58 Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacysame purpose, given in full just such an allegorical interpretation of Paul’s account at
Romans 9:10-13 of the election of Jacob in the womb. Rebecca’s twin pregnancy, he
says, was a prophecy of the two people, one elder, one younger, one slave, the other
free, and yet both sons of the same father. Just as Jacob supplanted his elder brother
and received the rights of the first born when Esau had spoken slightingly of them,
just so the younger people accepted Christ, the first born, when the elder people had
rejected him with the words “we have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). In Christ the
younger people stole from the Father the blessings of the elder people, just as Jacob
stole the blessings of Esau.
Irenaeus’s point is not simply that the two people are sons of the one God but that
the younger supplants the elder. We have seen that in the series of parables discussed
in Hae r. IV.36 there is an underlying notion of progression from Old Covenant to
New. If Irenaeus may be presumed to have intended the parable of the Two Sons to
make the same point, the son to whom the father went first must represent Israel,
and the son to whom the father went afterward must represent the Church. But if
the second son represents the church, then Irenaeus’s text of Matthew 21:31 must
have identified the second son as the one who did the Father’s will, and must thus
have had the parable in form II. In form I, the church would have to be typified
by the first son, which would not square with the pattern of progression from Old
Covenant to New.
This conclusion gains support from the way Irenaeus links the two sons with the
two groups approached by John the Baptist: first the chief priests and elders, sec-
ondly the tax collectors and prostitutes.^13 Irenaeus emphasizes the correspondence
between the second son and the tax collectors and prostitutes. Just as in the parable
of the Prodigal Son, it is the younger son who spent his wealth among prostitutes in
a far land (the point is emphasized by Irenaeus) who is favored by his father; just as it
is the tax collector who goes down to his house justified, so it is the second son, rep-
resentative of tax collectors and prostitutes, who is said to have done the will of the
Father. Just as the tax collector exceeds the Pharisee in prayer, and receives testimony
from the Lord that he is justified, rather than the Pharisee, so the tax collectors and
prostitutes precede the chief priests and the elders into the kingdom. Earlier, at Hae r.
IV.20.12, Irenaeus had said that the salvation of Rahab, the “Gentile prostitute who
had confessed herself guilty of all sins” and who had received the three spies—“the
Father, the Son, with the Holy Spirit”—had illustrated the Lord’s saying that tax col-
lectors and prostitutes precede the Pharisees into the kingdom of heaven.Irenaeus’s Exegesis of the Parable of the Two Sons
I turn now to a consideration of Irenaeus’s exegetical comments on the behavior of the
two sons. Irenaeus says of the first son that he repented “afterward, when repentance
availed him nothing,” and of the second son that he promised immediately “but did
not go, because every human being is a liar, and while willing is easy, we are not able
to accomplish what we will” (velle quidem in promptu adiacet, non invenit autem per-
ficere). Prima facie, it seems as though Irenaeus’s sympathies are with the second son
rather than with the first, since the repentance of the first is said to be profitless, and the