CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
One God: Intellect and love Irenaeus presents an immediate, infinite God whose presence streams through his creation in goodness and beauty. This immediacy comes because unity and universality are ruled by transcendent love. While transcendence commonly implies separation, transcendent love implies immediacy. The unknowable God has become knowable as universal Intellect in his good economy for all creation." Irenaeus describes himself (3.6.3, 4) as standing like
Elijah before the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:36) to pray to the God of all creation, the father of Jesus Christ and the God of the patriarchs:
Therefore I also call upon you, Lord God of Abraham, and God of Isaac and God of Jacob and Israel, you who are the father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the God who, through the greatness of your mercy have shown favour to us, that we should know you, who have made heaven and earth, who exercise rule over all, you who are the only aud true God, above whom there is no other God.
The Mount Carmel prayer is the motif of Irenaeus' theology. It is part of God's economy and is anticipatory of Christ. Irenaeus' account of God is rich because it rejects diverse errors and draws on diverse strands of intellectual tradition; yet, whatever the complexity, God remains one and universal.
God is the intimate, ultimate, personal and transcendent first cause of all things. 'His greatness lacks nothing but contains all things, comes close to us and is with us' (4.19.3). Irenaeus' account of God is a blend of three parts: the God of the bible, the classical
' As Tertullian later put it, the sight and hearing of the only God extended into every secret place (De oratione 1).
Dwine Intellect tradition of metaphysical mind and the God of popular piety. Remarkably, he moves from the biblical to the popular God by means of the universal Intellect of the classical tradition.
ATTRIBUTES OF GOD: FROM OPULENCE
TO OMNIPRESENCE
God is one, universal cause, creator, omnipotent, free and rich. His opulence is universal as ever-present Intellect. Irenaeus' various accounts of God show a clear and consistent awareness of God's attributes."
God is one, as even the heretics admit (1.22.1). He is unmade and unbegotten, without beginning and without end (2.34.2; 3.8.3;
4.38.1). Herein lies his perfection (4.38.3), eternity and immutability (2.34.2; 4.11.2; 4.38.1). He contains all things in his vastness and is contained by none (4.6.2; 4.19.3). The Gnostics go wrong when they put God within a larger whole (4.3.1). God holds all things and is held by none (2.30.9). To borrow Gnostic language,
God is the pleroma ('fullness') of all things (2.1.2).
'He is the cause of being to all things* (4.38.3). As universal cause, God contains all things. 3 For the Johannine prologue insists that there is nothing beyond what he has made (1.22.1). Only he who made all things is rightly called 'God' and 'lord' (3.8.3). His immanence matches his transcendence: "God is he who works all things in all' (4.20.6). Indeed he leaves nothing for anyone else to do; look where we will, we shall find nothing created by the devil;
God has made it all (4.41.1) to conform with his providence and to be governed by his command (4.36.6).
Creation defines the difference between God and man: God makes, man is made. God's goodness, too, is defined by his creative acts, while man's nature is defined by his creaturely status (4.39).
This was to be the mystery of the universe revealed to Augustine at Ostia: 'We did not make ourselves, he who made us is he who abides forever' (Confessions 9.10; cf. Ps. 99:3).
No external compulsion lies on God. Above all things he is free and sovereign; he can never be the slave of necessity (5.4.2)
* For a general introduction see J. Kunze, Die Gotteslehre des Irenaeus (Leipzig, 1891).
3 solus continens omnia et omnibus ut sint ipse praestans (2.1.1; 2.35.33 3-8.33 3.20.2; 4.20.6; 4.36.6).
One God: Intellect and love
as was Homer's Zeus (2.5.4). His will has universal precedence and dominion; all must submit to it (2.34.4). He takes precedence because he alone is unbegotten and first cause of all that exists
(4.38.3). All things are subject to his will. His common titles — most high, omnipotent, God over allt — declare his supreme power.
No human mind can penetrate beyond him; indeed, it would be foolish to try (2.25.4). Any such attempt leads to the fallacy and futility of infinite regress (2.16.3; 4.19.1). It is safer and better to take the creator as the only God than to exhaust one's mind in irreligious wandering (2.16.3).
The oneness of God implies the omnipotence ofhis free and powerful will. Irenaeus begins his critique of Gnostic ideas: 'unmoved by another, freely of his own decision he made all things, since he alone is God, alone lord, alone creator, alone father, alone containing all things, and giving existence to all things' (2.1.1). Such a God must be free and self-determining, subject to no external necessity.
The Gnostic aeons were, in Irenaeus' opinion, derived from Plato's forms, which served as a model for the creator. Irenaeus agrees with the Middle Platonic tradition of his own day in not allowing such entities to exist outside the divine mind.® Further, Irenaeus agrees with Plato when he makes the goodness of the creator, his power and wisdom, the source of creation (4.38.3; cf. Plato, Tamaeus
29d-30a). While God's will is identical with his thought and infinitely powerful, it bears some similarity to the human will whose freedom reflects a divine likeness (4.37.4). In all of this
Irenaeus not only argues philosophically, but uses arguments which philosophers had used.'
God is 'rich'.® Irenaeus stresses the attributes of power (which has no limit), goodness (which guides his every act), wisdom (which > altissimus, omnipotens, super omnia Deus (2.0.1—3).
E. P. Meijering, 'Irenaeus' relation to philosophy in the light of his concept of free will', in God, being, history (Amsterdam, Oxford and New York, 1975), 19. uo © See A. H. Armstrong, 'The background of the doctrine "that the intelligibles are not outside the intellect"', in Les sources de Plotin (Geneva, 1960), 391-413.
7 Some other philosophical arguments used by Irenaeus are examined by Meijjering in his essay, 'Some observations on Irenaeus' polemics against the Gnostics', in God, being, history, 31-8.
8 dives. Found in Paul's account of the great exchange where he who is rich becomes poor so that we through his poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9), and in Ephesians 2:4. where the opulence of love is the source of salvation.
Divine Intellect orders his acts ). In one place the three are joined (4.38.3). Elsewhere he speaks of love, power and wisdom (5.17.1), of kindness and power (4.38.4), of power and wisdom (2.30.3). All this points to the opulence of God, especially evident in his raising of the dead. 'For God excels nature, having in himself the will because he is good, the power because he is powerful, and the perfecting because he is rich and perfect' (2.29.2). His generosity and richness are evident in the varied splendour of creation (2.10.3; cf. 3.16.7 and 5.33.4).
Here Irenaeus finds proof, against Marcion, of the goodness of the creator (3.25.2, 3). Further he argues that justice, goodness and wisdom are inseparable in the God who demonstrated these virtues in creation and history (2.30.9; cf. 4.36.6).
God's opulence exceeds our grasp. Irenaeus, like the philosophers of his time, insists that finite cannot know infinite and creature cannot speak of creator. The names which we rightly give to God (light, mind) never carry a literal meaning. Only love can give access to him who transcends all our words (2.13.4). To overcome his inaccessibility, some men stupidly break him up into parts and present him as a composite being (1.15.5; 2.17.7; 2.28.4). This
Gnostic etror expands human psychological distinctions into divisions and applies them to God (2.13.10; 1.15.5). But the undivided
God is simple (2.13.3; 2.28.4; 4.11.2) and 1s all good things at once (2.13.9). The Gnostic aeons are the names of powers which are ever within God. Intellect and life are inseparable (2.13.9). God is entire Intellect, spirit, sense, idea, reason, hearing, eye, light and source of every good thing (2.13.3).
The greatness of God lies beyond human knowledge. He cannot be measured (4.20.1). While he came to be known by men, this knowledge did not cover his magnitude or his substance, which no one has measured or touched (3.24.2). To all his creatures he remains an unknown God who transcends their investigation (4.20.4; cf. 4.19.3; 4.20.6). He is beyond human sight, definition, measure, understanding and speech (1.10.3; 4.6.3; 4.19.2; 4.20.4, 5). This transcendence means that no matter how much a man learns of God there is always something beyond (4.20.7).
On the other hand, through his word, his creatures learn that the invisible and ineffable father is the one God 'who encloses all
One God: Intellect and love
things and grants their being' (4.20.6).9 Through his own love and immeasurable goodness he became known as the one true God who made and formed all things (3.24.2; 4.20.1). He who directs and governs is known through his providence (3.25.1; 2.6.1).
Irenaeus is precluded by his loyalty to Christian tradition from saying new things about God. What he does is to select one element from the Christian tradition and present it in a way which reflects a philosophical as well as a biblical ancestry. This Christian claim is one already accepted, he believes, by all men. His unique contribution is to exaggerate the common human awareness of a divine being into the striking claim: that God is a universal, intelligent being, from whom nothing 1s hidden, who knows our needs before we ask him and who shows his love and glory on every side, especially through his prophets and supremely in has son.
The opulence of divine Intellect comprises unity, immediacy, universality, goodness, beauty and love. The more love transcends, the closer it comes. The immediacy of God, shown in history, finds a climax in incarnation; but incarnation is the tip of a visible iceberg.
God's love and presence are everywhere. This theme is dominant in the bible, especially in the Wisdom literature (Psalms, Proverbs,
Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and Baruch). For good reasons Irenaeus takes his argument here from philosophical tradition more than the bible. (He will set out the full range of the biblical witness in the Demonstration.) His adversaries had shown such dexterity in rearranging and twisting texts that, like Tertullian, he knew such argument would bring at best uncertain victory (de praescriplione haereticorum 19.1) and that conflict of this kind brought only a pain to belly and to brain (de praescr. 16.2). Further, pre-Christian scripture was little help against those who rejected the creator and his scriptures. Finally Irenaeus has adopted philosophy because of his universal God, who is Intellect. The divine mind speaks to human minds.
God has implanted in all humans an intuition of his eminence.
All things know by rational instinct that there 1s one God and universal lord (2.6.1). To this awareness is added the evidence
9 See below, 3.1-3.2.2.
oo Divine Intellect of the world's design, which points to the existence and rational nature of the creator (2.9.1). From all that he has made, his power and wisdom shine; only wilful insensibility can blind men to this rich revelation (2.30.3; 2.27.2). All who were not sunk in depravity and superstition recognized God in creation and providence (3.25.1), and from the beginning God has been known to his creatures (2.30.9; 4.6.7; 4.20.7; 4.28.2). Yet the vision of God is something more, for while man cannot of himself see God, 'yet God is willingly seen by men, by whom he wills, when he wills, and how he wills' (4.20.5). Only when instructed by God (deo docente) can a human know God; only with God can God be known (4.6.4). Knowledge gained by love in nearness to God gives to the simple-minded a gift which far outstrips the blasphemies of the pretentious (2.26.1). Within this intimacy, unnecessary questions (like the. nature of God's activity before creation) are rightly left to God himself (2.28.3,
6, Wh am = 2.2
METAPHYSIC OF MIND
Despite his occasional hostility to philosophy, Irenaeus is happy to use without acknowledgment Xenophanes' account of the cosmic mind. He uses this text frequently without once acknowledging his source. Unacknowledged citation was common in the second century'' and a commonplace could be used without indicatmg any philosophical allegiance.
Philosophical elements in early Christian thought'? may be directly borrowed, either '® 9.28 brings up a number of questions about Irenaeus' epistemology. Does he lean towards scepticism or empiricism? His scepticism is qualified because he distinguishes between what can be known by humans and what cannot, and between knowing 'that' and knowing 'how' (2.28.7); we should give up causal investigations and stick to knowledge of facts. A similar distinction is made by Galen: nature is not comprehensible when it comes to searching out causes. See discussion in W. R. Schoedel, 'Theological method in Irenaeus (Adversus haereses 2.25~28), JThS, 35 (1984), 31-49 who cites. R. Walzer, Galen on medical experience (London, 1944), 113-14.
The Deipnosophistai of Athenaeus provide the clearest example. See my 'Philo and Clement: citation and influence', in Lebendige Uberlieferung. FS for H. J. Vogt, ed. N. el
Khoury et al. (Beirut and Ostfildern, 1.992), 231.
'* See my 'Was 'Tertullian a philosopher?', StudPatr 31 (1997), 328.
One God: Intellect and love
acknowledged or unacknowledged, part of a current paradigm, already used by a Christian writer, selected eclectically from 'whatever has been well said','S or simply absorbed from the language of the day. The use of the Xenophanes fragment varies enormously.'4
Irenaeus, we shall see, draws a wide range of meaning together.
The meaning of a commonplace lies not in its common presence but in the use each writer makes of it.
Irenaeus, like Tertullian, says negative things about philosophers (2.14.3, 4) but then goes on to use, with discernment, the philosophers and the traditions which derive from them.'5 These continue to attract interest, but do not indicate an engagement with contemporary philosophy such as we find in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. He accepts unambiguously the Socratic love of truth and the classical value of fitness or beauty as his criteria. This discriminating approach, as Mejjering has shown, confirms Harnack's verdict on Irenaeus, that his dogma is conceived and constructed by a Greek mind on an evangelical foundation.'® His account of cosmic
Intellect, for example, is part of a long philosophical tradition.'7
Irenaeus rejects those unargued elements of philosophy which Gnostics used.'® Heretics have collected what has been said by philosophers who do not know God, and have composed a pastiche which deceives by its novelty, a concoction of old doctrines
"3 Justin (2 apology 13.4) and Clement (sf. 1.7.37) insist that whatever has been well said belongs to Christians because it comes from the logos sown far and wide by the perfect
Logos.
'4 Unacknowledged use of the fragment in question is found in the philosophers Sextus
Empiricus (adversus Mathematicos 9.144), Diogenes Laertius (9.19) and Pliny the Elder
(Naturalis historia 2.1 4), in Christian writers Clement of Alexandria (str. 7.2.5.5; 7-7-37-6),
Cyril of Jerusalem (catecheses illuminandorum 6.7) and Theodoret of Cyr (commentarit in Psalmos 1 29.2). Closer to Irenaeus in the Western tradition, the text is found in Novatian
(de trinitate 6) and, within Gaul, Hilary of Poitiers (Tractatus super Psalmos 1 29,3), Vitricius from Rouen (Praise of saints 8) and Claudianus Mamertus from Vienne (de statu animae
1.21). See R. M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (London and New York, 1997), 44-5, 193- '5 See J. Birrer, Der Mensch als Medium und Adressat der Schépfungsoffenbarung (Bern, 1989), 47-65
('Philosophische Elemente in Adversus haereses'), 65—7 ("Logik und Metaphysik als Waffen irendischer Polemik').
16 Avon Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4th edn (1 909), vol. 1, 24, cited in Meijering,
'Trenaeus' polemics', in God, being, history, 37.
'7 See H. J. Kramer, Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik (Amsterdam, 1964), for a magisterial treatment of the the theme.
18 Meijering, Irenaeus . .. his concept of free will', in God, being history. 24-5.
Dwine Intellect without religious or intellectual value. Irenaeus lists the conclusions of Presocratic philosophers and shows their presence in the Gnostic myth (2.14.2). Traces of Democritus, Epicurus, Plato and the Stoics are also found in Gnostic writings (2.14.3, 4).'9 The philosophers disagreed with one another and were wrong on many points, claiming knowledge of things which men cannot know
@262)r° Irenaeus attacked Gnostics for their lack of consistent argument.
The one all-embracing God provided a rational first principle.
Irenaeus required that any argument, about man or God, should not contradict itself. Since God is the highest and all-embracing reality, there can be no other God beside God (2.1.2), and beyond
God there can be no higher necessity, for God is all-embracing and all-powerful. Unless God were rational first principle of all, there would be no limit to thought. Unending worlds and gods would follow (2.1.4). Thinking must have clear limits and a clear orientation; these are lost when one goes in search of a God higher than God. As in Anselm: God is that being than which nothing greater can be thought, the final ground and measure of thought.
This idea sprang from Christian beliefin the one God over, through, and in all (Eph. 4:6)."'
The first Greek steps towards a Christian idea of God were unwittingly indicated by Xenophanes of Colophon (570-475 BC).
He denounced the moral deficiency of the gods with their comic anthropomorphism and proposed one god, a universal mind (KRS,
166—72). There was one god, who excelled all gods and men, and who did not resemble men 'in body or in thought' (KRS, 170), and 'all of him sees, all thinks, all hears' (KRS, 172). Equally daring is the claim that this one intellectual god directly and drastically affects the physical world; 'without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind' (KRS, 171). Aristotle saw Xenophanes as the first
"9 See Grant, Jrenaeus of Lyons, 43.
2° Seneca (De benefictis 7.1.5) speaks similarly of things which are unknowable or useless.
*" 'The omnipotence of God cannot be handled without the acceptance of rational principles; yet this produces difficulties at two points: firstly, how can God embrace all things without contradictions?; secondly, how can the apparent contradictions between the old and new testament texts be reconciled with the idea of a consistent God? R. Schwager, 'Der Gott des Alten Testaments und der Gott des Gekreuzigten. Eine Untersuchung zur
Erlésungslehre bei Markion und Irenaus', ZATh 102 (1980), 289-313.
One God: Intellect and love
monist or henist?? who, when referring to the whole world, 'said the One was god'.*3 The metaphysic of mind continued through Heraclitus, Parmenides and Anaxagoras to Plato and to Aristotle whose first cause is mind or thought, a thinking of thinking (Met.
12.1074b).
It is astonishing how much of what Irenaeus says about the creator, who excels nature, has Stoic overtones, despite the fact that the Stoic creator, in contrast with the Christian God, is so immanent as to be identical with the world.*4 As in Irenaeus, Stoic theology of cosmic mind builds on a universal natural awareness of God, who is an immortal, rational, animate being. Divine providence precludes evil. Creator and father of all, he pervades his creation and his powers give rise to the many names of the gods
(Diogenes Laertius 7.147; LS, 54.4).?5 What wicked men do wrong, he sets right, making the crooked straight and turning chaos into order, so welding into one 'all things good and bad that they all share in a single everlasting reason' (Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus;
LS, 541).
God must be proved and providence defended. The order of the universe, the temperate climate and the movement of the heavenly bodies cannot be accidental (Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.1 2-15; LS,
54C). Our preconception joins to divine immortality the characteristics of benevolence, caring and beneficence (Plutarch, De communibus notits 1075E: LS, 54K). The teleological proof, frequently repeated (Cicero, VD 2.88; LS, 541), springs from the beauty of the world (Cicero, VD 2.93; LS, 54M) and is supported by forms of the ontological argument (Sextus Empiricus, adv. Math. 9.1 33-6,
Cicero, ND 2.16; LS, 54D-£). Three proofs of providence point to universal government by the gods: the gods exist and they must govern the world; the surpassing beauty of the world proves that things are under the control of a sentient, animate nature; finally,
22 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.g86b21.
23 Aristotle, Met. 1.986b24. This linked him historically with the Eleatics whom Plato
(Theaetetus 1816) had described as 'partisans of the whole'.
24 This Stoic element has been widely ignored, despite the outstanding work of Michel
Spanneut, Le stoicisme des péres de V'église (Paris, 1957).
25 LS refers to A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. (Cambridge,
1987).
Divine Intellect the wonder which we feel before marvels of heaven and earth secures belief in providence (Cicero, WD 2.75~—6; LS, 54)).
Yet God works from within more than from above. Divine power is found in universal reason, mind, intellect. More concretely, fire and all changing things like water, earth, air, sun, moon and stars, the totality of things and men who have gained immortality, embody god (Cicero, VD 1.39; LS, 548). Governed by its intellect and reason, the world is perfect and complete in all the parts which fit together for human benefit. Man is made to contemplate this perfection of which he is a tiny part (Cicero, ND 2.37—9; LS, 54H). The beauty and variety of nature are full of surprises, such as the peacock, which was created for the sake of its tail (Plutarch, De Stoccorum repugnantis 1044D; LS, 540). The harmony of good and evil is no great problem since they can only exist in 'a kind of opposed interdependence. And there is no such opposite without its matching opposite.' Justice, courage, moderation, prudence and truth all depend on their opposites. Good and evil, fortune and misfortune, pain and pleasure 'are tied to each other in polar opposition'. Nature did not intend evils but they followed as cgncomitant with certain goods. The thinness of the skull, needed Tor thinking, promoted the inconvenience of fragility. As soon as nature produced virtues, vices also emerged, 'thanks to their relationship of oppositeness'
(Chrysippus, On providence 4, at Aulus Gellius 7.1.1-13; LS, 54Q).
Xenocrates has been identified as the founder of the metaphysic of mind, which dominates later ancient philosophy.?° The monad is mind (frag. 16) which contemplates the ideas. Here we find the theme that is later found in Irenaeus, in Christian and later Platonism, that the ideas exist in the divine mind.*" Alcinous placed Intellect above the Soul in a threefold hierarchy which Irenaeus would have rejected (Didaskalikos 1 0). First-principle was the first unmoved
Intellect; then came the ever-active Intellect of the entire heaven which thought all things together, and finally came the potential
Intellect which was a power of the world — soul. The first Intellect thinks of itself as did the first mover of Aristotle, and resembles the sun, which gives sight and the desired object which promotes
26 Kramer, Der Unsprung der Geistmetaphysik, 126.
*7 See above at note 3.
One God: Intellect and love ey the movement of desire. Immobile, it moves the second Intellect of the whole heaven.?® Now the first God is eternal, ineffable, complete in itself, that is without needs, eternally complete, that is perfect at every point. It is deity, substantiality, truth, symmetry,
Good. 'I do not name these terms as a list of separate attributes but with the idea that they all are conceived in the same unity.' God is Good because as far as possible, he spreads his benefits on all things, and is the cause of everything good. He is Beauty because he is himself by nature perfect and proportioned. He is Truth because he is the principle of all truth as the sun is the principle of all light. He is Father, because he is the cause of all things and because he sets in order (kosmein) the Intellect of the heavens and the world-soul in accord with himself and his thoughts. For it is by his will that he has filled all things with himself, having awoken the world-soul and having turned it to himself because he is the cause of the Intellect which is in it (Did. 10).
So the metaphysic of mind moves through Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics to the Middle Platonic philosophy of Irenaeus' day. 'This development has been traced in more detail elsewhere.' Its effect on Irenaeus is crucial for his biblical sources alone cannot explain his use of Intellect as a designation of God. He moves into the philosophical paradigm in order to demolish his opponents and to claim popular piety.
Irenaeus holds as compatible the cosmic Intellect, which is 'the way religious and pious people may speak of God' (2.13.3), and a recognition of God as ineffable, 'above all these things and therefore beyond description' (2.13.4).3° For God's Intellect and light are
28 Why does it think of itself? It is the highest beauty and must think the most beautiful thought possible. Since there is nothing more beautiful than itself it thinks perpetually of itself.
29 See my The emergence of Christian theology (Cambridge, 1993), chapter 2.
3° Trenaeus does not explicitly engage with Middle Platonism, but there is an interesting parallel where both use the Xenophanes tradition in two ways: to avoid clashes between positive and negative theology and between the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of the divine fullness. The conflict between negative and positive theology emerges in the incompatibility of the three ways of knowing God (negation, analogy, eminence). If nothing can be predicated of God, how can analogy or eminence be applicable? A solution is found when Middle Platonism turns back to Xenophanes and claims ambiguity.
Pseudo-Aristotle describes God as eternal, one, homogeneous, spherical, neither unlimited nor limited, neither still nor moving in de Melisso Xenophane Gorgia 3.977437 to 977b21
Divine Intellect not at all like our intellect and light (2.13.4), which means that negation and eminence are necessary to each other, Irenaeus does not separate the account of God as total vision and total hearing from a higher account of the ineffable universal father. 'They are ways of speaking (or not speaking) about the same being,*'
DIVINE INTELLECT
IN IRENAEUS
The richness of Irenaeus' account of God is displayed in his varied use of the theme of Xenophanes' cosmic mind. From this short statement he develops an argued theology: God as Intellect 1s indivisible and simultaneous, sovereign and homogeneous, entire and identical, the source of all good things.8° (Aristotelis qui fertur de Melisso Xenophane Gorgia libellus', ed.
H. Diels, Philosophische und historische Abhandlungen der kénighehen Akademieacler Wissenschaften zu Berlin,
Aus den Jahren 1899 und 1.g00 (Berlin, 1goo), See translation in Aristo, Complete works, ed. J. Barnes (Princeton, 1995). Simplicius explains that God is at rest 'according to the abiding that is beyond motion and rest' (On Aristotle's Plysies 23.1314). God is spherical only in the sense of being 'everywhere homogeneous' (Piys, 23.1719) and simple,
These ways of speaking about an ineffable transcendent God resemble the account of Irenaeus, ~ ~ Nor Irenaeus as for Platonists the divine fullness must be reconciled with transcendence, Kudorus deseribed Pythagorean monism and dualism ay allernate ways of viewing the same realities, Wadorus' account of the Pythagoreans (at Simpl, Poy, 181.477) and Nenophanes place the supreme God above the opposites which arise from him. The Platonisation of Pythagoreanism tried to reconcile monism with dualism. In Eudorus the polarities, although derived from the One are not present in it, Monism was indicated by the higher way and dualism by the second way (Ploy, 181,10-12). Before Mudorus there seems no evidence of his view that the One is the highest God and beyond the opposites.
The Pythagoreanism of Xenophanes (Ps, 29.1 aff) is best explained on the assumption that originally it was Mudorus who interpreted Nenophanes in this way, Conversely, the positioning by Mudorus of a One that is a most high God beyond the Pythagorean
Opposites is best explained on the assumption that his interpretation of Nenophanes played a decisive part (J, Mansfeld, 'Compatible alternatives', in Anowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. K. van den Broek, Ty Baarda and J. Mansfeld (Leiden, 1988),
104). Again in Aleinous, the three ways (negation, analogy, eminence) may be seen as alternative ways of conceiving the First God, ranked in order of value, This points back to Hudorus? distinction between two accounts (logol) or ways (tropol) which are ranked in order of preference, Lam indebted to Mansteld's excellent essay,
A distinction between the two might be found in Clement's account of the ineffable
One (sf, 5.12.81.4 82.4) and his extended account (sf, 4.25.156-7) of the logos, son or Intellect as the circle of one thing as all things, Che first is infinite because the limits of the One have come together; the second iy infinite through its inclusion of all things, but the son is in the father and the father in the son,
Commonplaces ave clues to uncommon ideas, For in the different way a thinker uses a commonplace we learn the newness of his thought, Clement of Alexandria uses
XNenophanes' cosmic Intellect in another two ways: to describe the universality of saving
One God: Intellect and love
Indwwistbility and simultaneity The cosmic Intellect is indivisible and simultaneous. The complicated mentality of Bythos, who produces Ennoia, Thelesis, followed by Aletheia and Monogenes (or Intellect), recalls the dithering of Homer's Zeus. How different is the universal God whose thought is his will and his perfected act: for he is 'all thought, all will, all intellect, all light, all eye, all hearing, entire source of all good things'
(1.12.2), The divine mind has universal knowledge and power. Acts of thought and perception which are separate in mortals are united in clivine simplicity which fulfils perfectly and simultancously the act which it conceives. 'The divine mind of the Gnostics is not like that; it is divided and confused like fabled Zeus.
Sovereignty and homogeneity pale o p:
A more extended account of the sovereign Intellect is found at 2.13.
Intellect cannot be derived, as itis by the Valentinians from Bythos (depth) and Ennoia (though), for it is prior to these, being 'principal and supreme ... and source of all mental activity' (principale et summum .... el. fons universt sensus) (2.13.1). Idea (ennoia) cannot be the mother of intellect as the Gnostic hierarchy claims. 'Uhe intellect produces thoughts; thought cannot produce the intellect. Intellect is the father of idea/thought (ennora). Within Intellect ts that hidden and invisible mental state (ad/ecio) from which all intellectual activity derives.
From this mental state ,are generated mind (sensus, which the Latin translator sometimes uses as the equivalent of nous or Intellect), idea/thought (ennoia), and consideration (enthymesis). Intellect includes all these which are not entities outside the intellect. In all mental activities sensus (i.e. mind/ intellect) remains within, creating and administering. It governs all freely by its own power and will.
The sequence of mental process may be set out: idea/thought (ennoia) to consideration (enthymesis) to reflection (sensatio) to providence (sf, 7.2.5); and to describe the universal spiritual presence which makes the whole of life a festival of praise, and where 'the thoughts of the saints eut through not only the air but the whole world, and God's power with the speed of light sees through the whole soul' (st. 7.7.35-7):
Divine Intellect deliberation (consilium) to judgement (cogitationis examinatio) to word
(verbum) which may be inner or uttered (2.13.2).% All these are one and the same for they take their beginning from Intellect, and are governed by Intellect which is invisible, yet like light emits a ray but cannot be reduced to its emissions. Still more, God the father of all cannot be reduced to a series of mental acts for his thoughts are not like our thoughts (Isa. 55:8). He is 'simple, not compounded, without different members, entirely alike and equal to himself, for he is wholly intellect, wholly spirit and wholly intellection, wholly thought, wholly reason, wholly hearing, wholly seeing, wholly light and entire source of all good things, which is the way devout and faithful people speak of God' (2.13.3). This account of God is not restricted to Christians; it is the way in which all religious and pious people speak of him.
For all his universality, this God is ineffable. He could be rightly described as 'the mind which embraces all", but he is not like the human intellect. He may be called light but he is different from our kind of light. Whatever terms we apply to him are used in love, but we know that our thoughts of him go far beyond them.
This points to the transcendence of our intellect as well as of his.
For if human understanding is not caused by or reducible to its inseparable emissions, much more is God (¢otus sensus) not separable or reducible.
Either the universal father (Intellect) is void or everything is in him and remains in him (2.13.7). Just as shapes (circles, squares) drawn in the water still share in the water, so every mental act continues to participate in the father. Much that the Valentinians have said about the emissions of the pleroma could be affirmed of human minds; but they simply commit the anthropomorphic fallacy which Xenophanes attacked. The timetable of the Valentinian emissions cannot be applied to the God who is over all and who, in a simultaneous, equal, similar and homogeneous manner, is total Intellect, logos, vision, hearing, mind, word.
33 See A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau, Jrénée de Lyon, Contre les hérésies, Book 11, vol. 1, SC
294 (Paris, 1982): 'pensée', 'considération', 'réflexion', 'déliberation', 'discours intérieur',
'verbe immanent', 'verbe proféré'.
One God: Intellect and love AI Similarly life, incorruption and truth are perfections which exist always in God and are not separable phenomena (2.13.9). We may plausibly pile together all intellectual acts and verbal utterances when we consider the human mind; but such a procedure is entirely implausible in any account of God (2.13.10). The rejection of all anthropomorphism stands firm.
Entwety and identity Irenaeus returns to the theme of Intellect in Against heresies 2.28.
He sets the question in a wider setting and shows positively that the divisions which he disallows between the aeons or emissions cannot apply to the relation between God and the word.
All thinking must be done in the context of the rule of truth (2.28.1). For the rule is truth itself and saves us from being diverted in every direction. Rather we should inquire into the mystery and economy of the living God and, as we learn what great things he has done for us, we should increase in our love for him. The rule of faith provides the belief from which we should never fall: one God created the world and gave man the power to grow.
If the scriptures still leave us with many puzzles, we should not try to solve them by finding other gods (2.28.2). The scriptures are the perfect work of the logos and the spirit, to whom we are inferior.
There is nothing wrong in leaving things unexplained. We do not know why the Nile rises, why birds migrate, why tides change, not to mention the weather. These things have their causes; but only
God knows what they are.
We are forever learning-and God is forever teaching us (2.28.3).
Only three things will remain the same: faith, hope and love, all directed to one God. In hope we receive more and more as we learn of God's inexhaustible riches. Holding to our faith we find in scripture one harmonious truth. We know that at a fixed time
God produced the world and do not ask what he was doing before this. To claim that he was derived from defect and ignorance is blasphemy (2.28.4).
34 inquisitionem mysterit et dispositions exsistentis Det.
Divine Intellect Anthropomorphism reserves nothing for the uniqueness of God.
The plurality in God which divides his thought from his logos, life and Christ is drawn from human psychology.*° But (as Xenophanes also went on to say) these things cannot be applied to God. The scriptures tell us that God is all entire intellect, logos, active spirit, always the same. Therefore these divisions and processes cannot exist in him.
God, who is all intellect and logos3° speaks what he thinks and thinks what he speaks (2.28.5). His thought is logos, and logos is intellect, and universal Intellect which includes all things in its comprehension is the father himself. The division of this unity projects human processes on to the logos whose generation cannot be described (Isa. 53:8).
Such anthropomorphic subdivision is irrational and presumptuous (2.28.6). Even the son does not know all that the father knows.
How was the son produced from the father? No one knows but the father and the son. Valentinus, Marcion, even principalities and powers have no access to this knowledge. We do not know how
God produced material substance, or why some of his creatures sinned and rebelled against him (2.28.7).
~ Finality and generosity of the divine economy We come now to Irenaeus' last move. He has argued at length for the indivisible integrity of Intellect as the source of all good things.
How is this good dispersed? The answer is the divine economy, which unites the many economies of God as the Platonic forms are united within the divine Intellect.
In Against herestes 4.11, Irenaeus begins from the longing of prophets and just men to see the future advent and perfection of their lord (cf. Matt. 13:17). This is only possible because the coming lord of both testaments disclosed the future as part of God's continuous plan from creation to law, and then from reproof to adoption, to incorruptible inheritance and perfection. All progress
35 Such a move is as foolish as the snub-nosed Ethiopian gods and the red-haired Thracian deities whom Xenophanes ridiculed.
3° totus exsistens mens, totus exsistens logos.
One God: Intellect and love
springs from the command to man that he should increase and multiply (4.11.1); all points to the divine economy and shows how different God is from man (4.11.2). God is, man becomes; God makes, man is made; God is always the same, but man grows from beginning through middle to end; God makes well, and man is well made; God's perfection is shown in his glory which depends on man's enrichment.
Here the theme of divine perfection serves a more positive purpose than that found in Books 1 and 2, for man is the receptacle for God's goodness, the instrument whereby God is glorified. Those who bear fruit, those who use the talents he has given, are the great receivers, the faithful servants who enter into the joy of their lord.
And while God indeed does good, good is done to man. And while God is indeed perfect in all things, equal and like to himself; since he is all light, all mind, all substance and source of all good things, man receives progress and increase towards God. For while God is always the same, man when found in God will always advance towards God.3/
The divine perfection is a contrast to human contingency. Yet it is not aloof from that contingency but active to bring it from small things to great, from creation to glorification; all of which points to the goodness of God who does good to a man who receives good. Against dualist detractors of creator and creation, Irenaeus shows how divine perfection needs a contingent creature capable of consummation. The God who pours out his goodness in changing ways is a greater God than a perfection which exists in stagnant isolation.3° The pattern of his out-pouring, his economy whereby man is embraced and brought to God, now becomes the centre of interest.39
To sum up this section: God as Intellect 1s indwisible and simultaneous, sovereign and homogeneous, entire and identical, the source of all good things to man. In face of Gnostic myth, Irenaeus develops an intricate argument, the influence of which cannot be exaggerated. For, without a refined theism, christology is a keystone without an arch.
37 homo in deo inventus semper proficiet ad deum.
38 Cf. Plutarch, Moralia 1129, de latenter vivendo, 4..
39 See following chapters 3 and 4.
Divine Intellect 2.4
PLOTINUS When we come to Plotinus, however, we find someone who 1s profoundly useful for the study of Irenaeus. Historically there is no connection; but we shall find that, philosophically, there is near identity in their response to Gnosticism. The objections which Plotinus raises against Gnostics are the same as those which Irenaeus had raised: proliferation of first principles and denigration of the physical world.*° Against them he sets, as does Irenaeus, the vision of a divine Intellect where all things are joined in beauty and contemplation; the Gnostic subdivision of Intellect leads to infinite regress. Between the two accounts there is neither an historical dependence nor a similar social setting. Irenaeus and Plotinus thought that Gnostics were logically wrong and set out argument accordingly. ck Plotinus sees the objections in a wider context, for the Pythagorean tendency to elemental division, proliferation and hierarchy had begun in Middle Platonism and was to take off in later
Platonism. Plotinus sets out his own three principles of One, Intellect and Soul and asks whether it could be possible to add to them and if'so, in what way. Intellect is what it is, 'always the same, resting in a Static activity'. There is no duality (thinking of thinking), for the 'intellect that thinks that it thinks will be altogether the same as the intellect which did the thinking'. A separation of these elements would be absurd, since even in human minds it would be blamed as folly. 'To proliferate further would be still more absurd because of infinite regress.*' 'But if one even introduced another, third, distinction ... one which says that it thinks that it thinks that it thinks, the absurdity would become even clearer' (Enneads 2.9.1).47 One
4° 'This does not mean that there is total identity between the complex ideas of Plotinus and Irenaeus. It means, as in the following chapter, that they used similar arguments against Gnostics on the proliferation of first principles and denigration of the physical world.
For differences on other points see R. A. Norris, Jr, 'Irenaeus and Plotinus answer the Gnostics: a note on the relation between Christian thought and Platonism', USQR 36,1
(1980), 13-24.
I have referred elsewhere to the multiplication of intermediaries as the 'bureaucratic fallacy'. Its devotional value is indicated by T. S. Eliot in his poem, "The naming of cats', where the ultimate name is described as 'the thought, of the thought, of the thought of the name', '® Here and elsewhere I have followed the translation of A. H. Armstrong, LCL (London,
1979)
One God: Intellect and love
must not 'make superfluous distinctions in the realities of the intelligible world which the nature of these realities does not admit: we must lay down that there is one intellect, unchangeably the same, without any sort of decline, imitating the Father as far as is possible to it' (Enn. 2.9.2).
Even soul retains a unity through the light which it receives and gives, just as all things 'must exist for ever in ordered dependence upon each other; those other than the First have come into being in the sense that they are derived from other, higher, principles' (Enn.
2.9.3). Itis wrong to claim that the soul produced the world through a defect or moral decline, for the universal soul is complete. The direction is not down but upwards, inspired by intelligible realities which elevate. Despite all the unpleasant things in it, the world is the best imaginable likeness of the intelligible world. For 'what sphere could be more exact or more dignified or better ordered in its circuit (than the sphere of this universe) after the self-enclosed circle there of the intelligible universe?' (Enn. 2.9.4). Incredibly, the Gnostics think that they themselves possess a divine soul, while the whole heaven and the stars, far superior in order and design, lack immortal soul (Enn. 2.9.5). With meretricious pomposity, they try to improve on Plato's account of how things were made, but succeed only in dragging the unity of Intellect down to the plurality of the world of sense:
And by giving names to a multitude of intelligible realities they think they will appear to have discovered the exact truth, though by this very multiplicity they bring the intelligible nature into the likeness of the senseworld, the inferior world, when one ought there in the intelligible to aim at the smallest possible number, and attribute everything to the reality which comes after the First and so be quit of multiplicity, since it is all things and the first intellect and substance and all the other excellences that come after the first nature. (Enn. 2.9.6)
When they stay with Plato, they are all right; but when they 'wish to oppose the ancient teachings they introduce all sorts of comings into being and passings away, and disapprove of this universe'.
Intellect contains all intelligible things within itself. "We have here, then, one nature, Intellect, all realities, and truth: if so, it is a great god; or better, not just a god, but it demands as of
Dwine Intellect right that this which it is is universal god' (Enn. 5.5.3). As such it sees all things being itself pure light like the light of the sun (Enn.
5-5-7):
Intellect unites the universe and all the gods within itself, so that it, the one god, is all. For they are all together and each one again apart in a position without separation, possessing no perceptible shape . . . But this, the (intelligible)
All, is universal power, extending to infinity and powerful to infinity; and that god is so great that his parts have become infinite. For what place can we speak of where he is not there before us? (Enn. 5.8.9)
Zeus leads other gods, spirits and souls through sight.
But he appears to them from some invisible place and dawning upon them from on high illuminates everything and fills it with his rays, and dazzles those of them who are below, and they turn away unable to see him, as if he was the sun. Some endure him and gaze upon him, but others are troubled in proportion to their distance from him.
Those who see may not have the same vision, some seeing archetypat justice, others the source of integrity. Yet in the end some see the totality of the intellectual world from beginning to end.
Zeus then sees these things, and with him any one of us who is his fellowlover, and finally he sees, abiding over all, beauty as a whole, by his participation in the intelligible beauty; for it shines bright upon all and fills those who have come to be there so that they too become beautiful. (Enn.
5.8.10) 2.5
KNOWLEDGE, LOVE AND UNITY OF THE
DIVINE INTELLECT
Irenaeus' empiricist tendency and openness to learn the economies of God (2.25.3) mark a new stage in the development of theological method. Yet much about God cannot be known. The account of the divine Intellect ends with the prophets and the economy by which God brought man to perfection (4.11). They are stupid who believe that they can transcend God and know him from above
(4.19.2). The God who holds the earth, from the heights of heaven to the depths of the abyss, in his fist, is beyond the human mind. His
One God: Intellect and love
hand surrounds the vastness of the physical universe and penetrates the secrets of the human thought. Yet knowledge of God is possible through the love which leads us to him by his word, who contains the pattern of the world he made. God's word and wisdom, son and spirit were always with him (4.20.1). The one God and father who is above all and in us all, has delivered knowledge without limit to his son (Matt. 11:27) who has the key of David to open and shut the book of the father (Rev. 3:7) (4.20.2). The word and wisdom of the father were present with him to create and to witness his joy when the world and humanity were made (Prov. 3:19, 20; 8:22—5 and 27-31) (4.20.3). The great God is known through love which is focussed in his word, who by his incarnation has joined end to beginning, man to God. He in turn is known through the prophets who told of his coming and our salvation (4.20.4)
As the word unites the economies of glory by which man, found in God, ever advances to God, we return to the first divine attribute which we noted — his unity. Irenaeus' account of God as universal
Intellect is reflected in a consistent rejection of dualism. In response to the divisive tendency of Gnosis in so many conceptual fields,
Irenaeus argues for the unity of God,* the unity of man, and the unity of the history of salvation, the scriptures and the church.
When any one of these points of unity is denied the others are also affected.*+ All heresies deny creation and the salvation of the flesh
(4 pref. 4). God is separated from the world (2.31.1), goodness is separated from justice. 4° The old testament is either incompatible with or, at best (as in the Letter to Flora; Epiphanius, Panarion haereses 33.3-7) an image of, the new testament. The higher God of Gnostics is incompatible with Plato's good creator who is always joined to justice (3.25.5) and close to the Epicurean god who does nothing for himself or for others (3.24.2).
The unity of God and man in the incarnate Christ hinges on the reality of the flesh of Christ, without which there could be no recapitulation of Adam (3.22.1). His ineffable generation from the father is one with his generation from the virgin, through the 43 M. A. Donovan, One right reading? (Minnesota, 1997), 55: 'there is one God who is alone
Lord, Creator, Father and container of all'.
44 Ysabel de Andia, 'Irénée, théologien de l'unité', NRTh 109 (1987), 31.
45 S. Petrement, Le Dieu séparé. Les origines du gnosticisme (Paris, 1 984).
Dwine Intellect sign of Immanuel (3.19.2). The unity of the spirit, who spoke by the prophets and who makes men sons by adoption, is claimed (3.21.4).
The economy of salvation, governed by a rhythm or movement of father, son and spirit, is mirrored in the unity of the old and new testaments (4.10.1; 4.23.1). One God, through his spirit, unites his church, 'for where the church is, there is God's spirit and where
God's spirit is, there is the church and all grace' (3.24.1). Only the one spirit can impart truth and incorruption to the church, which is one in its catholic extension and its apostolic tradition.4° Mankind, divided into three classes by the heretics, is united by the image and likeness of God. No man is consubstantial with God but all may participate in him.4" The unity of mankind is central to the Gnostic debate.
We return to Elijah who is no longer on Mount Carmel but emerging distraught from the cave. The prophets, says Irenaeus, did not see the face of-God openly but they saw the economies and mysteries which would lead man to the open vision of God
(4.20.10). Elijah stands in the presence of the lord who is not in the wind, the'earthquake or the fire but in the murmur of a soft breeze.
Here is indicated to Eljah, indignant at the sin and slaughter on Mount Carmel, the ultimacy of the peace to which the name of Irenaeus pointed. The gentleness and tranquillity of God's incarnation pointed to the mildness and peace of his kingdom. 'For, after the wind which shatters the mountains, the earthquake and the fire, will come the calm and peaceful times of his kingdom, when, in utter tranquillity, the spirit of God will bring life and growth to mankind' (4.20.10). To this life and growth we turn as we consider the divine economy.
4° de Andia, 'Irénée, théologien de P'unité', 46.
47 Thid., 40.
48 See A. Orbe, 'La definicion del hombre en la teologia del s. 1', Greg 48 (1967), 522-76.
PART II Economy God makes, man is made. As wise architect and sovereign king, God creates from nothing all that is, ordering opposites by his artistry.
His plan unites disparate elements from creation to Christ.
So it is that a metrical line is beautiful in its own kind although two syllables of that line cannot be pronounced simultaneously .
. a line which is not simultaneously possessed of all its virtues but which produces them in order.
Augustine, On true religion, 22,42 For just as God spoke then to Adam in the evening, as he searched for him, so in the last days, with the same voice, he has visited the race of Adam, searching for it.
(5.15.4) The world in fact discerned by modern science has an openness in its becoming which is consonant, not only with its being a world of which we are actually inhabitants, but also a world which is the creation of the true and living God, continually at work within the process.
J. C. Polkinghorne, Science and providence (Boston, 1989), 99
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