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IRENAEUS: SABBATARIAN OR ANTI-SABBATARIAN? A Look at the Old Law in the New Covenant J. Ligon Duncan III In A.D. 177 when the controversy about Montanism or the "New Prophecy" was beginning to threaten the peace of the Church, the Christians of Lyons, though under severe persecution themselves, did their part to promote unity in the body of Christ. Eusebius tells us that they "submitted their own careful and most orthodox conclusions on the question, attaching various letters from the martyrs fulfilled in their midst — letters penned while they were still in prison to their brothers in Asia and Phyrygia, and also to Eleutherus, then Bishop of Rome." A young presbyter of the church in Lyons was entrusted with the duty of carrying this most important communication to Rome. With him he carried words of commendation form the Christian sin Lyons: "Greetings once more, Father Eleutherus: may God bless you always. We are entrusting this letter to our brother and companion Irenaeus to convey to you. We are anxious that you should hold him in high regard, as a man devoted to the covenant of Christ. For if we had thought that position conferred righteousness on anyone, we should have recommended him first as a presbyter of the Church, which indeed he is [emphasis mine]." Irenaeus would manifest the aptness of this tribute and show himself to be "zealous for the covenant of Christ" indeed when he wrote against the Gnostics. After the martyrdom of Pothinus, Irenaeus became bishop of Lyons and in the midst of his labors was constrained out of a sense of pastoral duty to set forth and refute the Gnostic doctrines which were troubling Christian sin his charge. He did so in his five volume magnum opus — Adversus Haereses which earned him Tertullian’s designation of "omnium doctrinarum coriosissimus explorator" ("a very diligent examiner of all doctrines"). Gnosticism, in its various forms, rejected the Creator God, the God of the Jews and the God of the Jewish scriptures. As Jean Danielou has noted: "this is the central thesis of Gnosticism, the contrast between the inferior god, the god of creation and the god of the Old Testament, who is the righteous god, and the god of redemption and of the New Testament, who is the good God." The Gnostics pointed to what they considered to be irreconcilable differences between the character of the god of the Old Testament and the god revealed by Christ; between the religion of the Old testament and Christianity. The contradictions between the writings of the Old testament and the Christian scriptures, they said, verified their dualistic theology. Irenaeus’ task, then, was to refute the Gnostic doctrine, arguing for the unity of God and the unity of the old and new revelation. He did so by setting forth a theology of Redemptive History which maintained the essential continuity of God’s plan (which began with Adam), while explaining the diversity which existed between the old and new. Irenaeus asserted that the history of redemption was covenantal. The complementary character of these covenants spoken of in the scriptures evinced the unity of the economy of God (and, of course, the unity of God himself) while the diversity in these covenants indicated the progress of redemption. Irenaeus say: "Since the new covenant was known and preached by the prophets, He who was to carry it out according to the Father’s good pleasure was also preached, having been revealed to man as God pleased, in order that they might make progress through believing in him and by means of the covenants gradually attain to perfect salvation.... It is allowable for an earthly and temporal king, even though he is just a man, to grant his subjects greater advantages at times: will it not be lawful for God, since he is the same and is always willing to confer greater grace upon the human race?...." While treating of the necessity of having four Gospels, Irenaeus adds this: "For this same reason were four principle covenants given to the human race: one before the floor, under Adam; the second after the flood, under Noah; the third — the giving of the Law, under Moses; the fourth — which renovates man and recapitulates in itself all things by the Gospel, elevating and carrying men on its wings into the celestial kingdom." Elsewhere Irenaeus declares that good instructors in the faith are able to explain why "more covenants than one were given to mankind; and teach what was the special character which belonged to each." And so we see that Irenaeus insisted that understanding the covenants was basic to Christian doctrine and that God was accommodating himself to mankind’s capacity by way of the covenants or rather as he put it: "in a variety of ways [God] adjusted the human race to agreement with salvation." This argument for the unity of Law and Gospel, old and new covenants, Old Testament scriptures and Christian writings left Irenaeus with the chore of answering the Gnostic allegations of their incompatibility — not the least of which concerned the role of the Old Testament Law in Christian ethics. For the Gnostic Marcion, in particular, the old Law had no validity since the 15th year of Tiberius (about 29 A.D.) when Christ descended from the heavens and revealed the true God, one other than the Creator. Marcion had solved the dilemma of diversity by producing his own version of the scriptures which contained no Old Testament, an abbreviated Gospel of Luke, and an edited Pauline corpus. Passages which spoke of the good god as a judge; which identified the good god with the Creator; which suggested that Christ had fulfilled Old Testament Law or Prophecy; or which suggested that Christ or Paul viewed the Old Testament as authoritative were excised. They were obvious interpolations of the judaizers. Marcion was able to retain, in his pocket version of the Gospel of Luke, the words: "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the law to fail," because this had reference only to the Jews. The previous verse made that clear: "The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the gospel of the kingdom of God is preached...." He thought this illustrated his point perfectly. The law was fine for the Jews, but for Christians there is a new order. Christ has revealed himself and there is nothing like him. His gospel of the kingdom does not need the encumbrance of Hebrew litigation. Christ has set men free from the bondage of the Creator’s code. New wine cannot be poured into old wineskins. As Tertullian was later to say: "Marcion’s special and principal work is the separation of Law and Gospel." Against this backdrop of the Marcionite view of the Law, Irenaeus sets forth his own teaching on the role of the old Law in the new covenant. There are at least two curious elements in the Irenaean teaching. First, Irenaeus speaks both of the abrogation and the continuing validity of the Old Testament law. Second, he asserts that the Decalogues binding for the Christian and then proceeds to speak of the fourth commandment as a temporary Jewish institution. In this presentation it will be our concern to outline Irenaeus’ teaching on the Law and to make an attempt at explaining these seemingly anomalous elements. LAW IN THE NEW COVENANT In Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses we find a generally positive estimation of the use of the Law and a strong emphasis on the continuing validity of the Law in the new covenant. According to Irenaeus, the story of the Rich Young Man (Matt. 19:16-26) illustrates "that the law did beforehand teach mankind the necessity of following Christ." He expands on this idea elsewhere, saying: "But as many as feared God and were anxious about his law, these ran to Christ and were all saved.... For the law never hindered them from believing in the Son of God; no, but it even exhorted them to do so, saying that men can be saved in no other way from the wound of the serpent than by believing in Him who, in the likeness of sinful flesh, is lifted up from the earth upon the tree of martyrdom [in ligno martyrii] and draws all things to himself and brings to life the dead." This is an example of Irenaeus’ view of the Law as schoolmaster. But the Law was not merely pedagogical for Irenaeus, it also provided the perfect standard for godly living and that in both covenants. He says: "As in the Law, so also in the Gospel, the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord God with the whole heart and there follows a commandment like it, to love one’s neighbor as one’s self.... For the precepts which are essential for life...are the same in both covenants...." Here we see an example of the Irenaean stress on the continuity of law between old and new covenant religion. Is there any difference, then, between the Law in the old and the Law in the new covenant as the standard of living? According to Irenaeus, yes. Though the same Law is held by both Hebrew and Christian, Christ has expanded the Christian’s obligation. He says: "Since then all the natural precepts are common to us and them [the Jews], they had in them the beginning and origin; but in us they have received growth and completion." Irenaeus makes the point even more forcefully in his comments on Jesus’ words about the Law, in the sermon on the mount. Irenaeus argues that Jesus, far from casting aside the law of the Old Testament (as the Gnostics claim), was actually extending the force of the Law. He says: "That the Lord did not abolish the natural law...but even extended and fulfilled it is made clear by his words...." The Lord’s contrast of "it has been said" and "but I say to you" does not indicate a rejection of the Law, according to Irenaeus. These words do not, he says, "contain or imply an opposition to and an overturning of the Law of the past, as Marcion’s followers do strenuously maintain; but are a fulfilling and an extension of them." This presentation of the place of the Law in Christianity, with its strong emphasis on continuity, has led some to charge that Irenaeus does not understand the Pauline conception of freedom from the bondage of the law. It is said that he has substituted the idea of "New Law" for the idea of "Gospel." And it must be admitted that even though he never speaks of the new covenant as "nova lex" he does speak of a greater legislation" being given in the new than in the old covenant (AH 4.9.2). However, alongside Irenaeus’ emphasis on the continuation of the old Law in the new covenant, there is an explicit stress on the fact that in the Gospel we have a new covenant of liberty and freedom from bondage. For instance, though Irenaeus speaks of legislation in the Gospel, it is different from the old law because it has been given with a view to freedom rather than given with a view to servitude (AH 4.9.2). Irenaeus can even turn to Marcion’s great proof text "the law and the prophets were until John" and draw almost as sharp a distinction. He says the verse speaks of the temporary nature of the Jewish administration. He continues by saying that the Jewish legislation must have an end "when the new covenant is revealed." "The Laws of bondage," Irenaeus insists, "He [Christ] canceled [circumscripsit] by the new covenant of liberty." This emphasis on the abrogation of the law comes to the fore in Irenaeus’ small catechetical work Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, available to us through the discovery of a 13th century Armenian manuscript. In this book, Irenaeus is able to press the newness of the new covenant because he is unhindered by olemical concern. In one passage he says: "That He [God] does not wish those who are to be redeemed to be brought again under the Mosaic legislation — for the law has been fulfilled by Christ — but to go free in the newness by the Word, through faith and love towards the Son of God, is said by Isaias: Remember not former things and attend not to what is from the beginning; behold a new thing, and now it shall spring forth and you shall know it....." But how can Irenaeus speak of "not being brought again under the Mosaic legislation," if the Law is essentially the same in both covenants? And if the Law is the same in both dispensations, how can the old covenant be characterized as bondage while the new covenant is one of liberty? How can he speak of the law not being abrogated and yet being canceled? In short, how do we account for these two opposing themes in Irenaeus’ teaching on the Law? The tension is largely resolved in this matter by recognizing that Irenaeus divides the Law of the Old Testament into two parts, the natural law (naturalia) and the [for want of a better term] ceremonial law (legalia or sometimes servitutis praecepta). Irenaeus was no the first second century theologian to suggest divisions in the law. Justin Martyr had previously proposed a three-fold division. In his scheme the first kind of law concerned righteousness, the second was for the purpose of pointing to the Messiah, and the third was included because of the hardness of men’s hearts. Irenaeus’ first category, naturalia, was roughly equivalent to Justin’s first kind — as it represented God’s primordial standard of righteousness for all men. Irenaeus’ second category, legalia, comprehended both Justin’s second and third kinds, and so it signified the laws which were typological in nature, as well as those which were given because of men’s stubbornness. According to Irenaeus, the naturalia or natural precepts of the law had been implanted in mankind form the beginning but the legalia or ceremonial laws had been added at a later time because of the disobedience of Israel (AH 4.15.1). Irenaeus says: "when they [the Jews] turned themselves to make a calf, and had gone back in their minds to Egypt, desiring to be slaves instead of free-men...[God] subjected them to the yoke of bondage." By "yoke of bondage" Irenaeus means the building of the tabernacle and temple, the Levitical priesthood, the sacrificial system and the other servile things of the Law (AH 4.14.3). And so the Mosaic law, though it included the naturalia which had been given to the patriarchs before, also included the ceremonial legislation. Because of this two-fold character of the Mosaic legislation, Irenaeus could speak of Christ canceling the laws of bondage (meaning only the ceremonial law) while simultaneously asserting that Christ was extending the law of the Old Testament (meaning the natural precepts of the Law). He could say that "God did not want the redeemed to be brought again under the Mosaic legislation." By this, asserting that the ceremonial aspect of the Mosaic code was not for the new covenant believer because it was fulfilled in Christ and at the same time appeal to the natural precepts contained in the Mosaic law as the standard of conduct for the new dispensation. He could characterize the new covenant as one of liberty because the keeping of the ceremonial laws no longer burdened the believer and because the legal dispensation was aptly so-called because of its many statutes in comparison to the precepts of the new covenant law which can be summed up in two commands. But having proposed that Irenaeus’ distinction of natural and ceremonial law resolves any seeming contradictions in his teaching concerning the Old Testament law in the new covenant, it would be amiss to suggest that the abrogation of the ceremonial code constitutes alone the liberty which Irenaeus says characterizes the new covenant. The freedom which he has in mind is not just freedom realized by the dissolution of the ceremonial precepts. The liberty of the new covenant, that which really sets it apart from the old covenant, results not from a distinction in the law but from the Incarnation. In Christ’s appearance as man, he recapitulated in himself all things. This is at the very center of Irenaeus’ redemptive history. Every stage of the old covenant predicts and looks for it. But in the new covenant it has been realized and so the Gospel dispensation is qualitatively superior to the legal economy (AH 4.13.2). Irenaeus says: "the same Lord granted by means of His advent a greater gift of grace to those of a later period, than what He had granted to those under the old covenant dispensation. For they indeed used to hear by means of his servants that the King would come, and they rejoiced to a certain extent insofar as they hoped for his coming; but those who have beheld him actually present and have obtained liberty, and been made partakers of his gifts, do possess a greater amount of grace, and a higher degree of exultation, rejoicing because of the King’s arrival...." The abolition of the ceremonial law, therefore, is but one new liberty among many. Irenaeus gives as examples of this new freedom: the adoption as sons (AH 4.13.2), the giving of the Spirit (Proof 89, 90), the giving of the Abrahamic promise to the Gentiles (Proof 91-95), and not insignificantly, the end of the law as a school-master. He says: "Therefore also we have no need of the law as pedagogue. Behold, we speak with the Father, and stand face to face with Him, become infants in malice and made strong in all justice and propriety." DECALOGUE IN THE NEW COVENANTReturning, however to the issue of the Irenean division of the law into naturala and legalia, we are left with the question of where these natural precepts can be found in the older scriptures. If Moses’ law contained both, how does one distinguish the natural precepts? Irenaeus emphatically answers that the natural law is enshrined in the decalogue. Speaking of the Jewish people he says: "They had a law, a discipline, and a prophecy of future events. For God, initially admonishing them by natural precepts [naturalia praecepta] which had been imprinted in mankind from the beginning, that is by the decalogue [decalogum],...demanded nothing additionally from them." Irenaeus’ conception of the institution of the natural law is as follows. The patriarchs, long before the time of Moses, lived their lives by the decalogue or as Irenaeus says: "the righteous fathers had the meaning of the decalogue written in their hearts and souls, that is, they loved God who made them and did no injury to their neighbor." While the children of Israel were in Egypt they forgot their love for God, and so he afflicted some, spoke to them with his own voice, led them out of Egypt, and fed them with manna in order to move them to love of God and neighbor (AH 4.16.3). When they sinned with the golden calf, God wrote down the decalogue and had Moses add to it laws of bondage which would be both for the people’s punishment and instruction (AH 4.16.5). And so whatever additions came in the time of Moses, the decalogue itself had been at the heart of God’s law since the time of Adam. Irenaeus is explicit about the binding character of the decalogue "which," he says, "if one does not observe, he has no salvation." The obligation of the Ten Words does not change in the new covenant. Though the precepts of Moses are abolished yet the decalogue remains. Irenaeus says: "Preparing man for this life, the Lord himself spoke in his own person to all alike the words of the decalogue; and therefore, in like manner, do they remain permanently with us receiving by his advent in the flesh, extension and increase, but not abrogation. However, right on the heels of this assertion of the authority of the Ten Commandments, Irenaeus declares that the keeping of the Sabbath is part of temporary Mosaic legalia (AH 4.16.1). This in itself is not very surprising. Ignatius and Justin had both rejected the seventh day Sabbath and asserted that it was part of the transient Jewish legislation. Indeed, as R.J. Bauckham observes, "it...seems axiomatic with second century writers that the Sabbath commandment, despite its place in the Decalogue, belongs with those Jewish ceremonial ordinances whose literal observance has passed with their fulfillment in Christ." The puzzling thing is trying to discern how Irenaeus reconciled his strong assertion of the continuing validity of the decalogue with his relegation of the fourth commandment to the status of Jewish ceremonial legislation. There are a few possible answers to this quandary, the first of which concerns the meaning of the term "decalogue." We have already noted that Irenaeus teaches that the patriarchs lived according to the decalogue and that Moses added ceremonial precepts at Sinai. To this he adds that Abraham was declared righteous without the observance of Sabbaths (AH 4.16.2). If we assume that Irenaeus is consistent with himself, and take into account that he says the patriarchs lived by the decalogue but did not keep Sabbath and then consider that Irenaeus treats the fourth command as part of the Jewish administration; we are led to the conclusion that Irenaeus is using the term "decalogue" loosely to denote the basic content of the natural law as expressed in the exhortation to love God and neighbor. If Irenaeus sometimes uses the term in this broad sense, it would explain how he could treat the fourth commandment as a ceremonial accretion and still stress the authority of the decalogue in the new covenant. A second possible solution is that Irenaeus believed that the fourth command was fulfilled in some symbolic sense and therefore did not need to be taken literally. In Adversus Haereses 4.16.1, Irenaeus compares circumcision and the Sabbath, and determines that they are both sign and symbol. Circumcision was a sign given to the race of Abraham to set them apart from other races and to signify God’s covenant with Abraham. The Sabbath was a sign for the Mosaic covenant. But circumcision, according to Irenaeus, is also a symbol which looks forward to its fulfillment in the "circumcision without hands." the Sabbath, too, is symbol. Irenaeus says: "the Sabbaths taught that we should continue day by day in God’s service." This interpretation reflects the application of Irenaeus’ principle that Christ has extended the law. Now the Christian does not simply keep one day in seven but every day of the week. This same idea is put across in a passage from Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 96: "Nor will he [the Christian] be commanded to leave idle one day of rest, who is constantly keeping sabbath, that is, giving homage to God in the temple of God, which is man’s body, and at all times doing the works of justice." Another possibility is that Irenaeus envisaged an eschatological fulfillment of the fourth commandment which thereby preempted its temporal fulfillment. He clearly has this in mind in this passage: "Moreover, the Sabbath of God [requietio Dei], that is the kingdom, was indicated by created things; in which [kingdom] the man who perseveres in serving God will, resting, partake of the table of God." Elsewhere he says: "For what are the hundred-fold rewards in this world, the entertainments given to the poor, and the suppers for which a return is made? These are to take place in the times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day, which has been sanctified, in which God rested from all the works which He created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous, when they shall not be engaged in any earthly occupation; but shall have a table at hand prepared for them by God, supplying them with all sorts of dishes." Nowhere, however, does Irenaeus relate the keeping of the Lord’s Day to the fourth commandment. In fact, it is apparently not until the mid-fourth century that a Christian theologian applies the Sabbath commandment to the Lord’s Day. In characterizing Irenaeus’ position on the fourth commandment, then, we might say that he was an eternal sabbatarian and a temporal anti-sabbatarian. CONCLUSION: THE IRENAEAN LEGACY Irenaeus had a great influence on his contemporaries. For instance, Tertullian’s teaching on the law was heavily dependent on Irenaeus, and the points which he took from Irenaeus and then developed in his own way are numerous. In fact, a passage in AH 4.15.2 is probably the seed from which grew Tertullian’s defense of his Montanistic ethics. However, Irenaeus’ greater legacy to the Church is his solution to the Gnostic challenge against the older scriptures. Irenaeus’ teaching on the Law is but a component of this. This Irenaean theology was taken up and again by Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine — who passed it on to the Middle Ages. There is a richness about this theology that makes it well worth consideration. In 1887 James Orr made his way form the United Free Church College in Glasgow, across the Atlantic Ocean, and to the northwest corner of Pennsylvania to deliver the Elliot Lectures at Western Theological Seminary in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. As he closed his second lecture on the progress of dogma he made these observations: "If...we take the theology of such as Irenaeus as a type of the constructive work of the period, we find, despite the fact that his ideas are nowhere systematically presented, a wealth of profound thoughts, some of which Modern theology is only beginning to appreciate...I only observe that a theology which takes the incarnation for its center; which uses this as the key to the doctrines of God, of creation, of man, of redemption, of the final issue of things; which unites creation in the closest way with redemption; which sees in Christ the "recapitulation" of humanity — its central Personage and New Head: which represents Him as gathering up all created things into one in Himself; which explains the redemption of sinners on the same principle of One representing all in the obedience He rendered to God, his victory of Satan, and His endurance of what was due to the righteous ordinance of God connecting death with sin — a theology of this kind, I say, is one regarding which it is not presumptuous to hold that the Church has yet a long way to travel before it leaves behind."
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