Is the history of the early Church the story of a movement away from the religion of the New Testament into Hellenic speculation, institutionalism, and bare moralism? Many present issues are affected by the judgment made upon this matter, which the author seeks to illuminate in his Cambridge Dissertation. There is in St. Irenaeus a doctrine of Creation and Revelation by ÒThe Two Hands of God, and likewise ÒRecapitulation, and exposition of the Saving Work of Christ. The claim is here advanced that of these doctrines the former is an expression of the Hebraic conception of the Living God, who is transcendent yet immediately active in Creation and Revelation. The latter is thoroughly Pauline, and is a statement of the ÒClassic theology of the Atonement. Together with his necessary emphasis upon the Church and Episcopate, Irenaeus has preserved the Gospel of real redemption by personal faith in Christ.
A close study of aspects of Irenaeus' pneumatology that demonstrates how Irenaeus combined Second Temple Jewish traditions of the spirit with New Testament theology to produce the most complex Jewish-Christian pneumatology of the early church.
This work, which establishes Irenaeus as the most important of the theologians of the second century, is a detailed and effective refutation of Gnosticism, and a major source of information on the various Gnostic sects and doctrines. This volume contains Book One. +
A full, contextual study of Irenaeus of Lyons, the first great theologian of the Christian tradition. John Behr sets Irenaeus both within his own context of the second century and our own contemporary context.
Eschatology and ethics are joined at the hip, says Michael Allen, and both need theocentric reorientation. In Grounded in Heaven Allen retrieves the traditional concept of the beatific vision and seeks to bring Christ back into the heart of our theology and our lives on earth. Responding to the earthly-mindedness of much recent theology, Allen places his focus on God and the heavenly future while also appreciating ways in which the Reformed tradition provides a unique angle on broadly catholic concerns. Reaching back to classical ethics as well as its reformation by Calvin and other Reformed theologians, Grounded in Heaven offers a distinctly Protestant account of the ascetical calling to be heavenly-minded and to deny one’s self.
This book provides a full, contextual study of St Irenaeus of Lyons, the first great theologian of the Christian tradition. John Behr sets Irenaeus both within his own context of the second century, a fundamental period for the formation of Christian identity, elaborating the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy and expounding a comprehensive theological vision, and also within our own contemporary context, in which these issues are very much alive again. Against the commonly-held position that 'orthodoxy' was established by excluding others, the 'heretics', Behr argues that it was the self-chosen separation of the heretics that provided the occasion for those who remained together to clarify the lineaments of their faith in a church that was catholic by virtue of embracing different voices in a symphony of many voices and whose chief architect was Irenaeus, who, as befits his name, urged peace and toleration. The first chapter explores Irenaeus' background in Asia Minor, as a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna, his activity in Gaul, and his involvement with the Christian communities in Rome. The theological and institutional significance of his interventions is made clear by tracing the coalescence of the initially fractionated communities in Rome into a united body over the first two centuries. The second chapter provides a full examination of Irenaeus' surviving writings, concentrating especially on the literary and rhetorical structure of his five books Against the Heresies, his 'refutation and overthrowal' of his opponents in the first two books, and his establishing a framework for articulating orthodoxy. The final chapter explores the theological vision of Irenaeus itself, on its own terms rather than the categories of later dogmatic theology, grounded in an apostolic reading of Scripture and presenting a vibrant and vigorous account of the diachronic and synchronic economy or plan of God, seen through the work of Christ which reveals how the Hands of God have been at work from the beginning, fashioning the creature, made from mud and animated with a breath of life, into his own image and likeness, vivified by the Holy Spirit, to become a 'living human being, the glory of God'.
St Irenaeus is the most important theologian of the second century, laying the foundation for all future Christian thinkers. Irenaeus tells us that he had known Polycarp, who had himself known the apostles and been appointed by them as the bishop of the church of Smyrna. This direct contact with the immediate successors of the apostles was of importance for Irenaeus in his later defense of Christian practice and teaching. In this work Against the Heresies, he was the first to utilize the full range of apostolic writings in his controversy with the Gnostics and others. Uniting, for the first time, the whole history of God's activity in one all-encompassing divine economy, Irenaeus demonstrates that there is but one God, who has made Himself known through His one Son, Jesus Christ, by the one Holy Spirit, to the one human race, bringing His creatures made from mud into the intimacy of communion with Himself.
Eric Osborn's book presents a major study of Irenaeus (125–200), bishop of Lyons, who attacked Gnostic theosophy with positive ideas as well as negative critiques. Irenaeus's combination of argument and imagery, logic and aesthetic, was directed to the bible. Dominated by a Socratic love of truth and a classical love of beauty, he was a founder of Western humanism. Erasmus, who edited the first printed edition of Irenaeus, praised him for his freshness and vigour. He is today valued for his splendid aphorisms, his optimism, love of the created world, evolutionary view of history, theology of beauty and humour. Why have two millennia of European culture been so creative? Irenaeus points to Greek ways of thinking and the Christian Bible. Irenaeus's thought is complex, yet rewarding to the critical reader, and this full study of it will be of interest to theologians, historians of ideas, classicists, scientists and students.
