Steenberg—Tracing the Irenaean Legacy 211
accord with Irenaeus’s writings; a maturational anthropology that echoes his own; an
emphasis on the creative work of the Holy Spirit that he expressed long before the
Council of Constantinople; a vision of sin and redemption perceived in developmental
terms, and the like. If in some senses these themes strike readers today as unique, the
fact that to Irenaeus’s contemporary readers, together with the patristic traditions that
carried on reading and quoting and copying him for centuries, they did not, gives the
Irenaean legacy significance even today.
It is somehow quite fitting that Irenaeus’s theological significance comes through
the silent dimensions of his legacy. He was quoted wide and far, but the abiding
influence of the bishop of Lyons lies in the powerful theological vision that his
contemporaries felt no need to attach to him. It was Christ’s gospel. Irenaeus had
effectively shaken off the dust of various perversions; but the message that was left
was Christ’s, not his. And this, we can be sure, is exactly as Irenaeus would have
wished it. To conclude with his own words on the unchanging gospel: “No great
ruler among the Churches, however highly gifted he may be in point of eloquence,
teaches doctrines different from [those of the apostles]—for no one is greater than
the Master; nor, on the other hand, will he who is deficient in power of expression
inflict any injury on the tradition. One who is able to discourse on it at great length
does not add anything to it; nor does one who can say but little, diminish it: for the
faith is ever one and the same.”^59