Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit by Anthony Briggman (review)

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in patristic pneumatology, coupled with a re-evaluation of older narratives about its development. Perhaps the best-known revisionist account is the collection of essays published by Lewis Ayres and Michel René Barnes in Augustinian Studies 39 (2008), collectively entitled, “Pneumatology: Historical and Methodological Considerations.” In their revised narrative, an early “high” pneumatology in the first stage (the first and second centuries) gives way to a “low” pneumatology in the second stage (the third and early fourth centuries), but then reappears in the third stage (from the mid-fourth century onward). This last stage is characterized by the continuation, retrieval, and clash of older pneumatologies and their reconfiguration within the new context of Pro-Nicene trinitarian theology. Thus there is no slow, steady progress to classic Nicene pneumatology; the path is far more circuitous than one might expect.

A central figure in the earliest stage in this revised narrative is Irenaeus. In this monograph, Anthony Briggman not only confirms the proposals of Ayres and Barnes, at least for the first two stages, but also complicates them. I say “complicates” because Briggman’s study makes it clear that there is a stage earlier than the first proposed by Ayres and Barnes, namely, a rudimentary pneumatology hampered by a focus on binitarian logic. Against this background, Irenaeus’s articulation of a high pneumatology, which Briggman presents in a meticulously researched and clear manner, has little precedent and is thus a truly remarkable achievement. And so, this study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the development of the early Christian theology of the Holy Spirit in its earliest stages.

Simply put, Briggman has produced the most comprehensive study of the pneumatology of Irenaeus to date. He proceeds through Irenaeus’s works chronologically (evidence and justification for this chronology and methodology is given on 5–7) in order to demonstrate the extent to which his pneumatology developed from crude beginnings, which reflected his immediate context, to the most sophisticated theology of the Spirit articulated in the first two Christian centuries. In fact, the monograph begins with a chapter on the pneumatology of Irenaeus’s older contemporary Justin Martyr as a point of contrast to show various insufficiencies in his mid-second century pneumatology, insufficiencies that Irenaeus would later successfully avoid. Justin fails to distinguish consistently the identities and activities of the Son and Spirit, and, even though his statements of belief are trinitarian, his logic is binitarian and thus there exists an unresolved tension in his thought that tends to obscure the Holy Spirit. Throughout the volume, Briggman insists that Irenaeus consistently couples his trinitarian confession to trinitarian logic and even devotes the last chapter to this subject. Thus, Briggman claims that Irenaeus is the first Christian author to develop a truly trinitarian account of God.

The bulk of the study (chapters three through six) is on the pneumatological themes encountered in Against the Heresies 3–5 and the Proof of the Apostolic Preaching. But Briggman does not ignore Against the Heresies 1–2, which are often neglected because they say little about the Spirit. In the second chapter, Briggman shows that one finds in these first two books a rudimentary, undeveloped form of his later, multi-faceted pneumatology. This tendency toward comprehensiveness on the part of Briggman is continued in chapter three, in which he discusses several themes in Against the Heresies 3, which, while not foundational for Irenaeus’s pneumatology, reveal a dramatic leap forward. The foundational themes, some of which have no precedent in Against the Heresies 1–2, are discussed over chapters four through six. The fourth chapter deals with the Spirit as the unction of Christ and the unction of the church. In the fifth chapter, Briggman discusses Irenaeus’s identification of the Spirit as one of the hands of God and as wisdom. These are rightly considered the two key aspects of...