I’ve spent the last few months working through the works of St. Irenaeus.
Which to most readers probably sounds utterly uninteresting. You aren’t going to do that. That’s OK, though if you’re an Elder or Deacon or anything similar I’d like to gently suggest it would be good for you to read some Christians from before this century alongside the rest of your team. If that isn’t you, I hope you can profit from these older saints through the preaching and teaching of your local church.
What I would like to tell you is why I think Irenaeus in particular is worth your time. He’s a second century bishop from Lyons in modern France. He just crossed over with Polycarp—meeting him when Irenaeus was a child—who was one of John’s disciples. That makes Irenaeus a third generation Christian. In his writings he occasionally mentions a saying of John’s that isn’t in the Bible but was told to him by people who knew John well.
Here are three reasons that he’s worth reading, or worth you encouraging your pastors to read him:
He’s the same as us
Irenaeus has two major works that we have full versions of: a summary of the gospel called On the Apostolic Preaching and a larger more famous work called Against Heresies.
The first relates what he understood the faith to be, in two parts: a relation of the story of the Bible from Genesis to Christ, and a systematic exposition of Jesus’ life and ministry showing how he fulfilled the prophets. The second devotes a couple of books to teachings that were popular in his day, but then the remainder is his positive case for the Christian faith in significantly more depth.
There are some surprising emphases but in the main it all feels very ordinary. Sometimes people read the Church Fathers and wonder what’s special. It’s broadly what they think and what they’ve always been taught in their churches, with some surprising bits around the edge. That’s because they were the first person to say that. The fact that you believe (broadly) the same as a second century bishop is itself a wonderful thing. I find it tremendously encouraging.
It also makes me consider carefully the things I find surprising, because the Fathers may just have a point.
His method
Irenaeus teaches us how to read the Bible. He doesn’t read it the same way most 21st century evangelicals do. He’s at home with spiritual readings and he assumes that the Old Testament is a historical document about Jesus. He’s what we’d these days call a maximalist.
When we agree with someone’s conclusions but not their argument, we often ignore it. I think the argument matters much more than we usually allow. The right answer from the wrong argument is a problem. I find it easier to get on with people with the ‘wrong’ (according to me) answer and the right argument. Not least because you can clearly have a discussion because you agree on the terms of the debate and the theological method used to get there.
Irenaeus relentlessly insists that all the scriptures are about Jesus and that they all can be read spiritually to great profit. This was the method he learned from John via Polycarp. His use of the Old Testament reminds me of all the ways the New Testament uses the Old Testament that makes scholars feel a bit squiffy. Usually, evangelical scholars wave their hands and suggest that the New Testament writers under the influence of the Spirit were able to make theological moves we can’t.
Except the next couple of generations continued with their methods, not just their conclusions. I think we’re meant to as well.
It’s definitely true that these methods, untethered, can be used to wander off in all sorts of directions. That’s an argument to teach good and proper use rather than discard them entirely.
Recapitulation
Irenaeus’ major contribution to Western theology is the doctrine of Recapitulation. This is his argument that the atonement works because Jesus ‘recapitulates’ all the stories of the Old Testament. He redoes what Adam did. Mary and the Church (both at different points) redo what Eve did. And then this principle is true for every Old Testament character.
It sounds very similar to Keller’s ‘true and better’ model of preaching, because it is, though Irenaeus goes slightly further and says that’s what the whole point of Jesus coming is: to be a new Adam, a new Israel, a new Temple.
Why do I like this so much? It’s a model of the atonement that runs on the logic of story. What did you expect me to think!
Photo by Géarld Gambier
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nuakh 