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Creation and Redemption – the One work of the One Word.

The Logos of the Cross in Irenaeus and Athanasius.

We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word who made it in the beginning. (Athanasius, De incarn. 1)

Introduction

‘The Logos of the cross’ has been ‘foolishness’ to philosophers of every age[1]. No human wisdom can ever accommodate the crucifixion of the ‘Lord of Glory’[2]. Carnal thinking demands that either the One crucified is less than the Lord of Glory or that His cross is less than a real crucifixion. Yet ‘God crucified’ is His power and wisdom and its uncompromising proclamation is the duty of the Church in all ages[3]. Thus the Scriptures warn us of the battleground between the wisdom of the cross and the wisdom of men[4]. The history of the Church, its doctrines of Christology, of Creation and of Redemption, have fallen along these contours.

In the sub-Apostolic period, this perennial threat of philosophy has been called ‘‘the work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the gospel.”[5] The characteristic fruit of this process was the divorce of redemption from creation. This will always be the case when the Scriptures are approached with the dualism of Hellenic thought. Unless the philosopher entirely reconfigures their categories of thought around the Word of God they will never apprehend the good news. ‘The Word became flesh’[6] must either be the foundation of a theology grounded in the God-Man, or the terms of this saving truth will be distorted beyond any Biblical sense.

When the creative Word and the realm of flesh are considered to be at odds, Christ’s Person and work cannot be appreciated. Yet, perhaps this is the wrong way around. Christ, as He reveals Himself in His word, judges our appreciation of ‘heaven and earth’, of ‘God and man’, of ‘time and eternity’, of ‘Spirit and flesh’. In encountering Him in His word and by His Spirit we then understand the unity of creation and redemption. We understand them as united since Christ can only be known as both ‘Word’ and flesh’, as both ‘the First and the Last’ and the One ‘who died and rose again’[7]. It is not simply that Christ’s work is incomprehensible without the doctrine of creation – Christ Himself demands to be known as the Creator who is crucified.

Here we grasp Paul’s resolve ‘to know nothing except Christ and Him crucified.’[8] Christ – His exalted Person and His submissive work – must be the foundation of thought[9]. Christ and His work is not a surprising metaphysical or ethical issue to be thought through via doctrine grounded elsewhere. All theology which begins elsewhere fails at the outset.[10] If we are to resist the divorce of creation and redemption, we must hold onto Christ as the Mediator of both. To fail in this is to fail to recognize Christ – to fail to be Christian.

Thus, against the heresies of the sub-Apostolic era, it fell to theologians such as Irenaeus and Athanasius to uphold the continuity of creation and redemption. They were able to do so precisely because, for them, Christ and His work was not a metaphysical conundrum but the Rock upon which they built[11]. Hart’s analysis of Irenaeus holds true for Athanasius also: “[he made] the person of the Incarnate Son[12] his dogmatic starting point, rather than the dualistic framework provided by the categories of Greek thought.”[13]

These men were not concerned to hold creation and redemption together in an abstract sense (so as to keep a balanced theological ledger). Rather their commitment to Christ as arche and telos of all things forced them to think through creation and redemption as the work of the One Word of the Father. Athanasius’ starting point in De Incarnatione is instructive:

The first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word who made it in the beginning.[14]

A ‘consistency’ in creation and redemption is not the outcome of a well balanced systematics. The consistency – in fact all theology, the Church, indeed the cosmos – resides in Christ Himself. For the Bishops of Lyon and Alexandria, Christ is our Logic – our Creator-Redeemer. For this reason they were able to defend the coherence of creation and redemption in Christ. We will now look briefly at some of their opponents.

Heresies

The early Church was assailed on all sides by those who claimed an allegiance to Christ and to His redeeming work. Yet immediately the question must be raised ‘Redemption from what? And to what? And by Whom?’

The answers given by Marcion (c.80 – c. 160) were disturbing. Christ saves us from the Creator God of the Old Testament who is bad (viz. involvement with creation), capricious, legalistic and not the Father of Jesus[15]. The death of Christ purchases salvation and His soul’s rising from death gives hope for our own soulish afterlife.

The Gnostic Valentinus (in Rome from c. 136-165), provided Irenaeus with his chief ‘whipping boy’. He taught that the creator is not the Supreme Being but, as Irenaeus caricatures, ‘the fruit of a defect’[16] existing in a long chain of deity (the pleroma) which kept the created order at a great (almost by definition, unbridgeable) distance. Christ is simply one emanation from this pleroma who came to save the true pneumatikoi from this material world through imparting secret gnosis.

Arius (c. 250 – c. 336), was perhaps the most serious threat to orthodox Christianity because his account of Christ’s saving work was so apparently Scriptural. The ‘what’ of the cross was set forth plainly. Yet the ‘Who’ of the cross proved the decisive error. Arius committed the fundamental mistake outlined above – that of deciding his doctrines of God, of man and of creation in advance of considering the God-Man Creator. For him, the Divine Being is unitary and without distinctions, must be un-begotten, can have no contact with creation and can never partake in human (i.e. mutable) existence. Of course he could subscribe to none of these views if Christ were his dogmatic foundation. Thus it fell naturally to Athanasius, whose Christocentricity we have noted, to defeat this terrible heresy.

Before we move on we ought to note that Arius’ account of redemption fails, not only on the point of Christ’s identity but also on the goal of this redemption. If God and the created order are necessarily incompatible then Christ either does not bring us true fellowship with God (so, for instance, Islam, where paradise is exceedingly carnal and a place from which Allah is conspicuously absent) or we partake in this fellowship only by escaping the creation (e.g. – eastern philosophies and their influence on the new age).

We now turn to the teaching of Irenaeus and Athanasius.

Creation

Christ’s work does not begin with His baptism or His birth. From eternity He has been the One in the bosom of the Father, loved by Him in the bond of the Spirit and chosen as the Agent of all the Divine will and wisdom. This is His Person, and His work begins with the Father and the Spirit on day one of creation.

For Irenaeus, even our individual formation in the womb[17] comes through Christ[18]. The Father of Jesus[19] brought all things into existence from nothing[20] through His two hands[21] – the Son and the Spirit, His Word and Wisdom.[22]

Each of these points is crucial for Irenaeus.

Firstly, that creation is wrought by Christ and from the very God revealed in Christ, is, he considers, his chief weapon against all heresies[23]. This was just what Valentinus and Marcion denied. For them, Jesus of Nazareth could not be the revelation of the LORD God of Genesis. This material defilement was precisely that from which they attempted to save the God of Jesus Christ. If Irenaeus could prove this point, Valentinus and Marcion would be forced either to abandon Christ or their false teaching. They could certainly not continue their allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ alongside a moral disdain (not to mention metaphysical incredulity) at His creative work.

Secondly, it was vital to proclaim ex nihilo against those who would put creation and Creator on a single continuum of being. Minns puts it well:

Creation does not share in the same substance as God, in however attenuated and sullied a form. Rather, God is the only reality, the only thing that really is, and over against God, called into existence out of nothingness by God, and held in being, poised over nothingness by God, is everything that God creates.’[24]

The long chain of ‘go-between’ deities espoused by Valentinus’ pleroma ought, in fact, to be infinite if they are truly to uphold the transcendence of the Supreme Being. Yet the distinction which Gnostics claim to exist between creation and Creator is, in the end, a quantitative, not qualitative one. Only ex nihilo can ‘draw the line’ in an absolute sense. Only on the other side of this line can God be truly free and sovereign in His dealings with creation. Only this kind of free sovereignty can allow, simultaneously, the immanence which God’s gospel proclaims.

The third point re-enforces the second – triune creation is essential if God’s transcendence and immanence are to be maintained.

“Because the Son and the Spirit are God, to create by means of his two hands means that God himself is creating. This is accordingly a theology of mediation which breaks through Hellenic doctrines of degrees of being. There do not, on this account, need to be intermediate beings between God and the world, because the Son and the Spirit mediate between the divine and the created.”[25]

God Himself creates but He creates through the ‘Other’ who is His Son and He perfects (or ‘disposes’ as he says in Demonstration. 5) through the ‘Other’ who is His Spirit. This triune theology of creation which Irenaeus propounded, which Athanasius built on, and of which we are the heirs, is the only doctrine which can make sense of the creation as truly other than God, yet belonging to Him. The otherness in eternity[26] of the Son and Spirit is an otherness which very much belongs to God. Yet through the ‘Other’ of the Son and by the ‘Other’ of the Spirit is a way out into the great ‘other’ – creation.

On all these points, Athanasius was in agreement.[27] The great advance which he won in his day was to differentiate definitively between the Son’s eternal generation from the Father and creation’s in-time manufacture. In securing this, Athanasius would settle the question, ‘on which side of the Creator-creation ‘line’ does the Logos belong?’[28]

To Athanasius, Arius could be heard to ask, ‘why is there a time when the creation was not[29] and not a time when the Son was not?’ ‘What convincing distinction can be made between begetting and creating?’[30]

Athanasius answers that there is a crucial distinction between what is begotten and what is willed. Paternity is a matter of essence, not will. As soon as a father has a son he is a father. Therefore the Father has always been Father just as the Son has always existed. Yet creating is a matter of will not essence – one can be a maker before one actually makes. Therefore, just because God has always been Maker does not mean that there has always been something that is made (i.e. creation). Having said all this, Athanasius can say confidently that the Son is God in essence; creatures are what they are by the will of God. The Logos is firmly on God’s side of the ‘line’ and we are on the other.

It is not He who was created for us, but we are created for Him.[31]

It is this sense of creation ‘for Him’ to which we now turn.

The purpose of creation

…why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.[32]

The creature is willed by God out of His abundant goodness[33] as the overflow of His triune life. Yet just as God does not will to be God alone[34], so the creature is not brought into being in independence. Rather, as one made after the true Image[35] – the eternal Word – the proper destiny of man is to participate in the divine life. Man, in union with Christ – who is Man among men[36] – is to be taken up to the Father, by the Spirit, and so to participate in God[37]. This participation is grounded in a knowing of God, and this knowing is necessarily a Trinitarian dynamic.[38]

Here is the telos of creation – many brought into God in the Son.

It should be clear from this that creation is not, therefore, an emanation, nor an inevitable existence alongside God. The creature is purposefully willed by the Father as that which is ‘after’ His eternal Image Whom He loves. His love for the creature corresponds to His love for the Son, for when He beholds the creation He delights ‘in seeing the works made after his own Image; even this rejoicing of God is on account of his own Image.’[39]

Crucially this means that God’s own integrity is bound up in the creation. To use the terminology of the previous section, the Father has willed a commitment to the creation, in a way analogous to His essential commitment to the Son. It is therefore unthinkable that the Father’s creation should not fulfil the purpose which He has ordained for it, for otherwise God’s “consistency of character with all”[40] is compromised. God must act lest He “be conquered [and] His wisdom lessened.”[41]

The need for re-creation (Athanasius)

In the world views circulating at the time of the early Church, the problem of our relation to the divine was ontological: our very physicality cuts us off from the divine life. The great ruptures occurred pre-creation (e.g. wars in heaven) and these gave rise to this world. Against this, Athanasius maintained the Biblical account that physicality is not the issue for the creature before God. Indeed creation, as we have seen, springs from the good purpose of God. The problem – that is, the fall – occurs after creation. Thus it is humanity’s disobedience that gives rise to the rupture between God and man: an ethical rather than ontological problem. This ethical obligation is owed to God precisely because He is the Maker and Owner of creation. At the same time, it is because God has placed man at the centre of His purposes as vice-gerent over creation that this ethical rupture will have consequences for the physical creation. In this way Athanasius could take seriously our true problem before God – sin – while at the same time observing the physical consequences for the creation. God’s covenant with ‘Man’ in the fullest sense of what God intended for him[42], was the operating system of creation[43]. Disrupt this and you disrupt the entire creative work.

Thus because of the fall, ‘the work of God was being undone.’[44] This ‘undoing’ is concentrated where creation itself was concentrated – in man after the Image of God. In rejecting the Word, mankind no longer knew God and instead pursued false images (idols), not the true Image.[45] Men made for incorruptibility and participation in God were perishing under sin and enslaved to Satan.

Time and again Athanasius stresses how ‘supremely unfitting[46]’ and ‘unthinkable[47]’ it would be for the ‘All Good[48]’ ‘Father of Truth[49]’ to allow His creation to run such a ruinous path. He also notes that humanity has no resources within itself to remedy the situation[50]. Thus God’s commitment to creation demands[51] a reversal of the fall. Since the fall was a ‘de-creation’ so redemption must be a re-creation. And if this is so, then the Creator Himself must be the Redeemer. Thus,

Creation and redemption are held together by the One Divine Agent.

The need for recapitulation (Irenaeus)

Where Athanasius speaks of re-creation, Irenaeus speaks of recapitulation.

Recapitulation (anakephalaiosis)[52] has been variously understood: to sum up, to go over the same ground again, to unite under a single head, to restore to the original, to bring to a climax, a spiral climb[53]. All of these capture something of Irenaeus’ meaning[54]. Fundamentally, redemption is described as God “recapitulating in himself his own handiwork.”[55] Thus “what we had lost in Adam – namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God – that we might recover in Christ Jesus.”[56] Christ achieves this by taking the very flesh of Adam[57] – the head of the old humanity – and, going over the ground of Adam’s history[58], Christ achieves victory where Adam failed.[59] Thus Christ can become the Head of the true spiritual humanity to which we must belong.[60] God’s creative work has moved in this direction from the beginning, making Christ’s incarnate work completely ‘of-a-piece’ with His creation. The goal of all God’s ways with the creation has ever been to sum up everything under the Heavenly Man, Christ[61].

Thus, the humanity of Adam, for Irenaeus, was ‘sketched out’ expressly as that which must be filled out in Christ’s soma pneumatikon:

“The Word – the Creator of all – prefigured in Adam the future economy of his own incarnation. God first sketched out the ensouled human being, with a view to his being saved by the spiritual human being. Since the Saviour was already in existence, the one who was to be saved had to come into existence, or the Saviour would have been Saviour of no one.”[62]

Christ is ‘Saviour’ before the fall.[63] Thus Minns must be right when he says of Irenaeus’ theology:

“Adam’s sin conditions the salvation to be worked by the incarnate Word but it does not call it into existence. For the earth creature does not come to be in the image and likeness of God until God becomes flesh, until the human being in whose image Adam was created stands on the earth.”[64]

It would be anachronistic to call Irenaeus supralapsarian and Athanasius infralapsarian yet these are roughly the sides on which they fall in this later debate[65]. For Irenaeus, Christ’s work is not simply the answer to sin but a progression in the one dynamic story of creation’s plerosis moving from Adam to Christ, from flesh to spirit, from Eden to the New Jerusalem. Thus,

Creation and redemption are held together by the one divine goal.

The cross and resurrection

Both Irenaeus and Athanasius are commonly accused of making the ‘bare fact’ of incarnation the sum total of Christ’s saving work. Yet this is unfair.

For Irenaeus, Christ’s filling out of Adam’s distorted image means necessarily a “filling up [of] the times of his disobedience”[66] In taking on Adam’s substance, He took on Adam’s curse – this He satisfied at the cross, ‘propitiating indeed for us the Father, against Whom we had sinned’[67] and ‘redeeming us by His own blood’[68]. Having put Adam to death, the resurrection then realizes Christ’s soma pneumatikon, bringing about the true glorified humanity to which the redeemed will belong and on which the new creation will be patterned.

For Athanasius, the curse of death[69] is a key consideration. Within the creation narratives comes a decree from the Creator God who orders all things by His Word. The word of Genesis 2:17 must be maintained lest God be proved false and, ironically, the serpent proved true. Christ’s incarnation is therefore that by which the Word can take a body capable of death “so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished.”[70] Moreover this death is specifically a sacrifice[71] made under God’s curse[72] and offered without blemish[73], so as to be a ransom[74] freeing us from Adam’s ‘primal transgression’[75]. “In the same act also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection.”[76]

Thus neither Irenaeus nor Athanasius espouse redemption as a fait accompli the minute the Word is united to flesh. While they both see the union of divine and human as the goal of God’s creation-redemption purposes and while the ‘Word become flesh’ is their sole hope for this union, the ‘bare fact’ will not do on its own. The nature of Adam’s race requires much work to be done. Mankind must turn from idols to the Truth, we must receive and truly own an active righteousness before the Father, Satan has to be defeated, justice must be upheld, sin must be dealt with, incorruptibility must be won. Thus, Christ’s divine teaching, His demonstrations of authority over man, nature and the devil, His active obedience, His suffering, His death, His resurrection and His ascension are all crucial in order to accomplish redemption. Yet, against those (especially the Arians), who would uphold the necessity of these works yet deny the Person who worked them, it must be maintained that the Agent of these works is God and the locus of their working is man. These works are, therefore, only effective because they are the works of the God-Man. Thus, for Irenaeus and Athanasius, the incarnation is the necessary and sufficient cause of redemption, but only when articulated as the full work of the Incarnate Word.

Creation and Redemption

Today the church struggles to relate creation and redemption appropriately. When theologians collapse the two together they fall for a universalism that betrays the plain teaching of the Scriptures[77]. When we sever creation from redemption we preach a false gospel of escape from this world to a higher plane. The latter danger is the greater in evangelical circles. In our pulpits the renewed creation is rarely preached. Instead an anaemic ‘heaven’ is held out as the eschatological hope. The sacraments become Platonised, worship becomes a-physical, Christology becomes Nestorian and the church is rendered dumb on such vital issues as ecology and our Western obsession with body image.

Again we maintain that such a church has not simply failed to appreciate Christ’s work – it has failed to recognize Christ Himself. The Christ of Scripture is the ‘one Lord… through Whom all things came and through Whom we live.’[78] The Church must hold together creation and redemption because she herself is held together in Him Who is the fulcrum of both.

We maintain that without a Christocentric doctrine of creation, sin makes no sense. Only the sovereignty of a Creator Christ could justify His definition of sin in John 16:9. Only sin against Jesus could possibly be forgiven by Jesus (see Mark 2:1-12). Thus only Christ as Creator can make sense of Christ as Redeemer. If He weren’t the Agent of Creation then the incarnation would be an alien work effected by an alien agent. “It would be the (albeit benign) invasion of a foreign land.”[79] Christ would not be the Good Shepherd (at least not in the Biblical sense[80]) and the sheep He saves would not be His own[81] except by conquest.

Against this, Irenaeus must be heard again as he proclaims the triune Creator’s good purposes for this world. Man ruling under God was the creation blueprint realized in Christ, the Heavenly Man ruling under God in the redeemed creation. We find our place in this one economy when we come to the Father through the Word made man. Crucially this participation in God comes as we participate in the creation. Indeed the very telos of the creation comes in this divinisation and this divinisation is located nowhere else than in the creation.

We also must hear Athanasius as he holds out Christ as the divine Agent of creation and redemption. The incarnate work is nothing less than a re-creation of the de-created cosmos disintegrating under the weight of sin and death. The Redeemer is therefore no-one less than the Creator taking responsibility for His handiwork and making them new.

When we fail to hold together these doctrines, Christ’s work is entirely misunderstood. It is either considered as a superfluous addendum to the telos of creation or it achieves a goal subordinate to it, or it begins a work alien to the creative intention or, worst of all, it is won as a salvation from the created order (and perhaps even from the Creator). Yet none of these say what the Scriptures insist and what Irenaeus and Athanasius knew must be proclaimed. That is, that redemption is the accomplishment of the one oikonomia theou encompassing both creation and redemption. Redemption is not an awkward adjunct but rather the accomplishment and consummation of creation’s goal.

Bibliography

Athanasius – On the Incarnation

Irenaeus, ‘The Writings of Irenaeus, Against Heresies’ Ante Nicene Christian Library, Vol IX, Ed: Alexander Roberts and James, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), 1869

K. Barth, Dogmatics in Outline. London: SCM, 1949

K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3/1, T&T Clark, 1958

J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Ed: J. McNeill, Westminster Press, 1960

C. Gunton, ‘The Doctrine of Creation’, The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, Ed: Colin Gunton (CUP, 1997)

C. Gunton, The Triune Creator, Edinburgh University Press, 1998

T. Hart (Ed), Christ In Our Place: The humanity of God in Christ for the reconciliation of the world, Paternoster, 1989

R. Jenson, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, Oxford University Press, 1997

R. Jenson, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, 1999

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-48.htm (last checked 4 April 2005)

J. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968

J. Lawson, The Biblical Theology of St Irenaeus, (The Epworth Press, 1948)

D. Minns, Irenaeus, London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994.

A. McGrath, Christian Theology, An Introduction, Blackwell, 2001

J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, NY: Fordham University Press, 1979

M. Ovey, ‘The Son Incarnate in a Hostile World’: http://www.geocities.com/the_theologian/content/doctrine/incarnation.html

last checked 12/03/05

W. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, (Trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley), T&T Clark, 1991.

W. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, (Trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley), T&T Clark, 1994.

D. Peterson (Ed), Where Wrath and Mercy Meet, (Paternoster, 2001)

A. Pettersen, Athanasius, London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994.

G. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics, SPCK, 1958

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[1] 1 Corinthians 1:18, 20

[2] 1 Corinthians 2:8

[3] 1 Corinthians 1:21-24; Matthew 28:18-20; Romans 1:15,16; 10:14-17

[4] read 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:8. Also Colossians 1:15-2:10

[5] This was Harnack’s central claim concerning the eastern fathers in his History of Dogma (1886-90), as quoted in T. Hart, ‘Irenaeus, recapitulation and physical redemption’, Christ in Our Place, Ed: Trevor Hart and Daniel Thimell, Paternoster, 1989. Hart makes a convincing case that such a verdict is unwarranted in the case of Irenaeus – see for e.g. p179.

[6] John 1:14

[7] Revelation 2:8

[8] 1 Corinthians 2:2

[9] cf. Colossians 2:8f; John 14:6; Matthew 11:25-27; Colossians 1:15; John 1:18

[10] From this it will be clear that we are not suggesting a prior commitment to the doctrine of creation before we consider Christ. This would be to fall off the horse on the other side. Both creation and redemption must be approached through the One Word and Image of God – Jesus Christ. More on this below.

[11] cf. Colossians 2:8f; John 14:6; Matthew 11:25-27; Colossians 1:15; John 1:18

[12] In saying ‘Incarnate Son’ Hart is perhaps influenced more by Barth than by Irenaeus himself in identifying the exact starting point. It is not so much the Logos ensarkos who provides Irenaeus’ doctrinal foundation as the Eternal Logos who later (and perhaps inevitably) becomes flesh. Either way, it is the Person of the Word, in distinction from, but also union with, the Father Who shapes all of Irenaean (and we must say Athanasian) theology. This Word forms creation so as to be the scene of His incarnate work (e.g. Ad. Her. III.22.3; V.17.3). Thus Hart’s point stands.

[13] T. Hart, ‘Irenaeus, recapitulation and physical redemption’, Christ in Our Place, Ed: Trevor Hart and Daniel Thimell, Paternoster, 1989. p.179

[14] De incarn. 1

[15] Indeed Marcion teaches that the Father was completely unknown before the incarnation. He took this from Matthew 11:27 (see footnotes 9 and 11 above). Perhaps again the problem can be seen in making the Logos ensarkos the foundation rather than the Word who then becomes flesh.

[16] Ad. Her. II.1.1

[17] (Ad. Her. IV.31.2) cf. Deuteronomy 32:6; (Ad. Her. V.15.3) cf. Jeremiah 1:5

[18] Though they prefer the designation ‘Word’, both Irenaeus and Athanasius are content to use the name ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ for His pre-incarnate ministry: “Christ did not at that time descend upon Jesus, neither was Christ one and Jesus another: but the Word of God… who is Jesus… was made Jesus Christ.” (Adv. H. III.9.3); ‘through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, He made everything from nothing.’ (De incarn. 3). This concurs with Scripture: John 12:41; Phil 2:5ff; 2 Cor 8:9; Jude 4-5

[19] As against the Gnostics and Marcion, Irenaeus stresses again and again that the Father Himself is Creator: ‘He is the Former, He the Builder, He the Discoverer, He the Creator, He the Lord of all… He is Father, He is God, He the Founder, He the Maker, He the Creator, who made those things by Himself.’ (Ad. Her. II.30.9). See also Ad. Her. II.16.3; Ad. Her. III.1.2; Ad. Her. IV.32.1; Dem. 4,5; Ad. Her. I.10.3; Ad. Her. I.22.1; Ad. Her. II.9.1; Ad. Her. III.25.1; Ad. Her. I.22.1; Dem. 5; Ad. Her. II.1.1; Ad. Her. IV.38.3; Ad. Her. III.8.3.

[20] ‘…one God Almighty, who made all things by His Word…fashioned and formed, out of that which had no existence, all things which exist’ (Ad. Her. I.22.1); see also Ad. Her. II.2.5, cf. Psalm 33:9;148:5; also Ad. Her. II.27.2 and Ad. Her. III.10.1. Demonstration. 43 cf. Genesis 1:1; Psalm 72:17; 110:3; John 1:1-18; also Ad. Her. IV.32.1, cf. Genesis 1:3; Ephesians 4:5-6.

[21] For the hands of God in Scripture see, for e.g. Isaiah 48:13, 51:9; Psalm 98:1; Ezekiel 3:14,16; Daniel 5:5; 10:10f; Matthew 12:28 ó Luke 11:20. Examples from Irenaeus: ‘This hand of God which formed us at the beginning, and which does form us in the womb, has in the last times sought us out who were lost, winning back His own, and taking up the lost sheep upon His shoulders, and with joy restoring it to the fold of life.’ (Ad. Her. V.15.2); ‘[There was no other] hand of God besides that which, from the beginning even to the end, forms us and prepares us for life, and is present with His handiwork, and perfects it after the image and likeness of God.’ (Ad. Her. V.16.1)

[22] “And, because God is rational, he therefore created what is made by his Word, and, as God is Spirit, so he disposed everything by his Spirit.” (Demonstration. 5.); “For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously , He made all things.” (Ad. Her. IV.20.1) see also Ad. Her. IV.7.4

[23] “Whatever I have said about the Creator to prove that He alone is the God and Father of all, and whatever I shall say in the subsequent books, I say against all the heretics.” (Ad. Her. II.31.1)

[24] D. Minns, Irenaeus, London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994. p33

[25] C. Gunton, The Triune Creator, Edinburgh University Press, 1998, p54

[26] Christ’s otherness does not manifest itself only in the incarnation but ‘applies indifferently throughout all time.’ See Ad. Her. IV.6.7

[27] The following quotations will show full agreement on all these points: ‘This is God’s loving kindness to men, that by grace He becomes the Father of those whose Creator He already is. This comes about when created men, as the Apostle says, receive the Spirit of His Son crying, “Abba, Father”, in their hearts. (C. Ar. 2.59); ‘God is good, or rather the source of all goodness; and the good has no envy for anything. Thus, because He envies nothing its existence, through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, He made everything from nothing.’ (De incarn. 3) ‘in Him [the Word] the Father wrought the creation’ (De. incarn. 41);‘[Creation] was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. (De incarn. 3); ‘The divinely inspired teaching of faith in Christ… teaches that… God, through the Word, brought the universe which previously subsisted in no way whatsoever into being from non-being.’ (De incarn. 3); ‘God is good, or rather the source of all goodness; and the good has no envy for anything. Thus, because He envies nothing its existence, through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, He made everything from nothing.’ (De incarn. 3)

[28] Of course Irenaeus knew where the Logos belonged. Yet the challenge of an Arius had not defined the issues so sharply in his day.

[29] Ex nihilo was vehemently asserted by Athanasius who saw that even Christians had fallen for an eternal creation. As against Justin, he wished to maintain that the ‘nothing’ out of which the Word formed the world was an actual ‘nothing’ and not another name for formless matter. As against Origen, he maintained that the creation did not eternally co-exist with God and so limit Him.

[30] As Athanasius himself puts it: ‘What likeness is there between the Son and works, that [the Arians] should parallel a Father’s with a Maker’s function?’ (Contra. Arianus. 1.29)

[31] Contra Arianos, II.31

[32] Athanasius, De incarn. 11

[33] It is absolutely foundational to Athanasius’ doctrine of God that He is ‘good’. ‘On the incarnation’ abounds with the ‘goodness’ and ‘sheer goodness’ of the ‘All-good God.’ E.g.: “For God is good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.” (De. Incarn. 3)

[34] K. Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, London:SCM, 1949, p54

[35] For Irenaeus, Adam is ‘after’ the Image in that he is an ensouled sketch of humanity taken from the blueprint of Christ’s spiritual humanity which was manifested at the incarnation (Ad. Her. III.22.3; see also V.16.1). For Athanasius, being ‘after’ the Image means having ‘a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself.’ (De. Incarn. 3)

[36] Irenaeus, ‘Fragment VIII’, The Writings of Irenaeus, Ante Nicene Christian Library, Vol IX, Ed: Alexander Roberts and James, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), 1869. p183

[37] This participation is described variously by the two:

Irenaeus: ‘passing into God’ (Adv. H., IV. 33.4.); being ‘promoted into God’ (Adv. H., III.19.1.);

“Our Lord Jesus Christ… did, through his transcendent love, become what we are, that he might bring us to be even what he is himself.” (Adv. H., V. pref.)

Athanasius: ‘He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.’ (De incarn., 54); ‘The Word became flesh in order both to offer this sacrifice and that we, participating in His Spirit, might be deified.’ (De Decret., ch 14) (quoted p377 of J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines)

[38] “Those who receive and bear the Spirit of God are led to the Word, that is to the Son. But the Son takes them up and presents them to the Father, and the Father bestows incorruptibility. Therefore one cannot see the Word of God without the Spirit, nor can anyone approach the Father without the Son. For the Son is the knowledge of the Father, and knowledge of the Son of God is through the Holy Spirit. But the Son, in accord with the Father’s good pleasure, graciously dispenses the Spirit to those to whom the Father wills it, and as the Father wills it.” Irenaeus, Demonstration. 7

[39] C.Ar. 2.82

[40] De. Incarn. 7

[41] Adv. H. III.23.1

[42] Which can be considered only Christologically. See for instance, Hebrews 2:6-9; Romans 8:29

[43] It is probable that both Irenaeus and Athanasius could agree with Barth’s dictum that ‘Creation is the external basis for the covenant and the covenant the internal basis for creation.’ (See Church Dogmatics, III)

[44] De incarn. 6

[45] De. Incarn. 11-12

[46] De. Incarn. 6

[47] De. Incarn. 8

[48] De. Incarn. 10

[49] De. Incarn. 7

[50] for e.g. De incarn. 7

[51] Athanasius insists that redemption was really the only course for an All-loving, Truthful God to take. In asking ‘What then was God to do?’ (ch. 6) Athanasius expects only one reply – redemption. See also De incarn. 13

[52] see especially Ephesians 1:10; also Romans 13:9

[53] The Biblical Theology of St Irenaeus, John Lawson, The Epworth Press, 1948, p142.

[54] See his own use of the term: Ad. Her. III.21.10; III.23.1; V.19.1; V.21.1.

[55] Adv.H., III.xxii.1

[56] Adv. H., III.18.1

[57] Adv. H. V.1.3

[58] e.g.: just as Adam had no earthly father, so too Christ (III.18.7); just as Eve was disobedient, so Mary is obedient (V.19.1); just as Adam was tempted through food and failed, so Christ was tempted through fasting and succeeded (V.21.2); just as Adam was disobedient with the tree, so Christ is obedient on the tree (V.16.3) etc. etc.

[59] “He has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things… in order that, as our species went down to death through a vanquished man, so we may ascend to life through a victorious one; and as through a man death received the palm [of victory] against us, so again by a man we may receive the palm against death.” Adv. H. V.21.1

[60] This is, of course, not an innovation of Irenaeus’, but the plain teaching of the Scriptures – Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:20-22, 44-50

[61] Ephesians 1:10

[62] Adv.H. III.22.3

[63] One suspects Irenaeus would have rejected the philosophical distinction between essence and will which Athanasius embraced. Christ seems to be Saviour in essence – it is not simply that He wills to be so in response to the fall. Yet, for Irenaeus, this does not imply an eternal fall from which He must save us. The eternal essence of Christ as Saviour can give rise to an in-time realization of this nature in the history of redemption.

[64] D. Minns, Irenaeus, p87

[65] For Athanasius as infralapsarian see for e.g.: “You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. (De. incarn. 1)” or “It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. (De. incarn. 4)”

For possible supralapsarian leanings one could appeal to the logic of chapters 21-22: “…Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body.” (De incarn. 21); “Moreover, as it was the death of all mankind that the Savior came to accomplish… (De incarn. 22); “…The supreme object of His coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body.” (De incarn. 22) Given the importance of incorruptibility in Athanasian theology one could make a supralapsarian case for his system.

[66] Ad. Her. III.21.1

[67] Ad. Her. V.17.1

[68] Ad. Her. V.14.3

[69] Genesis 2:17

[70] De incarn. 8

[71] De. Incarn. 9; 10; 20

[72] De incarn. 25

[73] De. Incarn. 9

[74] De. Incarn. 9; 25

[75] De. Incarn. 20

[76] De incarn. 20

[77] In anticipation of such a charge being levelled at Irenaeus we note for instance: [Adv. H., IV.xli.2] “According to nature… we are all sons of God, because we have all been created by God. But with respect to obedience and doctrine we are not all sons of God: those only are so who believe in him and do his will.”

[78] 1 Corinthians 8:6

[79] J.P. Arunzulla, The soma pneumatikon and the redemption of creation. Christological eschatology in Irenaean perspective, Unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College London, 2005.

[80] See for e.g. Genesis 48:15f; Psalm 23:1; Ezekiel 34:10

[81] Ad. Her. V.15.2