136 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy
power, Lord, according to wisdom, our creator and fashioner.” Going back now to the
passage we have just seen in haer. II.13.4, one might well suppose a Greek φιλανθρωπία
as the basis, but that word does not appear in any of the fragmentary remains of Ire-
naeus’s Greek. Adelin Rousseau, in his retroversion, takes the Greek to be ἀγάπη.^18 For
my argument, it is enough that the early translator used dilectio.
Our second instance comes a little later at haer. II.17.11, where Irenaeus questions
why his opponents assert that their Father delayed in making known his unknowabil-
ity, when that could have been done much earlier.
Why did the aeons rest and receive perfect knowledge when they learned that
the Father is uncontainable and incomprehensible? They could have had this
knowledge before they got into passions, for the greatness [magnitudo] of the
Father would not have been diminished if they had known from the beginning
that the Father is uncontainable and incomprehensible. For if he was unknown
on account of his immense greatness [magnitudinem], he ought also out of
immense love [dilectionem]^19 have preserved impassible those who were born
from him, since nothing stood in the way, but it even would have been more
useful had they known from the beginning that the Father is uncontainable and
incomprehensible.Granted, Irenaeus here is arguing dialectically against his opponents’ hypothesis,
not giving his own doctrine of God. It is an ironic argument. He is placing ideas in
their minds that apparently are not there, and suggesting that they should have been
there, and even more should have been in the mind of their alleged Father.
Our third passage is close to the end of Book Three, haer. III.24.2. Irenaeus is
already into his concluding peroration asserting the Church’s better claim to be the
source of knowledge about God. The terms that he uses are his own ideas, not ones that
he is attributing (however ironically) to his opponents. Irenaeus has just accused his
opponents of constantly looking and never being able to find; he continues,
For they blaspheme the Maker, that is, the one who is truly God, who furnishes
“finding.” They think they have found another god above God, or another
fullness or another economy. And for that reason the light that comes from
God will not enlighten them, because they have dishonored and scorned God,
thinking him insignificant because, on account of his love [dilectionem] and
immense benevolence [benignitatem] he came into human knowledge—not
knowledge according to greatness [magnitudinem], nor according to substance,
for no one has measured or touched it, but in this respect: that we may know
that the one who made and fashioned and breathed the breath of life into them
and sustains us through creation, making all things secure by his word and
joining them together by his wisdom, is the only true God.His opponents, Irenaeus says, would prefer to dream of an Epicurean-style god
who would never be caught communicating with the human race or taking care of