198 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy
find in Hae r. as Irenaeus moves from purple passages of impassioned plea to close and
careful argument and on to mordant wit and heavy sarcasm. There was a Baptist friend
of the family who used to write in the margin of his sermon notes, “Weak point. Shout
like hell.” Does Irenaeus ever do that?
The text that emerges for us might be less of a piece. Its texture might be less homo-
geneous. We might see something more of an Irenaeus struggling like us and our con-
temporaries to try to make sense of an obdurate world. That is, of course, speculation.
All we know is that there is no text without context, and our context is not quite what
it was a generation ago.