Human beings are earth that suffers,” according to the Letter of Barnabas.1 What he had in mind is clearly the biblical imagery of God taking clay from the earth and fashioning a human being (cf. Gen. 2:7), pummeling, stretching, forming the clay into a particular figure. The clay is passive in the hands of God; it “suffers” as it is being formed. Yet he clearly also has in mind the “sufferings” that we all undergo throughout our lives. This is indeed the common lot of humankind, though experienced in as many different ways as there are human beings. That this is indeed so is also a perennial subject for human reflection and questioning.
It is an even more poignant question for a Christian, for one struggling to affirm faith in a good God who has created everything such that it is “very good” (Gen. 1:31), in the face of the overwhelming suffering and tragedy in the world around us. Theologians have become accustomed to referring all this suffering back to “the fall,” the sinful act of human defiance against God that resulted in the world as we currently experience it—the fallen world and the human beings that God has come to redeem and re-create in Christ. Yet why did he wait so long, and why has his action not been more decisive? Why leave the world, as the apostle Paul put it, “groaning in travail” (Rom. 8:22 RSV)?
However, when we look at the full scope of Paul’s words, it seems that there is something more going on. “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail until now,” that is, creation as a whole has been in labor, giving birth to children of God, and it is to this end that God himself has subjected creation: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19–21). Thus it is God himself who has subjected creation to decay, to labor pains, but has done so “in hope,” looking forward (not backward) to the manifestation of the children of God in the liberty of their glory.
To see this perspective fleshed out more fully, we can do no better than to turn to the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons, near the end of the second century.2 Irenaeus really is the first great theologian of the church. It is in his writings that we can see coming together, for the first time, all the elements that form the structure and framework of theological reflection thereafter: the writings of the apostles and evangelists, now used as Scripture alongside the Scriptures we now call the “Old Testament”; an appeal to the canon or rule of truth, a creedlike statement of faith acting as a norm in theological reflection, alongside a developed understanding of tradition and episcopal succession; and especially important for this essay, a fully worked out understanding of the “economy” of God, the overarching arc of God’s work leading from Adam to Christ. In a striking manner, this economy incorporates creation and salvation together into the unitary work of God, which is that of making human beings in his own image and likeness. For Irenaeus, “the work of God” consists specifically in creating human beings (Haer. 5.15.1),3 that is, taking clay from the earth and fashioning it into his image, molding it with his hands so that humans might reflect his glory, or indeed that they might share in his glory and incorruptibility, becoming not only vessels of his power and operations but also themselves the glory of God. For as Irenaeus puts it, “The glory of God is the living human being” (Haer. 4.20.7). Yet what he means by this, as we will see, is somewhat surprising.
It is important to notice the particular character of Irenaeus’s theological methodology, which might best be described as phenomenological. That is, he repeatedly emphasizes that our goal is to see things as they are, the truth about God and the human being.4 For Irenaeus, the basis for seeing things in this way is articulated in the canon of truth, which he lays out for the first time near the beginning of his magnum opus, Against Heresies (1.10.1). By appealing to a canon, Irenaeus does not mean to curtail all thought but rather means to make reflection possible, for only if we have a canon or criterion (in the sense of a “yardstick”) are we able to reflect meaningfully at all. When he continues by suggesting fruitful avenues for exploration (Haer. 1.10.3), he urges that in such theological reflection, we should never substitute something else for the fundamental hypothesis of the Christian faith. This happens when we ask counterfactual questions, as we are prone to do. For instance, if we were to ask, could it have been otherwise, or what would have happened if, say, Adam had not fallen, we would necessarily be grounding our theological reflection on something other than the way in which God has in fact revealed himself in Christ. Instead, we should search out the wisdom and the power that God has revealed in Christ, the crucified and exalted Lord, as preached by the apostles in accordance with the Scriptures.5 One avenue he suggests, however, is precisely our question: Why was God “patient in regard to the apostasy of the angels who transgressed and in regard to the disobedience of the human being?” And how is it, as Paul says, that “he imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (cf. Rom. 11:32; Haer. 1.10.3)?
Against Heresies 4.37–39: Learning by Experience
There are two sections of Against Heresies in which Irenaeus provides a sustained analysis of these questions: 4.37–39 and 3.20.1–2. These two extended passages offer us much fruit for reflection and deserve to be studied closely before we go on to comment on what he says, and perhaps more important, how he can say what he says.
He describes Against Heresies 4.37–39 as an exposition, from Scripture, of “the ancient law of human liberty,” the fact that “God created man free, having, from the beginning, power over himself” (Haer. 4.37.1).6 Only such creatures are capable of initiative and response, and this is of fundamental importance, for only such creatures are capable of changing their mode of existence, of growing into the immortality of God. Irenaeus draws out the presuppositions in his opponents’ question by rephrasing it rather bluntly:
“But,” they say, “he should not have created angels such that they were able to transgress, nor human beings such that they immediately [statim] became ungrateful towards him, because they were created rational and capable of examining and judging. And they are not like irrational or inanimate creatures which are unable to do anything of their own will but are drawn by necessity and force towards the good, with one inclination and one bearing, unable to deviate and without the power of judging, and unable to be anything other than what they were created.” (Haer. 4.37.6)
His answer is that it would not have benefited either God or human beings for this to have been the case. Communion with God would have been something neither desired nor sought after; it would occur by nature and not by choice (Haer. 4.37.6). Freedom, for Irenaeus, is a precondition for creatures to grow into what they are called to become, for creatures to enter into communion with God, and so be transfigured.7 Irenaeus continues, in 4.37.7, by citing Matthew 11:12 and 1 Corinthians 9:24–27 to emphasize the need for struggle, and this on the grounds that endeavor heightens the appreciation of the gift. Moreover, he continues, as the faculty of seeing is desired more by those who know what it is like to be without sight, so also is health prized more by those who know disease, light by contrast with darkness, and life by contrast with death.
In Against Heresies 4.39.1, Irenaeus develops this analysis by contrasting two types of knowledge: that gained through experience and that arrived at by opinion. He points out that the tongue learns of bitterness and sweetness only through experience, and he argues that, in the same way, the human mind receives the knowledge (disciplina) of the good (obedience to God, which is life for human beings), through the experience of both good and evil (disobedience, which is death), and so is in a position to reject the evil. In this way, through experience of both, human beings come to cast away disobedience through repentance and become ever more tenacious in their obedience to God. But if someone tries to avoid the knowledge of both good and evil, he will, in Irenaeus’s striking language, both forget himself and kill his humanity (Haer. 4.39.1).
In 4.37.3, Irenaeus claims that the heavenly kingdom is more precious to those who have known the earthly kingdom, and if they value it more, they will also love it more: and loving it the more, they will be more glorified by God. Irenaeus then concludes:
God therefore has borne8 all these things for our sake, in order that, having been instructed through all things, henceforth we may be scrupulous in all things, and, having been taught how to love God in accordance with reason, we may remain in his love. God exhibits patience [magnanimitatem] in regard to the apostasy of human beings, and human beings are taught by it, as the prophet says: “Your own apostasy shall heal you.” (Haer. 4.37.7, quoting Jer. 2:19)
He then immediately continues by placing this particular action of God within the economy as a whole: God thus has determined all things beforehand for the perfection of the human being, and toward the realization and manifestation of his saving plans. Thus goodness may be displayed and righteousness accomplished, and thus the church may be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). Thereby finally, the human being may be brought to such maturity as to see and comprehend God (Haer. 4.37.7).
That Irenaeus can inscribe human apostasy into the unfolding of the divine economy is very striking. It indicates various points. First, it indicates that Irenaeus did not consider the economy simply as a plan that progresses automatically. Rather, as we have seen, God created beings capable of initiative, since only such beings would be able to respond freely to God and to love him. Second, it clearly indicates that Irenaeus does not think, as we are inclined to do, in terms of God having to substitute a “Plan B” when human beings ruin “Plan A” (but more on this later).
So, for Irenaeus, the aim of the whole divine economy is twofold: first, the perfection of humans by, second, the realization and manifestation of the saving plans of God, a perfection that, at the same time, displays his goodness and realizes his justice.
Finally, in this passage, when discussing the question of human freedom, Irenaeus appears to isolate each person’s relationship to God by emphasizing the need for each to gain personal experience and to endeavor to love God more. The section nevertheless ends with the assertion that through this process the church, a community, is conformed to the image of the Son, and in this way each is brought to such perfection as to see and comprehend God.
So far we have been looking at Against Heresies 4.37 and 39. In 4.38 Irenaeus approaches the same problem from a different angle. He argues that God could have created the human as perfect or as a “god” from the beginning, for all things are possible to God. However, created things, by virtue of being created, are necessarily inferior to the One who created them and hence fall short of the perfect. They are of a later date, infantile, and thus unaccustomed to, and unexercised in, perfect conduct (4.38.1). Yet, as it is possible for a mother to give an infant solid food, so also God could have made humans “perfect” from the beginning, but they, being still in their infancy, could not have received this perfection (4.38.1).9
As a creature, the human can never be uncreated, can never cease existing in the mode proper to a creature, that is, being created. But the aim of this creating or fashioning of humans is that they should come to be ever more fully in the image and likeness of the uncreated God. There can be, for humans, no end to this process, for they can never become uncreated. Human perfection instead lies, according to Irenaeus, in continual submission to the creative activity of God, through which the human is brought to share in the glory of the Uncreated (Haer. 4.38.3).
Finally, Irenaeus concludes 4.38 by outlining the preceding discussion in a few brief strokes: “It was necessary, first, for nature to be manifest; after which, for what was mortal to be conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and the corruptible by incorruptibility, and for the human being to be made in the image and likeness of God, having received the knowledge of good and evil” (Haer. 4.38.4; cf. Gen. 1:26; 3:5; 3:22; 1 Cor. 15:53; 2 Cor. 5:4).
Thus creation and salvation, the appearance of human nature and the conquering of mortality by immortality, both belong to the same economy, the purposeful arrangement of history. In this economy the acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil has its place, contributing to the realization, in the end, of the original divine intention: making the human in the image and likeness of God.
As we have seen in Against Heresies 4.37–39, Irenaeus speaks of God’s patience in the face of human apostasy and explains apostasy, within the framework of God’s overall economy, by the general principle of the need for newly created humans to acquire experience of both good and evil, in order to hold ever more firmly to the good and to continue indefinitely progressing toward God, thus becoming ever more fully in his image and likeness.
Against Heresies 3.20: The Sign of Jonah
Irenaeus treats the same question of God’s great patience in the face of human apostasy in Against Heresies 3.20.1–2. Yet this time he brings out certain other aspects, in particular how the role of Christ fits into this divine economy. He begins 3.20 by explaining that God was patient with human apostasy, both because he already foresaw the victory that would be granted to the human through the Word and, following the words of Christ to Paul, because his “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Irenaeus suggests that it is in this way, through our own weakness and mortality, that God reveals his goodness and magnificent power (Haer. 3.20.1).
As an example of this, Irenaeus gives the case of Jonah. By God’s arrangement, Jonah was swallowed by the whale, not so he would perish, but so that once he was cast out, he would be more obedient to God and give more glory to the One who had unexpectedly saved him. Irenaeus then continues:
So also, from the beginning, God did bear10 human beings to be swallowed up by the great whale, who was the author of transgression, not that they should perish altogether when so engulfed, but arranging in advance the finding of salvation. This was accomplished by the Word through the “sign of Jonah” [Matt. 12:39–40] for those who held the same opinion as Jonah regarding the Lord, and who confessed and said, “I am a servant of the LORD, and I worship the Lord God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” [Jon. 1:9]. So human beings, receiving an unhoped-for salvation from God, might rise from the dead, and glorify God, and repeat, “I cried to the LORD my God in my affliction, and he heard me from the belly of Hades” [Jon. 2:2]. And they might always continue glorifying God, and giving thanks without ceasing for that salvation which they had obtained from him, “that no flesh should glory in the Lord’s presence” [1 Cor. 1:29]. And that human beings should never adopt an opposite opinion with regard to God, supposing that the incorruptibility which surrounds them is their own by nature, nor, by not holding the truth, should boast with empty superciliousness, as if they were by nature like God. (Haer. 3.20.1)
For Irenaeus, then, God has borne the human race from the beginning, while it was swallowed up by the whale. For Irenaeus, there is no lost golden age of primordial perfection, no time when, hypothetically (and counterfactually), we might not have needed Christ.11
Such language, which one can find in other fathers,12 sounds strange to us, largely, I suspect, because we are used to thinking of God “before” the creation—deciding, in an all-too-human manner, what he is going to do and accomplishing it—as Plan A, but then having to respond to the fall with Plan B. As I pointed out at the beginning, Irenaeus (Haer. 1.10.3) specifically asserts that theological reflection is not to start from any other (hypothetical or counterfactual) position. It is not to conceive of another God or Christ, other than the ones proclaimed by the apostles, in accordance with the Scriptures (Haer. 1.10.3). We are rather to seek out God’s wisdom made manifest in the Christ preached by the apostles, “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). Adam, as the apostle asserted, is always already a “type of the one to come” (Rom. 5:14), that is, a sketch or an imprint of the reality that is manifest in Christ. So, as Irenaeus puts it, Christ is in fact the beginning who appears at the end (Haer. 1.10.3).
For Irenaeus, the starting point for all theological reflection is the given fact of the work of Christ, his life-giving and saving death. In a very interesting way, this is confirmed by James Barr’s study The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality: Barr points out that it is only from the perspective of the crucified and exalted Christ that we can speak of a “fall” in Genesis and of the human race being held thereafter under sin and death.13 Accordingly, in the passage we just looked at, Irenaeus speaks of God “arranging in advance the finding of salvation, which was accomplished by the Word through the sign of Jonah.” This was already a given, though it was unknown to humans prior to the incarnation; they then receive an “unhoped-for salvation,” not hoped for but divinely foreseen.
In one other part of his work, Irenaeus emphasizes his starting point in an even more startling fashion. Commenting on Paul’s description of Adam as a “type of the one . . . to come” (typos tou mellontos, Rom. 5:14), Irenaeus says: “Since he who saves already existed, it was necessary that the one who would be saved should come into existence, that the One who saves should not exist in vain” (Haer. 3.22.3).
Creation and salvation, for Irenaeus, are not Plan A and Plan B. Rather, they cohere together as the one economy of God, which culminates in the work of Christ. God’s saving plan can be understood and explained only from this starting point, which is at the same time the completion of the creative act begun in Genesis 1:26–27: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” In the Gospel of John (19:30), when Christ says from the cross, “It is finished”—and then God rests from his works on the day that Byzantine hymnography says “is the blessed Sabbath”14—we should recall what Pilate has just unwittingly stated, making clear what it is that is now finished: “Behold the human being” (John 19:5, my trans.).
This does not, however, mitigate human responsibility for the action of apostasy or the reality of the work of the devil in instigating it, for he is, as Irenaeus puts it, “the author of transgression.” The devil’s temptation, according to Irenaeus, is to offer what he could not give: Adam and Eve were beguiled through “the pretext of immortality” (Haer. 3.23.5; 4, preface 4). Trying to secure their life, they lost it; if they had lost it in the manner shown by Christ, they would have gained true immortality (cf. Matt. 16:25 and parallels).
So, for Irenaeus, death is the result of human apostasy, turning away from the one and only Source of life. It is instigated by the devil and thus is the expression of his dominion over the human race. But it is also embraced within the divine economy, the way in which everything fits together in God’s hand. When viewing this from the perspective of the salvation granted by Christ through “the sign of Jonah,” we can see that, as it was God himself who appointed the whale to swallow Jonah, so also the engulfing of the human race by the great whale was “borne” by God in his arrangement, his economy, which culminates in the finding of salvation.
But there is yet more! For Irenaeus, the newly created humans were inexperienced, and so they immediately gave way to temptation.15 And, so Irenaeus continues:
Such then was the patience of God, that human beings, after passing through all things and acquiring knowledge of death, then attaining to the resurrection from the dead, and learning by experience from whence they have been delivered, may thus always give thanks to the Lord, having received from him the gift of incorruptibility, and may love him the more, for “he to whom more is forgiven, loves more” [cf. Luke 7:42–43]. And may they know themselves how mortal and weak they are, but also understand that God is so immortal and powerful as to bestow immortality on the mortal and eternity on the temporal. And may they also know the other powers of God made manifest in themselves, and, being taught by them, may they think of God in accordance with the greatness of God. For the glory of the human being is God, while the vessel of the workings of God, and of all his wisdom and power, is the human being. (Haer. 3.20.2)
God thus is patient, while humans learn by experience their own weakness and death in their ungrateful apostasy. Knowing that having passed through this experience, and having an unhoped-for salvation bestowed upon them, they will remain ever more thankful to God, they are willing to accept from him the eternal existence that he alone can give. In this way humans become fully acquainted with the power of God. By being reduced to nothing, to dust in the earth, humans simultaneously come to know their total dependency upon God, allowing God to work in and through them, to deploy his power in them as the recipient of all his work. And both dimensions of this economy—the engulfing of the human and the salvation wrought by the Word—are simultaneously represented by Jonah, a sign of both the transgressing human race and its Savior.
By viewing death from the starting point of the work of Christ, the divinely foreseen sign of Jonah, Irenaeus can discern in the tragedy and absurdity of death an educational role within the divine economy: it enables humans to experience to the uttermost their weakness and mortality in their apostasy from God, the only Source of life, so that they might thereafter hold ever more firmly to God.
A little later in Against Heresies 3, Irenaeus draws out a further positive role for death, this time following Theophilus of Antioch.16 If death has come into the world as a result of sin (cf. Rom. 5:12), death can also be seen as a restriction of sin. Death cuts sin short, lest sin be immortal and as such unable to be healed. Viewed in this way, death can be seen, not so much simply as an arbitrary penalty imposed for disobedience, nor as a consequence of human transgression, turning away from the Source of life and so becoming mortal, but as a limitation on sin itself. As such, subjection to death can be seen as an act of mercy. It puts an end to sin through the resolution of the human into the earth. It is in this way that Irenaeus describes the action of God in response to the apostasy:
Wherefore also he drove him [Adam] out of paradise and removed him far from the tree of life, but not because he envied him the tree of life, as some venture to assert. Rather, having mercy on him, that he should not continue a transgressor forever, nor that the sin which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable. But God set a bound to his transgression, by interposing death and causing sin to cease, putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh into the earth. So the human being, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God.17
From this perspective, the subjection of humans to death was an act of mercy. Had humans been created in such a way as to be able to remain immortal after apostatizing from God (if, for instance, they possessed a life of their own, other than the one received from God), then sin and evil would also have remained immortal and thus irremediable, and so God’s economy would have been frustrated, conquered by the serpent (cf. Haer. 3.23.1).
Death as Eucharistic in Our Becoming Human
There are two further aspects to the mystery of death, as expounded by Irenaeus, when seen in the light of the mystery of Christ: seeing it in eucharistic terms and seeing it as the culmination of our becoming truly human. The life in death, begun by dying to sin in baptism as a “likeness” of Christ’s death (Rom. 6:5; cf. Eph. 4:13), finds fruition in the eucharistic self-offering of the Christian in their own bodily death in witness to Christ. This finds striking expression in Ignatius of Antioch, when he beseeches the Christians at Rome not to interfere with his impending martyrdom: “Suffer me to be eaten by the beasts, through whom I can attain to God. I am God’s wheat, and I am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of Christ.”18 He continues:
It is better for me to die in Christ Jesus than to be king over the ends of the earth. I seek him who died for our sake. I desire him who rose for us. The pains of birth are upon me. Suffer me, my brethren; hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die. Do not give to the world one who desires to belong to God, nor deceive him with material things. Suffer me to receive the pure light; when I shall have arrived there, I shall become a human being. Suffer me to follow the example of the passion of my God.19
For Ignatius, undergoing death in witness to Christ, the “perfect human being” or the “new human being,” is a birth into a new life, to emerge as did Christ himself, a fully human being.20
Irenaeus quotes the passage of Ignatius about becoming the wheat of God and takes the imagery further:
The wood of the vine, planted in the earth, bore fruit in its own time, and the grain of wheat, falling into the earth and being decomposed, was raised up manifold by the Spirit of God who sustains all, then, by wisdom, they come to the use of human beings, and receiving the Word of God, become eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ. Likewise also, our bodies, nourished by it, having been placed in the earth and decomposing in it, shall rise in their time, when the Word of God bestows on them the resurrection to the glory of God the Father, who secures immortality for the mortal and bountifully bestows incorruptibility on the corruptible [cf. 1 Cor. 15:53], because the power of God is made perfect in weakness [cf. 2 Cor. 12:9]. [This will take place] in order that we may never become puffed up, as if we had life from ourselves, nor exalted against God, entertaining ungrateful thoughts, but learning by experience that it is from his excellence, and not from our own nature, that we have eternal continuance, that we should neither undervalue the true glory of God nor be ignorant of our own nature, but should know what God can do and what benefits the human, and that we should never mistake the true understanding of things as they are, that is, of God and the human being. (Haer. 5.2.3)
There is clearly a close relationship between the processes that lead to the Eucharist and to the resurrection: It is by receiving the Eucharist, as we have made the fruits into the bread and the wine, and as the wheat and the vine receive the fecundity of the Spirit, that we are prepared for the resurrection effected by the Word. Then, just as the bread and wine receive the Word and so become the body and blood of Christ, the Eucharist, so also our bodies will receive immortality and incorruptibility from the Father. As such, death, within the overall economy of God seen in the light of Christ’s passion, takes on a eucharistic dimension, alongside its educative and limiting function: God’s saving plan as a whole can be described as the Eucharist of God.
Irenaeus, like Ignatius, also connects the eucharistic self-offering of the martyrs with their becoming human, for, as he puts it in the words with which we began, “the work of God is the fashioning of the human being” (Haer. 5.15.2). When Irenaeus says that “the glory of God is the living human being” (4.20.7), this is not simply an endorsement of what we might now think it is to be “fully alive” in this world. Rather, for Irenaeus, the “living human being” is the martyr, going to death in confession of Christ:
In this way, therefore, the martyrs bear witness and despise death, not through the weakness of the flesh, but by the readiness of the Spirit. For when the weakness of the flesh is absorbed, it manifests the Spirit as powerful; and again, when the Spirit absorbs the weakness, it inherits the flesh for itself, and from both of these is made a living human being: living, indeed, because of the participation of the Spirit; and human, because of the substance of the flesh. (Haer. 5.9.2)
The strength of God is made perfect in weakness, and so, paradoxically, it is in their death, their ultimate vulnerability, that the martyrs bear greatest witness to the strength of God. It is not that they reckon death to be a thing of no importance, Irenaeus emphasizes, but rather that in their confession they are vivified by the Spirit, living the life of the Spirit, who absorbs the weakness of their flesh into his own strength. When the Spirit so possesses the flesh, the flesh itself adopts the quality of the Spirit and is made like the Word of God (Haer. 5.9.3). The paradigm of the living human being is Jesus Christ himself, and those who follow in his footsteps, the martyrs, have flesh vivified by the Spirit.
Conclusion
In this way, then, without denying the catastrophic reality of death—that the creature brought into being by God to share in his own life and glory turned his back on his Creator and so ends up rotting in the grave—it is possible, nevertheless, to see the same reality embraced within the overarching economy of God. He makes death a means of bringing his creation, made from mud, to the full maturity of a human, made in the image and likeness of God, knowing both good and evil but rejecting the evil by turning in repentance to God. This, at the same time, demonstrates the wisdom and the power of God, a power that is made perfect in weakness.
This is possible, however, only if we start with Christ’s own passion and the theological vision it opens up. Retrospectively, this vision infuses the whole of our human, and humanly created, condition, with the power of God, the power that he manifests on the cross. The goal of the economy, for Irenaeus, is that we are brought to a true understanding “of things as they are, that is, of God and the human being,” so that we too might allow ourselves to be fashioned into the fullness of being human. The truth about God revealed in, through, and as Christ, the crucified and exalted Lord, coincides with the truth about humans. This transition, from seeing death as catastrophic to seeing it as embraced within the divine economy, is a transition that has been essential to Christian theology from the beginning. It is a transition from a merely human perspective to a properly theological perspective, thus indicating the transformative power of theological words and the importance of the task of theology. Joseph bore witness to this transition when his brothers fearfully approached him in Egypt, and he reassured them that while they thought they had sold him into slavery (which they had), in fact it was God at work, sending Joseph into Egypt “to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5). Peter makes this transition evident in his preaching: “This man [Jesus], handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law” (Acts 2:23). And the liturgy of John Chrysostom emphasizes this transition rhetorically when the priest says, “In the night in which he was given up,” and then, as if correcting himself, adds, “no, rather, gave himself up.” It is perhaps most poetically expressed in the hymn of John of Damascus now used in the funeral service:
I weep and I wail when I think upon death, and behold our beauty, fashioned in the image of God, lying in the tomb, disfigured, dishonored, bereft of form. O marvel! What is this mystery which befalls us? Why have we been given over unto corruption, and why have we been wedded to death? Of a truth, as it is written, by the command of God, who gives the departed rest.21
It is a catastrophe: we should weep and wail. But it is also a marvel, a miracle, a mystery, a sacrament. We have been wedded to death by the command of God, no less. In all these ways, then, the earth that we are is being fashioned, “suffering,” to use Barnabas’s expression, into the image and likeness of God, into what is truly human, into the children of God, for whose birth the world is currently “in travail.” But for our suffering, and ultimately our death, to be effective in this way, we too need to learn to raise the horizon and scope of our vision, to see things theologically, which, as Irenaeus reminds us, is to see things as they really are.
1. Barnabas 6.9, trans. and ed. Kirsopp Lake, Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, LCL (1913; reprint, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).
2. Many of the themes in this essay have been developed more fully, and in a broader context, in my The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006); Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity, Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013).
3. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies (= Haer.) 5.15.2. I am using the SC edition of A. Rousseau (SC 263–64 [Haer. 1], 293–94 [Haer. 2], 210–11 [Haer. 3], 100 [Haer. 4], 152–53 [Haer. 5] [Paris: Cerf, 1979, 1982, 1974, 1965, 1969]); and the translations in ANF, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1887; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), adjusting them as needed. Translations of Haer. 1–3 by D. J. Unger as revised by J. J. Dillon and M. C. Steenberg have also appeared in the series ACW 55, 64, 65 (New York: Paulist Press, 1992, 2012, 2012). For his Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching (= Dem.), I have used my translation in the Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997).
4. Cf. esp. Haer. 5.2.3; and Dem. 3. As Hans Urs von Balthasar observes, for Irenaeus “the primary aim is not to think, to impose Platonic intellectual or even mythical categories on things, but simply to see what is.” See his The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), 45.
5. Cf. Haer. 1.10.3; 2.25–28; Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons, 103–20.
6. On this section, see Philippe Bacq, De l’ancienne à la nouvelle alliance selon S. Irénée: Unité du livre IV de l’Adversus haereses (Paris: Lethielleux, Presses Universitaires de Namur, 1978), 363–88.
7. Cf. John Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 35–43.
8. Rousseau translates sustinuit by “a permis”; however, as Roger Berthouzoz observes, such a translation characterizes a later theological perspective, and so he proposes instead “a supporté,” in Liberté et grace suivant la théologie d’Irénée de Lyon: Le debat avec la gnose aux origines de la theologie chretienne (Fribourg, Switzerland: Éditions Universitaires; Paris: Cerf, 1980), 216n79. Irenaeus in Haer. 5.2.3 employs ἀνέχω in a similar context, a verb that in its New Testament usage (the background for much of Irenaeus’s vocabulary) always appears in the middle voice, generally with the sense of “to bear, to endure,” as in Matt. 17:17, etc. The Armenian of Haer. 4.37.7 seems to be an attempt to explain the middle voice, “He took to Himself” (cf. Haer. 35.2 in Texte und Untersuchungen, 137 line 23; for Haer. 5.2.3, see 157 line 5). The idea mentioned in Haer. 5.2.3, that God has borne our death that we might not be ignorant either of God or of ourselves, echoes Irenaeus’s startling words at the end of Haer. 4.39.1, cited above.
9. Denis Minns asserts that in arguing this way, Irenaeus is not claiming that the omnipotence of God is restricted by the nature of that on which he is working. See Minns, Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), 73–74. Gustaf Wingren earlier pointed out that the infantile state is not itself imperfect, despite only beginning to grow toward its full perfection. See Wingren, Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1959), 20, 26–35: a newborn child may well have “perfect” limbs yet is unable to walk or run until these limbs are exercised (which includes much falling down).
10. Although the Latin is fuit patiens, Rousseau suggests that the Greek was ἠνέσχετο and translates this again by “a permis”; I have preferred “bear”; see my comments above on Haer. 4.37.7. If the parallel with Jonah is indeed to hold, God was more actively involved in this event than is suggested by “a permis”; in Jon. 2:1, it is said that the Lord appointed (προσέταξεν) a great whale to swallow up Jonah.
11. Irenaeus does nevertheless write of the “prelapsarian” existence of Adam in occasional comments and discussion in Against Heresies, as in 3.22–23; the comments here, however, are made within the Pauline Adam-Christ framework. In Dem. 11–16, Irenaeus provides a sustained commentary on the creation and paradisiacal life of Adam and Eve; here, it is to be noticed, the theology that Irenaeus develops out of the opening chapters of Genesis is that of the dependency of the human race on God and the need for grateful obedience, human infancy and their need for growth: that is, Genesis functions, within the Demonstration, to establish the framework within which salvation history unfolds. See further, Thomas Holsinger-Friesen, Irenaeus and Genesis: A Study of Competition in Early Christian Hermeneutics, Journal of Theological Interpretation Supplements 1 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009); and Behr, Irenaeus of Lyons, 144–62.
12. See esp. Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 61, where he asserts that the first human squandered his capacity for spiritual pleasure, turning it instead toward the physical senses, ἅμα τῷ γενέσθαι, “together with coming into being.”
13. James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), esp. 89.
14. See the Doxastikon for Vespers on Holy Saturday; Greek and English text, in Michael Monos, ed., The Services of Holy and Great Week (Columbia, MO: Newrome, 2012).
15. Cf. esp. Haer. 4.40.3, where Irenaeus mitigates the disobedience of humans by attributing it to a lack of care and inexperience, in contrast to the conscious sowing of tares by the devil; cf. Haer. 3.23.3.
16. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum 2.25–26, trans. and ed. Robert Grant, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970).
17. Irenaeus, Haer. 3.23.6; Gen. 3:22–24; Rom. 6:2, 10. This positive evaluation of death, as putting an end to sin through the resolution of humanity into the earth, recurs in later patristic writings, e.g., Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio catechetica 8. On this dimension of death, see Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 64–66. The positive pedagogical value of death within the whole economy seems to be particular to Irenaeus.
18. Ignatius, To the Romans 4, trans. and ed. Lake, Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1.
19. Ignatius, To the Romans 6.
20. Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 4.2; Ignatius, To the Ephesians 20.1.
21. Idiomelon hymn, by John of Damascus, in the funeral service; Sticheron from the Aposticha, Friday Vespers, Octoechos, tone 8. See Paraclitique ou Grand Octoèque, trans. P. Denis Guillaume, 2 vols. (Rome: Diaconie Apostolique, 1979), 2:544.