In no other way could we have learned the things of God, if our Master, existing previously as the Word, had not been made man. For no one else could have declared to us the truths of the Father than the Father's own Word. For who else knew the mind of the Lord or who else has been his counsellor? [Rom. 11:34]. Nor again in any other way could we have learned except by seeing our Master with our eyes and hearing His voice with our ears; that so as imitators of His acts and doers of His words we might have fellowship with Him and receive of the fulness of Him who is perfect and who was before all creation. All this we have been made in these latter days by Him who only is supremely good and who has the gift of incorruptibility; inasmuch as we are conformed to His likeness and predestinated to become what we never were before, according to the foreknowledge of the Father, made a first-fruit of His workmanship, we have, therefore, received all this at the foreordained season, according to the dispensation of the Word, who is perfect in all things. For He, who is the mighty Word and very man, redeeming us by His blood in a reasonable manner, gave [pg 137] Himself as a ransom for those who had been led into captivity. And since apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, for though by nature we were God's possession, it yet alienated us contrary to nature, making us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all things and constant in His justice, dealt justly even with apostasy itself, redeeming from it what was His own property. Not by force, the way in which the apostasy had originally gained its mastery over us, greedily grasping at that which was not its own; but by moral force [secundum suadelam] as became God, by persuasion and not by force, regaining what He wished; so that justice might not be violated and God's ancient handiwork might not perish. Therefore, since by His own blood the Lord redeemed us and gave His soul for our soul, and His flesh for our flesh, and shed on us His Father's spirit to unite and join us in communion God and man, bringing God down to men by the descent of the Spirit, and raising up man to God by His incarnation, and by a firm and true promise giving us at His advent incorruptibility by communion with Him, and thus all the errors of the heretics are destroyed.
(b) Irenæus. Adv. Hær., III. 18:1, 7. (MSG, 6:932, 937.)
The following is a statement by Irenæus of his doctrine of recapitulation, which combines the idea of the second Adam of Paul and the Johannine theology.
Ch. 1. Since it has been clearly demonstrated that the Word, who existed in the beginning with God, and by whom all things were made, who also was present with the human race, was in these last days, according to the time appointed by the Father, united to His own workmanship, having been made a man liable to suffering, every objection is set aside of those who say: “If Christ was born at that time, He did not exist before that time.” For I have shown that the Son of God did not then begin to be, since He existed with His Father always; but when He was incarnate, and was [pg 138] made man, He commenced afresh [in seipso recapitulavit] the long line of human beings, and furnished us in a brief and comprehensive manner with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam—namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God—that we might recover in Christ Jesus.
Ch. 7. He caused human nature to cleave to and to become one with God, as we have said. For if man had not overcome the adversary of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately overcome. And again, if God had not given salvation, we could not have had it securely. And if man had not been united to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and man, by His relationship to both, to bring about a friendship and concord, and to present man to God and to reveal God to man. For in what way could we be partakers of the adoption of sons, if we had not received from Him, through the Son, that fellowship which refers to Himself, if the Word, having been made flesh, had not entered into communion with us? Wherefore He passed also through every stage of life restoring to all communion with God.
(c) Irenæus, Adv. Hær., IV, 18:5. (MSG, 6:1027 f.)
The conception of redemption as the imparting of incorruptibility connected itself easily with the doctrine of the eucharist, which had been called by Ignatius of Antioch “the medicine of immortality” (v. supra, [§ 12]). With this passage compare Irenæus, Adv. Hær., IV, 17:5.
How can they say that the flesh which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with His blood goes to corruption and does not partake of life? Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion or cease from offering the things mentioned. But our opinion is in accordance with the eucharist, and the eucharist, in turn, establishes our opinion. For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and the Spirit. For as the bread which is produced from the earth when it receives the invocation [pg 139] of God is no longer common bread, but the eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly, so, also, our bodies, when they receive the eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection unto eternity.