's own conversion exempliﬁes many of these points regarding the reading of Scripture in ways important for understanding much of what we will see in Irenaeus. Before his encounter with Christ, he considered himself to be 'blameless with respect to righteousness under the law' (Phil.

3:6), not needing salvation, and in fact persecuting Christians on the grounds of their obvious impiety. However, after his encounter, whatever

9 Commenting on Christ's claim that 'Moses wrote of me' ( John 5:46), Irenaeus says this means that 'the writings of Moses are his [i.e. Christ's] words', and extends this to include 'the words of the other prophets' (haer. 4.2.3). For the problems that arise when the synchronic character of Scripture, as the product of one author or as speaking of a single subject throughout, is replaced by a diachronic study of the text, attempting to reconstruct the 'original meaning' of its various parts, see Jon D. Levenson, 'The Eighth Principle of Judaism and the Literary Simultaneity of Scripture', JR 68 (1988), 205–25, repr. in Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, The Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies

(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993).

10 Cf. Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1985), 376.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

that may in fact have been, he concluded, with reference to the same Scripture, that all human beings since Adam have been held under the power of sin and death. The text of Scripture had not changed, but rather his starting point, his ﬁrst principle or 'hypothesis'—the person and work of Christ—was new. Correlating and contrasting Adam and Christ, he understood the end in terms of the beginning and the beginning in terms of the end: Adam, who, prior to Paul's insight, appears very rarely in Scripture, is now understood as 'a type of the one to come' (Rom. 5:14).

Paul also reﬂects on this hermeneutical turn, comparing it to the removal by the Lord, for all who turn to him, of the veil that lay over the face of Moses as he descended from the mountain and which still remains over the minds of those who now read Moses (now a text) without having turned to the Lord. That the veil is removed by Christ means that it is only in Christ that the glory of God is revealed, and revealed in the right reading of the Scriptures. Behind the veil, then, is nothing other than

'the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God', though this remains 'veiled' to those whose 'minds are blinded by the god of this world'. In this way, he identiﬁes the God who said 'let light shine out of darkness' as the one who 'has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ' (2 Cor. 3:12–4:6).

As Richard Hays points out, in this hermeneutical reading of the veiling and unveiling of Moses, the man and the text, and the Gospel, as Christ himself and the Gospel preached by the apostles, 'Scripture becomes—in Paul's reading—a metaphor, a vast trope that signiﬁes and illuminates the Gospel of Jesus Christ'.11

This does not mean, however, that the Gospel is simply or straightforwardly a new interpretation or reading of an ancient Scripture, but rather that it is so on the basis of a new event, the death and resurrection of Christ, which provides the catalyst for the veil to be removed and the books to be opened, and itself now becomes the subject of interpretation.

As God has acted in Christ in a deﬁnitive, an unexpected manner, making all things new (cf. Rev. 21:5), Scripture itself must be read anew. The 'word of the Cross', the preaching of 'Christ cruciﬁed', may well be a scandal for the Jews and folly for the Gentiles, but it alone, according to Paul, is 'the power of God' making known 'the wisdom of God' (1 Cor.

1:18–25). The goal now is not to understand the 'original meaning' of an ancient text, as in so much modern scriptural scholarship, but to 11 Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven and London: Yale

University Press, 1989), 149.

Irenaeus of Lyons understand Christ, who, by being explained 'according to the Scriptures', becomes the sole subject of Scripture throughout.12

The apostle's proclamation of Christ 'in accordance with the Scriptures' is clearly evident in the four Gospels accepted by Irenaeus, or rather in the four forms of the one Gospel (e PÆªªºØ ææç, haer. 3.11.8), the forms of which he expounds by reference to passages from Scripture.

In these Gospels, the accounts of Christ and his activity, culminating in the Passion and always told from that perspective and leading inexorably towards it, are described with constant allusion to scriptural imagery, from the very 'beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ', illustrated by a passage from Isaiah (Mark 1:1–3; Isa. 40:3), to the opening of the books by the risen Christ, mentioned earlier, and, most emphatically, in the statement of Christ himself in John: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me' ( John 5:46). The reasons Irenaeus gives for there only being four Gospels—that there are only four corners of the earth and four winds—are clearly secondary reﬂections on what is already a given fact, that, by this time, the number of Gospels had become an established part of the broad consensus and tradition, rather than a serious attempt to argue the case.13 As such, since the 'Gospel of Truth' was but 'recently composed', it cannot lay claim to the same authority, and, in any case, as Irenaeus argues, it is totally 'unlike those which have been handed down by the apostles, as is shown from the Scriptures themselves' (haer. 3.11.9).

The exposition of the Gospel in terms drawn almost exclusively from the Scriptures can be seen in other subsequent writings, most poetically in On Pascha, by Melito of Sardis, another orator of the second sophistic period from Asia Minor alongside Irenaeus.14 It is the very subject to which Irenaeus devotes a speciﬁc short work, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. Here he gives a clear, coherent, and concise exposition of the apostolic preaching without, however, making any extensive use of the apostolic writings, but rather by deriving the whole content of their preaching from the Scriptures themselves. He begins by brieﬂy outlining

12 James Barr makes a similar point, noting that 'large elements in the text [of the Genesis story of Adam] cannot be made to support Paul's use of the story without distortion of their meaning'. This is, he continues, because 'Paul was not interpreting the story in and for itself; he was really interpreting Christ through the use of images from this story' (The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 89).

13 The collection of four authoritative Gospels seems to go back to the turn of the second century, very likely in Asia Minor and perhaps associated with the shadowy ﬁgure of John the Elder. Cf. Hill, Who Chose the Gospels?

14 See Hainsworth, 'The Force of the Mystery'.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

the faith handed down by the elders who had known the apostles, summarized in the three articles of the 'canon of faith' through which the baptismal regeneration is effected (Dem. 3–7). After laying out his ﬁrst principles, he then turns to the two interrelated tasks at hand in this demonstration: ﬁrst, to recount, in the manner of the great apostolic speeches in Acts, the narrative of God's work of salvation that culminates in Christ (Dem. 8–42a), and, second, to demonstrate that what the apostles proclaimed to be fulﬁlled in Christ was indeed foretold in Scripture (Dem. 42b–97). Importantly, before beginning the second part, Irenaeus notes that, while, for God, the Son is indeed in the beginning, from all eternity, yet, as he has only now been revealed to us, 'before this he was not for us who did not know him'

(Dem. 43). So, although, in the ﬁrst part, Irenaeus recounted the scriptural narrative that, on his hypothesis, culminates in Christ, as preached by the apostles, a preaching that, as we have seen, is articulated in the texture of the same Scriptures, it is only in the second part that he is able to describe, retrospectively, how Jesus Christ was present throughout the economy, already being seen, in anticipation by the patriarchs (cf. esp. Dem. 44–5) and being spoken of, in anticipation, by the prophets.

The second point to note, from haer. 4.26.2 quoted above, is the apocalyptic and eschatological ﬁnality and completeness of the Gospel. The consummation of the things spoken of in Scripture, through types and parables, occurs with the Cross of Christ. The work of God is concluded and brought to completion: it is ﬁnished or perfected ( º ÆØ), as Christ himself says on the Cross ( John 19:30). There are no further acts for God to perform or revelations to be given, but rather everything thereafter is determined and understood by this deﬁnitive revelation: the sealed books are opened, and the faith is 'delivered, once for all' ( Jude 3), requiring now the exposition of the Scriptures in the preaching of the Gospel. Thus, for Irenaeus, the Gospel is unique precisely as apocalyptic and eschatological: it is only through this act of God in Christ, as preached by the apostles, that the types and prophecies of Scripture are unveiled to speak of the one and only Word of God, rather than mere myths and fables.

Irenaeus appeals directly to this apocalyptic imagery in haer. 4.20.2, where he points out that, as Christ has been given all things by his Father (Matt.

11:27), he alone, as the judge of the living and the dead, has the key of David, and so he alone opens and shuts (Rev. 3:7). Using the imagery of Revelation 5, Irenaeus continues:

'No one, either in heaven or on earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book' of the Father, 'nor to look into it', with the exception of 'the Lamb who was

Irenaeus of Lyons slain and who redeemed us with his own blood', receiving from the same God, who made all things by the Word and adorned them by [his] Wisdom, power over all things when 'the Word became ﬂesh'. (haer. 4.20.2; Rev. 5:3, 6, 9; John 1:14)

The slain Lamb alone has received all power, wealth, wisdom, and might (Rev. 5:12), and so he alone is able to open the book, and this, Irenaeus speciﬁes, is the book of the Father. Irenaeus very strikingly associates revelation of the content, the Word, of the paternal book by the slain

Lamb with the Word becoming ﬂesh, for it is the enﬂeshed, revealed, Word who alone makes known or exegetes (KÅª Æ) the Father, as the Prologue of John concludes ( John 1:18).15 Just as the Gospel alone unlocks the treasures of Scripture, so also it is only in the Son, as preached in the Gospel, that the invisible and immeasurable God becomes visible and comprehensible (cf. haer. 4.4.2, 6.6).

The third point to note is that, for Irenaeus, the Cross is the deﬁnitive event in the revelation of God, occurring within our history yet with a signiﬁcance that is eternal; the only perspective from which one can speak of the Word of God is that of the Cross.16 The evangelical rereading of Scripture in the proclamation of the cruciﬁed Lord is the unique locus for the revelation of God, and so this 'eschatological apokalypsis of the Cross', in Richard Hays's words, provides the hermeneutical lens through which Scripture is now refracted with 'a profound new symbolic coherence'.17

Irenaeus continues the passage from 4.26.1, cited above, by noting how this manner of reading the Scriptures was revealed only after the Passion, when the risen Christ demonstrated to his disciples from the Scriptures that 'the Christ must suffer and enter into his glory' (haer. 4.26.1; Luke

24:26, 47). As such, the Passion of Christ is revealed to be the subject of the Law and the Prophets.

In this manner, therefore, they did also see the Son of God as a human conversing with human beings; they prophesied what was to happen, saying that he who was

15 As Rolf Noorman (Irena¨us als Paulusinterpret: Zur Rezeption und Wirkung der paulinischen und deuteropaulinischen Briefe im Werke des Irena¨us von Lyon, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2.66 (Tu¨bingen: Mohr, 1994), 451) notes, Irenaeus does not differentiate too sharply between the 'Incarnation' and the 'Passion', neither as 'events' nor in terms of their effects; both are embraced in the 'coming' of Christ in the last times. Cf. haer.

3.16.6; 4.10.2; 5.17.3. All the 'works' of God throughout the economy are told only from the perspective of the opening of the books in 'the last times' and so are embraced together in this apocalyptic revelation.

16 For the role of the Cross in Irenaeus more generally, see Daniel Wanke, Das Kreuz

Christi bei Irena¨us von Lyon, Beihefte zur ZNTW 99 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000).

17 Hays, Echoes, 169.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

not come as yet is present [eum qui nondum aderat adesse] and proclaiming the impassible as passible, and declaring that the One in the heavens had descended into the 'dust of death'. (haer. 4.20.8; Ps 21:16 LXX)

Christ is not yet present, but his saving Passion, proclaimed in the Gospel, is already the subject of the prophets' words and visions. Having the Gospel pre-preached to him by the Scripture, that in him all nations will be blessed (cf. Gal. 3:8), 'the prophet Abraham saw in the Spirit the day of the Lord's coming and the dispensation of his suffering', so that those who follow his example, trusting in God and taking up the Cross as Isaac did the wood, might be saved (haer. 4.5.4–5). The same subject is also revealed in the actions of the prophets. Discussing Elisha's actions in 2 Kings 6:1–7, and interpreting the axe by means of the words of John the Baptist (Matt.

3:10), Irenaeus comments:

By this action the prophet pointed out that the sure Word of God, which we, having negligently lost by means of a tree, did not discover, we should receive anew by the dispensation of a tree . . . This Word, then, which was hidden from us, did the dispensation of the tree make manifest, as we have said. For as we lost it by means of a tree, by means of a tree again was it made manifest to all, showing the height, the length, and the breadth, in itself; and, as one of our predecessors observed, 'Through the extension of the hands, gathering together the two peoples to one God'. (haer. 5.17.4)18 This emphasis, that it is through the Cross that the Word is revealed, means that the Word of God is always related to the Cross, is always, as it were, cruciform. Just as Scripture is permeated, in this way, by the ﬁgure of the Cross, Irenaeus also points out, following Justin, that the Word of God who adorned and arranged the heavens and earth does so in a likewise cruciform manner.19

18 The explanation given here for the signiﬁcance of the Cross, the inclusion of the Gentiles, supports Hays's conclusion that Paul's interpretative strategies are more ecclesiocentric than Christocentric, so that 'his typological reading strategy extends a typological trajectory begun already in the texts themselves', referring to the typological reading of Yahweh's dealings with Israel in Deut. 32 and Isaiah. Hays, Echoes, 164, cf. 84–7.

19 Cf. Dem. 34, and Justin, 1 Apol. 60. A. Rousseau, 'Le Verbe "imprime´ en forme de croix dans l'univers": A propos de deux passages de saint Ire´ne´e', in Armeniaca: Me´langes d'e´tudes arme´niennes (Venice: S. Lazarus, 1969), 67–82. This tradition is echoed, a couple of centuries later, by Gregory of Nyssa (de Tridiu spatio, GNO 9.303; trans S. G. Hall, 48). Similarly, in the seventh century, Isaac of Syria (The Second Part, chapter 11.3) comments: 'We do not speak of a power in the Cross that is any different from that (power) through which the worlds came into being, (a power) which is eternal and without beginning, and which guides creation all the time, without any break, in a divine way and beyond the understanding of all, in accordance with the will of his divinity.'

Irenaeus of Lyons The fourth point to note is how Irenaeus understands the relationship between the Scriptures and the Gospel. His arresting association in haer.

4.20.2, considered above, of the Word becoming ﬂesh with opening of the books by the slain Lamb is paralleled by haer. 1.9.2, in which he quotes this verse from John's Prologue for the ﬁrst time and connects it to the ﬁnal literary or rhetorical term that is important for the structure and method of Irenaeus' theology—'recapitulation'. For Irenaeus the subject of Scripture is clearly always the cruciﬁed and risen Christ, as preached by the apostles 'in accordance with Scripture', and so it is to him that all the various divine titles are attributed, as in the book of Revelation, where it is to the one 'clad in a robe dipped in blood' that the title 'Word of God' is ascribed (Rev. 19:13). This stands in stark contrast, as we saw in the previous chapter, to his opponents' personiﬁcation of these various titles as diverse heavenly beings. After emphasizing that John spoke only of one

Jesus Christ—declaring of Christ that 'this "the Word of God" [ John 1:1], this "the Only-begotten" [ John 1:18], this the Maker of all things, this "the true Light who enlightens every man" [ John 1:9], this "the Maker of the world" [ John 1:10], this the one who "came to his own" [ John 1:11], this the one who "became ﬂesh and dwelt among us"' [ John 1:14]—rather than the various conjunctions of Aeons in his opponents' systems, he concludes: 'For, summing up concerning the Word in the beginning mentioned by him above [ÆŒ çÆºÆØ ªaæ æd F NæÅı

ÆPﬁH ¼ø K IæåBﬁ ºªı], he adds, "And the Word was made ﬂesh, and dwelt among us"' (haer. 1.9.2). John's statement that 'the Word became ﬂesh' is interpreted by Irenaeus in terms of the recapitulation of everything that has previously been said by him.20 It is, as we have seen, only in the apostolic preaching 'in accordance with Scripture' that we 'see' the revelation of God in Christ, and so it is, in a very real sense, here, in the Gospel, that the Word becomes ﬂesh.21

The term 'recapitulation', as other important terms for Irenaeus such as 'hypothesis' and 'economy', has a well-deﬁned meaning in Hellenistic literary and rhetorical theory.22 The Roman rhetorician Quintilian,

20 Robert M. Grant notes that 'his context is strictly literary when he asserts that the evangelist John "sums up" the account in his Prologue ( John 1:1–13) by saying that the Word became ﬂesh (1:14)' (Irenaeus of Lyons (New York: Routledge, 1997), 50).

21 Ignatius had already drawn this comparison, exhorting his readers to 'take refuge in the Gospel as in the ﬂesh of Christ' (Phil. 5.1).

22 A weakness of many accounts of Irenaeus' use of 'recapitulation' is that they have not paid attention to this literary dimension, but instead see it as a controlling 'idea' or 'concept' for his theology, analysing it into its various components. Eric Osborn (Irenaeus, 97–8), for

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

writing a century before Irenaeus, provides a succinct and useful statement of the meaning of this term:

The repetition and grouping of the facts, which the Greeks call IÆŒ çÆºÆ ø Ø [recapitulation] and some of our own writers call enumeration, serves both to refresh the memory of the judge and to place the whole case before his eyes, and, even although the facts may have made little impression on him in detail, their cumulative effect is considerable.23

That is, the rhetorical device of 'recapitulation' serves to provide a summary of the whole case or a restatement of the argument in an epitome or re´sume´, bringing together the whole into one conspectus, so that, while the particular details will have made little impact because of their number or apparent insigniﬁcance, the picture summarily stated as a whole will be more forceful, giving new signiﬁcance to each particular detail and bringing them all together into one. In this way, recapitulation provides a re´sume´ which, as a succinct synopsis, is clearer and therefore more effective.

The apostle Paul uses 'recapitulation' as a literary summary when he comments that the various commandments of Scripture have been

'summed up in this word [K ﬁH ºªﬁø ﬁø IÆŒ çÆºÆØFÆØ], "You shall love your neighbour as yourself"' (Rom. 13:9). And it is precisely in this way, and in reference to this passage, that Irenaeus explains how God has provided us with an epitome or re´sume´ of the Law in the Gospel:

And that, not by the prolixity of the Law, but according to the brevity of faith and love, men were going to be saved, Isaiah, in this fashion, says, 'he will complete and cut short [his] Word in righteousness; for God will make a concise Word in all the world'.24 And therefore the Apostle Paul says, 'Love is the fulﬁlment of the Law' [Rom. 13:10], for he who loves God has fulﬁlled the Law. Moreover, the Lord instance, devoting two chapters to 'recapitulation', begins with this disclaimer: 'The complexity of the concept is formidable. At least eleven different ideas—uniﬁcation, repetition, redemption, perfection, inauguration and consummation, totality, the triumph of Christus

Victor, ontology, epistemology, and ethics (or being, truth, and goodness)—are combined in different permutations.' All these themes are certainly at play in Irenaeus, but we should not forget the grounding of all this in the relationship between the Scriptures and the Gospel which is that of a literary 'recapitulation'. For a summary of the century of scholarship on this term following in the wake of Harnack, see Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and Genesis, 1–26, who rightly reminds us that, when we read Irenaeus himself, we 'shall discover "recapitulation" to involve Irenaeus' performance of biblical texts rather than of concepts' (p. 22), though he himself does not look to the background of the term in rhetorical and literary theory or expound it in terms of the relationship between Scripture and Gospel.

23 Quintilian, Inst. 6.1.1.

24 Isa. 10:22–3; Rom. 9:28. This point is lost in the RSV translation: 'for the Lord will execute his sentence upon the earth with rigour and dispatch.'

Irenaeus of Lyons also, when he was asked, which is the ﬁrst commandment, said, 'You shall love the Lord your God with [your] whole heart and [your] whole strength; and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments', he says, 'depend all the Law and the Prophets' [Matt. 22:37–40]. So he has increased, by means of our faith in him, our love towards God and towards the neighbour, rendering us godly, righteous and good. And therefore he made 'a concise word < . . . > in the world'. (Dem. 87)25

Although the Scriptures speak of the Word of God, their prolixity effectively renders the Word obscure, hidden under a veil, and so invisible and incomprehensible—types and parables that are enigmas and ambiguities.

The work of God in Christ, therefore, as preached by the apostles 'in accordance with Scripture', has 'cut short' the Law and produced a 'concise word', which as an epitome or re´sume´ is clearer and therefore more effective, increasing our faith in God and our love for him and our neighbour, and so providing salvation. Yet, while being 'cut short', it is nevertheless identical in content: the Gospel, as the recapitulation of Scripture in a 'concise word', is its fulﬁlment. The apostolic proclamation of the cruciﬁed Christ is composed from the texture of Scripture, no longer proclaimed in the obscurity of types and prophecies, but clearly and concisely, in a re´sume´: what was prolix becomes condensed, what was incomprehensible becomes comprehensible, the unseen becomes seen, the invisible visible—the Word becomes ﬂesh.26

25 In quotations from the Demonstration words in angled brackets < > indicate a correction of the text printed in PO 12.5, and words in square brackets [ ] are supplementary additions to the text.

26 Thomas F. Torrance (Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics (Edinburgh: T&T

Clark, 1995), 121), puts the matter well, illustrating the synchronic and diachronic aspect of the economy: 'In the whole course of Christ's life from birth to Passion and resurrection, there is presented an epitome of God's saving acts, so that it is to the pattern enshrined in the humanity of Jesus Christ that Irenaeus turns for his precise understanding of the universal economy of God. The principle term he uses to express this is IÆŒ çÆºÆ ø Ø or recapitulatio, which he applies both to what happened in the life of Jesus himself and to what God accomplished through him and will accomplish in the ﬁnal actualization of his saving will within creation. "Recapitulation" means that redemptive activity of God in Jesus Christ was not just a transcendent act that touched our existence in space and time at one point, but an activity that passed into our existence and is at work within it, penetrating back to the beginning in the original creation retracing and reafﬁrming in it the divine Will, and reaching forward to the consummation in the new creation in which all things are gathered up, thus connecting the end with the beginning.' It is necessary to specify, however, that this epitome of God's saving acts throughout the economy in the life of Christ is seen in the Gospel as preached by the apostles 'in accordance with the Scriptures', so recognizing the scriptural or literary dimension of this recapitulation.

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

It is necessary to have a ﬁrm grasp of Irenaeus' understanding of the relationship between the Scriptures and the Gospel if we are not to misunderstand his exposition of the economy of God described therein.

Irenaeus does not understand this in terms of a history recorded in the 'Old Testament' continuing on to a new phase in the 'New Testament', as two bodies of literature between which, if we so wish, we might be able to discern correspondences, or 'types', and continuities. There is, rather, a strict identity between the Scriptures and the Gospel, both speaking of the 'once for all' work of God in Christ: at length and diachronically, on the one hand, through various ﬁgures in the Scriptures; in brief, on the other hand, recapitulated together, synchronically, in the Gospel, drawing from the Scriptures. On the basis of this identity, Irenaeus can counter his opponents, both those who would broaden this scriptural revelation and those who would curtail it. Against the Valentinians, Irenaeus can point to the eschatological completeness of what is revealed through the Cross of Christ expounded through the Scriptures: although there are abundantly more treasures to bring forth from the Scriptures in proclaiming Christ, there is no new hypothesis. And, on the other hand, he can maintain, against Marcion, that there is in fact nothing new in the Gospel: what

Christ is preached as having done, in the Gospel, is what he has done in directing the economy from the beginning, in all the symbolic actions and words recorded in Scripture. So, he exhorts Marcion: 'read with earnest care that Gospel which has been given to us by the apostles, and read with earnest care the prophets, and you will ﬁnd that the whole conduct, and all the doctrine and all the sufferings of our Lord, were predicted through them' (haer. 4.34.1).

To those who would then ask 'what new thing then did the Lord bring by his advent?' Irenaeus simply answers: 'Christ himself!' Irenaeus compares this to the announcement of the arrival of a king and his actual arrival: the king's arrival is heralded beforehand, so that those who will entertain the king can prepare; the king's arrival brings nothing new apart from himself, though the joyful fulﬁlment of what had previously only been announced is itself a novelty—'Know that he brought all novelty by bringing himself who had been announced' (haer. 4.34.1).

Finally, this recapitulation of Scripture in the Gospel provides Irenaeus with the key to understanding and explaining the person and work of Jesus

Christ himself and his relationship to God, his Father. The recapitulation of Scripture in the Gospel is, according to Irenaeus, complete: there is no part of Scripture that speaks of God independently from Christ, and so what is revealed in Christ in this way is nothing other than a revelation of

Irenaeus of Lyons God himself, the God who is the Father and Creator. Moreover, to suppose, as some did, that the Son who has been revealed is distinct, as 'another God', from the Father, who in turn, by virtue of the supreme transcendence of his divinity, is unable to come into contact with created reality and manifest himself, would undermine the very revelation given in Christ: Christ would no longer reveal the Father, in looking at him we would not be granted a vision of the one true God, and so would not be brought into communion with him.27 For Irenaeus, the Father is indeed invisible and inﬁnitely beyond human comprehension, and so, he argues, if human beings are to see him and to enter into communion with him, to share in his life, rather than just hear reports about him, then, just as the Gospel provides a visible synopsis of the Scriptures, the Christ that it proclaims provides a 'measure' of the 'immeasurable Father' (haer. 4.4.2), in whose human nature, rather than behind it, we can see the invisible

Father.28 Thus, as Irenaeus puts it, 'the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son the visible of the Father' (haer. 4.6.6). Yet, at the same time, the Son preserves the invisibility of the Father, in order that we might never think we comprehend all there is to know, and so come to think little of the Father and then turn away from him, the only source of life, but rather that there might always be something to which we might advance, in order that the glory of God might continue to be demonstrated, for this glory is, as Irenaeus puts it, the 'living human being', whose life is 'the vision of God' (haer. 4.20.7).

The coming Christ Pivoted, as this recapitulation is, on the person of Christ and his Cross, the Gospel afﬁrms, as we have seen, the one Jesus Christ, the subject about whom Scripture speaks and to whom all the divine titles apply. Thus when Irenaeus sets out to expound 'the entire mind of the apostles regarding our Lord Jesus Christ' (haer. 3.16.1), he begins by pointing out that John 'knew one and the same [R. x ŒÆd › ÆP] Word of God, the 27 It is noteworthy that Irenaeus criticizes those who 'allege that, the Father of all being invisible, the one seen by the prophets was another [God]' for being 'altogether ignorant of prophecy' (haer. 4.20.5). The unity of the one God is connected with the singular opening of the Scriptures by Christ determining thereby the prophetic nature and character of what had been written.

28 Cf. D. Minns, Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), 38–43; Real Tremblay, La

Manifestation et la vision de Dieu selon saint Ire´ne´e de Lyon, Mu¨nsterische Beitra¨ge zur Theologie,

41 (Mu¨nster: Aschendorff, 1978).

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

Only-begotten, incarnate for our salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord' (haer.

3.16.2). Likewise Matthew also 'recognized one and the same Jesus Christ', when he recounted 'his human birth from the Virgin': Matthew did not write that the 'birth of Jesus took place in this way', but that 'the birth of Christ took place in this way', who was called Emmanuel, so demonstrating that 'the Son of God was born from a Virgin', in order that 'we should not imagine that Jesus was one, and Christ another, but should know them to be one and the same' (haer. 3.16.2). Paul also knew only one

God and one Son, Jesus Christ (haer. 3.16.3), bringing together his statements concerning the appointing of Christ as the Son of God at the resurrection (Rom. 1:1–4), his descent according to the ﬂesh (Rom. 9:5), and his birth at the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4–5). After demonstrating a similar position in Mark and Luke, Irenaeus concludes, apropos of Luke:

The Gospel, therefore, knew of no other Son of Man but him who was of Mary, who also suffered, and no Christ who ﬂew away from Jesus before the Passion; but it recognizes as the Son of God this Jesus Christ who was born, this same one who suffered and rose again, as John the disciple of the Lord conﬁrms, saying, 'These things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing you might have eternal life in his name' [ John 20:31], foreseeing these blasphemous canons [regulas] that divide the Lord, as far as lies in their power, saying that he was formed of two different substances [ex altera et altera substantia dicentes eum factum]. (haer. 3.16.5)

In context, this statement that Jesus Christ was not 'formed of two different substances' refers to his opponents' teaching that an Aeon called

'Christ' or 'Saviour' descended upon the man Jesus and departed from him prior to the Passion (haer. 3.16.1; 11.3). For Irenaeus, in contrast, there is one Jesus Christ, the one Son of God: he it was who was born, suffered, and rose again. Yet it also suggests that we should not conceptualize the relation between divinity and humanity in the one Christ in terms of two distinct 'parts', one passible and visible, the other impassible and invisible.

For Irenaeus, the distinction between God and created reality is not thought of in terms of distinct substances existing in parallel, and therefore commensurate with each other, but rather in terms of the relationship between God as Creator and the created reality he brings about: 'In this

God differs from the human being, that God makes and the human being is made' (haer. 4.11.2). For Irenaeus there is no question but that Jesus

Christ is everything that it is to be God and everything that it is to be human, but this is not revealed separately or in division, as if one 'face', as it were, revealed one aspect and another 'face' revealed the other, but

Irenaeus of Lyons together, without confusion or change: on the one hand, Christ is the one who creates, fashioning human beings into the image and likeness of God; on the other hand, he does this by himself fulﬁlling the economy, being made the living human being. The one Jesus Christ, as God, creates and fashions us, by himself being made human and undergoing the Passion.

There are not two 'parts', then, to the one Jesus Christ, one invisible the other visible, but it is he himself who, as we have seen, is both invisible and visible, being hidden in the type and prophecies of Scripture, yet revealed in the Gospel recapitulating Scripture. Understanding Christ in this hermeneutic manner has further implications not appreciated, Irenaeus claims, by his opponents:

[They] stray from the truth, because their teaching forsakes him who is truly God, not knowing that his only-begotten Word, who is always present with the human race, was united and closely grafted to his own handiwork, according to the Father's good pleasure, and who 'became ﬂesh' [ John 1:14], is himself Jesus Christ our Lord, who did also suffer for us, and rose for our sakes, and who is again coming in the glory of his Father, to raise up all ﬂesh, and for the manifestation of salvation, and to reveal the rule of just judgement to all who were made subject to him. There is, therefore, as we have shown, one God the Father and one Christ

Jesus, who is coming throughout the whole economy,29 'recapitulating all things in himself ' [Eph. 1:10]. But in this 'all things' is the human being, the handiwork of God, and thus he recapitulated the human being in himself—the invisible becoming visible; the incomprehensible becoming comprehensible; the impassible becoming passible; and the Word, human—'recapitulating all things in himself ', so that just as in the super-celestial, spiritual and invisible things, the Word of God is the Sovereign Ruler, so also in the things visible and corporeal he might possess sovereign rule, and thus, by taking to himself the primacy and constituting himself the head of the Church, he might draw all things to himself at the proper time.

(haer. 3.16.6; cf. Col. 1:15–18; Eph. 1:22) The identity between the Scriptures and the Gospel, preached by the apostles 'in accordance with' and recapitulating Scripture, means that the Christ it proclaims has always been present with the human race,

29 Steenberg translates the clause veniens per universam dispositionem as 'who comes through every economy', wanting to emphasize that 'the Word was present in every one of the "lesser economies", not simply that he was present in the whole of the ﬁnal economy; much less that he is in the universal economy, as Sagnard (SC 34, p. 293) has it' (ACW 64,

164). However, given what we have seen, and will consider further below, of the connection between the beginning and the end of the one economy, I have preferred to remain with the SC translation, preserved in the later edition by Rousseau, in which he suggests for a retroversion: › KºŁg ŒÆŁ ‹ºÅ c NŒ Æ (SC 211, 313).

The Glory of God (haer. 3–5)

'grafted to his handiwork': Jesus Christ, 'coming throughout the whole economy', always is, and remains, even in the Gospels, the Coming One

(› Kæå , cf. e.g. Matt. 11:3). It is again, as we saw earlier, by recapitulating all things in himself, including the human being, that the invisible, incomprehensible, impassible Word becomes visible, comprehensible, and passible—becomes human. The mention of the 'proper time' as the point at which Christ draws all things to himself, that is, by ascending the Cross,30 as the crux by which Scripture is focused into an epitome, is picked up in the following paragraph where Irenaeus interprets the exchange between Christ and his mother at Cana ( John 2:3–4) as his mother urging Christ to perform the miracle because she 'desired before the appointed time to partake of the cup of concision [compendii poculo]'

(haer. 3.16.7): the cup that results from Christ's Passion is the epitome in which salvation is granted.

These themes are picked up again in haer. 3.18, where the continual presence of the Word, 'united to his own handiwork' (haer. 3.16.6), is reafﬁrmed: the Word, who existed in the beginning with God, by whom all things were made, who was also always present with the human race, was in the last times, according to the time appointed by the Father, united to his own workmanship, inasmuch as he became a human being liable to suffering. (haer. 3.18.1)

After voicing the objection that, if Christ was born then, he could not have previously existed, Irenaeus continues:

For we have shown that the Son of God did not begin to exist then, being eternally with the Father; but when he became incarnate, and was made human, he recapitulated in himself the long unfolding [expositionem] of human beings, furnishing us with salvation by way of a compendium [in compendio], so that what we lost in Adam—to be according to the image and likeness of God—that we might recover in Christ Jesus. (haer. 3.18.1) The Word becoming ﬂesh is an eschatological event, in the 'last times'. As one coming throughout the whole economy, it is only at the end that Christ, recapitulating the long narrative given in Scripture, provides salvation in the concise word, the Gospel, which makes what had been

30 Cf. haer. 5.17.4, cited above, and haer. 4.2.7: 'For the Law never hindered them from believing in the Son of God; but it even exhorted them to do so, saying that human beings can be saved in no other way from the old wound of the serpent than by believing in him who, in the likeness of sinful ﬂesh, is lifted up from the earth upon the tree of martyrdom and draws all things to himself and viviﬁes the dead.'

↑ Back to top