On the Apostolic Preaching

126 Pages·2016·35.94 MB·English

by  Irenaeus

On the
~postolic
Preaching
ST IRENAEUS OF LYONS
Translated & with an Introduction
by
JOHN BEHR
ST VLADIMIR'S SEMINARY PRESS
CRESTWOOD, NEW YORK
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Irenaeus,Saint, Bishop of Lyons.
[Epideixis tou apostolikou kerygmatos. English]
On the apostolic preaching I St. Irenaeus of Lyons: translation and
introduction by John Behr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-88141-174-4
1. Theology-Early works to 1800. 2. Apologetics-Early works to 1800.
I. Title.
BR6S·163E6413 1997
238'.1-dc21 97-42422
CIP
COPYRIGHT © 1997
ST VLADIMIR'S SEMINARY PRESS
575 Scarsdale Rd, Crestwood, NY 10707
1-800-204-2665
www.svspress.com
ISBN 0-88141-174-4
ISBN 978-088141-174-4
ISSN 1555-5755
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
St Irenaeus of Lyons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching. . . . 7
The Text and Its Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1 .
Apparatus ......................... 38
THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE
APOSTOLIC PREACHING ............... 39
Notes ...... . 102
Bibliography . . 119
For Michael
I call upon You, Lord, God of Abraham and God of Isaac and
God of Jacob and Israel, You who are the Father of our Lord Je
sus Christ, the God who, through the abundance of your mercy,
was well-pleased towards us so that we may know You, who
made heaven and earth, who rules over all, You who are the one
and the true God, above whom there is no other God; You who,
by our Lord Jesus Christ gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit, give
to every one who reads this writing to know You, that You alone
are God, to be strengthened in You, and to avoid every heretical
and godless and impious teaching.
St Irenaeus of Lyons, Against the Heresies 3:6:4
St Irenaeus of Lyons
"No early Christian writer has deserved better of the whole
Church than Irenaeus."· This assessment is unfortunately
borne out both by the paucity of information that we have con
cerning his life and by the poor state in which his writings have
survived. For all his importance as the most profound and in
I.
fluential theologian of the second century, a decisive period in
the history of Christianity, we know relatively little about Ire
naeus which he does not tell us himself in the few works of his
which we now have, and these, for the most part, have survived
only in Latin and Armenian translation.
Irenaeus tells us that in his early youth he had known Poly
carp, who had himself known the apostles and been appointed
by them as the bishop of the church in Smyrna.2 This contact
with the immediate successors of the apostles was of impor
tance for Irenaeus in his later defence of both Christian prac
tice and teaching. As Polycarp was martyred some time in the
late 150's, Irenaeus would have been born in the latter part of
the first half of the second century. At some point Irenaeus
journeyed westward, probably staying for a while in Rome,
learning from such teachers as Justin, and then, for whatever
reason, ending up in Gaul. Here, around 177, the Christian
communities of Lyons and Vienne were subject to violent per
secution. About the same time controversy broke out concern
ing the teaching of Montanus in Asia Minor. The Christians in
Lyons and Vienne intervened, sending various letters from the
I. H.B. Swete, foreword in F.R. Montgomery Hitchcock, Irenaeus of Ly
ons: A Study of his Teaching (Cambridge: CUP, 1914).
2. Cf. Against the Heresies (-AH) 3:3:4; and Irenaeus' letter to Florinus,
cited in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (-EH) 5:20:4-8.
2 ON THE APOSTOLIC PREACHING
confessors in prison-the Letter oft he churches ofV ie nne and
Lyons to the churches ofA sia and Phrygia, which was perhaps
drafted by Irenaeus himself,3 and another letter to the bishop of
Rome, Eleutherius (175-189). Irenaeus was commissioned to
take the letter to Eleutherius himself, and the confessors gave
him the following, perhaps pointed, testimony:
Once more and always, Father Eleutherius, we wish you
greetings in God. We have asked our brother and com
panion, Irenaeus, to bring this letter to you and we beg
you to hold him in esteem, for he is zealous for the cove
nant of Christ. For had we known that rank can confer
righteousness on anyone, we should first of all have rec
ommended him as being a presbyter of the church, for
that is his position. (EH 5:4:2).
This information, that at this time Irenaeus was a presbyter,
is not, however, unambiguous. In the second century, the words
"presbyter" and "bishop" were often used interchangeably; Ire
naeus himself describes Polycarp as being a presbyter (EH
5:20:7), and in his letter to Victor, bishop of Rome, he refers to
the "presbyters before Soter," that is, the predecessors of bishop
Victor (EH 5:24: 14). Nautin suggests that Irenaeus was in fact
already the bishop of Vien ne, and that as Pothinus, the bishop of
Lyons, was now in prison, Irenaeus had assumed episcopal re
sponsibility for Lyons.4 In any case, when Irenaeus returned
from his mission to Rome, he succeeded Pothinus.
The only other known event of Irenaeus' life is his involve
ment in the Quartodeciman controversy between the churches
of Rome and Asia Minor concerning the date of Pascha. Vic
tor, who was then bishop of Rome (189-198), threatened to ex
communicate those churches of Asia who kept Pascha on 14
3. Extracts from this letter are preserved in Eusebius, EH 5: 1-3; that it was
at least drafted by Irenaeus is argued by P. Nautin, LeI/res ef ecrivains
chretiens des lie et IIle siecies (Paris: Cerf, 1961),54-61.
4. Cf. Nautin, Op. cit., 93-95.
ST IRENAEUS OF LYONS 3
Nisan rather than the following Sunday (cf. EH 5:23-24). Ire
naeus, living up to his name (derived from the Greek word for
peace, cf. EH 5:24:18), wrote to Victor, exhorting him not to
excommunicate those who were "following a tradition of an
cient custom," and reminding him of his predecessors who, al
though not following the Quartodeciman practice themselves,
nevertheless were at peace with those who did so, pointing in
particular to an exchange between bishop Anicetus
(c.154-c.166) and Polycarp (EH 5:24: 11-17). No further infor
mation is known about Irenaeus' life. Although he is com
memorated, on 28 June, as a martyr, the evidence for his mar
I
s
tyrdom is late.
By the standards of later church fathers, Irenaeus was not a
prolific author. Only two of his writings are extant. The first is
The Refutation and Overthrowal of Knowledge falsely so
called, to use the title by which Irenaeus himself refers to it
(AH 4:Pref.:l; cf. EH 5:7:1); the shorter, more popular title,
Against the Heresies, comes from Eusebius (EH 3:23:3). The
second work, here translated, is The Demonstration of the Ap
ostolic Preaching. In book 3 of Against the Heresies, Irenaeus
mentions that Eleutherius was then the bishop of Rome (AH
3:3:3). As such, this book can be dated with some certainty to
the period between 175 and 189. That Irenaeus refers the
reader of the Demonstration (chp 98) to his work Refutation
and Overthrowal of Knowledge falsely so-called would seem
to indicate that the Demonstration was written later, at the end
of the second century, although it is possible that the final
chapters of the Demonstration are a later addition.6 The Greek
5. The first to refer to Irenaeus as a martyr is Jerome (c.342-420), who de
scribes him as "Bishop of Lyons and martyr," In Esaiam 17; although it
is possible, as H. Dodwell suggested, that this is a later scribal error, for
Jerome never refers to him as a martyr elsewhere, cf. Disser/a/iones in
Irenaeum (Oxford, 1689),259-264. The first full report of his martyr
dom is by Gregory of Tours (c.540-94), His/oria Francorum 1:27.
6. Cfbelow, p. 16 and note 229 on p. 118.
4 ON THE APOSTOLIC PREAClllNG
text of Against the Heresies was consulted by Photius in Bagh
dad in the ninth century, but was probably lost in the sacking of
the city in 1258.7 The complete text, apart from a paragraph to
wards the end, survives only in a Latin version probably made
in the fourth or early fifth century. In 1904, a manuscript was
discovered in Erevan which contained an Armenian version of
books 4 and 5 of Against the Heresies and the complete text of
the Demonstration, probably made in the last quarter of the
sixth century.
Apart from these two works, we also have extracts from
letters composed by Irenaeus preserved in Eusebius' Ecclesi
astical History: the letter to Florinus, entitled On the Sole Sov
ereignty or That God is not the Author ofE vil (EH 5:20: 1,4-8);
the letter to Bishop Victor (EH 5:24: 11-17); perhaps the Letter
of the churches of Vie nne and Lyons to the churches of Asia
and Phrygia (EH 5:1-3, see above); and the title of a letter to
Blastus, On Schism (EH 5:20:.1). Eusebius also mentions that
Irenaeus wrote a treatise On the Ogdoad for Florinus, when he
was turning to Valentinian teaching (EH 5:20: 1); a treatise
Concerning Knowledge, written against the Greeks (EH 5:26);
and "a little book of various discourses in which he mentions
the Epistle to the Hebrews and the so-called Wisdom of Solo
mon, quoting certain passages from them" (EH 5:26).
Subsequent generations seem to have remembered Ire
naeus more for his anti-heretical writings than for his theologi
cai vision. This is shown by ihe faci ihai aithough he is ciied
by, amongst others, St Basil the Great and St Maximus the
Confessor, and some lengthy extracts from Irenaeus' works
are preserved in the Sacra Parallela, attributed to St John of
Damascus, it is primarily book 1 of his Against the Heresies, in
7. Cf. B. Hemmerdinger, "Les 'Notices et extraits' des bibliotMques grec
ques de Bagdad par Photius," Revue des Etudes Grecques 69 (1956),
101-103.
ST IRENAEUS OF LYONS 5
which he describes the various Gnostic systems, that has been
preserved in Greek by being incorporated into later anti
heretical writings, such as that of Hippolytus and Epiphanius.
However, what Irenaeus achieved through his struggles with
the Gnostics and others, cannot be gainsaid, and there is per
haps no greater testimony to his theological legacy , which will
be considered in the next section, than that it passed
unobserved.