Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity by John Behr (review)

Few historical figures are as relevant as Irenaeus of Lyons for the developmental identity of the early Church. The late-second-century bishop stands at the pivotal juncture of ecclesiastical authority in the West, at the intersection of orthodoxy and heresy, and at the center of the melee of theological factions. Although much of his biographical information eludes historians, his singular location in Church history is viewed as a pinnacle among obscure ecclesiastical leaders and at the epicenter of controversial forces that shaped Christian orthodoxy. Since he stands out in singular fashion, he has become an emblem with many faces: the marginalization of diversity, the target of gnostic advocates, and the champion of the apostolic tradition. Father John Behr falls in the last of these camps of historical interpretation, and his subtitle captures the milieu of religious self-discovery in which this Church father participates.

Behr serves as Dean and Professor of Patristics at St Vladimir’s Seminary, where he is well known in patristic circles for his work on Irenaeus. He composed the “Formation of Christian Theology” series, in which he expounded Irenaeus’s ascetic and anthropological values. He provided a new translation of Irenaeus’s On the Apostolic Preaching and regularly appears on projects related to second-century Christianity. In this new work, he provides a comprehensive treatment of the work and person of Irenaeus.

Throughout the book, Behr presents his subject as both an ancient and a contemporary figure, a truly catholic writer: “The context for the study of Irenaeus undertaken here has not only been the second century, but also our own times. … He is the most important theologian in the articulation of Christian orthodoxy to his time, and, arguably, thereafter” (206). In three large chapters, the work thoroughly condenses Irenaeus’s historical and theological contribution. It clearly and fairly lays out the situation of contemporary critical scholarship that prioritizes inclusivity in the tension with a catholic “Great Church” that prioritized exclusivity. The work faithfully “negotiates the complex relations between history and interpretation, faith and reason, and ancient texts as historical documents and as Scripture” (12). Throughout, Behr unmistakably acknowledges a non-catholic sector in the hybridity of early Christianity, first typified in Marcion, that functions to define a writer like Irenaeus as a genuine emblem of catholicity.

In the first chapter, Irenaeus is considered for his roots in Asia Minor in the shadow of Polycarp and for his attention to the division in the West that sought leadership from Rome. Recently described as a “scion of the East” by J. A. Cerrato, Irenaeus is a crucial link in the early influence of the apostolic tradition between two halves of the Roman Empire, East and West. “If Rome, during the second century, was the crucible in which ‘orthodoxy’ was forged, it was Irenaeus, on the basis of the witness of the martyrs in his community and the tradition going back through Polycarp to John, who over-saw this process” (71). Behr posits Irenaeus as a figure who united a divided ecclesiology by advocating for both Quartodecimians who practiced a different dating for Easter and Montantists who promoted apocalyptic signs of the immediate return of Christ. While Irenaeus promoted them as members of the Church, he demoted gnostic leaders in his work Against Heresies through enunciating orthodoxy against them. The dual inclusion/exclusion approach is clearly centered on orthodoxy for Behr, who writes, “Irenaeus argues that his [gnostic] opponents, with their faulty exegesis and their myth-making, have substituted another hypothesis and so created their own fabrication” (119).

Behr positively compiles the pieces of Irenaeus’s elusive biography to construct a solid summary of his life, informed by the Moscow manuscript of Martyrdom of Polycarp, which places Irenaeus in Rome. He judiciously provides a chronology of the books of Against Heresies and the letters that is rarely seen. Perhaps surprising to some, he proposes that The Demonstration of the Apostolic Tradition is a later addition than Irenaeus “to reuse [Against Heresies] in...