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199 ChAPtER EIGhtEEn Tracing the Irenaean Legacy Irenaeus M. C. Steenberg Some legacies are easier to trace than others. Athanasius of Alexandria’s role in promulgating the creed and language of Nicaea, however one might assess it, ensured that he was remembered, quoted, discussed, and debated for centuries to follow. Exploring his influence and legacy is a project supported by rich, extensive testimony. Elsewhere one finds similar stories. Basil of Caesarea, dying far younger than his kin could have anticipated, was heralded at once as a great teacher, the reflection on his writings becoming almost immediately an ecclesiastical project—and one that continued for centuries. After the death of Cyril of Alexandria in ad 444 (a repose that prompted some rather memorable funeral tributes1 ), an almost continuous reflection on his influence—assessed both positively and negatively—began, and would carry on over the coming decades and centuries. Appreciating his personal legacy too, if not always his personality or precise theological contribution, is a task which history facilitates by preserving a tremendous amount of evidence and testimony. But when we come to Irenaeus, the story is somewhat different. He had been no less involved in the theological conflicts and controversies of his age than these. He had been no less a theologian of creative expression and robust articulation. He had been, his writings would lead us to believe, no less a “personality”—prone to rather aggressive fits of satire and mocking as much as he was ready to express the most tender emotions of forgiveness and repentance, even toward his enemies. He had composed a work unlike any other known at the time, bridging polemic and apologetic with positive doctrinal articulation, speaking in a voice that would earn him the reputation, in modern study, of the “first theologian” in the patristic heritage (as odd, and probably unhelpful, as that ascription really is). And yet there is no great or obvious Irenaean history in the decades and generations following his death. The man whose theological expression is today taken by many as a kind of landmark of the second century, who is described, rightly, as “one of the most important theologians in the period before the Council of Nicaea,”2 is not remembered, not discussed, by his peers and successors—at least, not in theological terms (a critical distinction, on which more to follow). Irenaeus flourishes, 200 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy but then, despite the fact that his works are translated and read, the name of Irenaeus as theologian seems to go rather quietly into the night. Or does it? In the modern day, Irenaeus’s influence is at a peak. The fascination with the bishop of Lyons among scholars over the past century demonstrates a particularly modern appeal, and in and among the various themes and persons that mark out the second century, Irenaeus has today become a kind of figurehead. Of course, scholars have a penchant for digging up the long-lost and little-known and bringing them to center stage; but perhaps this interest has something to do with what Bernard Sesboüé, in his helpful and at times quite moving study published in 2000, called “la séduction d’Irénée.”3 He is, in the most positive sense of the term, a seducer: he draws one into his vision of the Church, of God, of redemption with a kind of potency and immediacy that has hardly diminished over the past 1,800 years. Or, to put it in the words of Sesboüé: “Irénée de Lyon, qui fut une autorité pour l’Église ancienne et dont l’œuvre a été relue de siècle en siècle, se présente encore à nous comme un auteur ‘séduisant’ au sens noble de ce terme. Son texte est le témoignage de la jeunesse de la foi, thème qui lui est d’ailleurs cher. Il dit les choses avec une grande fraîcheur et un réalisme simple qui emportent la conviction.”4 Perhaps this is a touch romantic, but it is grounded in reality. In the complex and often unclear array of voices and activities of the second century, scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth discovered in Irenaeus an apostolic disciple (through his connection to Polycarp), a peacemaker, a pastor, a kind of defensor fidei who nonetheless broke out of the pattern of focusing narrowly on any specific doctrinal question, to broach the whole vision of God, creation, man, and redemption that stands at the heart...

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