Irenaeus, the Law and Salvation
Irenaeus believed that humanity had come under the dominion of sin, because it had rejected the Law that God had written on the hearts of humanity at the beginning. Therefore, God decided to make a new covenant with humanity. By making the covenant with Moses, God provided a way of discipling humanity.
God also used the same means to reveal the extent of human sin and also keep it in check.In essence God provided the law as a loving way of restraining sin.Through the law God could maintain order until Christ was revealed.
In Irenaeus’ view God did not intend for the Mosaic Law to be the final means of salvation. Instead, the Mosaic law was a temporary and mediating covenant. Christ, when he came, abrogated this temporary law and restored the original law, the one written on the hearts of the people.
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1. Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology, (St. Louis, Concordia Publ. House, 1968), 47-48.
3. Why, then, did the Lord not form the covenant for the fathers? Because “the law was not established for righteous men.”39943994 1 Tim. i. 9. But the righteous fathers had the meaning of the Decalogue written in their hearts and souls,39953995 [Hearts and souls; i.e., moral and mental natures. For a correct view of the patristic conceptions of the Gentiles before the law, this is valuable.] that is, they loved the God who made them, and did no injury to their neighbour. There was therefore no occasion that they should be cautioned by prohibitory mandates (correptoriis literis),39963996 i.e., the letters of the Decalogue on the two tables of stone. because they had the righteousness of the law in themselves. But when this righteousness and love to God had passed into oblivion, and became extinct in Egypt, God did necessarily, because of His great goodwill to men, reveal Himself by a voice, and led the people with power out of Egypt, in order that man might again become the disciple and follower of God; and He afflicted those who were disobedient, that they should not contemn their Creator; and He fed them with manna, that they might receive food for their souls (uti rationalem acciperent escam); as also Moses says in Deuteronomy: “And fed thee with manna, which thy fathers did not know, that thou mightest know that man doth not live by bread alone; but by every word of God proceeding out of His mouth doth man live.”39973997 Deut. viii. 3. And it enjoined love to God, and taught just dealing towards our neighbour, that we should neither be unjust nor unworthy of God, who prepares man for His friendship through the medium of the Decalogue, and likewise for agreement with his neighbour,—matters which did certainly profit man himself; God, however, standing in no need of anything from man. (Against Heresies, Book 4, chapter 16)
God also used the same means to reveal the extent of human sin and also keep it in check.In essence God provided the law as a loving way of restraining sin.Through the law God could maintain order until Christ was revealed.
In Irenaeus’ view God did not intend for the Mosaic Law to be the final means of salvation. Instead, the Mosaic law was a temporary and mediating covenant. Christ, when he came, abrogated this temporary law and restored the original law, the one written on the hearts of the people.
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1. Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology, (St. Louis, Concordia Publ. House, 1968), 47-48.
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