Fr. Florovsky: Theological Thought of St. Irenaeus

St. Irenaeus delineates the legitimate areas of theology in his Adversus Haereses. The "basic idea" remains the same — by this he means that the original deposit remains always one and the same. Theology consists of "working out the things that have been said," of "building them into the foundation of faith." This is done by "expounding the activity and dispensation of God for the sake of mankind," by "showing clearly" God’s long-suffering, by "declaring why one and the same God made some things subject to time, others eternal," by "understanding why God, being invisible, appeared to the prophets, not in one form, but differently to different ones," by "showing why there were a number of covenants with mankind," by "teaching the character of each of the covenants," by "searching out why God shut up all in disobedience that he might have mercy on all," by "giving thanks that the Logos of God was made flesh, and suffered," by "declaring why the coming of the Son of God was at the last times," by "unfolding what is found in the prophets about the end and the things to come," by "not being silent that God has made the forsaken Gentiles fellow heirs and of the same body and partners with the saints," and by "stating how this mortal and fleshly body will put on immortality, and this corruptible incorruption" (I, 10). Clearly St. Irenaeus does not consider this enumeration to be exhaustive and comprehensive. Rather, it is no more than a sketch, a guide of some of the areas in which speculative theology can be utilized. He himself discusses far more areas of theological concern.

God, for St. Irenaeus, is the Creator, the "Father of all," the "Source of all goodness." He is "simple, uncompounded, without diversity of parts, completely identical and consistent, beyond the emotions and passions" of created existence (II, 13). God as Creator gives existence to everything; creation was an act of his freedom, a free act, for "he was not moved by anything" (I, 1). God in his "greatness" cannot be known to man, he cannot be "measured" (IV, 20). It is God’s love, which brings man within the grasp of knowledge of God but this knowledge is limited, it is not knowledge of God’s "greatness" or his "true being." Our knowledge of God comes from the revelation of the Logos of God (IV, 20; III, 24). God is without need. He did not create because he had need of man and creation. Neither does he need our love, obedience, and service. God gives, confers, and grants (IV, 14).
God is "absolute and eternal." Creation is "contingent" and, being contingent, having their beginning in time, created beings "fall short of their maker’s perfection" (IV, 38). Akin to the thought of Theophilus of Alexandria and other Apologists, St. Irenaeus thinks of man at creation as "immature" — "being newly created they are therefore childlike and immature, and not yet fully trained for an adult way of life. And just as a mother is able to offer food to an infant, but the infant is not yet able to receive food unsuited to its age, so also God could have offered perfection to man at the beginning, but man, being yet an infant, could not have absorbed it" (IV, 38).
Not only is man’s participation in the redemptive work of Christ a process but the very plan of redemption is a process and — moreover, the very Incarnation, the reality of God becoming man, begins a process in the life of the God-Man that sanctifies every aspect and stage in the life of man. This is his well-known teaching of "recapitulation," of άνακεφαλαίωσις: There is no notion in the thought of St. Irenaeus of any form of passive holiness or passive righteousness. Everything is process, everything is dynamic, and everything is moving toward the goal of rebirth in Christ, of rebirth into incorruptibility, of rebirth into eternality, of rebirth leading to a vision and knowledge of God, of rebirth leading to transfiguration. The theme of the later Greek and then Byzantine fathers of the vision of God and of deification is also the thought of St. Irenaeus. As St. Irenaeus asks, what is the deification of created beings if not their participation in the divine life? Men will "see God in order to live; men will become immortal by the vision and will progress on the path to God" — per visionem immortales facti et peregrinantes usque in Deum. St. Irenaeus writes that "it is impossible to live without life, and the foundation or existence — ΰπαρξις — of life comes from participating — μετοχή — in God. To participate in God is to know — γιγνοσκειν — him and to enjoy his goodness” (III, 20). In the thought of St. Irenaeus everything is accomplished by God and by the will of God and yet man participates by a spiritually free acceptance of everything accomplished and revealed by God.
Since God is the cause of the being of all things, these created things, in order to participate in "incorruptibility," must remain "subject to God." Subjection and obedience to God conveys incorruptibility and "continuance in incorruptibility is the glory of eternity." "Through such obedience and discipline and training, man, who is contingent and created, grows into the image and likeness of the eternal God. This process the Father approves and commands; the Son carries out the Father’s plan, the Spirit supports and hastens the process — while man gradually advances and mounts towards perfection; that is, he approaches the eternal. The eternal is perfect and this is God. Man has first to come into being, then to progress, and by progressing come to manhood, and having reached manhood to increase, and thus increasing to persevere, and by persevering be glorified, and thus see his Lord. For it is God’s intention that he should be seen: and the vision of God is the acquisition of immortality; and immortality brings man near to God" (IV, 38). It has been observed and commented upon that St. Irenaeus taught in The Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching (15) that man before the Fall was immortal by nature. What appears to be contradictory is not necessarily the case if one analyzes the two different perspectives from which St. Irenaeus was writing in the respective texts. The interpretation involves that important "if" in St. Irenaeus — if man had kept the commandments of God if man had remained subject to incorruptibility. But in his thought, it is clear that this "if" is completely speculative and theoretical, not real and existential. The very nature of created existence and the depth of spiritual freedom in his thought render this "if" existentially meaningless.
God, invisible by nature, reveals himself, manifests himself to man by the Logos, the principle of all manifestation. And here there is simultaneity and reciprocity of knowledge and vision, for the Logos reveals God to man while simultaneously revealing man to God. And the Logos has become man so that men might become gods (V, preface).
Eternally the Son is the "Only-Begotten" of the Father. "His Begetting" is "in truth indescribable… Only the Father knows who begat him, and the Son who was Begotten" (II, 28). "The Son always co-exists with the Father" (II, 30). The "Son of God did not begin to be" (III, 18). "Through the Son who is in the Father and who has the Father in himself, He Who Is has been revealed" (III, 6). "The Son is the measure of the Father because he contains the Father" (IV, 4). "All saw the Father in the Son, for the Father is the invisible of the Son, the Son the visible of the Father" (IV, 6).
"There is one God, who by his Logos and Wisdom made and ordered all things… His Logos is our Lord Jesus Christ who in these last times became man among men so that he might unite the end with the beginning, that is, Man with God" (IV, 20). "God became man and it was the Lord himself who saved us" (III, 21). "He united man to God… If he had overcome man’s adversary as man, the enemy would not have been justly overcome. If it had not been God, who granted salvation, we should not have it as a secure possession. And if man had not been united to God, man could not have become a partaker of immortality. For the mediator between God and man had to bring both parties into friendship and harmony through his kinship with both, and to present man to God and to make God known to man. In what way could we share in the adoption of the sons of God unless through the Son we had received the fellowship with the Father, unless the Logos of God made flesh had entered into communion with us?" (III, 18). "The Lord redeemed us by his blood and gave his life for our life, his flesh for our flesh, and poured out the Spirit of the Father to unite us and reconcile God and man, bringing God down to man through the Spirit, and raising man to God through his Incarnation" (V, 1).
The Holy Spirit, the "unction," is referred to constantly by St. Irenaeus not only in credal forms but in terms of his activity — the "Spirit prepares man for the Son of God," the "Spirit supplies knowledge of the truth," the "Spirit has revealed the oikonomiai of the Father and the Son towards man," the Spirit is the "living water" which the Lord pours forth.