252 Notes to Chapter 18
de Gruyter, 1971], 135.10—136.15). The letter may, however, not be genuine. It is transmitted only in Latin,
in the Acts of the Fifth Council of 553, and in the manuscript tradition—which is not good—is addressed to
John of Antioch, who was dead by 444, the year of Cyril’s death, and had been replaced as bishop of Antioch
by Domnus.
- From M. Simonopetritis, The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, vol. 6: July-
August (Ormylia: Indiktos, 2008), 579 n. 14.
- B. Sesboüé, Tout récapituler dans le Christ: Christologie et sotériologie d’Irénée de Lyon, Jésus et Jésus-
Christ 80 (Paris: Desclée, 2000), section heading on page 29.
- Ibid., 29, 30: “Irenaeus of Lyons, who was an authority for the ancient Church and whose work has been
read from century to century, presents himself ever as a ‘seductive’ author, in the noble sense of that term. His
text represents the teaching of the youthfulness of the faith, a theme that is ever dear. He says things with a
great freshness and simple realism that carries conviction.”
- E. Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 9.
- See A.v. Harnack, Philotesia zu Paul Kleinert zum LXX-Geburtstage dargebracht (Berlin, 1907), 1–38;
W. Bousset, Jüdische-christlicher Schulbetreib in Alexandria und Rom: Literarische Untersuchungen zu Philo
und Clemens von Alexandria, Justin und Irenaus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1915); F. Loofs,
Theophilus von Antiochien: Adversus Marcionem und die anderen theologischen Quellen bei Irenäus (Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1930). For a compendium of their views, together with an analysis of the shift in appreciation for
Irenaeus, see K. M. Tortorelli, “Some Notes on the Interpretation of St. Irenaeus in the Works of Hans Urs von
Balthasar,” Studia Patristica XXIII (1989), 284; and M. A. Donovan, One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus
(Collegeville: Liturgical, 1997), 10, 11.
- E.g. Refutation III.4.3: “Before Valentinus, of course, the Valentinians did not exist; and before Marcion,
there were no Marcionites. And the rest of the evil-minded heretics whom we mentioned above did not exist
at all before the originators and inventors of their perverse systems.” (Irenaeus’s own title for the work so often
known as Against the Heresies was Refutation and Overthrow of the Knowledge Falsely So Called, and so it will
be cited here as Ref.)
- See his Letter to Florinus, preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History V.20.4-8.
- See Ref. III.1.1, 2; and more broadly the whole address of the fourfold Gospel that consumes Irenaeus’s
attention in the first half of book III.
- See Ref. III.7.1, 2.
- See Osborn, Irenaeus, 8; cf. A. Benoît, Saint Irénée, introduction à l’étude de sa théologie (Études
d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses, 52; Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1960), 73.
- Cf. Sesboüé, Tout récapituler, 17; Osborn, Irenaeus, 3. The latter refers in a note to the further specula-
tions on Irenaeus’s philosophical and rhetorical training of P. Nautin, Lettres et écrivains chrétiens des IIe et IIIe
siècles (Paris: Cerf, 1961), 33–104, which we would also commend; though the assertion that Irenaeus went to
Rome to study rhetoric seems fairly groundless, and would contradict his own testimony at Ref. I.Praef. R. M.
Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 1997), 44, 45, rightly draws attention
to the significance of Xenophanes to Irenaeus’s writing.
- Cf., e.g., Ref. IV.30.1.
- Irenaeus refers by name to Papias at Ref. V.33.4; cf. Papias, Fragments IV in U. H. J. Körtner and M.
Leutzsch, Papiasfragmente: Hirt des Hermas, Schriften des Urchristentums, Dritter Teil (Darmstadt: Wissen-
schaftliche, 1998), 54–55. It is clear that Papias is of influence on Irenaeus throughout much of Ref. V in par-
ticular. The “certain man of ours” at V.28.4 is Ignatius, from his Letter to the Romans 4, though the Antiochene
bishop is not named by Irenaeus.
- This particularly with respect to Hermas, which I have argued elsewhere Irenaeus viewed as a scrip-
tural text, despite the propensity of some scholars to interpret his use of graphe in reference to it as simply
meaning “a writing.” See my article, M. C. Steenberg, “Scripture, Graphe, and the Status of Hermas in Ire-
naeus,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 53.1 (2009): 29–66.
- Particularly with regard to Theophilus’s treatment of the Tree of Knowledge and the narrative of Adam
and Eve in Ad Autol. 2.25; cf. Demonstration (Dem.), 14–16.
- For more on the relationship of Theophilus to Irenaeus, see R. M. Grant, “The problem of Theophilus,”
in Christian Beginnings: Apocalypse to History (London: Variorum Reprints, 1950/1983), 179–96; and Loofs,
Theophilus, 44–80.
- This on the speculation that Irenaeus traveled from Asia Minor to Rome sometime soon after Polycarp
in 155/6, and that Justin was martyred during the prefecture of Junius Rusticus (162–168); cf. A. Birley, Marcus
