Contra John Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 70, who cites the passage as evidence that Irenaeus thought that God incorporates those who are
adopted into the sonship of the Son.
SC 211: 66–68.
Denis Minns, Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), 110–12; followed by John Behr, Asceticism
and Anthropology, 69–70.
In Haer. III.19.2, referring to the discussion in III.6.1, he asserts that he “demonstrated from the
Scriptures that no one among the sons of Adam is called God or named Lord in an absolute sense” (SC 211:
374–76).
SC 100: 984–92. The text of Haer. IV.41.2 is uncertain. See Rousseau’s discussion of it, SC 100: 283-5.
Rousseau and Behr favor the Armenian translation, Minns the Latin. Rousseau’s discussion has been relied
on for this study.
Haer. III.20.2 (SC 211: 390).
SC 100: 638–40.
SC 153: 92–96.
ComJn I.16.91. Origen ends the discussion in section 91 with an allusion to John 17:21, a verse Ire-
naeus never cites. This perfect sonship will be realized, says Origen, “when we become one as the Son and the
Father are one.”
In Haer. III.11.6 (SC 211: 154–56), for instance, he quotes the verse in conjunction with allusions to
Matthew 11:27.
“The Rule of Truth... which He Received through Baptism” (Haer. I.9.4): Catechesis,
Ritual, and Exegesis in Irenaeus’s Gaul
Such is the manner in which H.J. Carpenter, “Creeds and baptismal rites in the first four centuries,” JTS
44 (1943): 7 interprets this passage.
Hae r. I.10.1.
Carpenter, “Creeds and baptismal rites.”
It is also found in Socrates, HE I.8.35 and Theodoret, HE I.12.1 and is critically edited as document 21
in Hans-Georg Opitz, ed., Athanasius Werke III.1, Urkunde zur Geschichte des arianischen Streites 318–328
(Berlin and Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1935), 42 –47.
Traditio Apostolica 21.14. This is taken as possibly the earliest extant creed that is roughly contemporary
with Irenaeus. For a recent defense of the dating of this creed to the time of Irenaeus, see my “The Baptismal
Creed in Traditio apostolica: Original or Expanded?” QL 90 (2009): 199–213.
P. Smulders, “Some Riddles in the Apostles’ Creed,” Bijdragen 32 (1971): 350–66.
L.H. Westra, The Apostles Creed: Origin, History and Some Early Commentaries (Turnhout: Brepols,
2002), 38–39.
E.g., Hae r. III.1.2, III.4.2.
Cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London: Longmans, 1950), 76–82.
Contra Noetum 1.7: “We too know a single God. We know Christ. We know that the Son suffered as
indeed he suffered, died as indeed he died, rising up on the third day and is at the right hand of the Father and
is coming to judge living and dead.”
S.G. Hall, “The Christology of Melito: A Misrepresentation Exposed,” in E.A. Livingstone (ed.), Studia
Patristica XIII = TU 116 (Berlin: Akademie, 1975), 154–68.
Polycarp, Phil.1.2: “He (Christ) persevered to the point of death on account of our sins. God raised him
up, releasing the labour pains of Hades.”
See the scholarly orthodoxy on the date of the traditio represented by Johnson (apparently unaware of
the evidence of Eusebius): “The first references we have to the traditio and redditio symboli are at the earliest,
mid-to-late fourth century.” M. E. Johnson, “The Problem of Creedal Formulae in Traditio apostolica 21.12-
18,” Ecclesia orans 22 (2005): 174. Here we are talking, however, of verbally fixed creeds that are rehearsed
on a separate occasion from the baptism itself. Carpenter, “Creeds and Baptismal Rites,” 11, after a careful
examination of the evidence, suggests the middle of the third century as the time in which the practice of the
traditio originated.
