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Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching
St Irenaeus of Lyons, tr. Robinson, 1920
Chapter 33
And just as through a disobedient virgin man was stricken down and fell into death, so through the Virgin who was obedient to the Word of God man was reanimated and received life.1 For the Lord came to seek again the sheep that was lost;2 and man it was that was lost: and for this cause there was not made some other formation,3 but in that same which had its descent from Adam He preserved the likeness of the (first) formation.4 For it was necessary that Adam should be summed up in Christ, that mortality5 might be swallowed up and overwhelmed by immortality; and Eve summed up in Mary, that a virgin should be a virgin’s intercessor,6 and by a virgin’s obedience undo and put away the disobedience of a virgin.
Notes
- The same parallel is worked out in III, xxxii. 1, and V, xix. 1. It is found earlier in Justin Martyr (Dial. 100), and later in Tertullian (De carne Chr. 17).
- Irenaeus is fond of referring to the sheep that was lost: see III, xx. 3, xxxii. 2, xxxvii. 1; V, xii. 3, xv. 2.
- V, xiv. 2: “Nunc autem quod fuit qui perierat homo, hoc salutare factum est Verbum . . . non alteram quandam, sed illam principalem Patris plasmationem in se recapitulans, exquirens id quod perierat.”
- See above, c. 32.
- Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 53.
- III, xxxii. 1: “eam quae est a Maria in Evam recirculationem significans;” V, xix. 1: “uti virginis Evae virgo Maria fieret advocata.” Cf. Just. M. Dial. 100.