Saint Irenaeus served as the bishop of Lugdunum (now Lyons), a Celtic city named for Lug (who was Odin by another name) the chief god of the Celtic pantheon…at least among the Celts of cisalpine Gaul.
Irenaeus was born c. 130 CE and died at the age of seventy-two. His leadership in the Church took place during a time commonly referred to as the Apostolic Era. He was an acolyte of Polycarp the bishop of Smyrna, a Greek city in Anatolia (modern Turkey), who was himself acquainted with the apostle John, giving Irenaeus only three degrees of separation from the life and ministry of Jesus.
Irenaeus was a prolific writer; his surviving work demonstrates a deep commitment to the unity of Christian doctrine. He was among the first of the Ante-Nicene theologians to argue for the doctrine of apostolic succession, positing that a bishop of the church, and through the bishop all the priests that he ordains, should stand in an unbroken line of succession going back to the first apostles, who were the disciples of Jesus (a qualification he himself possessed), he was ardently opposed to heterodox sects like the so-called Gnostics that were prominent in his day.
Irenaeus’ name is also listed among the martyrs of the Church, though the details of his martyrdom are unknown…leading many to speculate that this is an honorific he likely never sought and does not deserve; his status as a martyr is irrelevant, what is important about his work is something referred to as the Irenaean Theodicy.[1]
The Irenaean Theodicy was the leading doctrine in the church for three-hundred years, from the time that Christians were a persecuted minority, through the transformation of Christianity into the Imperial church. The Irenaean cosmology and the metaphysics that supported it, was preeminent among theologians until the late fifth and early sixth century, at which point this completely canonical worldview was supplanted by the legalistic theology developed by saint Augustine of history that manifested itself in a sacramental-system that was utterly reliant on the novel-doctrine of original sin. Augustine’s systematic thinking was favored by the imperial church and its teaching became normative; it still holds sway throughout Christendom today.
Augustine taught that creation was made perfect and without blemish, and that subsequent to creation the fall into sin occurred, resulting in an utterly flawed creation; he taught that the inclination toward sin, corruption and depravity comes out of nowhere and nothing…from the stuff-of-nothingness out of which God created the matter and the material-world, resulting in a degree of chaos and disorder which completely separates the universe from God, and would collapse into itself if it were not for the grace of God sustaining it.
Irenaeus did not deny the fall, though unlike Augustine he posited that the world is not wholly fallen. He understood the reality of sin, but he taught that creation, including the fall, takes place within God, and that God is present in the fallen world.
Irenaeus’ argument was for unity, making it so that the fall (as we understand it) is not an irreparable breach that requires supernatural or divine power to overcome; he put forward the notion that God’s plan for the resolution of evil is to draw all things to God’s self, within the context of the natural order, according to the specific nature which God has relegated to all things and beings, which in the fullness of time become one with the divine.
For Irenaeus the perfection of the created order is a process of assimilation, which he calls recapitulation, imagining that each individual-being is on a journey, coming closer to the divine over-time, and that our imperfections fall away as we approach the eternal, a process which culminates in the atonement.
Irenaeus’ theology, which was never condemned, provides a strong philosophical grounding for the doctrine of universal salvation I have been teaching since I first discovered that I had something to say on the matter, and dedicated myself to the mission of bringing sight to the blind.
[1] Theodicy
is the specific field of theological study devoted to understanding the problem
of evil, and its ultimate resolution by the divine.
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