Note (return) — Chapter V

It is different with Irenæus. The Christianity of this man proved a decisive factor in the history of dogma in respect of its content. If Tertullian supplied the future Catholic dogmatic with the most important part of its formulæ, Irenæus clearly sketched for it its fundamental idea, by combining the ancient notion of salvation with New Testament (Pauline) thoughts.479 Accordingly, as far as the essence of the matter is concerned, the great work of Irenæus is far superior to the theological writings of Tertullian. This appears already in the task, voluntarily undertaken by Irenæus, of giving a relatively complete exposition of the doctrines of ecclesiastical Christianity on the basis of the New Testament, in opposition to heresy. Tertullian nowhere betrayed a similar systematic necessity, which indeed, in the case of the Gallic bishop too, only made its appearance as the result of polemical motives. But Irenæus to a certain degree succeeded in amalgamating philosophic theology and the statements of ecclesiastical tradition viewed as doctrines. This result followed (1) because he never lost sight of a fundamental idea to which he tried to refer everything, and (2) because he was directed by a confident view of Christianity as a religion, that is, a theory of its purpose. The first fundamental idea, in its all-dominating importance, was suggested to Irenæus by his opposition to Gnosticism. It is the conviction that the Creator of the world and the supreme God are one and the same.480 The other theory as to the aim of Christianity, however, is shared by Irenæus with Paul, Valentinus, and Marcion. It is the conviction that Christianity is real redemption, and that this redemption was only effected by the appearance of Christ. The working out of these two ideas is the most important feature in Irenæus' book. As yet, indeed, he by no means really succeeded in completely adapting to these two fundamental thoughts all the materials to be taken from Holy Scripture and found in the rule of faith; he only thought with systematic clearness within the scheme of the Apologists. His archaic eschatological disquisitions are of a heterogeneous nature, and a great deal of his material, as, for instance, Pauline formulæ and thoughts, he completely emptied of its content, inasmuch as he merely contrived to turn it into a testimony of the oneness and absolute causality of God the Creator; but the repetition of the same main thoughts to an extent that is wearisome to us, and the attempt to refer everything to these, unmistakably constitute the success of his work.481 God the Creator and the one Jesus Christ are really the middle points of his theological system, and in this way he tried to assign an intrinsic significance to the several historical statements of the baptismal confession. Looked at from this point of view, his speculations were almost of an identical nature with the Gnostic.482 But, while he conceives Christianity as an explanation of the world and as redemption, his Christocentric teaching was opposed to that of the Gnostics. Since the latter started with the conception of an original dualism they saw in the empiric world a faulty combination of opposing elements,483 and therefore recognised in the redemption by Christ the separation of what was unnaturally united. Irenæus, on the contrary, who began with the idea of the absolute causality of God the Creator, saw in the empiric world faulty estrangements and separations, and therefore viewed the redemption by Christ as the reunion of things unnaturally separated—the "recapitulatio" (ανακεφαλαιωσις).484 This speculative thought, which involved the highest imaginable optimism in contrast to Gnostic pessimism, brought Irenæus into touch with certain Pauline trains of thought,485 and enabled him to adhere to the theology of the Apologists. At the same time it opened up a view of the person of Christ, which supplemented the great defect of that theology,486 surpassed the Christology of the Gnostics,487 and made it possible to utilise the Christological statements contained in certain books of the New Testament.488