Slusser—The Heart of Irenaeus’s Theology 137
the world. The only way that his opponents can conceive of a transcendent god is by
isolating him so completely from the created world that he is barred from creating it,
caring for it, or communicating with rational creatures. The Gnostics’ low opinion of
the creator God worshiped by the church people goes hand in hand with their scorn
for a God who would love as the church people say that God loves. There is no doubt
here about Irenaeus’s own position: The creator is the true God, who is unknowable in
terms of greatness, but who so loves creatures as to find a way to be known by them.
This is pure Irenaeus, with the possible exception of the use of the term substantia.
Here it implies materiality, since it could be measured and touched; it may be a term
that he is borrowing from Gnostic usage.
By the famous chapter 20 of Book IV, Irenaeus is completely involved in presenting
his Christian alternative, while he continues—as he always will—to assert the intrinsic
greatness and immeasurability of God. Right from the beginning of haer. IV.20.1, he
combines the magnitudo/dilectio pairing with the second axiom mentioned above, the
one that says that God contains all things while remaining uncontained. “Therefore
according to greatness [secundum magnitudinem] there is no knowing God, for it is
impossible for the Father to be measured. But according to his love [secundum dilec-
tionem]—for this is what leads us through his word to God—those who obey him are
always learning that God is so great [tantus], and that it is he who through himself
established and chose and adorned and contains^20 all things—including in ‘all things’
us and this world of ours. And we therefore were created along with those things con-
tained by him.” I think that the “him” in “when we obey him” refers to God’s Word. The
equation of Word and Son is made explicitly at the start of haer. IV.20.3, where likewise
Wisdom, as it appears in Proverbs, is equated with the Spirit.
In any case, it is clear that, for Irenaeus, the creator is the transcendent God and
love can bring about results that would be strictly inconceivable in terms of God’s
greatness alone. At the beginning of haer. IV.20.4, Word and Wisdom are integrated
into what by now we recognize as one of Irenaeus’s favorite ways of speaking:
Therefore there is one God, who made and finished all things by Word and Wis-
dom. But this is the Creator [Demiurgus], who also entrusted this world to the
human race, who according to greatness [secundum magnitudinem], indeed,
is unknown to all of his creatures (for no one has searched out his height, nei-
ther of the ancients nor of those who are alive today); but according to love
[secundum dilectionem] he is always known through him through whom he
established all things. This is his Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the last
times became a human being among human beings, in order to join the end to
the beginning, that is, humanity to God.How does the knowledge of God that is possible “according to love” become available?
Through the Word of God, through whom God establishes all things. On the face
of it, this could be the kind of natural knowledge of God that can be obtained by infer-
ence from the works of creation, a knowledge that there is God. Making such knowl-
edge available, austere and minimal though it be, might itself be a loving act. But that