Irenaeus

Slusser—The Heart of Irenaeus’s Theology 135

When the late Richard A. Norris spoke about the unity and transcendence of God
as Irenaeus and the Gnostics addressed it, he did it in philosophical terms. He empha-
sized, “He [Irenaeus] repeats over and over again that God is without limits. The true
God is himself the Pleroma, ‘the Fullness’ of all things. As such, he is contained by noth-
ing, yet himself contains whatever exists.” In Norris’s view, since Irenaeus was fighting
a teaching that held “the irreconcilability of divine Being with material existence,” he
was “in search... of a way of asserting the transcendent majesty of God which will not
seem to exclude him from the world.” The notion of limitlessness, “not merely that God
cannot be measured, but also that nothing sets a limit to his power and presence,” in
Norris’s view is “precisely what assures his direct and intimate relation with every crea-
t u r e .”^16 A good case can be made that only a strong doctrine of divine transcendence
can make divine immanence possible, but I am not convinced that Irenaeus has that
in mind. In addition, Norris’s phrase “will not seem to exclude him from the world”
could undermine that transcendence. Norris’s philosophical angle of approach looks
for a metaphysical solution to conflict with the Gnostics. I think that this obscures
Irenaeus’s real agenda, which goes beyond metaphysics and portrays God in terms of
love and will.
When Irenaeus comes to provide a basis for creaturely knowledge of God, he does
not appeal to divine infinity or to limitlessness, however great a role those concepts
played in his fencing with his Gnostic opponents. He appeals, rather, to a divine initia-
tive that overrides the insuperable metaphysical obstacle constituted by God’s incom-
prehensibility and magnitudo. That initiative is usually, but not always, rendered in the
old Latin translation by dilectio. Let us look at the principal passages where those two
stand in contrast.
The first is in haer. II.13.4. Using the first axiom above, the one from Xenophanes,
Irenaeus has just described how the Father of all—a term widespread in early Christian
usage for God the creator—is above human emotions and conflicts. He continues,

[God] is, however, even beyond these things and for these reasons indescrib-

able. “Intelligence” encompassing all things [capax omnium] will well and truly

be said [of God], but not in a way like human intelligence; and “Light” will most

properly be said, but nothing like the light with which we are familiar. Likewise

in all other respects the Father of all will in nothing be like our human little-

ness. He is spoken of in these terms according to love [secundum dilectionem];

according to greatness [secundum magnitudinem], however, he is understood

to be above them.

This is a passage where both of the axioms that I introduced at the start of this
paper appear alongside the terms on which I wish to focus. Magnitudo in the Latin
translation of Against heresies generally represents the Greek μέγεθος, according to
Bruno Reynders’ Lexique comparée.^17 The case of dilectio is not so simple. Where there
is Greek with which to compare the Latin, it is ἀγάπη in all cases but one, but those are
usually biblical passages. The best parallel in which there is Greek is in haer. V.17.1: “He
[i.e., God] is the Creator, who according to love [ἀγάπην] is Father, but according to