2. The Doctrines of the Church.
In the following section we do not intend to give a presentation of the theology of Irenæus and the other Antignostic Church teachers, but merely to set forth those points of doctrine to which the teachings of these men gave currency in succeeding times.
Against the Gnostic theses[497] Irenæus and his successors, apart from the proof from prescription, adduced the following intrinsic considerations: (1) In the case of the Gnostics and Marcion the Deity lacks absoluteness, because he does not embrace everything, that is, he is bounded by the kenoma or by the sphere of a second God; and also because his omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence have a corresponding limitation.[498] (2) The assumption of divine emanations and of a differentiated divine pleroma represents the Deity as a composite, i.e.,[499] finite being; and, moreover, the personification of the divine qualities is a mythological freak, the folly of which is evident as soon as one also makes the attempt to personify the affections and qualities of man in a similar way.[500] (3) The attempt to make out conditions existing within the Godhead is in itself absurd and audacious.[501] (4) The theory of the passion and ignorance of Sophia introduces sin into the pleroma itself, i.e., into the Godhead.[502] With this the weightiest argument against the Gnostic cosmogony is already mentioned. A further argument against the system is that the world and mankind would have been incapable of improvement, if they had owed their origin to ignorance and sin.[503] Irenæus and Tertullian employ lengthy arguments to show that a God who has created nothing is inconceivable, and that a Demiurge occupying a position alongside of or below the Supreme Being is self-contradictory, inasmuch as he sometimes appears higher than this Supreme Being, and sometimes so weak and limited that one can no longer look on him as a God.[504] The Fathers everywhere argue on behalf of the Gnostic Demiurge and against the Gnostic supreme God. It never occurs to them to proceed in the opposite way and prove that the supreme God may be the Creator. All their efforts are rather directed to show that the Creator of the world is the only and supreme God, and that there can be no other above this one. This attitude of the Fathers is characteristic; for it proves that the apologetico-philosophical theology was their fundamental assumption. The Gnostic (Marcionite) supreme God is the God of religion, the God of redemption; the Demiurge is the being required to explain the world. The intervention of the Fathers on his behalf, that is, their assuming him as the basis of their arguments, reveals what was fundamental and what was accidental in their religious teaching. At the same time, however, it shows plainly that they did not understand or did not feel the fundamental problem that troubled and perplexed the Gnostics and Marcion, viz., the qualitative distinction between the spheres of creation and redemption. They think they have sufficiently explained this distinction by the doctrine of human freedom and its consequences. Accordingly their whole mode of argument against the Gnostics and Marcion is, in point of content, of an abstract, philosophico-rational kind.[505] As a rule they do not here carry on their controversy with the aid of reasons taken from the deeper views of religion. As soon as the rational argument fails, however, there is really an entire end to the refutation from inner grounds, at least in the case of Tertullian; and the contest is shifted into the sphere of the rule of faith and the Holy Scriptures. Hence, for example, they have not succeeded in making much impression on the heretical Christology from dogmatic considerations, though in this respect Irenæus was still very much more successful than Tertullian.[506] Besides, in adv. Marc. II. 27, the latter betrayed what interest he took in the preëxistent Christ as distinguished from God the Father. It is not expedient to separate the arguments advanced by the Fathers against the Gnostics from their own positive teachings, for these are throughout dependent on their peculiar attitude within the sphere of Scripture and tradition.
Irenæus and Hippolytus have been rightly named Scripture theologians; but it is a strange infatuation to think that this designation characterises them as evangelical. If indeed we here understand "evangelical" in the vulgar sense, the term may be correct, only in this case it means exactly the same as "Catholic." But if "evangelical" signifies "early-Christian," then it must be said that Scripture theology was not the primary means of preserving the ideas of primitive Christianity; for, as the New Testament Scriptures were also regarded as inspired documents and were to be interpreted according to the regula, their content was just for that reason apt to be obscured. Both Marcion and the chiefs of the Valentinian school had also been Scripture theologians. Irenæus and Hippolytus merely followed them. Now it is true that they very decidedly argued against the arbitrary method of interpreting the Scriptures adopted by Valentinus, and compared it to the process of forming the mosaic picture of a king into the mosaic picture of a fox, and the poems of Homer into any others one might choose;[507] but they just as decidedly protested against the rejection by Apelles and Marcion of the allegorical method of interpretation,[508] and therefore were not able to set up a canon really capable of distinguishing their own interpretation from that of the Gnostics.[509] The Scripture theology of the old Catholic Fathers has a twofold aspect. The religion of the Scripture is no longer the original form; it is the mediated, scientific one to be constructed by a learned process; it is, on its part, the strongest symptom of the secularisation that has begun. In a word, it is the religion of the school, first the Gnostic then the ecclesiastical. But it may, on the other hand, be a wholesome reaction against enthusiastic excess and moralistic frigidity; and the correct sense of the letter will from the first obtain imperceptible recognition in opposition to the "spirit" arbitrarily read into it, and at length banish this "spirit" completely. Irenæus certainly tried to mark off the Church use of the Scriptures as distinguished from the Gnostic practice. He rejects the accommodation theory of which some Gnostics availed themselves;[510] he emphasises more strongly than these the absolute sufficiency of the Scriptures by repudiating all esoteric doctrines;[511] he rejects all distinction between different kinds of inspiration in the sacred books;[512] he lays down the maxim that the obscure passages are to be interpreted from the clear ones, not vice versa;[513] but this principle being in itself ambiguous, it is rendered quite unequivocal by the injunction to interpret everything according to the rule of faith[514] and, in the case of all objectionable passages, to seek the type.[515] Not only did Irenæus explain the Old Testament allegorically, in accordance with traditional usage;[516] but according to the principle: "with God there is nothing without purpose or due signification" ("nihil vacuum neque sine signo apud deum") (IV. 21. 3), he was also the first to apply the scientific and mystical explanation to the New Testament, and was consequently obliged to adopt the Gnostic exegesis, which was imperative as soon as the apostolic writings were viewed as a New Testament. He regards the fact of Jesus handing round food to those lying at table as signifying that Christ also bestows life on the long dead generations;[517] and, in the parable of the Samaritan, he interprets the host as the Spirit and the two denarii as the Father and Son.[518] To Irenæus and also to Tertullian and Hippolytus all numbers, incidental circumstances, etc., in the Holy Scriptures are virtually as significant as they are to the Gnostics, and hence the only question is what hidden meaning we are to give to them. "Gnosticism" is therefore here adopted by the ecclesiastical teachers in its full extent, proving that this "Gnosticism" is nothing else than the learned construction of religion with the scientific means of those days. As soon as Churchmen were forced to bring forward their proofs and proceed to put the same questions as the "Gnostics," they were obliged to work by their method. Allegory, however, was required in order to establish the continuity of the tradition from Adam down to the present time—not merely down to Christ—against the attacks of the Gnostics and Marcion. By establishing this continuity a historical truth was really also preserved. For the rest, the disquisitions of Irenæus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus were to such an extent borrowed from their opponents that there is scarcely a problem that they propounded and discussed as the result of their own thirst for knowledge. This fact not only preserved to their works an early-Christian character as compared with those of the Alexandrians, but also explains why they frequently stop in their positive teachings, when they believe they have confuted their adversaries. Thus we find neither in Irenæus nor Tertullian a discussion of the relation of the Scriptures to the rule of faith. From the way in which they appeal to both we can deduce a series of important problems, which, however, the Fathers themselves did not formulate and consequently did not answer.[519]
The doctrine of God was fixed by the old Catholic Fathers for the Christendom of succeeding centuries, and in fact both the methodic directions for forming the idea of God and their results remained unchanged. With respect to the former they occupy a middle position between the renunciation of all knowledge—for God is not abyss and silence—and the attempt to fathom the depths of the Godhead.[520] Tertullian, influenced by the Stoics, strongly emphasised the possibility of attaining a knowledge of God. Irenæus, following out an idea which seems to anticipate the mysticism of later theologians, made love a preliminary condition of knowledge and plainly acknowledged it as the principle of knowledge.[521] God can be known from revelation,[522] because he has really revealed himself, that is, both by the creation and the word of revelation. Irenæus also taught that a sufficient knowledge of God, as the creator and guide, can be obtained from the creation, and indeed this knowledge always continues, so that all men are without excuse.[523] In this case the prophets, the Lord himself, the Apostles, and the Church teach no more and nothing else than what must be already plain to the natural consciousness. Irenæus certainly did not succeed in reconciling this proposition with his former assertion that the knowledge of God springs from love resting on revelation. Irenæus also starts, as Apologist and Antignostic, with the God who is the First Cause. Every God who is not that is a phantom;[524] and every sublime religious state of mind which does not include the feeling of dependence upon God as the Creator is a deception. It is the extremest blasphemy to degrade God the Creator, and it is the most frightful machination of the devil that has produced the blasphemia creatoris.[525] Like the Apologists, the early Catholic Fathers confess that the doctrine of God the Creator is the first and most important of the main articles of Christian faith;[526] the belief in his oneness as well as his absoluteness is the main point.[527] God is all light, all understanding, all Logos, all active spirit;[528] everything anthropopathic and anthropomorphic is to be conceived as incompatible with his nature.[529] The early-Catholic doctrine of God shows an advance beyond that of the Apologists, in so far as God's attributes of goodness and righteousness are expressly discussed, and it is proved in opposition to Marcion that they are not mutually exclusive, but necessarily involve each other.[530]
In the case of the Logos doctrine also, Tertullian and Hippolytus simply adopted and developed that of the Apologists, whilst Irenæus struck out a path of his own. In the Apologeticum (c. 21) Tertullian set forth the Logos doctrine as laid down by Tatian, the only noteworthy difference between him and his predecessor consisting in the fact that the appearance of the Logos in Jesus Christ was the uniform aim of his presentation.[531] He fully explained his Logos doctrine in his work against the Monarchian Praxeas.[532] Here he created the formulæ of succeeding orthodoxy by introducing the ideas "substance" and "person" and by framing, despite of the most pronounced subordinationism and a purely economical conception of the Trinity, definitions of the relations between the persons which could be fully adopted in the Nicene creed.[533] Here also the philosophical and cosmological interest prevails; the history of salvation appears only to be the continuation of that of the cosmos. This system is distinguished from Gnosticism by the history of redemption appearing as the natural continuation of the history of creation and not simply as its correction. The thought that the unity of the Godhead is shown in the una substantia and the una dominatio was worked out by Tertullian with admirable clearness. According to him the unfolding of this one substance into several heavenly embodiments, or the administration of the divine sovereignty by emanated persons cannot endanger the unity; the "arrangement of the unity when the unity evolves the trinity from itself" ("dispositio unitatis, quando unitas ex semetipsa [trinitatem] derivat") does not abolish the unity, and, moreover, the Son will some day subject himself to the Father, so that God will be all in all.[534] Here then the Gnostic doctrine of æons is adopted in its complete form, and in fact Hippolytus, who in this respect agrees with Tertullian, has certified that the Valentinians "acknowledge that the one is the originator of all" ("τον 'ενα 'ομολογουσιν αιτιον των παντων"), because with them also, "the whole goes back to one" ("το παν εις 'ενα ανατρεχει").[535] The only difference is that Tertullian and Hippolytus limit the "economy of God" (οικονομια του Θεου) to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, while the Gnostics exceed this number.[536] According to Tertullian "a rational conception of the Trinity constitutes truth, an irrational idea of the unity makes heresy" ("trinitas rationaliter expensa veritatem constituit, unitas irrationaliter collecta hæresim facit") is already the watchword of the Christian dogmatic. Now what he considers a rational conception is keeping in view the different stages of God's economy, and distinguishing between dispositio, distinctio, numerus on the one hand and divisio on the other. At the beginning God was alone, but ratio and sermo existed within him. In a certain sense then, he was never alone, for he thought and spoke inwardly. If even men can carry on conversations with themselves and make themselves objects of reflection, how much more is this possible with God.[537] But as yet he was the only person.[538] The moment, however, that he chose to reveal himself and sent forth from himself the word of creation, the Logos came into existence as a real being, before the world and for the sake of the world. For "that which proceeds from such a great substance and has created such substances cannot itself be devoid of substance." He is therefore to be conceived as permanently separate from God "secundus a deo consititutus, perseverans in sua forma"; but as unity of substance is to be preserved ("alius pater, alius filius, alius non aliud"—"ego et pater unum sumus ad substantiæ unitatem, non ad numeri singularitatem dictum est"—"tres unum sunt, non unus"—"the Father is one person and the Son is another, different persons not different things", "I and the Father are one refers to unity of substance, not to singleness in number"—"the three are one thing not one person"), the Logos must be related to the Father as the ray to the sun, as the stream to the source, as the stem to the root (see also Hippolytus, c. Noëtum 10).[539] For that very reason "Son" is the most suitable expression for the Logos that has emanated in this way (κατα μερισμον). Moreover, since he (as well as the Spirit) has the same substance as the Father ("unius substantia" = 'ομοουσιος) he has also the same power[540] as regards the world. He has all might in heaven and earth, and he has had it ab initio, from the very beginning of time.[541] On the other hand this same Son is only a part and offshoot; the Father is the whole; and in this the mystery of the economy consists. What the Son possesses has been given him by the Father; the Father is therefore greater than the Son; the Son is subordinate to the Father.[542] "Pater tota substantia est, filius vero derivatio totius et portio".[543] This paradox is ultimately based on a philosophical axiom of Tertullian: the whole fulness of the Godhead, i.e., the Father, is incapable of entering into the finite, whence also he must always remain invisible, unapproachable, and incomprehensible. The Divine Being that appears and works on earth can never be anything but a part of the transcendent Deity. This Being must be a derived existence, which has already in some fashion a finite element in itself, because it is the hypostatised Word of creation, which has an origin.[544] We would assert too much, were we to say that Tertullian meant that the Son was simply the world-thought itself; his insistance on the "unius substantiæ" disproves this. But no doubt he regards the Son as the Deity depotentiated for the sake of self-communication; the Deity adapted to the world, whose sphere coincides with the world-thought, and whose power is identical with that necessary for the world. From the standpoint of humanity this Deity is God himself, i.e., a God whom men can apprehend and who can apprehend them; but from God's standpoint, which speculation can fix but not fathom, this Deity is a subordinate, nay, even a temporary one. Tertullian and Hippolytus know as little of an immanent Trinity as the Apologists; the Trinity only appears such, because the unity of the substance is very vigorously emphasised; but in truth the Trinitarian process as in the case of the Gnostics, is simply the background of the process that produces the history of the world and of salvation. This is first of all shown by the fact that in course of the process of the world and of salvation the Son grows in his sonship, that is, goes through a finite process;[545] and secondly by the fact that the Son himself will one day restore the monarchy to the Father.[546] These words no doubt are again spoken not from the standpoint of man, but from that of God; for so long as history lasts "the Son continues in his form." In its point of departure, its plan, and its details this whole exposition is not distinguished from the teachings of contemporaneous and subsequent Greek philosophers,[547] but merely differs in its aim. In itself absolutely unfitted to preserve the primitive Christian belief in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, its importance consists in its identification of the historical Jesus with this Logos. By its aid Tertullian united the scientific, idealistic cosmology with the utterances of early Christian tradition about Jesus in such a way as to make the two, as it were, appear the totally dissimilar wings of one and the same building,[548] With peculiar versatility he contrived to make himself at home in both wings.
It is essentially otherwise with the Logos doctrine of Irenæus.[549] Whereas Tertullian and Hippolytus developed their Logos doctrine without reference to the historical Jesus, the truth rather being that they simply add the incarnation to the already existing theory of the subject, there is no doubt that Irenæus, as a rule, made Jesus Christ, whom he views as God and man, the starting-point of his speculation. Here he followed the Fourth Gospel and Ignatius. It is of Jesus that Irenæus almost always thinks when he speaks of the Logos or of the Son of God; and therefore he does not identify the divine element in Christ or Christ himself with the world idea or the creating Word or the Reason of God.[550] That he nevertheless makes Logos (μονογενης, πρωτοτοκος, "only begotten," "first born") the regular designation of Christ as the preëxistent One can only be explained from the apologetic tradition which in his time was already recognised as authoritative by Christian scholars, and moreover appeared justified and required by John I. 1. Since both Irenæus and Valentinus consider redemption to be the special work of Christ, the cosmological interest in the doctrine of the second God becomes subordinate to the soteriological. As, however, in Irenæus' system (in opposition to Valentinus) this real redemption is to be imagined as recapitulatio of the creation, redemption and creation are not opposed to each other as antitheses; and therefore the Redeemer has also his place in the history of creation. In a certain sense then the Christology of Irenæus occupies a middle position between the Christology of the Valentinians and Marcion on the one hand and the Logos doctrine of the Apologists on the other. The Apologists have a cosmological interest, Marcion only a soteriological, whereas Irenæus has both; the Apologists base their speculations on the Old Testament, Marcion on a New Testament, Irenæus on both Old and New.
Irenæus expressly refused to investigate what the divine element in Christ is, and why another deity stands alongside of the Godhead of the Father. He confesses that he here simply keeps to the rule of faith and the Holy Scriptures, and declines speculative disquisitions on principle. He does not admit the distinction of a Word existing in God and one coming forth from him, and opposes not only ideas of emanation in general, but also the opinion that the Logos issued forth at a definite point of time. Nor will Irenæus allow the designation "Logos" to be interpreted in the sense of the Logos being the inward Reason or the spoken Word of God. God is a simple essence and always remains in the same state; besides we ought not to hypostatise qualities.[551] Nevertheless Irenæus, too, calls the preëxistent Christ the Son of God, and strictly maintains the personal distinction between Father and Son. What makes the opposite appear to be the case is the fact that he does not utilise the distinction in the interest of cosmology.[552] In Irenæus' sense we shall have to say: The Logos is the revelation hypostasis of the Father, "the self-revelation of the self-conscious God," and indeed the eternal self-revelation. For according to him the Son always existed with God, always revealed the Father, and it was always the full Godhead that he revealed in himself. In other words, he is God in his specific nature, truly God, and there is no distinction of essence between him and God.[553] Now we might conclude from the strong emphasis laid on "always" that Irenæus conceived a relationship of Father and Son in the Godhead, conditioned by the essence of God himself and existing independently of revelation. But the second hypostasis is viewed by him as existing from all eternity, just as much in the quality of Logos as in that of Son, and his very statement that the Logos has revealed the Father from the beginning shows that this relationship is always within the sphere of revelation. The Son then exists because he gives a revelation. Little interested as Irenæus is in saying anything about the Son, apart from his historical mission, naïvely as he extols the Father as the direct Creator of the universe, and anxious as he is to repress all speculations that lead beyond the Holy Scriptures, he could not altogether avoid reflecting on the problems: why there is a second deity alongside of God, and how the two are related to one another. His incidental answers are not essentially different from those of the Apologists and Tertullian; the only distinction is this incidental character. Irenæus too looked on the Son as "the hand of God," the mediator of creation; he also seems in one passage to distinguish Father and Son as the naturally invisible and visible elements of God; he too views the Father as the one who dominates all, the head of Christ, i.e., he who bears the creation and his Logos.[554] Irenæus had no opportunity of writing against the Monarchians, and unfortunately we possess no apologetic writings of his. It cannot therefore he determined how he would have written, if he had had less occasion to avoid the danger of being himself led into Gnostic speculations about æons. It has been correctly remarked that with Irenæus the Godhead and the divine personality of Christ merely exist beside each other. He did not want to weigh the different problems, because, influenced as he was by the lingering effects of an early-Christian, anti-theological interest, he regarded the results of this reflection as dangerous; but, as a matter of fact, he did not really correct the premises of the problems by rejecting the conclusions. We may evidently assume (with Zahn) that, according to Irenæus, "God placed himself in the relationship of Father to Son, in order to create after his image and in his likeness the man who was to become his Son;"[555] but we ought not to ask if Irenæus understood the incarnation as a definite purpose necessarily involved in the Sonship, as this question falls outside the sphere of Patristic thinking. No doubt the incarnation constantly formed the preëminent interest of Irenæus, and owing to this interest he was able to put aside or throw a veil over the mythological speculations of the Apologists regarding the Logos, and to proceed at once to the soteriological question.[556]