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We began this journey from the lost Jewish Christian Book of Acts. In that text Jesus was a man who was raised from the dead to signal the general resurrection in the flesh at the end of the age. According to this understanding God sent Jesus as a ‘sign’ of what was to come. It is unknown whether the rest of the gospel was treated typologically, but there is no evidence to suggest this to us. It was Irenaeus’s teacher Polycarp who seemed to have ‘broken up’ the typological interpretation of the scriptures and the gospel in particular. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that while always criticizing the Valentinian interpretation of the gospel, Irenaeus never provides so much as one example of the actions of Jesus fulfilling any Old Testament typology.
This is a startling realization for it runs counter to what we might suppose at first glance. Surely Irenaeus thought that certain ‘types’ existed in the writings of the Law and the prophets which were ‘fulfilled’ by Jesus. A careful analysis of Irenaeus’s writings reveals something else entirely. While he sees scripture as ‘typical’ he never actually says that they are typical of Jesus. Rather Irenaeus argues that the things said in scripture are only typical of the Gentile Church being established in Rome at the time he was writing.
The idea immediately comes to the fore – is it possible then that Jesus was merely a sign for someone else? Could Jesus’s advent in humility have been understood by Irenaeus originally to have been a precursor for the glory of Commodus? The short answer to that question is – no. As the text stands now there are no indications that Jesus was a type for Commodus. However if take notice of a recognized pattern of corruption that crept into the preservation of Irenaeus’s writings the possibility that such an argument was once there may be stronger than it appears now.
There is a well-known example of Justin referencing Marcion which appears in Book Four of Against Heresies which sees a later editor substitute the Latin ‘semetipsum’ (He himself) for eo ‘he.’ Most scholars acknowledge that this substitution occurred here. Yet we will take that argument one step further and argue that it happens throughout the surviving writings of Irenaeus. The reason for this is simple – the Latin ‘semetipsum’ is used to disguise Irenaeus’s original monarchianist beliefs especially when it comes to the Father directing all action by the Son. An example may be in order from Book Three.
After repeating once again that the heretics divide Jesus and Christ and assume one came upon the other during the Lord’s baptism, Irenaeus goes on to say that “they thus wander from the truth, because their doctrine departs from Him [i.e. the Father] who is truly God, being ignorant that His [i.e. the Father’s] only-begotten Word, who is always present with the human race, united to and sprinkled with His own creation, according to the Father's pleasure, and who became flesh, is Himself Jesus Christ our Lord, who did also suffer for us, and rose again on our behalf, and who will come again in the glory of His Father, to raise up all flesh, and for the manifestation of salvation, and to apply the rule of just judgment to all who were made by Him.”
When we read that long and difficult to understand sentence it is might not be completely clear that the actual subject of the sentence is actually the Father not Jesus. What especially throws the reader off is that a later Latin translator has again substituted semetipsum for eo in the material that immediately follows. The passage now reads:
So one God the Father, as we have shown, and one Christ Jesus, came by means of the whole dispensational arrangements and gathered together all things in Himself.( semetipsum) But in every respect, too, He is man, the formation of God; and thus He took up man into Himself (semetipsum), the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible becoming capable of suffering, and the Word being made man, thus summing up all things in Himself (semetipsum) so that as in super-celestial, spiritual, and invisible things, the Word of God is supreme, so also in things visible and corporeal He might possess the supremacy, and, taking to Himself (semetipsum) the pre-eminence, as well as constituting Himself (semetipsum ) Head of the Church, He might draw all things to Himself (semetipsum) at the proper time.
Yet since Irenaeus was originally a much more radical monarchianist and whose writings – many of which no longer survive – are described by the tenth century Church Father Photius of Constantinople as such that “the exact truth of the doctrines of the Church appears to be falsified by spurious arguments.”
The same section of text suddenly takes on a whole different character when we substitute eo for semetipsum again:
So one God the Father, as we have shown, and one Christ Jesus, came by means of the whole dispensational arrangements and gathered together all things in Him (i.e. Jesus). But in every respect, too, He is man, the formation of God; and thus He took up man into Him, the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible becoming capable of suffering, and the Word being made man, thus summing up all things in Him so that as in super-celestial, spiritual, and invisible things, the Word of God is supreme, so also in things visible and corporeal He might possess the supremacy, and, taking to Him the pre-eminence, as well as constituting Him Head of the Church, He might draw all things to Him at the proper time.
What exactly is the significance of this restoration? We finally see the exact understanding that Irenaeus gives us elsewhere of Jesus being in the burning bush talking to Moses but only as a ‘mode’ of the Father. In other words, Jesus is doing this or that but the Father is actually always present throughout.
So it is then that when we go back to Book Four where this section of text is specifically cited in the middle of an attack against the Jewish Christian Ebionites we see it again stated that God the Father made the Son of Man into Man, but the present Latin text reads:
And for this reason He did in these last days exhibit the similitude; the Son of God was made man, assuming the ancient production unto Himself (semetipsum), as I have shown in the immediately preceding book.
Yet clearly the original sense of the passage was that God the Father made the Son of Man man, so again we see eo replaced by semetipsum. The original read:
And for this reason He did in these last days exhibit the similitude; the Son of God was made man, assuming the ancient production unto Him, as I have shown in the immediately preceding book.
The point of course is that the Ebionites are wrong for only seeing him as Adam or a Son of Man. Acting within him was the very Father of the universe because not only was Jesus divine but more specifically he and his Father were one.
