Irenaeus: The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

Apostolic Preaching

Introduction

I

The Document and Its Value

IT is a remarkable fact, and much to be regretted, that none of the works of St Irenæus, the greatest theologian of the second century, have come down to us in the language in which they were written. Of his chief work, the five books Against Heresies, we have a very early Latin translation, and a few fragments of the original Greek preserved through quotation by other writers. The work now before us, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, has recently been found in an Armenian translation, and no portion of it seems to have survived in any other language.

This new treatise does not come upon us entirely as a surprise; for Eusebius had mentioned its title, Eis epideixin tou apostolikou kerugmatos, and had said that it was addressed to "a brother named Marcianus." This is all he tells us; but we can now add from the book itself that it was written after the completion of the greater work, and therefore somewhere about A.D. 180; and that Marcianus was on intimate terms with the writer, but absent from him at the time of writing. The work Against Heresies is, of course, controversial from first to last: but the present treatise is a sort of Vade mecum for an intelligent Christian, explaining his faith, placing it in its historical setting in relation to Judaism, and confirming it by the citation and exposition of a great number of Old Testament passages. It is in no sense a manual for catechumens: it is a handbook of Christian Evidence, though its form is not controversial.

A tract of this kind from the pen of a great teacher in any age must needs be of interest. How was Christianity presented as a whole to an educated believer? What were the main points of doctrine and of life on which stress was laid? What were the grounds of belief. which appeared to be most convincing then? These are the things which the historian of religious development wants to know in each of the Christian centuries, and which he finds it exceptionally difficult to get at. The great events and the leading personalities have left their mark on the records of the time: the development of doctrine and the growth of ecclesiastical institutions can be traced with increasing clearness as the documents are tested and studied and compared: but the religious sense of an age, the beliefs which affected life, and the grounds of those beliefs, the ruling motives of conduct, the things that to…