Note (return) — Chapter V

Nothing is more instructive than an examination of Irenæus' views with regard to the destination of man, the original state, the fall, and sin; because the heterogeneous elements of his "theology," the apologetic and moralistic the realistic, and the Biblical (Pauline), are specially apparent here, and the inconsistencies into which he was led are very plain. But these very contradictions were never eliminated from the Church doctrinal system of succeeding centuries and did not admit of being removed; hence his attitude on these points is typical.557 The apologetic and moralistic train of thought is alone developed with systematic clearness. Everything created is imperfect, just from the very fact of its having had a beginning; therefore man also. The Deity is indeed capable of bestowing perfection on man from the beginning, but the latter was incapable of grasping or retaining it from the first. Hence perfection, i.e., incorruptibility, which consists in the contemplation of God and is conditional on voluntary obedience, could only be the destination of man, and he must accordingly have been made capable of it.558 That destination is realised through the guidance of God and the free decision of man, for goodness not arising from free choice has no value. The capacity in question is on the one hand involved in man's possession of the divine image, which, however, is only realised in the body and is therefore at bottom a matter of indifference; and, on the other, in his likeness to God, which consists in the union of the soul with God's Spirit, but only comes about when man is obedient to him. Along with this Irenæus has also the idea that man's likeness consists in freedom. Now, as man became disobedient immediately after the creation, this likeness to God did not become perfect.559 Through the fall he lost the fellowship with God to which he was destined, i.e., he is forfeit to death. This death was transmitted to Adam's whole posterity.560 Here Irenæus followed sayings of Paul, but adopted the words rather than the sense; for, in the first place, like the Apologists, he very strongly emphasises the elements that palliate man's fall561 and, secondly, he contemplates the fall as having a teleological significance. It is the fall itself and not, as in Paul's case, the consequences of the fall, that he thus views; for he says that disobedience was conducive to man's development. Man had to learn by experience that disobedience entails death, in order that he might acquire wisdom and choose freely to fulfil the commandments of God. Further, man was obliged to learn through the fall that goodness and life do not belong to him by nature as they do to God.562 Here life and death are always the ultimate question to Irenæus. It is only when he quotes sayings of Paul that he remembers sin in connection with redemption; and ethical consequences of the fall are not mentioned in this connection. "The original destination of man was not abrogated by the fall, the truth rather being that the fall was intended as a means of leading men to attain this perfection to which they were destined."563 Moreover, the goodness of God immediately showed itself both in the removal of the tree of life and in the sentence of temporal death.564 What significance belongs to Jesus Christ within this conception is clear: he is the man who first realised in his person the destination of humanity; the Spirit of God became united with his soul and accustomed itself to dwell in men. But he is also the teacher who reforms mankind by his preaching, calls upon them to direct their still existing freedom to obedience to the divine commandments, thereby restoring, i.e., strengthening, freedom, so that humanity is thus rendered capable of receiving incorruptibility.565 One can plainly see that this is the idea of Tatian and Theophilus, with which Irenæus has incorporated utterances of Paul. Tertullian and Hippolytus taught essentially the same doctrine;566 only Tertullian beheld the image and likeness of God expressly and exclusively in the fact that man's will and capacity are free, and based on this freedom an argument in justification of God's ways.567