ipsum homini et hominem sibimet ipsi assimilans"). "In past times it was said indeed that man had been made after God's image, but it was not shewn. For the Logos was still invisible after Whose image man had been made. And on this very account did man also easily forfeit the likeness. But when the Logos of God became flesh He established both points: He truly exhibited the [divine] image, by Himself becoming that which was the image of Himself, and firmly restored the likeness by making man to be like the unseen Father" (v. 16, 2). Man's destination is to be like God, and by the attainment of this likeness God's great purpose is accomplished of indwelling in man, and so of uniting man to Himself (iii. 20, 2). Hence follows the necessity that He by Whom the perfecting of man was accomplished should be Himself both God and man. Irenaeus is therefore as strongly opposed to the Ebionitic as to the Docetic error. To the Ebionites he objects that they do not receive the doctrine of the commixture of the heavenly wine with the earthly water, the union of God and man, but, retaining the leaven of the old birth (after the flesh), abide in mortal flesh and in that death which disobedience has incurred (v. 1, 3; iii. 19, 1). It was necessary that the Logos should become man in order that man, receiving the Logos and obtaining the sonship, might become son of God. We could not obtain incorruption and immortality except by being united to that which is incorruptible and immortal. Only through the absorption of the one by the other can we become partakers of the divine Sonship (iii. 19, 1; cf. iii. 18, 7). On the other hand, in opposition to Gnostic Docetism, Irenaeus insists no less strongly on the reality of the Incarnation of the Logos. If this were but putative, salvation would be putative also (iv. 33, 5). The mediator between God and man must belong to both in order to unite both (iv. 18, 7). If we are truly to know God and enter into fellowship with the Divine Logos, our teacher must Himself have become man. We need a teacher Whom we can see and hear, in order to be followers of His deeds and doers of His words (v. 1, 1). This fundamental thought—that the divine nature of which we are to be partakers can be brought nigh to us only in the form of a genuine human existence—is expressed elsewhere still more emphatically, when Irenaeus insists that Christ, in order to conduct the human race to its divine destination, must Himself belong to it, and take upon Him human flesh and all the characteristics of humanity; that if man is to be raised to God, God must come down to man (iv. 33, 4, πῶς ἄνθρωπος χωρήσει εἰς Θεόν, εἰ μὴ ὁ Θεὸς ἐχωρήθη εἰς ἄνθρωπον). The second Adam, the head of our spiritual humanity, must Himself come of the race of Adam in order to unite the end with the beginning (iii. 22, 3 seq.; 23, 1; iv. 34, 4; v. 1, 3; 16, 1 seq.). The profound conception of a recapitulatio (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις) of humanity in Christ is one to which Irenaeus perpetually recurs. (See iii. 18, 1; 22, 1, 3; 23, 1; iv. 38, 1; v. 1, 2 seq.; 14, 1; 23, 2; 36, 3; cf. iv. 40, 3; v. 16, 2). It was needful that Christ should recapitulate and pass through all the stages of an ordinary human life in order to consecrate each of them in us, by a likeness to Himself in each (ii. 22, 4; iii. 18, 7), and that He should come at the end of time in order to conduct all who from the beginning had hoped in Him to eternal life in fellowship with God (iv. 22, 1 seq.; cf. 27, 1). As Christ was typically pre-formed in Adam (iii. 22, 3), so was Adam's destiny accomplished in Christ (v. 1, 3; 16, 2 seq.). The Spirit of God descended on the Son of God made man that in Him He might accustom Himself to an indwelling in the human race (iii. 17, 1). Man was to grow used to receive God, and God to indwell in man (ii. 20, 2).
With this thought of the recapitulatio of the human race in Christ is combined another of equal depth and significance—that of the victory over sin and deliverance of sin's captives from the power of Satan by the obedience of Christ. This deliverance or redemption was necessary before the divine purpose of the union of God and man could be accomplished. For if man, created by God for life, but corrupted by the serpent, had not returned to life, but been wholly subjected to death's power, God would then have been defeated, and the devil's iniquity proved itself stronger than His holy will. But God, triumphant and magnanimous, has by the second Adam (Christ) bound the strong man and spoiled his goods, and deprived death of its prey, and brought back man once slain to life. He who by false promises of life and the likeness of God had bound man in the chains of sin has now been justly made captive in his turn, and his prisoner, man, set free (iii. 23, 1 seq.; cf. 18, 7; iv. 21, 3). The power of the devil over man consisted in man's sin, and the apostasy into which the devil had seduced him (v. 21, 3), but now the disobedience of one man has been repaired by one man's obedience (iii. 18, 7; 21, 10). The first Adam was initium morientium, the second Adam initium viventium, Who needed to be both God and man, no less in order to become the saviour than to be the perfecter of mankind (iii. 22, 4; v. 1, 3). Only One Who was Himself man could overcome man's enemy, and bind in his turn him by whom man had been bound; in this way alone could the victory over the enemy be altogether just. So, on the other hand, only One Who was also God could accomplish a redemption which should be stable and sure (iii. 18, 7; v. 21, 3). Christ must be truly man to be as man truly tempted, must be born of a woman to deliver those who by a woman had been brought under the devil's power, and must truly live and suffer as a man in order as man to fight and triumph. Again, He must also be the Logos in order to be glorified, in order as the strong one to overcome the enemy in whose power the whole human race found itself (iii. 18, 6, 7; 19, 3; iv. 33, 4; v. 17, 3; 21, 1; 22, 1); and finally, that man might learn that it is not through himself but only through God's mercy that he obtains incorruption (v. 21, 3). The recapitulation of mankind in Christ consists therefore not only in man's original destiny being accomplished by the beginner of a new humanity, but also in His taking up and conducting to a triumphant issue, at the end
