Bishop of Lyon from 177/8, perhaps best remembered today for his fight against the gnostics—writing an influential five-volumed work, Against Heresies to the subject—and for his affirmation of the apostolic tradition and of the revelation of Scriptures. He represents one of the earliest links between the later church and the apostles via his acquintance with Polycarp, who, according to Irenaeus, held conversations with the Apostle John and other eye-witnesses of Christ. They, therefore, provide vital resouces for understanding the development of the early Church.
Not much is known about Irenaeus's early years; he is believed to have been a native of Smyrna, where he came under the influence of Polycarp. After an education in Rome, he moved to Lyon, where, as a presbyter, he was sent on behalf of his bishop to Rome to mediate in the controversy over the Montanists. He succeeded his bishop who died soon after his return from Rome.
The Refutation of False Gnosis (better known today as Against Heresies) devotes the first two volumes to a detailed exposure of the gnostic fallacies, followed by two volumes of expositions of Christian teaching, and ending with a volume on the resurrection and consummation of history. Significantly, Irenaeus turns to Scriptures to refute errors and to affirm the apostolic teachings, and, for the first time, the NT is quoted as scriptures, and the four Gospels asserted as closed and canonical. Henry Bettenson assesses him thus:
Irenaeus may justly be called the first biblical theologian; for him the Bible is not a collection of proof-texts as it is for the Apologists, but a continuous record of God's self-disclosure and his dealings with man, reaching its culmination in the person and work of Christ. His Christology is not systematically expounded; Irenaeus was not a systematic thinker. But the chief points are clear: Christ is the Logos, the complete revelation of the Father's love; in opposition to the Gnostic notion of emanation Irenaeus affirms the eternal co-existence of the Logos with the Father, thus developing the teaching of the prologue of the Fourth Gospel. But he employs Pauline as well as Johannine ideas: Christ is the second Adam who restores mankind to the position lost by the Fall, or rather he enables man to fulfil the potentialities possessed by Adam at his creation; for man was not created perfect or immortal, but capable of perfection and immortality. This redemptive work, by which Christ 'joins the end to the beginning', that is, restores man to God, is one of the meanings of the famous doctrine of 'recapitulation'. . . He speaks of Christ's victory over Satan, of ransom, of sacrifice, but these conceptions do not seem to be brought into relation with one another, or with the dominant theme of salvation through Christ's incarnation or our incorporation in him." (The Early Christian Fathers, 13).
F. F. Bruce, "The History of New Testament Study," in New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Principles and Methods, ed. I. Howard Marshall, (Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979), pp.21-59. (For Irenaeus, see esp., pp.24-25.) Pdf N 6-7 (Open on Phone)
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