Irenaeus

Notes to Chapter 7 231

7. The Man with No Name: Who Is the Elder in Irenaeus’s Adversus haereses IV?
   
   
   1. Charles Hill, From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp, WUNT 186 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).
   
   
   2. Ibid., 15.
   
   
   3. ANF 1:568.
   
   
   4. For the following, cf. Norbert Brox, Offenbarung, Gnosis und gnostischer Mythos bei Irenäus von Lyon
      (Salzburg: Anton Pustet, 1966), 146–48. Brox is strikingly missing from Hill’s index of authors.
   
   
   5. Hae r. III.34.
   
   
   6. Cf. Paul Foster, Review “Charles Hill, From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp,” WUNT 186, Tübingen: Mohr
      Siebeck, 2006, Expository Times 118 (2006): 78–79.
   
   
   7. Hill, Lost Teaching, 13.
   
   
   8. Polycarp’s Second Letter to the Philippians has also often been considered to contain anti-Marcionite
      teaching; however, there is no specifically anti-Marcionite element to be found in the text (cf. Sebastian Moll,
      The Arch-Heretic Marcion [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010]).
   
   
   9. Cf. Adolf von Harnack, Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius I (Leipzig: Hinrichs,
      1897), 338, n.2; Friedrich Loofs, Theophilus von Antiochien Adversus Marcionem und die anderen theolo-
      gischen Quellen bei Irenaeus, TU 46/2 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1930), 101–13; Gerhard May, “Marcion in Con-
      temporary Views: Results and Open Questions,” Second Century 6 (1987/88): 129–51, at 133 (= Gesammelte
      Aufsätze, 17).
   
   
   10. Antonio Orbe (“Ecclesia, sal terrae según san Ireneo,” RSR 60 [1972]:  220, n.8) tried to show that
       certain aspects of the elder’s argumentation make it very unlikely that it was directed against Marcion, but his
       reasons for this view are most questionable. The first two may suffice to demonstrate this. Orbe claims that
       in an anti-Marcionite text one would not find frequent references to the Old Testament and to the Gospel of
       Matthew as both documents are of no value to an “auténtico discípulo de Marción”; but the whole point of
       this argument is to defend the Old Testament against Marcion’s attacks. How is anyone supposed to do that
       without referring to it? Has Orbe not considered Tertullian’s work against Marcion, in which the Carthagin-
       ian also constantly refers to the Old Testament in order to refute his opponent? To say nothing about the fact
       that it is not true that the Old Testament would not have any value to Marcion. This is true for Matthew’s
       Gospel, but I am unable to see why a Christian opponent of Marcion’s should not use it in an argument
       against him. Orbe’s second point is that the allegorical exegesis would not be used against Marcion since
       he refused to accept it; but this is exactly the reason why! To point out the allegorical meaning of scriptural
       passages is one of the most common ways to refute the arch-heretic; cf. for example Origen, De princ. II.5.2:
       “But they [the Marcionites] see these things in this way, because they have not understood to hear anything
       beyond the letter.”
   
   
   11. Cf. Hom. Ies. XII.3.
   
   
   12. For the problem of the Latin in diminutione, see Adelin Rousseau, Irénée de Lyon: Contre les hérésies,
       Livre IV (Paris: Cerf, 1965), 1: 264.
   
   
   13. Indocti et audaces adhuc etiam et impudentes inveniuntur omnes qui, propter transgressionem eorum
       qui olim fuerunt et propter plurimorum indictoaudientiam, alterum quidem aiunt illorum fuisse Deum, et hunc
       esse mundi Fabricatorem et esse in diminutione, alterum vero a Christo traditum Patrem, et hunc esse qui sit ab
       unoquoque eorum mente conceptus (my translation).
   
   
   14. Cf. Hae r. I.5.1-2.
   
   
   15. Cf. Hae r. I.6.1.
   
   
   16. Adv. Marc. II.14.4.
   
   
   17. Adv. Marc. II.20.
   
   
   18. Hill has correctly perceived these two different kinds of arguments in the elder’s teaching, calling the
       reproaches against certain Old Testament individuals “the argument from God’s friends” and the reproaches
       against the Old Testament God “the argument from God’s enemies” (Hill, Lost Teaching, 33). He did, however,
       mistakenly assume that they were both directed against Marcion.
   
   
   19. Hae r. IV.28.1.
   
   
   20. Rousseau, Contre les hérésies, Livre IV, 1: 265. I am generally a little skeptical as far as the reconstruc-
       tion of the originally Greek text of Adversus haereses by the Sources chrétiennes edition is concerned; however,
       the Latin contrario opponentes is so close to Tertullian’s wording contrariae oppositiones (Adv. Marc. I.19.4) that
       I believe it is justified to assume the above mentioned allusion.