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Irenaeus of Lyons (The Early Church Fathers)

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Irenaeus of Lyons (in modern France) was the first great expositor of Christian theology, writing around 175 A.D. Born in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and taught by the disciples of the apostles, he wrote as a churchman using scripture, his own thoughts, and a few other early writings (Justin Martyr, Papias, Ignatius of Antioch) to explain and defend the deposit of faith he had received. Irenaeus defined his theology in conflict with the Gnostics who frequently shared churches with the Christians but advocated an often wildly divergent theology from that shared by the orthodox Christians. His big book was "Against the Heresies," a five-volume description and refutation of the Gnostic beliefs. He describes the Valentinian Gnostics in detail; the Marcionites and other schools get less attention. Thus Irenaeus can be read both to find out what Gnosticism was like, and also to find out about Christian theology in the second century A.D.

No modern unabridged translation of "Against the Heresies" exists. Dominic Unger translated only the first of the book's five volumes, that which consists of a simple description of Gnostic beliefs without detailed refutation. It is unclear if any subsequent volume will appear. In the meantime, Robert Grant in this book "Irenaeus of Lyons" presents an abridged translation of the whole book including virtually all of the the main passages that touch on important theological issues. Even if the complete translation appears, I think general readers will want to stick with Grant's translation. I have the Unger volume and can testify that Irenaeus unabridged is hard to plough through, partly because the beliefs he is refuting seem so colossally strange and partly because Irenaeus tends to repeat the main points several times. Hence few but hard-core specialists would want to read the whole thing.

In his preface, Grant usefully points out the importance of "hypothesis" (meaning the overall plot line) and "economy" (meaning dispensation or sub-plot, more or less ) in Irenaeus's thinking. The "hypothesis" and "economy," which together make what Irenaeus calls "the Rule of Faith" (basically something like the later Nicene and Apostolic creeds), is the big story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. To Irenaeus, the problem with the Gnostics is that they broke free from this Rule of Faith in order to answer the puzzles of theology and scripture. Irenaeus insisted that the salvation brought by Christ is a "recapitulation" of the blessed state of Adam and Eve before the fall, not a return to some world of pre-material and pre-Creation "eons" (manifestations of the Godhead). Irenaeus testified that he was taught this Rule of Faith by the martyr Polycarp who had it from the apostle John, and that it is identical to the theology taught by the Roman bishops who likewise traced their teaching back to apostles Peter and Paul. While the Gnostics used their concept of a pre-Creation world of interacting "eons" and a division between merely carnal and truly spiritual Christians to explain scriptural puzzles like the many names of God in the Old Testament, the divine Christ and the human Jesus, faith vs. works, and predestination vs. moral responsibility, Irenaeus demonstrated through Scripture (he knew all four of the Gospels, the letters of Paul, 1 and 2 John, and Revelation) that their explanations could not be accepted as responsible interpretations. (Irenaeus later summarized the "overall plot line," together with refutations of Rabbinic Jewish attacks on Christianity in his "Proof of the Apostolic Preaching").

It's also worth noting the pervasive physicality of Irenaeus's theology. Eucharist is the real body of Christ because otherwise how would our body be redeemed? Likewise, there must be a thousand-year earthly rule of the resurrected saints, otherwise Christ would not be redeeming our bodies, and so on. Indeed at some points he seems to be viewing God as a kind of super-huge body surrounding the cosmos. His explanation of the Trinity defines the persons solely by how they relate to the material world rather than by their internal relations: Jesus is defined as the God the Father's Word that creates all things and the Spirit as God's Wisdom that governs the motions of all things. Later Christian theologians lost interest in Irenaeus, whose work seemed somewhat out of date and his works, originally written in Greek, survived only in obscure Latin and Armenian translations. Fortunately scholarship has revived these fascinating early works.

In sum, this is a very useful edition of an important testimonial to the Christian teaching in the first generations after Christ. To judge by this testimony, the orthodox bishops of the early church had great difficulty plumbing the depths of what Paul, John, and the other New Testament writers wrote. Yet they knew in their gut that the Gnostics explanations had to be wrong. Irenaeus, by holding on to the essential "plot line" (hypothesis) of salvation through Christ's recapitulation of the original unfallen state of physical Creation, began the long process of drawing out the "treasures of wisdom and knowledge" hidden in the New Testament.

I found Dr. Grant's work to be well-written and lucid. If there are those who are willing to criticize his work for not revealing every little detail about the life of St. Irenaeus, it's because we actually don't know much about him above what he wrote and the later comments of other writers - most of them incidental to other conversations. Grant has collected the essential information about the Bishop of Lyons and has, in my opinion, covered the most interesting parts of "Against Heresies" in his translation.

Recommended for those who are students of early Christian history and heresies. Irenaeus writes cleanly and it's not too difficult to discover the trajectory of the gnostic threat from his arguments. In fact, Irenaeus, as noted by Pelikan, is the father of the traditional Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican three-fold authority (Scripture, Tradition and apostolic authority).

The introduction to Irenaeus's methodology is brief, but very useful. The text of Against Heresies, however, is only an incomplete reproduction of an earlier translation. If you are looking for the whole text of Against Heresies, this book does not contain it.

Overall, a great little book. The introductory sections by Grant are really helpful. My only real complaint is that it does not have every chapter or paragraph. Nowhere was this mentioned; neither in the preface, nor introductory chapters. So buyers need to know that this is an abridged addition. I was really disappointed when I realized, for example, that Book III chapter 2 was missing. I think this is a significant chapter in the book. There are lots of other chapters, & whole paragraphs missing. I assume the editor left out what he felt was redundant. So to find out what you missed, you'll have to hit the Early Christian Writings web site & take a glance to see if there are chapters & paragraphs missing that you might want to read.

This work attempts to introduce the reader to the important Church Father Irenaeus, who presided as a Bishop in Lyons in around the 2nd century AD.

Irenaeus is remembered today for his long anti-Gnostic polemic called the 'Detection and Overthrow of Gnosis, so Falsely called.' Irenaeus was strongly concerned to differentiate what he saw as Orthodox, correct Christianity as handed on by the Apostles and confirmed by scripture, with the bizarre and chaotic mythology of the diverse Gnostic sects, who seemed to constantly churn out endless works claiming to be divinely inspired scripture which talked about various strange motifs and ideas, many of which seemed to totally reverse accepted ideas.

Irenaeus saw the most dangerous heretic in the form of the brilliantly gifted Gnostic Valentinus, who grafted Gnostic teachings into Orthodox Christian theology. Irenaeus saw this as extremely dangerous to the Church and to Christianity itself, which he felt had a definite and exact continuity as well as very clear doctrines which were totally opposed to what the Gnostics believed. Hence much of Irenaeus's work is devoted to exposing and refuting Valentinian 'Gnosis' by showing its blasphemous contempt for God's goodness and the goodness of the created world, its incoherent and chaotic mythology, and its bizarre symbolism and interpretation of the Bible.

Unfortunately looking back now, it can't be said Irenaeus was as calm and objective as he should have been, and his demonisation of Gnostics as agents of the devil and heretics set a very dangerous precendent within Christianity itself for the later brutal persecution of pagans, Jews and Muslims, and alleged 'heretics' within Christianity itself. His obsession with correct doctrine, while saving Christianity from many of the more absurd ideas of Gnosticism, also laid the dark seeds for persecution, and probably helped make it much harder for Western Christianity to develop a genuine interior search for God and absolute reality, which was after all what the Gnostics said they were seeking. We must remember that while a brilliant man, brilliant men also often made mistakes and their ideas often had negative as well as positive consequences for Christianity as a whole.

Nevertheless, Irenaeus is to be admired as a brilliant and original theologian whose unwavering faith in the goodness of God and the created universe, helped set a strong precedent in later Christian theology to see God's beauty and glory mirrored in the created world and within ourselves, and later formed an integral and deeply positive spiritual doctrine which is to this day an excellent antidote to any Gnostic-style pessimism about this world and our life within it.

Review of Irenaeus of Lyons (Early Church Fathers) by Robert Grant

Grant did a nice job summarizing difficult sections of St Irenaeus, and a good job in presenting them to us in a nice manner. Unfortunately, he spent most of his time summarizing the wrong sections and missed many key opportunities to explicate more helpful topics in St Irenaeus's thought. For some reason academics think it is very important to summarize what Gnostics and ancient feminists believed about reality. Are they, too, Gnostics and feminists? Probably. Much of the book was laborious and boring--and this comes from someone who has read all five books of St Irenaeus' Adversus Haerisis.

That is not to say the book is without merit. As noted earlier, Irenaeus' key arguments are presented in an easy-to-find manner (this is made even easier if one reads it on the Amazon Kindle, as I did). We have Irenaeus's very clear teaching on apostolic succession as a demonstration that the Gnostics are pale imitators of the Faith, and given their lack of AS, they cannot prove their faith. We see how to interpret Scripture--interpreting it in light of the regula fide within the context of the church. Most importantly, (if sadly too briefly) we have the Recapitulation of all things in Christ.

Conclusion

Is the book worth getting? I'm not sure. Kindle makes the purchasing easier (if going by the paperback price the answer is a definite no). I'm beginning to suspect this Early Church Fathers Series by Routledge is not as superior as many wannabe scholars say it is. You get the same text you will find in Schaff or CCEL.org, although the text is admittedly organized better. The introductory sections are varying. Brian Daley's section on Gregory is good, as is Anatolios's on St Athanasius. Neither, however, is remarkable enough to justify the purchasing price. Neither section really alters one's perception of the Father (since the people who take the time and money to read these books are already reasonably familiar with said fathers).

As noted earlier, Grant's intro to Irenaeus does not stand out one way or another. He covered the basic ground, but did not say anything too different from what you would find in a theological or church history dictionary. He spent too much time incredulating (forgive the neologism) on Irenaeus's belief that Christ was 50 years old, and too little time on the actual recapitulatory hermeneutic itself.

I was looking for an impartial, scholarly assessment of what little we know about Irenaeus of Lyons, his role in the history of the Roman Catholic church, and a nice translation of "Against Heresies." This book offers none of that.

First, the prose is bloated and overblown. Mr. Grant likens Irenaeus' contribution to Christian history as being like a gothic column; this simile is inappropriate in so many ways, I don't know where to begin. He is obviously enamored of his subject, but his enthusiasm doesn't carry over to the presentation. This book contains nothing more than can be found for free on the Internet.

The translations themselves are nothing short of disappointing. Not that there's anything wrong with the translation itself, I'm in no position to judge that, but the abridgement is nothing more than a paragraph here, paragraph there approach. Only passages that mirror his unilluminating commentary are included. The books back cover claim that "significant parts" of his work have been newly translated should be read "parts significant to this bland commentary."

This book does nothing new for early Church scholarship, is a poor introduction to Irenaeus of Lyons, and is dull to boot.

While finding a complete copy of Irenaeus' 5 volume set is difficult, this work is a fine stepping stone on the way to commiting oneself to delving into the lunicy of Gnostic "thought."

In essence, this work is accurately described as a "best of" Against Heresies. Not exhaustive by any means, this volume stills provides more than enough to chew on for those who have never been properly introduced to the approach, style, and "tact" of this surprisingly entertaining apostolic leader.

As a manager of two large Christian book stores, I highly recommend it!