St. Irenaeus

The sources give different years for Irenaeus's birth and death, differ on when and whether he held the see of Lyons, and disagree on how he died. Where they differ, the text names who says what.

For Inquirers

Irenaeus was a boy in Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey, when he sat and listened to an old bishop named Polycarp, and what he remembered as an old man was the man himself: the spot where Polycarp used to sit and talk, the way he came in and went out, how he looked, and how he used to tell about the time he had spent with John, one of Jesus' own friends. Irenaeus wrote that he had "treasured them up not on paper, but in my heart."[^flor] He said it in a letter to an old acquaintance who had taken up teachings Irenaeus thought ruinous, and he used the memory to call him back. Irenaeus himself later moved far to the west, to Gaul, where he lived among the Kelts and was "accustomed for the most part to use a barbarous dialect," and he warned his readers not to expect polish. Against Heresies — Preface 3.1[^pref3] A terrible persecution fell on the Christians of his city while he was away on an errand to Rome; the aged bishop died in it, and Irenaeus was afterward made bishop in his place.[^jer35][^oca-life]

The teachers he spent his life answering claimed a secret tradition for the few, and held that matter was imperfect and the bearer of evil, so that God could not take flesh.[^arak-resp][^oca-life] Irenaeus answered that the faith was the one the apostles had handed to the Church, kept "as if occupying but one house" in churches scattered through the whole world, and that the God who made heaven and earth was the Father of Jesus Christ, who became flesh for our salvation.[^ah10-2][^ah10-1] One of his pictures is easy to hold on to. A mother could feed her baby solid food, he said, but she does not, because the baby cannot take it yet; so God could have made human beings finished from the first, but they were infants, and they had to grow. Against Heresies — Chapter 38 1.6[^ah38-1] Christ came to grow up with them, passing through infancy himself, so that they could take him in.[^ah38-2]

It is an unusual way to talk about the first human beings, and a reader meeting it for the first time may well be startled to hear them called children. The surprise is a fair reaction. The Church's hymns honor Irenaeus as a hierarch "bearing the name of peace," and the name suited him: when the bishop of Rome threatened to cut off the churches of Asia over the date of the great spring feast, Irenaeus wrote to urge him not to break the unity of the brothers.[^oca-life][^jer35b] Modern Orthodox writers read some of his sayings differently, for instance whether the Son of God would have become man had Adam never sinned, and what the famous line about the glory of God means, and the pages below say where.

Overview

• Who: Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum (Lyons) in Gaul, a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna, who in turn had known the Apostle John. OCA and OrthodoxWiki give his dates as about 130 to about 200 or 202; Robert Arakaki says he was born between 130 and 140.[^ow][^oca-life][^arak-cont]
• Main works: Against Heresies in five books, written about 180 against the Gnostic teachers, and the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, a short handbook of the faith addressed to a friend named Marcianus.[^ow-ah][^dap1]
• Chief teachings: the rule of faith received at baptism, the public succession of the churches against secret teaching, the unity of the Old and New Testaments, man created as a child who must grow, and Christ's "summing up" of Adam, from which the Church draws her teaching on Recapitulation and Theosis.
• What survives: the Greek of Against Heresies is largely lost; the whole work exists in a Latin translation that OrthodoxWiki dates soon after the Greek and F. F. Bruce to the fourth century, Books IV and V also exist in Armenian, and the Demonstration in Armenian alone.[^ow-ah][^bruce]
• Feast: 23 August.[^oca-life][^ow]

Summary

Irenaeus links the Apostle John to the Church of the late second century by a chain of three remembered voices: John, whose teaching Polycarp used to recount, Polycarp, who taught the boy Irenaeus, and Irenaeus, who carried that memory to Gaul and put it into books.[^flor][^oca-life] He is a bishop of the western frontier who apologizes for his style, a pastor whose church was struck by the Lyons persecution of 177 while he was away in Rome and who became its bishop afterward, and a controversialist who went through the writings of the Valentinian teachers and described their system so carefully that Hippolytus, writing against the same schools, sends readers to him instead of repeating it.[^pref2][^hipp] His answer to them rests on a single public faith, which he sets down in short form in Against Heresies I.10 and in the Demonstration; on the unity of the one God who made the world and spoke through the prophets; and on a picture of salvation in which the Son of God, to bring a created and childlike humanity to maturity, takes on every stage of human life and so gathers up Adam in himself. Later Fathers cite him: Cyril of Jerusalem as "Irenaeus the interpreter," Basil the Great as one who "lived near the times of the Apostles," and Theodoret as a man who "enjoyed the teaching of Polycarp." The Church keeps his memory as a hieromartyr on 23 August.[^cyril][^basil][^theod][^oca-life]

Life

Smyrna and Polycarp

Irenaeus does not say in any surviving work where he was born. OrthodoxWiki thinks he was a Greek from Polycarp's Smyrna, brought up in a Christian family, and the synaxarion for 23 August goes further: he was born at Smyrna in 130, was given the finest education in poetics, philosophy and rhetoric, was baptized by Polycarp and afterward ordained presbyter.[^ow][^oca-life] F. F. Bruce is more guarded, saying only that he was born and brought up in the province of Asia and came under Polycarp's influence in his youth, and Arakaki puts his birth between 130 and 140.[^bruce][^arak-cont] The year matters little to what he reports, because he is clear that he heard Polycarp as a child.

In his letter to Florinus, a friend of his youth who had risen to a place at the imperial court and had since begun to hold views that Irenaeus found intolerable, he sets down what he heard. He reminds Florinus of the old bishop:

"I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse — his going out, too, and his coming in — his general mode of life and personal appearance, together with the discourses which he delivered to the people; also how he would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord."[^flor]

If Polycarp had heard such opinions as Florinus now held, Irenaeus continues, he would have cried out, stopped his ears, and fled the room. Irenaeus sets a remembered face and voice against a novelty, and his claim to be heard rests on knowing who taught him.

Eusebius preserves another of Irenaeus's reports, from the third book of Against Heresies: Polycarp "was not only instructed by the apostles, and acquainted with many that had seen Christ, but was also appointed by apostles in Asia bishop of the church of Smyrna."[^euseb-iv14]

The same passage has the story, which Irenaeus had from men who heard Polycarp tell it, that John once went to bathe at Ephesus, found Cerinthus inside, and ran out of the bath-house crying that they should flee lest the building fall, "because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within."[^euseb-iv14] Eusebius also records Irenaeus's statement that John remained at Ephesus until the time of Trajan.[^euseb-iii23] The Martyrdom of Polycarp itself, according to the synaxarion for 11 March, was transcribed through a line of copyists from an account that rested on Irenaeus's recollections.[^syn-mar11]

Lyons and the persecution of 177

The accounts agree that Irenaeus came to Lugdunum, a Greek-speaking settlement in the Rhone valley, but they do not agree on when or in what rank. The synaxarion says Polycarp ordained him presbyter and sent him to the dying bishop Pothinus.[^oca-life] Jerome says only that he was a presbyter under Pothinus, who "ruled the church of Lyons in Gaul," and Bruce says Irenaeus later emigrated to the Rhone valley.[^jer35][^bruce] The persecution under Marcus Aurelius fell on the Christians of the Rhone cities in 177, as Bruce dates it, and OrthodoxWiki's timeline notes the martyrdoms of Pothinus, Blandina and Ponticus under that year.[^ow-timeline]

Irenaeus was away in Rome when the arrests came. Jerome says the martyrs of Lyons sent him to Rome "on account of certain ecclesiastical questions," and that he presented letters to Bishop Eleutherius.[^jer35] The synaxarion adds that while he was away all the known Christians of the city were thrown into prison.[^oca-life] Bruce, drawing on Eusebius, describes two letters leaving Gaul at the same time: one from the churches of Lyons and Vienne to their friends in Asia, and one to Eleutherus of Rome, which Irenaeus carried and which commended him as zealous for Christ's covenant.[^bruce] Pothinus, whom Jerome calls "nearly ninety years of age," died a martyr.[^jer35]

The persecution left a trace in the fragments attributed to Irenaeus. One of them tells how pagans seized the slaves of Christian catechumens and tortured them for secrets, and how, when the slaves said only that they had heard from their masters that the communion was the body and blood of Christ, the inquisitors turned on the martyrs Sanctus and Blandina. Blandina's answer, as Irenaeus gives it, was: "How should those persons endure such (accusations), who, for the sake of the practice (of piety), did not avail themselves even of the flesh that was permitted (them to eat)?"[^frag13] John Behr notes that the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons, which tells of Blandina, might have been written by Irenaeus; that is Behr's suggestion, not a claim any ancient text makes.[^behr4]

Bishop of Lyons

Jerome says that after Pothinus died Irenaeus "was put in his place," and Bruce says he was elected bishop when the church had had time to recover; the synaxarion dates the election to 178, a year after Pothinus's death.[^jer35][^bruce][^oca-life] OrthodoxWiki remembers him as the second bishop of Lyons but adds that there is "no clear evidence that he ever officially assumed the episcopal duties."[^ow] Later writers speak of him simply as bishop: Socrates names him bishop of Lyons in France, Theodoret calls him bishop of Lyons, and a fragment calls him martyr and bishop of Lyons.[^socrates][^theod][^frag7] Hippolytus calls him "the blessed presbyter," but the title proves little in either direction, since Irenaeus himself uses presbyter of the bishops of Rome in his letter on the paschal fast.[^hipp][^frag3]

Of his work as bishop the synaxarion reports one saying of Gregory of Tours, that "by his preaching he transformed all Lugdunum into a Christian city."[^oca-life] Arakaki, writing as a modern admirer, adds that Irenaeus was a missionary among a people without letters, which fits what Irenaeus says of himself in the preface to Against Heresies, that he lived "among the Keltæ" and was "accustomed for the most part to use a barbarous dialect."[^arak-cont][^pref3] In that preface he writes to a friend who had asked for an account of the Valentinian teaching and who is expected to develop for himself the points Irenaeus touches only briefly.[^pref3]

The Paschal Letter to Victor

Near the end of the century a dispute arose over the day of Pascha. The churches of Asia kept it on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month, whatever day of the week that fell on, while Rome kept it on the Sunday after.[^ow-anicetus] OrthodoxWiki dates the quarrel to about 195, when Victor of Rome disputed with Polycrates of Ephesus and broke communion with the Asian bishops; the OCA dates Victor's attempted excommunication of the Quartodecimans to about 190.[^ow-victor][^oca-quarto]

Jerome knows a letter of his to Victor on the paschal controversy, in which he "warns him not lightly to break the unity of the fraternity," and adds that even those who differed from the Asians did not support Victor.[^jer35] Socrates, too, says that Irenaeus censured Victor by letter for his immoderate heat.[^socrates] The OCA, on Eusebius's authority, speaks of a number of bishops, Irenaeus among them, who "very sternly rebuked Victor," even though they agreed with him that Pascha should always be on a Sunday, and the synaxarion says Irenaeus wrote in the name of the Christians of Gaul to Victor and others.[^oca-quarto][^oca-life] On these accounts Irenaeus was one voice in a protest, perhaps the voice that carried it, rather than a lone mediator; the sources do not let one settle which.

The quarrel, Irenaeus writes in a fragment, concerns not only the day but also the length of the fast, and the variety is old:

"And when the blessed Polycarp was sojourning in Rome in the time of Anicetus, although a slight controversy had arisen among them as to certain other points, they were at once well inclined towards each other (with regard to the matter in hand), not willing that any quarrel should arise between them upon this head."[^frag3]

Neither man could persuade the other. Polycarp pleaded that he had always kept the feast so with John and the other apostles; Anicetus pleaded the usage of the presbyters before him. Yet "Anicetus conceded to Polycarp in the Church the celebration of the Eucharist, by way of showing him respect," and they parted in peace.[^frag3] The rest of Rome's earlier bishops, Irenaeus adds, sent the Eucharist to those of other dioceses who kept the other custom, and "none were ever cast out (of the Church) for this matter."[^frag3] The troparion of his feast calls him a hierarch "bearing the name of peace," and the name, which is Greek for peace, here lines up with what he did.[^oca-life]

Death and burial

After the letter to Victor, the synaxarion says, Irenaeus "drops out of sight, and we do not even know the exact year of his death," though it adds that Gregory of Tours believed he was beheaded in 202 under Severus.[^oca-life] OrthodoxWiki says there is "no evidence for how he died," presumably soon after the turn of the third century, while its timelines put his martyrdom about 200 and mark it as possible.[^ow][^ow-timeline] Arakaki says only that he died sometime after 200.[^arak-cont] Socrates, in telling of the paschal dispute, writes that Polycarp suffered martyrdom under Gordian, and the translator's note observes that Polycarp died in the reign of Antoninus Pius and that Valesius therefore thought Socrates meant Irenaeus.[^socrates] Theodoret, who calls Ignatius, Hippolytus and Methodius martyrs in the same passage, calls Irenaeus a light of the western Gauls without the title of martyr; Jerome says he flourished chiefly under Commodus.[^theod][^jer35] The title of martyr appears in a fragment and in the Church's liturgical tradition; neither Jerome nor Theodoret gives it to him, and Gregory of Tours, as the synaxarion reports him, is the only source here to say how he died.

OrthodoxWiki reports that he was buried under the church of Saint John in Lyons, later renamed for him, and that his tomb and remains were destroyed in 1562 by Calvinist Huguenots.[^ow]

Writings

Against Heresies

Irenaeus's own title, as Bruce gives it, was An Exposure and Refutation of the Knowledge that is Falsely So Called, and it fills five books.[^bruce] OrthodoxWiki dates it about 180, since Irenaeus names Eleutherus as the current bishop of Rome.[^ow-ah] Little of the Greek survives. The whole work exists in Latin, which OrthodoxWiki says was made shortly after the work appeared in Greek and Bruce places in the fourth century; the sources do not agree on the date. Books IV and V are also found in a literal Armenian translation.[^ow-ah][^bruce] Until the discovery at Nag Hammadi in 1945, OrthodoxWiki says, it was the best surviving description of Gnosticism, and the discovery confirmed his reports against scholars who had suspected polemical exaggeration.[^ow]

Book I holds the account of the Valentinian system and its offshoots; the rule of faith in I.10; the survey of the sects in I.23 to I.31; and the preface in which he explains why he writes. The later books carry the positive teaching: the unity of the two testaments at the end of Book II (II.32 to II.35) and in Book IV (IV.36 to IV.41), the Eucharist in IV.18 and V.2, and his sayings on the four Gospels, on apostolic succession and on the Word becoming what we are, which the sections below take from Behr, Florovsky, Arakaki and others.

The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

The Demonstration is shorter and gentler. The Greek is lost, and the work survives only in an Armenian translation, of which J. Armitage Robinson published an English version in 1920.[^ow-ah][^dap1] Irenaeus writes to "my beloved Marcianus" with a "manual of essentials," so that "by little you may attain to much."[^dap1] Jerome, who knew the title, calls Marcianus Irenaeus's brother.[^jer35] The first part sets out the rule of faith and the history of creation, fall and promise down to David; the second, from the forty-third section on, is a demonstration from the prophets that the whole Gospel was foretold. Most of what Irenaeus says about man, Adam and Christ in these pages is given in the sections below.

Other works and fragments

Jerome lists, besides these, a book Against the Nations, one On Discipline, a book of various treatises, a letter to Blastus On Schism, a letter to Florinus On Monarchy, or That God Is Not the Author of Evil, an excellent commentary On the Ogdoad, and the letter to Victor.[^jer35] None of these survives complete. What remains is a collection of fifty-five short passages in the Ante-Nicene translation, gathered from later writers. Two of them are the letters already cited: the one to Florinus and the one on the paschal fast. The first of the series is the adjuration to copyists that Jerome says closed the work on the Ogdoad, in which Irenaeus swears by the Lord's glorious appearing that whoever transcribes the book must compare the copy with its model and copy the oath too.[^frag1][^jer35] A seventh preserves a custom: the Church does not kneel on Sunday or in the days of Pentecost, a practice that it traces, on the authority of "the blessed Irenæus, the martyr and bishop of Lyons," to a treatise On Easter.[^frag7] Most of the rest are exegetical remarks on Numbers, Judges, Matthew and other books, and short sayings. Which of these small pieces come from Irenaeus is a question the printed collection does not settle.

Against the Gnostic Teachers

What the Valentinians taught

Irenaeus begins by describing, at length, because he thinks that a system, once seen whole, needs few words to overturn it.[^ah31-4] The system he sets out first is that of the school of Ptolemaeus, a Valentinian teacher, and it is known here through his report and not from a text of theirs. Its members, he writes, hold that in the invisible heights there exists a perfect pre-existent Aeon, whom they call Bythus, the Depth, with whom was Ennoia, also called Grace and Silence; from them came Nous and Truth, then Logos and Life, then Man and Church, a first group of eight, which extended through further pairs to thirty Aeons altogether and made up the fullness, the Pleroma.[^ah1-1] The thirty, they claimed, were hidden in the Gospels: the Saviour did no public work for thirty years, and in the parable of the labourers sent into the vineyard at the first, third, sixth, ninth and eleventh hours the numbers add up to thirty.[^ah1-3] The Demiurge, who for these teachers stands below the Pleroma and made the world, is the subject of what Irenaeus calls their "blasphemous and impious opinions."[^ah-pref1][^oca-life]

Irenaeus gives the myth in the school's own terms so that the reader may see how far it travels from the Gospels. His preface says he writes after reading the commentaries of Valentinus's disciples and after "personal intercourse with some of them," and that error "is never set forth in its naked deformity."[^pref2]

Others confirm how closely he read them. Hippolytus, writing a generation later against the same schools, says that when he reached the Marcosians he did not think it necessary to set out their opinions again "as now the blessed presbyter Irenaeus has powerfully and elaborately refuted the opinions of these," and that he owes to Irenaeus the knowledge of their inventions.[^hipp] Eusebius, too, says that Irenaeus unfolds the abyss of Valentinus's errors with great vigor.[^euseb-iv11]

How they used Scripture

What drew Irenaeus's sharpest image was their use of the Bible. They collect parables of the Lord and sayings of the prophets and apostles, he says, and work them into a plan that none of those speakers taught: "they strive to weave ropes of sand." Against Heresies — Chapter 8 1.2[^ah8-1] He compares the method to a mosaic of a king, made by a skilled artist from precious stones, which someone then dismantles and reassembles as a dog or a fox, pointing to the same jewels to prove it is still the king.[^ah8-5] A second picture is from literature: a man can arrange lines of Homer into a story the poet never told, and those who do not know Homer will take it for his.[^ah8-4] Behr points out that hypothesis, in the literary theory of Irenaeus's day, meant the plot or outline a poet starts from, and that the Gnostics, on Irenaeus's account, adapt the words of Scripture to a plot that the prophets, the Lord and the apostles never gave. Florovsky draws the same lesson from Irenaeus's phrase for the "body" of the truth, the right context and original design into which the scattered pieces must be fitted.[^behr2][^flor-tradition]

The answer to a false plan is the true one, which he calls the rule of truth. "The rule of truth which we hold," he writes, "is, that there is one God Almighty, who made all things by His Word." Against Heresies — Chapter 22 1.1[^ah22-1] Behr observes that the rule does not hand over propositions to be used as building blocks for a system; it expresses the plot of the Scriptures themselves, the presupposition that lets the reader see a king and not a fox, and he draws attention to the difference from later creeds, where the events of Christ's life are listed under the second article and here are listed under the Spirit who spoke through the prophets.[^behr2] I.10 gives the rule at length:

"The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith." Against Heresies — Chapter 10 1.1[^ah10-1]

It names one God the Father Almighty, one Christ Jesus the Son of God who became incarnate for our salvation, and the Holy Spirit who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, the birth from a virgin, the passion, the resurrection, the ascension in the flesh, and the coming again to gather all things in one and raise up all flesh.[^ah10-1] The Demonstration gives the same faith in three points, which it calls "the order of the rule of our faith, and the foundation of the building." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 6.1[^dap6] It ties the three points to baptism, which "proceeds through" them. The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 7.1[^dap7] Sacred Tradition treats this rule and its use in the Church at length.

Cerinthus, the Ebionites, Marcion and Tatian

Book I ends with a catalogue of other sects, which show the range of the errors he meets. Cerinthus taught that the world was made by a power far from the supreme God, and that the Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism and left him before the Passion.[^ah26-1] The Ebionites agree that God made the world, but "use the Gospel according to Matthew only, and repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the law." Against Heresies — Chapter 26 2.2[^ah26-2] Marcion, who followed Cerdo, taught that the God of the Law and the Prophets was not the Father of Jesus Christ, and "mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke," and cut Paul's letters. Against Heresies — Chapter 27 2.4[^ah27-2] Irenaeus singles him out as the only one to mutilate the Scriptures openly and promises a separate refutation.[^ah27-4] Tatian, once a hearer of Justin, separated from the Church after Justin's martyrdom, set up "his own peculiar type of doctrine," and denied that Adam could be saved.[^ah28] Eusebius repeats the passage on Tatian from Irenaeus's first book.[^euseb-iv29]

Against them all he sets the public faith. Jerome says that John wrote his Gospel at the request of the bishops of Asia against Cerinthus and other heretics, and especially the Ebionites.[^jer-john] The pattern is already in Book I: where the heretic makes the world the work of a lesser power, Irenaeus answers with John, who proclaims "one God, the Almighty," and one Jesus Christ "by whom all things were made."[^ah9-2]

What Irenaeus Taught

One God, the Word and the Spirit as his hands

The Demonstration begins its account of God with a plain axiom, that things made must have a great cause, and "the beginning of all things is God." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 4.1[^dap4] God made all things by the Word and adorned them by the Spirit, and the Word is rightly called the Son and the Spirit the Wisdom of God.[^dap5] OrthodoxWiki notes that Irenaeus prefers to call the Son and the Spirit the "hands of God," and Pomazansky gives the saying as from Against Heresies V.6.[^ow][^pomaz-creation] The phrase belongs to a time before the language of the Cappadocians, and Irenaeus's way to the Trinity runs through the economy, the order of what God does in creation and salvation, with no formula of definition yet in view.

"Without the Spirit it is not possible to behold the Word of God, nor without the Son can any draw near to the Father." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 7.3[^dap7-3] The three are known together in the way God is approached. Irenaeus is explicit that the Son is God: "the Father is Lord and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God and the Son is God; for that which is begotten of God is God." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 47.1[^dap47] The sections on the prophets read the Old Testament appearances as appearances of the Son: it was the Word of God who spoke with Abraham at Mamre and with Moses in the bush, since the Father is the one whom the world does not see.[^dap44] The Trinity tells the later history.

One Old Testament and one New

Against Marcion and the Gnostics who split God into a just Creator and a good Father, Irenaeus insists on one God and one history. The prophets, he says in the last chapter of Book II, "all" "proclaimed one God and Lord," the very Maker of heaven and earth, and announced the coming of his Son. Against Heresies — Chapter 35 2.1[^ah35-2] In Book IV he says the same of the two covenants: the God who called those of the former dispensation "is the same as He who has received those of the latter." Against Heresies — Chapter 36 2.1[^ah36-2] The unity reaches past authorship. For Behr, the heart of Irenaeus's reading is that the Old Testament speaks of Christ, who is the treasure hidden in the field (IV.26.1); read without him it is a myth, and read in the light of the Cross it is a treasury.[^behr2] Florovsky makes a similar point about his anthropology: the image in which man was made is the Incarnate Word, and Irenaeus can speak of the whole man, flesh included, as made after it.[^flor-ot] The relation of the testaments is worked out further in Typology in Scripture, where Irenaeus's own examples are used.

The Demonstration is a book-length exercise of this reading. Earlier the tabernacle Moses built is "the visible form on earth of those things which are spiritual and invisible in the heavens, and a figure of the form of the Church," The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 26.2[^dap26] and the prophets are heralds of the revelation of Christ.[^dap30] From section 43 on he brings witnesses for the birth from a virgin, the place in Bethlehem, the healings, the Passion, the descent to the dead, the Ascension, the calling of the Gentiles and the new covenant. In section 98, shortly before the end, he gathers the whole into one statement:

"This, beloved, is the preaching of the truth, and this is the manner of our redemption, and this is the way of life, which the prophets proclaimed, and Christ established, and the apostles delivered, and the Church in all the world hands on to her children." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 98.1[^dap98]

The four Gospels and the New Testament

OrthodoxWiki says Irenaeus was the first Christian writer to list all four and exactly four of the canonical Gospels as divinely inspired, perhaps in answer to Marcion's edited Luke; the OCA says his firm affirmation of the four helped to solidify the first step in the process by which the New Testament was gathered.[^ow][^oca-protect] The argument is from Book III. Behr says Irenaeus defends the fourfold Gospel as a matter "after the fact," as there can be no more or fewer than four since the world has four zones and four principal winds; and he holds that Irenaeus is the first writer to make wide and steady use of the apostolic writings as Scripture.[^behr2] Bruce, writing as a historian of the canon, qualifies the "first": in his view the four Gospels were already so widely received that Irenaeus could argue for their fitness in the way one argues for a given, and Bruce adds that no list of New Testament books survives from Irenaeus.[^bruce] The two accounts fit one another better than the slogan does. Irenaeus did not invent the four Gospels; he gave them a theological reason.

Man created a child

Irenaeus's picture of Adam is given twice, in the Demonstration and in Against Heresies IV. In the Demonstration God formed man with his own hands and "traced His own form on the formation," and placed him lord of the earth; but "the lord, that is, man, was (but) small; for he was a child; and it was necessary that he should grow, and so come to (his) perfection."[^dap11][^dap12] Paradise was prepared for his growth, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil carried a command so that man might perceive that he had the Lord of all as his own lord; the commandment was kept by obedience and broken by disobedience.[^dap15]

In Book IV the same view answers an objector's question, whether God could not have made man perfect from the beginning. He could, Irenaeus says, but created things, being later than their Maker, are necessarily short of perfect; and the image he gives is the one the introduction uses, of the mother and the infant who cannot take solid food.[^ah38-1] The Son of God, though perfect, "passed through the state of infancy in common with the rest of mankind," not for his own sake but for the infant stage of man's existence, so that man might be able to receive him.[^ah38-2] Kallistos Ware notes the contrast with Augustine, for whom Adam was endowed from the start with all possible wisdom; Irenaeus's picture is dynamic, and Ware thinks it sits more easily with modern theories of evolution, though he adds that both Fathers speak as theologians and not as scientists.[^ware] Panayiotis Nellas takes the point further: on his reading of Irenaeus, man even before the fall needed salvation, since he was an imperfect and incomplete child who could not be completed by his own tendency but only by union with Christ.[^nellas]

Man is to be made after the image and likeness of the uncreated God by growing day by day toward the perfect, and Irenaeus gives the order: "Now it was necessary that man should in the first instance be created; and having been created, should receive growth."[^ah38-3] The sentences on divine goodness in IV.39 mark the border from the other side: "For you did not make God, but God you." Against Heresies — Chapter 39 2.5[^ah39-2] Creation belongs to the goodness of God, and being created belongs to the nature of man.[^ah39-11] Theosis treats how Irenaeus's picture of men growing into gods belongs to the Church's doctrine of deification, and he sets it against a firm refusal to blur creature and Creator.

Freedom, the fall, and the Image

God "made man a free [agent] from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul," so that he might obey voluntarily and not by compulsion. Against Heresies — Chapter 37 1.1[^ah37-1] The light does not enslave anyone; those who turn from it have done so through their own fault.[^ah39-3] The tempter, in the Demonstration, was an angel who envied man's gifts and became "the author and originator of sin," and was called Satan, "Apostate," for what he did.[^dap16] Behr points out that Irenaeus does not use the later vocabulary of "the Fall," preferring apostasy, and that he sees no lost golden age: the economy includes the knowledge of good and evil, the experience of death, and the education of man through them.[^behr3]

Man bears the image in his whole person. The Orthodox Church in America quotes Irenaeus's well-known saying that man is body, soul and Holy Spirit, and a passage from Against Heresies V.6 in which the perfect man is "the commingling and the union of the soul, receiving the Spirit of the Father and the fleshly nature which was also moulded after the image of God."[^oca-man] Florovsky stresses where Irenaeus finds the image shown: in the Demonstration the image of God is the Son, and Christ "appeared in the end of the times that He might show the image (to be) like unto Himself."[^dap22][^flor-ot] Florovsky also cites Against Heresies V.16.2 for the claim that the image had not yet been manifested while the Word was invisible, and that when the Word became flesh he showed the true image and restored the likeness.[^flor-ot]

Recapitulation

Paul's word anakephalaiosis, in Ephesians 1.10, becomes in Irenaeus what Florovsky calls the basic idea at the center of his theological vision, and Recapitulation sets it out.[^flor-ot] The prophets, he says, in the Demonstration, announced that Christ would be "the Word of God gathering up in Himself all things that are in heaven and that are on earth."[^dap30]

The Word, he says, "united man with God, and established a community of union between God and man; since we could not in any other way participate in incorruption, save by His coming among us." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31.1[^dap31-1]

Adam's disobedience bound all his descendants to death, and so it was right that death should be undone by the obedience of one who was made man for us, and so the Lord took up the same original formation of flesh in order, as Irenaeus puts it, to "conquer by Adam that which by Adam had stricken us down."[^dap31-3]

Adam was formed from the virgin earth, before God had sent rain, and the Lord, "summing up afresh this man," was born of the Virgin.[^dap32] Three more reversals follow. Man fell through a disobedient virgin and is raised through the Virgin who obeyed.[^dap33] The trespass by the tree is undone by the obedience of the Son of man nailed to the tree.[^dap34] And if anyone will not receive His birth from a virgin, "how shall he receive His resurrection from the dead?" The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 38.5[^dap38] For Irenaeus the birth and the resurrection stand or fall together, and he argues that a Christ who was not truly born could not have truly died or risen.[^dap39] Behr draws out one more consequence from Book III (III.22.3): since the Savior already existed in God's plan, the human being who was to be saved had to come into existence, lest the Savior exist in vain, so that creation and salvation belong to one economy.[^behr3] A question follows, whether Christ would have come even without sin. OrthodoxWiki says Irenaeus believed he would. Florovsky says the question was never raised by the Fathers with one exception, Maximus the Confessor, and credits Irenaeus with the redemptive line of reasoning, in which the Redeemer had to belong to both sides so that the broken communion between God and man could be restored.[^ow][^flor-ot] Nellas, as noted above, finds in Irenaeus a man who needed Christ even before the fall, which concerns completion and leaves open whether the Incarnation would have come apart from sin. The modern writers do not agree, and the passages of Irenaeus themselves do not settle the question.

OrthodoxWiki also says Irenaeus understood the atonement as happening chiefly through the incarnation and not through the crucifixion alone, though the crucifixion is part of the incarnation.[^ow] The Demonstration gives a version of this: "the Word was made flesh, that, through that very flesh which sin had ruled and dominated, it should lose its force and be no longer in us." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31.4[^dap31-4]

Eve and Mary

OrthodoxWiki says Irenaeus is the first to draw the comparison of Eve and the Theotokos, the faithless and the faithful.[^ow] In the Demonstration the matter is stated briefly: the Lord came to seek the lost sheep, and "it was necessary that Adam should be summed up in Christ, that mortality might be swallowed up and overwhelmed by immortality; and Eve summed up in Mary, that a virgin should be a virgin's intercessor, and by a virgin's obedience undo and put away the disobedience of a virgin." The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 33.3[^dap33-3] Arakaki's quotation from Against Heresies V.19.1 gives the same reversal on the side of the annunciation: the seduction by which the virgin Eve had been wickedly led was broken when the angel brought good tidings to the Virgin Mary.[^arak-ex] He takes the phrase "advocate of the virgin Eve" in another passage he quotes to imply the intercession of the saints.[^arak-cont] Theotokos and Eve treat the teaching and its later growth.

The Word became what we are

Irenaeus's "favourite idea," in Florovsky's phrase, is stated in the preface of Book V. Arakaki, quoting the Ante-Nicene translation, gives it as: "our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."[^arak-theosis] The synaxarion for his feast has the same thought in its own rendering, and Florovsky gives the Latin and says that Athanasius's formula in On the Incarnation 54 "resumes" the favourite idea of Irenaeus.[^oca-life][^flor-palamas] Theodoret, in the fifth century, had already set one version of it before his opponent in the Eranistes, in a list of testimonies from Irenaeus: "For this cause was the word made man that man receiving the word and accepting the adoption should be made God's son."[^theod] Theodoret's list gives the Psalm that Irenaeus cites with it, in which those who are called gods still die as men, and that verse supplies the limit; Theosis sets out how the Church holds both.

The glory of God

A popular paraphrase of one of Irenaeus's sayings runs "the glory of God is man fully alive." Arakaki gives the sentence in the Ante-Nicene form, "the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God" (IV.20.7), and notes that the paraphrase has often been taken out of context to mean that doing one's own thing glorifies God.[^arak-ex] He reads the saying as a vision of life lived for God's glory and brought to its height in the liturgy. Behr also rejects a reading that stops at being fully alive in this world: the living man of whom Irenaeus speaks is, in the context of the saying, the martyr going to death in confession of Christ, flesh made alive by the Spirit, and the paradigm is Christ himself, a reading Behr supports with a passage from Book V on the martyrs (V.9.2–3).[^behr3] The two writers agree in setting aside the "doing your own thing" reading and differ on where the saying finds its fullness, in the liturgy for Arakaki and in martyrdom for Behr.

The Eucharist and the flesh

In IV.18 Irenaeus argues that the Church's oblation is the first-fruits of creation offered with thanks, and he asks how those who think the world a product of ignorance and passion can say that the bread is the body of their Lord. His own position follows:

"For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity."[^ah-iv18]

In V.2 the argument runs from the Eucharist to the salvation of the flesh. If the flesh does not attain salvation, Irenaeus says, then the Lord did not redeem us by his blood, "nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His blood."[^ah-v2] The cup and the bread are parts of creation that He has called His own blood and body, and from them "the substance of our flesh is increased and supported," and the body, nourished by them and laid in the earth, "shall rise at their appointed time."[^ah-v2] The doctrine of Eucharist and Bodily Resurrection each have a source here.

Tradition and succession

Irenaeus appeals to the public succession of the bishops of the churches the apostles founded, and especially of Rome, against teachers who claimed a secret tradition; Arakaki gives the passage in which he says "We can enumerate those who were established by the apostles as bishops in the churches, and their successors down to our time" (III.3.1).[^arak-ex][^arak-resp] Apostolic Succession and Sacred Tradition treat the teaching at length. OrthodoxWiki calls him one of the first Christian writers to cite apostolic succession against opponents, and the synaxarion links the successors' "certain gift of truth" with the succession of the episcopate (IV.26.2).[^ow][^oca-life] Pomazansky quotes the same line as an early witness to the grace received through ordination.[^pomaz-priest] The OCA gives three marks by which Irenaeus distinguished the true churches: the same rule of faith, an origin in one of the apostles, and the four Gospels alone.[^oca-protect]

In Irenaeus's phrase the bishops have received "the firm charisma of truth," and it has been contended that this meant only the apostolic doctrine and not a special endowment of the bishops, a reading Florovsky mentions among others, Karl Müller's among them. Florovsky holds that, whatever the exact connotation, Irenaeus took the preservation of the deposited faith to be guided by the abiding presence of the Spirit in the Church, so that his conception was at once "charismatic" and "institutional."[^flor-tradition] Behr and Arakaki both tie the tradition closely to Scripture. For Behr the rule is the proclamation of Christ in accordance with the Scriptures; for Arakaki, Scripture is one integral part of an interlocking matrix with the succession and the rule of faith, and he notes that Irenaeus himself asks what would follow if the apostles had not left their writings, in which case the churches would follow the tradition they handed down (III.4.1).[^behr2][^arak-resp]

Reception

Eusebius, in his account of the age of Marcus Aurelius, names Irenaeus among the writers who flourished then and says that from them "has come down to us in writing, the sound and orthodox faith received from apostolic tradition."[^euseb-iv21] He treats him as a reliable witness for John and for the canon, and as an authority on heresies, but he is not wholly uncritical. Of Papias, whom Irenaeus called a hearer of John and a friend of Polycarp, he says that his millenarian notions were adopted by many later Fathers on the strength of the man's antiquity, "as for instance Irenæus."[^euseb-iii39] Jerome likewise lists Irenaeus among those who followed Papias in expecting a reign of the Lord with the saints in the flesh after the resurrection.[^jer-papias] Pomazansky counts Irenaeus among the ancient writers of the universal Church in whom chiliastic views appear, and he rejects the teaching.[^pomaz-res] On these three witnesses, Irenaeus's authority did not carry every opinion he held with it.

Hippolytus is said, in the synaxarion for 30 January, to have been his disciple.[^syn-jan30] Cyril of Jerusalem, warning his catechumens against the heretics who spoke against the Holy Spirit, writes that "Irenæus the interpreter has written in his injunctions against heresies," and so cites him as an authority against heresy.[^cyril] Basil, in On the Holy Spirit, names "the famous Irenæus" first among the witnesses to the form of the doxology, and later introduces him as one "who lived near the times of the Apostles" when he turns to what Irenaeus says of the Spirit.[^basil]

Theodoret, in the Eranistes, introduces him as one who enjoyed the teaching of Polycarp and became a light of the western Gauls, and sets seven passages from his third book in a list of Fathers on the Lord's incarnation.[^theod] Jerome gives him a full entry among the illustrious men of the Church.[^jer35] Of the three, Basil and Theodoret place him near the apostles, Basil by his date and Theodoret by his teacher.

Modern Orthodox writers return to Irenaeus in different ways: Behr as the model of how Scripture, rule, tradition and succession belong together, and Florovsky as a witness to tradition and succession. Behr calls his demonstration of the coherence of these four elements his "particular genius," while Florovsky's writing on Irenaeus bears on tradition and succession in particular.[^behr2][^flor-tradition] The OCA calls him the first of the great Church Fathers, and Arakaki, who found in him a reason to leave Evangelical Protestantism, took him as a patron saint.[^oca-protect][^arak-cont]

The Feast

The Church keeps Irenaeus on 23 August as hieromartyr and bishop of Lyons, though the sources differ on how he died, as the account of his death above shows.[^oca-life] The troparion, in the fourth tone, sings of "a wise Hierarch bearing the name of peace," who proclaimed the Gospel in the world and "contested vigorously for Christ," and the kontakion calls him a "protector of your flock" who extinguished "the sacrifices of idolatry."[^oca-life] A different Irenaeus, bishop of Sirmium, is commemorated on 26 March; he suffered in the persecution under Diocletian and Maximian, and the two should not be confused.[^syn-mar26]

The hymns do not name his books and praise a shepherd, while the Church's doctrine still bears his hand: that the Son of God took on the whole of our nature and summed up Adam in himself, which is the root of Recapitulation and Theosis; that the faith is one in every church because it is the faith of the apostles, which is the substance of Apostolic Succession; and that the God who made the world is the Father of Jesus Christ, whom the four witnesses of The Gospels proclaim.

Sources

[^flor]: Irenaeus, Letter to Florinus, in Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus, fragment 2 (Ante-Nicene Fathers 1, trans. A. Roberts), preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.20. [^pref3]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I, Preface 3. [^pref2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I, Preface 2. [^jer35]: Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 35. [^jer35b]: Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 35 (letter to Victor on the paschal controversy). [^ah38-1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.38.1. [^ah38-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.38.2. [^ah38-3]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.38.3. [^ow]: OrthodoxWiki, "Irenaeus of Lyons." [^oca-life]: Synaxarion for 23 August, "Hieromartyr Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons," life, troparion and kontakion (Orthodox Church in America). [^arak-cont]: Robert Arakaki, "Irenaeus of Lyons: Contending for the Faith Once Delivered," Orthodox Bridge (2012). [^ow-ah]: OrthodoxWiki, "Against Heresies." [^dap1]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 1 (trans. J. Armitage Robinson, 1920). [^bruce]: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 170–75. [^hipp]: Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 6.37, 6.50 (Ante-Nicene Fathers 5). [^cyril]: Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 16.6. [^basil]: Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 29.72. [^theod]: Theodoret of Cyrus, Eranistes, Dialogue 1 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 3). [^euseb-iv14]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.14 (citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.3.4). [^euseb-iii23]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.23 (citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies, books 2 and 3). [^syn-mar11]: Synaxarion for 11 March, Hieromartyrs Pionius and Limnus of Smyrna (Orthodox Church in America). [^ow-timeline]: OrthodoxWiki, "Timeline of Church History" and "Timeline of Saints." [^frag13]: Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus, fragment 13 (Ante-Nicene Fathers 1). [^behr4]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006), ch. 4. [^socrates]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 5.22 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 2, with translator's note). [^frag7]: Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus, fragment 7 (Ante-Nicene Fathers 1). [^frag3]: Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus, fragment 3 (Ante-Nicene Fathers 1). [^ow-anicetus]: OrthodoxWiki, "Anicetus of Rome." [^ow-victor]: OrthodoxWiki, "Victor I of Rome." [^oca-quarto]: Orthodox Church in America, "The Quartodeciman Controversy." [^frag1]: Fragments from the Lost Writings of Irenaeus, fragment 1 (Ante-Nicene Fathers 1). [^ah1-1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.1.1–2. [^ah1-3]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.1.3. [^ah-pref1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I, Preface 1. [^ah31-4]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.31.4. [^ah10-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.10.2. [^ah9-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.9.2. [^euseb-iv11]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.11. [^ah8-1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.8.1. [^ah8-5]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.8.1. [^ah8-4]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.9.4. [^behr2]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006), ch. 2, citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.8.1, I.9.4, I.10.1–2, III.1–5, III.11.8, IV.26.1. [^flor-tradition]: Georges Florovsky, "The Function of Tradition in the Ancient Church," in Bible, Church, Tradition (Collected Works, vol. 1). [^ah22-1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.22.1. [^ah10-1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.10.1. [^dap6]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 6. [^dap7]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 7. [^ah26-1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.26.1. [^ah26-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.26.2. [^ah27-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.27.2. [^ah27-4]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.27.4. [^ah28]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.28.1. [^euseb-iv29]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.29. [^jer-john]: Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 9. [^dap4]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 4. [^dap5]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 5. [^pomaz-creation]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, "The manner of the world's creation," citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.6. [^dap7-3]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 7. [^dap47]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 47. [^dap44]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 44–46. [^ah35-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies II.35.2. [^ah36-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.36.2. [^flor-ot]: Georges Florovsky, "The Fathers of the Church and the Old Testament," in Aspects of Church History (Collected Works, vol. 4), citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.6.1 and V.16.2 and Demonstration 11 and 22. [^dap26]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 26. [^dap30]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 30. [^dap98]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 98. [^oca-protect]: Orthodox Church in America, "Protecting the Church from Falsehood and Heresy." [^dap11]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 11. [^dap12]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 12. [^dap15]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 15. [^ware]: Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (excerpt), citing Irenaeus, Demonstration 12. [^nellas]: Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: The Nature of the Human Person (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1987), 38. [^ah39-2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.39.2. [^ah39-11]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.39.2. [^ah37-1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.37.1. [^ah39-3]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.39.3. [^dap16]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 16. [^behr3]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006), ch. 3, citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.22.3, III.20, IV.20.7, IV.37.7, IV.38–39, V.9.2–3. [^oca-man]: Orthodox Church in America, "Man," citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.6.1. [^dap22]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 22. [^dap31-1]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31. [^dap31-3]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31. [^dap31-4]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31. [^dap32]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 32. [^dap33]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 33. [^dap33-3]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 33. [^dap34]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 34. [^dap38]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 38. [^dap39]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 39. [^arak-ex]: Robert Arakaki, "Excerpts from Irenaeus of Lyons," Orthodox Bridge (2012), citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.3.1, V.19.1 and IV.20.7. [^arak-theosis]: Robert Arakaki, "Theosis and Our Salvation in Christ," Orthodox Bridge, citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies V, Preface. [^flor-palamas]: Georges Florovsky, "St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers." [^ah-iv18]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.18.4–5. [^ah-v2]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.2.2–3. [^arak-resp]: Robert Arakaki, "Response to Robin Phillips, 'Questions About St. Irenaeus and Apostolic Succession,'" Orthodox Bridge (2011), citing Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.3.1, III.3.4, III.4.1. [^pomaz-priest]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, "Priesthood." [^euseb-iv21]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.21. [^euseb-iii39]: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39. [^jer-papias]: Jerome, De Viris Illustribus 18. [^pomaz-res]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, "The resurrection of the dead." [^syn-jan30]: Synaxarion for 30 January, Hieromartyr Hippolytus and those with him (Orthodox Church in America). [^syn-mar26]: Synaxarion for 26 March, Hieromartyr Irenaeus, Bishop of Sirmium (Orthodox Church in America).