An Account of the Life and Writings of S. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons and Martyr: Intended to Illustrate the Doctrine, Discipline, Practices, and History of the Church, and the Tenets and Practices of the Gnostic Heretics During the Second CenturyBeaven, James
History
An Account of the Life and Writings of S. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons and Martyr: Intended to Illustrate the Doctrine, Discipline, Practices, and History of the Church, and the Tenets and Practices of the Gnostic Heretics During the Second Century
Beaven, James
Gnosticism; Irenaeus, Saint, Bishop of Lyon; Theology, Doctrinal -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600
There were other points in which Moses was a type of Christ. “He took an
Ethiopian woman to wife, whom he thereby made an Israelitess; foreshowing
that the wild olive is grafted into the olive, and partakes of its
fatness. For since that Christ, who was born according to the flesh, was
to be sought out for destruction, and to be delivered in Egypt, that is,
amongst the Gentiles, to sanctify the infants there, whence also he made a
Church there; (for Egypt was from the beginning a gentile nation, as was
also Æthiopia;) for this reason by the marriage of Moses was shown the
marriage of the Word, and by the Æthiopian wife the Gentile Church is
pointed out: and those who speak against it, and inveigh against and
deride it, shall not be clean; for they shall be leprous and cast out of
the camp(479).”
He declares that the re‐appearance of justification by faith, after it had
been for some time cast out of sight by the Law of Moses, was typified by
the circumstances of the birth of the sons of Thamar. For as Zarah put
forth his hand first, and had the scarlet thread bound upon it, and then
retiring gave way to his brother Pharez, and thus was born after him; by
this the Scripture declared “that people which has the scarlet sign, viz.
faith in uncircumcision, which was shown first in the patriarchs, and
afterwards withdrawn when its brother was born; and that in consequence
that which was first was born second, being known by the scarlet mark upon
it, which is the suffering of the Just One, foreshown in Abel, written by
the Prophets, and accomplished in the last times in the Son of God(480).”
Irenæus was of opinion that some of the apparent misdeeds of the old
Patriarchs were not really sins, but circumstances brought upon them by
divine Providence, with some mystical and typical end. Thus the
cohabitation of Lot and his daughters is with him providential and
typical, signifying that from one Father the Word, by means of the life‐
giving Spirit, the two sister synagogues, the Jewish and the Christian,
have brought forth a spiritual seed(481).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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