Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/542

 extract showing that the current controversies regarded also the mode and duration of the antecedent Paschal fast. Some kept one day, others two days, others several days; some again reckoned their fast-day at 40 hours of day and night (οἱ δὲ τεσσαράκοντα ὥρας ἡμερινάς τε καὶ νυκτερινὰς συμμετροῦσι τὴν ἡμέραν αὐτῶν). But these differences of practice resting on ancient custom—so Irenaeus proceeds to say—have never yet disturbed the church's peace and unity of faith. For although former bishops of Rome, from Xystus to Soter, had never kept Nisan 14, they had always maintained full communion with any who came from dioceses where it was observed; e.g. Polycarp, whom Anicetus permitted to celebrate in his own church, both separating afterwards in peace. No title is given by Eusebius to this epistle, but according to the Quaestiones et Responsa ad Orthodoxos of Pseudo-Justin (c. 115) it was entitled περὶ τοῦ Πάσχα (cf. Fragm. Graec. vii. ap. Harvey, ii. 478). In the same work Pseudo-Justin tells us further that the old Christian custom of refraining from kneeling on Easter Day, as a sign of Christ's resurrection, is carried back by Irenaeus to apostolic times, and the observance of this custom continued through the season of Pentecost, as the whole period (of 50 days after Easter) was regarded as equal to Easter Day itself.

Of other writings of Irenaeus Eusebius mentions (H. E. v. 26) a short tractate, πρὲς Ἕλληνας, which bore also the title περὶ ἐπιστήμης, an ἐπίδειξις τοῦ ἀποστολικοῦ κηρύγματος, addressed to a certain Marcian; and a βιβλίον διαλέξεων διαφόρων, in which he is said to have cited Hebrews and the Wisdom of Solomon. Jerome, apparently copying Eusebius, makes, however, a distinction (de Vir. Ill. 35) between the λόγος πρὸς Ἕλληνας and the περὶ ἐπιστήμης ("scripsit . . . contra Gentes volumen breve et de Disciplina aliud"). The tractate on Apostolical Preaching addressed to Marcian appears to have been a catechetical work on the Rule of Faith. The βιβλίον διαλέξεων διαφόρων appears, in accordance with the early usage of the word διαλέξεις (cf. Harvey, i. p. clxvii. sqq.), to have been a collection of homilies on various Scripture texts. Rufinus incorrectly renders διαλέξεις by Dialogus; Jerome by Tractatus. From these homilies were probably taken the numerous Gk. fragments found in various catenae, containing expositions of various passages of the Pentateuch and the historical books of O.T. and of St. Matthew and St. Luke (Fr. Graec. xv.–xxiii., xxv.–xxix., xxxi., xxxiii., xxxiv., xxxix., xl., xlii.–xlvii.), as well as the Syriac fragment of an exposition of the Song of Solomon (Fr. Syr. xxvi. ap. Harvey, ii. 455) and the Armenian homily on the Sons of Zebedee (Fr. Syr. xxxii. ap. Harvey, ii. 464 sqq.). To the same collection would also belong a tractate on the History of Elkanah and Samuel, mentioned in a Syriac manuscript (Harvey, ii. 507 note).

His Theology and Influence on Ecclesiastical Development.—Irenaeus, with Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian, on the one side, and Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen on the other, was a main founder of the ancient Catholic church, as it rose amid conflicts with Gnosticism and Montanism, out of the church of the post-apostolic era. Baur and the Tübingen school were wrong in explaining the development of primitive Catholic Christianity as the fruit of a compromise effected by the Pauline and Petrine parties soon after the middle of the 2nd cent. to overcome the new opposition. The earliest post-apostolic form of Christianity was no mere product of conflicting antitheses of the apostolic time, or of their reconciliation. The Jewish-Christian communities of Palestine and Syria formed, even towards the end of the 1st cent., a small and vanishing minority as compared to the swelling dimensions of the Gentile church. That to some extent Jewish-Christian influences did operate upon Gentile Christianity during the former half of the 2nd cent. need not wholly be denied; yet the one feature in which we are most tempted to trace them—the conception of the gospel as a new law—is quite as much the outcome of an internal development within the Gentile church itself. The ultimate triumph of Christian universalism, and the recognized equality between Jewish and Gentile members of the church of the Messiah, was a fruit of the life-long labours of St. Paul. The new Christian community, largely Gentile, regarded itself as the true people of God, as the spiritual Israel, and as the genuine heir of the church of the O.T., while the great mass of Jewish unbelievers were, as a penalty for their rejection of the true Messiah, excluded from the blessings of the kingdom of God. To this new spiritual Israel were speedily, in part at least, transferred the forms of the O.T. theocracy, and all the Jewish Scriptures were received as divinely inspired documents by the new church. But, whereas St. Paul had emphasized the antithesis between law and gospel, the Gentile churches after his time attached themselves more closely to the doctrinal norm of the older apostles, and laid stress on the continued validity of the law for Christians; though, as it was impossible to bind Gentiles to observe the ceremonial law, its precepts were given, after the example of the Jewish religious philosophy of Alexandria, a spiritual interpretation. Already, in Hebrews, we find the relations between O. and N. T. viewed under the aspect of Type and Anti-type, Prophecy and Fulfilment. The later Gentile Christianity learned to see everywhere in O.T. types of the gospel revelation, and thus combined freedom from the Mosaic ceremonial law with the maintenance of the entire continuity of the O. and N. T. revelation. The Moral Law, as the centre and substance of the Mosaic revelation, remained the obligatory norm of conduct for Gentile Christians; Christ had not abrogated the law of Moses, but fulfilled and completed it. The theological learning of the time confines itself too exclusively to a typological interpretation of O.T. So much the greater, on the other hand, is the influence exercised upon these writers by heathen philosophic culture. In the Apologists of the middle portion of the 2nd cent.—Justin, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras—this influence appears specially strong. Justin makes constant endeavours to comprehend Christianity