Saint Irenaeus 2nd Century
Saint Irenaeus was born around 125 and he died in about 202. He was a Greek bishop famed for his roles in both expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and for the development of Christian theology by opposing Gnostic interpretations of Christian Scripture and defending orthodoxy. Saint Irenaeus was chosen as Bishop of Lugdunum. He is the earliest surviving witness to regard all four of the now-canonical gospels as vital. Saint Irenaeus made important contributions to the early church. Have you ever heard of him?
Saint Irenaeus Biography
Saint Irenaeus was a Greek from Turkey. He was born during the first half of the 2nd century. The exact date is thought to be between the years 120 and 130. During the persecution of Christians in Lyon, where Saint Irenaeus was a priest, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor from 161 to 180. The clergy of that city, many of whom were suffering imprisonment for the faith, sent him to Rome in 177 with a letter to Pope Eleutherius concerning the heresy of Montanism. That letter worked out for him as he succeeded the martyr Saint Pothinus and became the second bishop of Lyon.
Saint Irenaeus probably wrote during the period of peace that followed. The new bishop divided being a pastor, a missionary, and an author. Almost all his books were directed against Gnosticism, a major heresy of the time. The most famous of these writings is On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis, usually known by the abbreviated title Against Heresies.
In Against Heresies Saint Irenaeus wrote: “One should not seek among others the truth that can be easily gotten from the Church. For in her, as in a rich treasury, the apostles have placed all that pertains to truth, so that everyone can drink this beverage of life. She is the door of life.” But he also said, “Christ came not only for those who believed from the time of Tiberius Caesar, nor did the Father provide only for those who are now, but for absolutely all men from the beginning, who, according to their ability, feared and loved God and lived justly. . . and desired to see Christ and to hear His voice.”
Saint Irenaeus’ purpose in writing Against Heresies was to refute the teachings of Gnostic groups. As several Greek merchants had begun an oratorial campaign in Irenaeus’s bishopric, teaching that the material world was the accidental creation of an evil god, from which we are to escape by the pursuit of gnosis. Irenaeus argued that the true gnosis is in fact knowledge of Christ, which redeems rather than escapes from bodily existence.
Saint Irenaeus’s presentation of Jesus Christ as the new Adam is based on Paul’s Christ-Adam parallel in Romans 5:12–21, but also derives significantly from the John’s presentation of the Adam-Christ typology. He uses this parallel to demonstrate that Christ truly took human flesh. Irenaeus considered it important to emphasize this point because he understands the failure to recognize Christ’s full humanity links the various strains of Gnosticism together, as seen in his statement that “according to the opinion of no one of the heretics was the Word of God made flesh.”
The biblical passage, “Death has been swallowed up in victory,” implied for Saint Irenaeus that the Lord will surely resurrect the first human, i.e. Adam, as one of the saved. According to him, those who deny Adam’s salvation are “shutting themselves out from life for ever” and the first one who did so was Tatian.
Conclusion
Saint Irenaeus had a number of contribution. He was central to the spread of Christianity in its early stages. We have people like him to thank that there are one billion Christians in the world. Also, he wrote and argued, vociferously against Gnosticism, a major heresy of the time. Little is known of this saint beyond these two big contributions. The first one is particularly important.
