Gnostics, are not less applicable to the emanistic theories of other teachers. On the other hand, the clearly marked division between the Logos-doctrine of an Hippolytus and Tertullian and the Patripassian conception of it can hardly be said to exist for Irenaeus, who often speaks as if the eternal Logos were but the self-revealing side of the otherwise invisible and hidden Godhead, without one's being always able to see how the personal distinction between the two can be thus maintained. His doctrine of the Logos was developed (unlike that of Tertullian and Hippolytus) without any direct reference to Patripassianism (of which no mention is made in his writings), while the true human personality of the Son is maintained against the Gnostics with as much decision as His true Godhead against the Ebionites.
His conception of the Logos as the one great and absolute organ of all divine revelations leads Irenaeus, as it did Justin Martyr and the other Apologists, to refer back to His agency all the pre-Christian manifestations of God (iv. 20, 7 seq.). But Irenaeus is the first Christian doctor who expressly applies this thought, in his conflict with the Gnostics, to the origination of the Mosaic law (iv. 9). "Both Testaments proceeded from one and the same head of the family (paterfamilias), our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, Who spake (of old) to Abraham and to Moses " (cf. iv. 12, 4). But Irenaeus nowhere maintains the precepts of the old ceremonial law as obligatory upon Christians.
The fulfilment of all previous revelations is attained in the personal manifestation of the Logos in the flesh. By the Incarnation of the Son the divine purpose in creation, the union (adunatio, communio, commixtio) of God and man, has been accomplished, and the end is brought back to the beginning (iv. 20, 2, 4; 33, 4; v. 2, 1, et passim).
Together with the Logos the Spirit of God is often spoken of as an organ of divine revelation. It is not, however, easy to determine their right relation one to the other. The designation of the Holy Spirit as Wisdom (Sapientia) reminds us of the Alexandrine phraseology, which λόγος and σοφία are also distinguished without the distinction being fully worked out or consistently adhered to. Irenaeus uses the term "Sapientia" of the Divine Spirit always. But the comprehension of his meaning is made somewhat difficult by his sometimes speaking of our communion with the Son as mediated by the Spirit (v. 26, 2), and sometimes of the historical manifestation of the Logos as the means whereby men become partakers of the Spirit of the Father (iv. 38, 2). The solution probably is that Irenaeus uses the term "Spirit of God" in now a narrower, now a wider sense. In the narrower sense the Spirit is the organ of Divine Revelation in the heart and consciousness of man, and so distinguished from the Logos as the universal organ of Divine Revelation to all creatures and all worlds (v. 1, 1; cf. iii. 21, 4; iv. 33, 1, 7, etc.). In the wider sense the Spirit is the inner Being of God Himself in contradistinction to the material universe and the σάρξ (caro) or human corporeity. The former sense is always to be assumed where the Spirit is distinguished from the Logos as another divine hypostasis, "progenies et figuratio Dei" (iv. 7, 4; 20, 1 seq.); the latter, where the Spirit is spoken of as "the bread of immortality" (iv. 38, 1) and the life-giving principle from which endless life wells forth (v. 12, 2). It is with this latter meaning that Irenaeus, speaking of the humanity of Jesus Christ, expresses a thought, often recurred to by later theologians, that the Spirit is the anointing (unctio, χρίσμα) and bond of unity between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is in fact, for him, also the uniting principle between God and man. God through the Spirit imparts Himself to man; man through the Incarnation enters into God (v. 1, 1). This last thought leads us on to the grand conception which Irenaeus entertains of the development of the whole human race from Adam up to Christ. Man was not from the first, according to Irenaeus, made perfect and immortal, but designed, in God's purpose concerning him, to become so. But this can only be through the Spirit of God, and in order that man may be made partaker of the Spirit and thereby united to God, it was necessary that the Logos should become incarnate (iv. 38, 1 sqq.). The image of God (εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ), for which man was created, could not become visible before the Incarnation, and so man lost this image, the likeness of God, the possession of the Spirit (v. 16, 2), falling into sin by his own fault, and thereby coming not only under the power of natural death, but rendered incapable of exhibiting the image of God (v. 12, 2; 23, 1 seq.). Thus though Irenaeus regards sin, not like the Gnostics as a necessity of nature, but as man's own free act, he yet works out the thought that God has permitted the existence of evil because only by the contrast could goodness be appreciated, like health after sickness, light after darkness, life after death (iv. 37, 7; 39, 1). Without sin there would have been no consciousness of need, no desire for union with God, no thankfulness for His mercy (iii. 20, 1 seq.). The chief aim of Irenaeus in these disquisitions is again his conflict with Gnostic error, especially that of Marcion, who explained the origin of evil in the universe by the theory of two Gods—the highest and an inferior one. Irenaeus appropriates the language of the prophet (Isa. xlv. 6, 7), I am the Lord: I make peace, and create evil, and works out the thought that for the very sake of destroying evil a final recapitulatio totius iniquitatis may be necessary (v. 29, 2). Two equally significant thoughts must be distinguished in the full doctrine of Irenaeus concerning the Incarnation of the Logos and the divine purpose in the Incarnation: the idea of humanity being raised to perfection in Christ through union with the divine nature, and that of the victory gained by humanity in the God-man its Head over sin and the devil.
The Incarnation is for Irenaeus not merely an historical fact, but has for its basis the eternal divine predestination of man. It was only by God becoming man that man could attain the predestined end of his original creation. The perfecting of humanity in Christ is also a realisation of the true idea of humanity—the Logos first assimilating Himself to man, and then man to Himself ("semet
