begotten of the Father, is still, like him, distinguished from the created world, as increate, without beginning, and eternal — all plainly showing that Irenwus is much nearer the Nicene dogma of the substantial identity of the Son with the Father than Justin and the Alexan- drians. If, as he does in several passages, he still sub- ordinates the Son to the Father, he is certainly incon- sistent, and that for want of an accurate distinction between the etemal Logos and the actual Christ. The \oyoc (iiyapKOQ and the \6yoQ ivaapKoq, expressions like ' My Father is greater than I,' which apply only to the Christ of history, he refers also, like Justin and Origen, to the eternal Word. On the other hand, he has been charged with leaning in the opposite direction towards the Sabellian and Patripassian views, but un- justly, as Duncker, in his monograph Die Christoloyie des keilit). Irenaus (p. 50 sq.), has unanswerably shown. Apart from his frequent want of precision, he steers in general, with sure Biblical and churchly tact, equally clear of both extremes, and asserts alike the essential unity and the eternal personal distinction of the Father and the Son. The incarnation of the Logos he ably discusses, viewing it both as a restoration and redemp- tion from sin and death, and as the completion of the revelation of God and of the creation of man. In the latter view, as finisher, Christ is the perfect Son of man, in whom the likeness of man to God, the similitudo Dei, regarded as moral duty, in distinction from the imago Dei, as an essential property, becomes for the first time fuUy real. According to this, the incarnation would be grounded in the original plan of God for the education of mankind, and independent of the fall ; it would have taken place even without the fall, though in some other form. Yet Irenreus does not expressly say this ; specu- lation on abstract possibilities was foreign to his real- istic cast of mind" (Dr. Schaff, i, § 77, 78).
We now pass to a consideration of Irenaus's views on the doctrine of Christ's hiimaniff/. Here, again, his first task is to refute Gnostic Docetists. " Christ," he con- tends against them, " must be a man, like us, if he would redeem us from corruption and make us perfect. As sin and death came into the world by a man, so they could be blotted out legitimately and to our advantage only by a man ; though, of course, not by one who should be a mere descendant of Adam, and thus himself stand in need of redemption, but by a second Adam, supernatu- rally begotten, a new progenitor of our race, as divine as he is human. A new birth unto life must take the place of the old birth unto death. As the completer, also, Christ must enter into fellowship with us, to be our teacher and pattern. He made himself equal with man, that man, by his likeness to the Son, might be- come precious in the Father's sight." Iremeus (to quote Dr. SchaflF still further) " conceived the humanity of Christ not as mere corporeality, though he often con- tends for this alone against the Gnostics, but as true humanity, embracing body, soul, and spirit. He places Christ in the same relation to the regenerate race which Adam bears to the natiu-al, and regards him as the absolute universal man, the prototype and summing up of the whole race. Connected with this is his beau- tiful thought, found also in Ilippolytus in the tenth book of the Philosophoumtna. tliat Christ made the cir- cuit of all the stages of human life, to redeem and sanc- tify alL To apply this to advanced age, he singularly extended the life of Jesus to fifty years, and endeavored to prove his view from the gospels against the Valen- tinians. The full communion of Christ with men in- volved his participation in all their evils and sufferings, his death, and liis descent into the abode of the dead." Also on the doctrine of the mutual relation of the divine and the human in Christ, which was neither specially discussed nor brought to a final, definite settlement un- til the Christological controversies of the 5th centurj', Iren.-eus, in a number of passages, throws out hints
t which deserve consideration from tlieir importance.
I " He teaches unequivocally a true and indissoluble union
IRENJEUS
650
IREN^US
of divinity and humanity in Christ, and repels the Gnostic idea of a mere external and transient connec- tion of the divine 2wn;p with the human Jesus. The foundation for that union he perceives in the creation of the world by the Logos, and in man's original like- ness to (iod and destination for permanent fellowship with liim. In the act of union, that is, in the super- natural generation and birth, the divine is the active principle, and the seat of personality; the human, the passive or rece[>tive; as, in general, man is absolutely dependent on God, and is the vessel to receive the reve- lations of his wisdom and love. The medium and bond of the union is the Holy Ghost (see below), who took the place of the masculine agent in the generation, and overshadowed the virgin womb of Mary with the power of the Highest. In this connection he calls Mary the counterjDart of Eve, the 'mother of all living' in a higher sense, who, by her believing obedience, became the cause of salvation both to herself and to the whole human race, as Eve, by her disobedience, induced the apostasy and death of mankind — a fruitful parallel, which was afterwards frequently pushed too far, and turned, no doubt, contrary to its original sense, to favor the idolatrous worship of the blessed Virgin. Irenteus seems, at least according to Dorner {Christolor/y, i, 495), to conceive the incarnation as progressive, the two fac- tors reaching absolute communion (but neither absorb- ing the other) in the ascension; though before this, at everv- stage of life, Christ was a perfect man, presenting the model of every age" (Schaff. i, § 79).