Shuve—Irenaeus’s Contribution to Early Christian Interpretation of the Song of Songs 85There are two main passages in the Adversus haereses where Irenaeus uses nuptial
imagery to speak of the church and the redemption of humanity. We shall begin with
the less extensive and more elliptical account in V.9.4. Irenaeus’s aim in this passage
is to argue against the assertion that the Pauline phrase “flesh and blood are not able
to inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50)” means that the “creation of God is not
saved [non salvari plasmationem Dei] .”^26 Irenaeus proceeds to articulate an anthropol-
ogy that contrasts flesh and spirit, placing the soul as intermediary between the two.
The soul, he admits, that panders to the lust of the flesh is drawn down into baseness
and cannot be saved. But the soul that participates in the Spirit has “the infirmity of
the flesh absorbed by the strength of the Spirit, and such a one is not carnal, but spiri-
tual, on account of communion with the Spirit [absorbeatur infirmitas carnis a fortitu-
dine Spiritus, et esse eum qui sit talis non iam carnalem, sed spiritalem, propter Spiritus
communionem] .”^27 Not content to let the argument rest, however, Irenaeus proceeds to
offer a linguistic argument, based upon the use of the active voice in the Pauline text:
“For if it is necessary to speak precisely, the flesh does not inherit, but is inherited [non
possidet sed possidetur caro] .”^28 Irenaeus says that the Spirit delights in the temple—a
periphrasis for the flesh—in the same way as a bridegroom does his bride. The bride
does not wed, she is wed; the flesh does not inherit the kingdom, it is in fact taken into
the kingdom for an inheritance (V.9.4). The analogy of marital union is here secondary,
employed in the service of both anthropology and soteriology.
The far more lengthy and developed exposition comes in IV.20.12, and it is
here that Irenaeus’s contribution is most significant. This particular passage is situ-
ated in the context of an exhaustive attempt to demonstrate that the same prophets
who revealed knowledge of the Creator God also disclosed the future redemption of
humanity through Christ (IV.20.1ff ). Having listed numerous prophetic visions of the
coming of Christ, Irenaeus turns to the prophetic foreshadowing of Christ’s coming “in
works that were undertaken by the prophets [in operationibus usus est prophetis] .”^29 The
first two operationes/ἔργα that Irenaeus cites are Hosea’s marriage to the prostitute and
Moses’ union with the Ethiopian woman. In both instances, the men serve as types of
Christ and the women, outsiders of ill-repute, signify the Gentiles.
In the case of Hosea and the prostitute, Irenaeus emphasizes that it is her commu-
nicatio/κοινωνία with the prophet that sanctifies her and that her redemption acts as a
sign of the salvation of the Gentiles in Christ: “God was pleased to receive the church
that had been sanctified by union [communicatione] with His son, just as she had been
sanctified by union [communicatione] with the prophet.”^30 We see Irenaeus here mak-
ing a clever play on words. Κοινωνία almost certainly the Greek word behind commu-
nicatio, has the general meaning of union, fellowship, or association, but it can carry
both the more specific meanings of marriage to someone (cf. Aristotle, Pol. 1334b)
and, in Christian writing from the New Testament, of the believer’s participation in
Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 1:9), which Irenaeus here juxtaposes. We no longer, as in Justin, have
a simple identification of the bridegroom with Christ but a more robust ecclesiologi-
cal and soteriological reading that reflects upon the dynamics of the marriage itself.
Irenaeus, moreover, does not allow the corporeal dimension of Hosea’s marriage to be
swallowed up entirely in a typological reading of the story; rather, he claims that the