Irenaeus—Part 3.
THE scenes just related must have produced a deep effect on the spirit of Irenaeus. The aged Bishop, Pothinus, having been one of the martyrs, Irenaeus was chosen to succeed him in the following year, 178. He labored so diligently and successfully that it is said the city became almost wholly Christian. He also interested himself in the adjustment of the Easter controversy, which was a dispute between the Eastern and Western portions of the church. The Easterns desired to celebrate the anniversary on the same day of the month every year; whereas the Westerns desired to have it fall on the first day of the week every year. Victor, Bishop of Rome, thought of excommunicating these Eastern churches, who did not and would not conform to the Western custom; but was turned from his purpose by a peace-making letter from Irenaeus.
He is best known, however, by a book written against heresies, in which he describes the doctrines of the Gnostics and of the Ebionites; these denying Christ’s Godhead, and those the reality of His manhood. He proceeds to show the true doctrine, and makes use of the forty-fifth Psalm to prove the Diety of Jesus. He insists on the continuity of the church from the apostles, and says that Christianity does not consist merely in the possession of knowledge (Gr. gnosis, hence gnostic), but in partaking of a life which is to be lived in this world and beyond it.
“His labors in Gaul were no doubt of solid utility,” says the historian from whom I cull most of these sketches.
“Nor is it a small instance of the humility and charity of this great man, accurately versed as he was in Grecian literature, that he took pains to learn the barbarous dialect of Gaul, conformed himself to the rustic manners of an illiterate people, and renounced the politeness and elegant traits of his own country for the love of souls.”
With all this, however, the gospel does not appear in its simplicity and fulness in his writings. He held the fundamental facts of it: the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son and Word of God. He states that, “The Lord redeemed us with His own blood, and gave His life for our life, and His flesh for our flesh, and so effected our salvation;” but as another has said, when we pass from the inspired writings of the apostles to those of their immediate successors, “it is like a fall down a precipice.”
In the reign of Septimus Severna, persecution, always smoldering, blazed up again. Gregory of Tours affirms that after several torments Irenaeus was put to death, but the learned disagree as to the reliability of this testimony. Whether as a martyr or not, he entered into his rest about the year 202.
To find our next “Landmark” we shall cross the Mediterranean, to the north coast of Africa, where, in his days Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, shone for Jesus.
ML 09/27/1903