of time, the conflict wherein, at the beginning, man had been overcome. The victory of God made man is man's victory, since all humanity is summed up (recapitulated) in Christ. Man must himself leave the evil one bound with the same chains wherewith he himself had been bound—the chains of transgression (v. 21, 3); but the first man could not thus have triumphed, having been by him seduced and bound, but only the second man, the Son of God, after Whose image Adam was created, and Who has become man in order to take back His old creation ("antiquam plasmationem") into Himself (iv. 33, 4). The devil had obtained his dominion over the first man by deceit and violence; whereas the redemption of the new race had taken place not with violence but, as became God, by free persuasion ("secundum suadelam, quemadmodum decebat Deum suadentem, non vim inferentem, accipere quae vellet," v. 1, 1). The dominion of the devil is an unjust dominion, for he, like a robber, has seized and taken to himself what did not belong to him, estranged us from our original godlike nature, and made us into his own disciples. Divine justice demands that what the devil has obtained by conflict should in a lawful conflict be won back from him. The Son of God deals, according to His own sense of right, with the apostasy itself, redeeming from it, at a price, that which was His own ("non deficiens in sua justitia juste etiam adversus ipsam conversus est apostasiam, ea quae sunt sua redimens ab ea," v. 1, 1; cf. 24, 4). Christ came not snatching with deceit that which was another's, but justly and graciously resuming that which was His own; justly in regard to the apostasy (the evil one) from whose power He redeemed us with His own blood, and graciously in reference to us whom He so redeemed (v. 2, 1). The persuasion (suadela) of which the Son of God made use consisted, so far as the devil was concerned, in his free consent to accept the redemption price of the Lord's death for his prisoners; and so the Lord redeemed us, giving His soul for our souls and His flesh for our flesh (v. 1, 1). Two thoughts are here to be distinguished. The first is that of Christ's victorious conflict with the evil one, maintaining, spite of all his temptations, full and entire obedience to the Father, unmasking Satan as rebel and deceiver, and thereby proving Himself the strong one (v. 21, 2 seq.). The second is that of redemption through Christ's blood, which is expressly represented as a price paid to the devil and by him voluntarily received. The first thought is developed mainly with reference to the temptation in the wilderness. In the third temptation the evil one is completely exposed and called by his true name, the Son of God appears as victor, and, by His obedience to the divine command, absolves the sin of Adam (v. 21, 2). With this chain of thought, complete in itself, the other theory of a redemption-price paid in the blood of Christ, is placed in no connexion. It is not said that the devil, acting up to his rights, caused the Saviour's death, which indeed is represented from another point of view as a price legitimately offered and paid down to him (v. 1, 1). The thought, moreover, subsequently worked out by Origen, that the devil deceived himself with the hope of bringing under his power One Whom he was too weak to hold, is not found in Irenaeus. But along with this conception of the redemption-price offered to the devil appears another thought, that man has been reconciled to God by the sacrifice of the body of Christ and the shedding of His blood (v. 14, 3).
It must be allowed that Irenaeus gives no complete dogmatic theory with regard to the nature of Christ's work of redemption, for his theological speculations nowhere appear as an independent system, but are simply developed in polemical contrast to those of the heretical gnosis. By this conflict with Gnosticism the currents of Christian religious thought were once more put in rapid movement and problems which had exercised St. Paul were again before the church.
A new letter of St. Irenaeus of considerable importance was discovered in 1904 by an Armenian scholar in the Church of the Virgin at Erivan in Russian Armenia, and trans. into German with notes by Dr. Harnack (1907). It was written to his friend Marcian and possibly intended as a manual for catechising (Drews, Der lit. Charakter der neuernt deckten Schrift des Iren. 1907). For an account of it see Essay VI. in Dr. Knowling's Messianic Interpretation (S.P.C.K. 1911).
Literature.—The Vita Irenaei of Feuardent and that of Peter Halloix; the Dissertationes in Irenaeum of Dodwell and those of Massuet; the Prolegomena of Harvey (Preliminary Matter, I. Sources and Phenomena of Gnosticism; II. Life and Writings of St. Irenaeus); Tillemont, Mémoires, iii. 77 sqq. and 619 sqq.; Lipsius, Die Zeit des Irenaeus von Lyon und die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche in Sybel's Histor. Zeitschrift, xxviii. pp. 241 sqq.; Lightfoot, The Churches of Gaul, in Contemp. Review, Aug. 1876, pp. 405 sqq.; the posthumous work of Dean Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries (London, 1875). Some translations of Irenaeus are in the Ante-Nic. Fathers, and bk. iii. of adv. Haer. has been trans. by H. Deane with notes and glossary (Clar. Press). A critical ed. of adv. Haer. is pub. by the Camb. Univ. Press in 2 vols.
[R.A.L.]
Irenaeus (7), count of the empire and subsequently bp. of Tyre, while a layman took a zealous interest in theological controversies and was ardently attached to the cause of his personal friend Nestorius. In 431 Irenaeus unofficially accompanied Nestorius to the council of Ephesus (Labbe, Concil. iii. 443) employing his influence in behalf of his friend to the great irritation of Cyril and his party (ib. 749, 762; Baluze, 496, 524). When, five days after Cyril had hastily secured the condemnation of Nestorius, the approach of John of Antioch and the Eastern bishops was announced, Irenaeus, accompanied by a guard of soldiers, hurried out to apprise them of the high-handed proceedings of the council. He was followed by deputies from the council, who, as Memnon relates, were at the count's instigation maltreated by the soldiers, and prevented from having an audience with John (Labbe, ib. 764; Mercator, ii. praef. xxvii.). To counteract the influence of Dalmatius and the monastic party at Constantinople, the
