170 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy
since the Father is truly Lord and the Son is truly Lord, the Holy Spirit has deservedly
designated them with the title Lord.”^30 Because, for Irenaeus, both the Father and Son
are Lord, they have been designated as such in Psalm 110:1. The theological confession
that the Father and Son are God, as expressed in his regula fidei, actually precedes the
identifications of the individuals speaking in Psalm 110:1. The question, for Irenaeus,
is not merely the identity of the speakers but the identity of the one who is “truly Lord.”
Distinct from the Gnostic tendencies mentioned earlier, the titles of “God” and “Lord”
are used because the Father and Son are in reality “God” and “Lord.”^31
This discussion is followed closely by Gen. 19:24, another well-known christologi-
cal passage that depicts the Lord’s judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. For Irenaeus,
the one judging must be the Son, who previously spoke with Abraham and received
power from the Father to judge the Sodomites. This combination of Psalm 110 and
Gen. 19:24 is also found in Dial. 56.12-15, where Justin links these texts for the pur-
pose of announcing the presence of two distinct persons functioning in the narra-
tive. Justin’s concern is the multiplicity of divine persons speaking in the text, while
Irenaeus’s concern is the more fundamental question of divine identity. This is most
obvious in the context when, after citing Psalm 50:1, “God of gods, the Lord has spo-
ken, and has called the earth,” Irenaeus asks the most basic question, “Who is meant by
God?” The rest of Hae r. III.6.1 and 6.2 discusses the divine identities of other passages
including Psalm 45:6, Psalm 82:1, Exod. 3, and Isa. 43:10 (LXX), all of which deal with
dialogical accounts. It is only Psalm 82:1 that provides the interesting qualification
where the term “gods” is used in reference to the faithful.^32
But all this attention in Hae r. III.6.1-2 to divine titles exposes a glaring problem for
Irenaeus: scripture also uses the language of “god” in a negative sense for false gods and
idols. How can the interpreter assume that there is only one true “God” when scripture
itself refers to other “gods” and how would the interpreter know the difference between
the use of similar divine titles? It is this problem he addresses in Hae r. III.6.3,5, saying:
“However, when scripture names those who are not gods, it does not in every sense, as
I said beforehand, reveal them as gods, but with additional elements and indications
through which they are revealed not to be gods at all.” Having laid the theological
groundwork for his first premise above, Irenaeus must now exclude its corollary. The
only God identifiable in the text is the one true God and any other uses of the language
of “god” that does not actually refer to a god at all. This point is especially important
for his anti-Gnostic polemic. If multiple deities are discernable in the text, then the
Gnostic prosopological method has more creditability. He cites several texts including
Psalm 96:5, Psalm 81:9, and Jer. 10:11, where the gods “perish from the earth and are
destroyed.”^33 Their destruction, according to Irenaeus, exposes their false identifica-
tion. They are in fact, not gods at all. He also invokes the story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel,
who exposes that the prophets of Baal believed in a God that did not exists and Elijah
invoking of the one true God incites Irenaeus to prayer in Hae r. III.6.4. These texts
convey, for Irenaeus, that the only “God” who properly can be called such is the one
true God. This God, as he has argued, can only be identified as the Father or the Son.
Irenaeus continues citing a host of other texts including: Gal. 4:8-9, 2 Thess. 2:4, 1
Cor. 8:4, Deut. 5:8, Deut. 4:19, Exod. 7:7, and Heb. 3:5, all of which argue that there