104 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy
the upshot is clear. If one wants to read scripture in company with the presbyters with
whom is the apostolic teaching, one can hardly do better than to read Irenaeus’s books!
But Irenaeus accomplishes this without having to invoke Polycarp’s name again, but
instead by framing his exposition of Polycarp’s teaching with references back to the
place where he had revealed his association with that apostolic elder.
Irenaeus’s omission of Polycarp’s name is perhaps not so mysterious.
Conclusion
It is not simply that Polycarp is the best candidate to be identified with the presbyter,
among those whose names we know. It is that if the presbyter is not Polycarp, we shall
have found his twin. The omission of Polycarp’s name from the section IV.27-32 is
now, I think, not hard to understand. The reader of Against Heresies already knows his
name. What would be much harder to understand is why Irenaeus would never (here
or elsewhere) have mentioned the name of another presbyter he had known, a presby-
ter who like Polycarp had learned from apostles, who like Polycarp lived long enough
to address a Marcionite problem, and some of whose teaching Irenaeus had learned by
heart, as he had Polycarp’s.
Despite his very considerable contributions in exegesis, theology, and church life,
Irenaeus saw himself very much as a conduit, as one part in a line of succession from
the apostles. For him, this line was very important, and it was very short. The apos-
tles of Jesus had deposited the faith into the safe coffers of the church, and Polycarp
was one of those who had personally received the transfer. However we might assess
Irenaeus’s construction of things, the prospect of retrieving from Irenaeus more of
Polycarp’s teaching is an opportunity to increase our contact with a time and situa-
tion in early Christianity for which we have all too little, contemporary information.
Irenaeus’s rehearsal of what he learned from his “apostolic presbyter” can expand
our understanding of Irenaeus and Polycarp, of Marcion, of Cerinthus, and of the
intriguing nexus of social, theological, and ecclesiastical matters they all played their
parts in shaping.