Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity

Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity (Christian Theology in Context) by John Behr

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I had always thought of Irenaeus as a cataloger of heresies. After reading John Behr's book, I gained an appreciation for Irenaeus as a theologian. The chief effect of this book has been to make me resolve to attempt to read Irenaeus's works.

Behr's book seems to fall into three parts. In the first part, Behr seems to be interested in retrieving the reputation of Irenaeus from that of being a heresy hunter. Behr's thesis seems to be that the Great Church was tolerant of other versions of Christianity, but it was the heretics, such as the Gnostic Valentinians and the Marcionites, who withdrew from contact with the Great Church.

I'm sure there was a lot of that going on, but the idea that orthodox Christians were comfortable with sects that wanted to eliminate the Old Testament, identify the Creator God with evil, or read the Bible as a total metaphor for various quasi-divine emanations seems like a tough sell in light of the willingness of orthodox Christians to anathematize heretics both before and after the second century AD when Irenaeus was active.

Behr spends a lot of time promoting the Lampe thesis that there was no monoepiscopacy in Rome until literally the historic 12th bishop, Eleutherus (174/5-189), the immediate predecessor of Pope Victor, about whom no one doubts were the bishop of Rome. Behr's arguments in adopting the Lampe thesis are weirdly backfiring. Thus, he points out that Ignatius of Antioch wrote his epistle to “the church in Rome” and not to a particular church in Rome, and that the Church of Rome - again, not a particular church in Rome - wrote to Corinth. Lampe argues that since no bishop is named, this means that there was no single bishop of Rome, but Behr acknowledges that this is evidence that the Christians of Rome understood that they were in some sense of single community (p. 22) (which would be consistent with some kind of hierarchy among possibly fractionated communities, involving a leader.) Likewise, Behr acknowledges that the Corinthians had a tradition of reading the Letter of Clement as “the letter of Clement” who was the bishop of Rome. Did they just make up that tradition after Eleutherius? That seems doubtful.

Behr also gives value to Lampe's argument that the list of bishops provided by Irenaeus was falsified because the sixth bishop bore the name “Sixtus.” (p. 48) One has to wonder why the forgery didn't include “Septimus” as the seventh bishop and “Octavius” as the eighth bishop? These were, after all, not uncommon names in Rome.

On such evidence, Behr states with certainty, the basis for which was not clear, that Irenaeus's list cannot be older than Eleutherius, not only because it includes the name of Eleutherius as the final bishop on the list but because Eleutherius was using the list to justify an “emerging understanding of the office of bishop.” (p. 48) Thus, Eleutherius omits Peter as a bishop and makes himself 12th, with a totally fictional “Sixtus” as sixth, to support his claim to fullness of the apostolic office. (p. 48-49.)

What a con job. One has to wonder why they gave the show away by naming the sixth bishop “Sixtus”? A lack of imagination? They couldn't have used “Septimus,” “Primus,” “Octavius” or “Gaius.”

Also, Irenaeus was literally in Rome during this period. Wouldn't he have learned when he went asking about prior bishops that there really hadn't been prior bishops? This seems odd. Irenaeus shares that he listened to the teachings of both Polycarp and Polycarp's teacher, John, the Beloved Disciple, who knew Jesus Christ. Irenaeus knew what it was like to get information from the source.

It's not clear what this discussion means to a book about Irenaeus. Irenaeus obviously believed in the credibility of the list. In fact, its credibility is a major part of his argument for the validity of the Great Church. So, why the effort to discredit Irenaeus's apologetics? Behr is an Orthodox priest, which may have something to do with why he finds Lampe's thesis so compelling.

I will give one part of this part of the book major props. I had known about Pope Eleutherius fight over the dating of Easter. I knew that he proposed to excommunicate those who held to the Jewish-based dating of Easter. I had always thought this meant most of the churches in Asia. Behr explains that this probably referred to immigrant communities in Rome that continued to follow the traditions of their home country. Eleutherius was persuaded by Polycarp not to go down this road, although later the entire Great Church adopted the Roman position.

This makes a lot of sense. Rome was a great city with a lot of immigrants. Immigrants tend to stay within their own communities. They don't adopt the customs of their host community for a long time, sometimes never. It seems reasonable that people from Antioch or Alexandria in Rome might have continued to go to churches in Rome that had ties to, and recognized the authority, of the bishops back home. That, in fact, is what we still see in many American cities today.

This also might explain some of the conflicting evidence on Lampe's “fractionation thesis.” There were immigrant communities in Rome, who might have their own leaders, with ties to their prior homes. There were also native Christian churches with a native Roman bishop. As the host community with connections to Roman society, the Roman church would have been understood as the leading church, which is why Pope Clement of Rome could write a letter to Corinth on behalf of Rome. It also explains what church would be getting the mail from Ignatius and Polycarp, although the mail might have been lateralled in via connections between the home church in Antioch and the colony church in Rome, which is how things are usually done. In any event, it would have been understood that these colony churches were on Roman territory. Finally, it would explain how “fractionation” ended without any record of the usual human conflict associated with such realignments - the immigrant churches always understood that they were on Roman territory subjected ultimately to the Roman bishop.

The second part of the book involves a deeper look into Irenaeus. I may have known it before, but it stuns me that Irenaeus knew someone who knew Jesus. The conventional datings of their lives do not make them contemporaries, but if you adjust the dating on both slightly and they could have overlapped, and Irenaeus says he listened to John.

Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp and affirmatively testifies that Polycarp was a student of John. This is far more likely under conventional dating. It also suggests how broad a sweep of history can be encompassed by three lives. An example: the man who taught me saber fencing in my teens remembered seeing Czarist cavalry in the streets of Warsaw. Let's put that at 1910. My daughter will be able to tell her children when she is 80 in 2080 that she knew someone who knew someone with first-hand knowledge of Czarist troops in the streets of Warsaw. That will be 170 years in the past by that time.

It also indicates why Irenaeus accounts of Christian teachings may contain a fair bit of the understanding of the early church.

The final and lengthiest part of the book is a minute analysis of Irenaeus's writings. Behr really flourishes in this part. I will not attempt to recap any part of it, but I will say that it is valuable for getting an introduction to Irenaeus's thoughts, which I will say again that I had no idea were so deep and important.