Irenaeus of Lyons
Irenaeus was born about 130 and as a young man heard Polycarp of Smyrna, a living link to the apostles. He became bishop of the church at Lyons in Gaul. His great work, Against Heresies (c. 180), was written to refute Gnosticism, and he pointed to the Scriptures both to defend the truth and to expose the Gnostics’ errors.1
Against the Gnostics, who despised matter, Irenaeus insisted that the Creator redeems the whole man, body and soul, and that the Son truly took flesh. He taught “recapitulation”: Christ retraced Adam’s steps and succeeded where Adam failed. He extended the parallel to Mary as a second Eve, and he held to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and to a premillennial hope.2 By tradition he died a martyr about 202.
Of the apostles he wrote:
We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.3 Irenaeus of LyonsAgainst Heresies 3.1.1
His Legacy
Both sides of the Reformation claim Irenaeus. Rome appeals to his teaching that the apostolic tradition was preserved in the churches, and his Mary-Eve parallel stands at the root of later Marian devotion. But Busenitz notes that the verb for “handed down” here is a form of the word “tradition,” and the tradition Irenaeus means is the Scriptures. Gregg Allison likewise observes that Irenaeus “gives no hint” that the apostles’ oral teaching differed in content from their written word, which is the Reformation’s point.4
