St. Irenaeus of Lyon

130 – 202

Irenaeus of Lyons was born in Smyrna, in what is now western Turkey. As a boy he heard Polycarp preach — the bishop of Smyrna who had known the Apostle John personally. He grew up to become bishop of Lyon, in what is now southern France, after his predecessor Pothinus was killed in a persecution under Marcus Aurelius. He wrote in Latin for a congregation that spoke Gaulish. He was a Greek-speaking theologian doing pastoral work at the edge of the known world, and he became one of the most important thinkers in Christian history. Against Heresies — Adversus Haereses — was written around 180 AD in five books. It is the most comprehensive refutation of Gnosticism ever written, and it remains the primary historical source for understanding what the Gnostics actually believed. The Valentinians, whose system Irenaeus most thoroughly dissects, taught that the God of the Old Testament was not the supreme God but a lesser, ignorant deity — the Demiurge — who had created the material world as a mistake. They taught that Christ came not to redeem material creation but to rescue spiritual beings from it. They taught that ordinary Christians could not grasp the real truth, which was reserved for a spiritual elite. Irenaeus took all of this seriously enough to quote it at length before dismantling it. His response was not merely negative. Against the Gnostic appeal to secret tradition, he articulated the principle of apostolic succession: the churches founded by apostles, with their bishops in unbroken succession, are the public custodians of the public faith, verifiable by anyone. Against the Gnostic denigration of material creation, he articulated the doctrine of recapitulation: Christ, the second Adam, lives through every stage of human life and sanctifies it from within, reversing what Adam had broken. The body is not a prison. Matter is not evil. The resurrection is physical. History is going somewhere. His most quoted line — "The glory of God is man fully alive" — is almost always lifted out of context. The full sentence is: "The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God." The Gnostics believed that God's glory was served by the soul escaping the body. Irenaeus believed it was served by human beings becoming fully what they were created to be. The difference between these two positions is the difference between two entirely different religions. Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all draw on Irenaeus. Catholics cite him on apostolic succession and the canon of Scripture. Orthodox claim him as a pre-schism Eastern Father and cite his eucharistic theology. Protestants in the Reformed tradition cite his insistence on Scripture's public authority against Gnostic esotericism. He is one of the few figures in Christian history claimed with equal seriousness by all three streams of the tradition. Irenaeus may have been martyred during the persecution under Septimius Severus around 202 AD — the sources are not conclusive. What is certain is that the tradition he preserved proved stronger than the movements he opposed. Valentinianism is a historical curiosity. The faith Irenaeus defended is still being practiced.