St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons – Aug 23 I Church Father, Theologian, Apologist, Defender of Faith

Irenaeus was born around the year A.D. 130 in Smyrna, near Ephesus, Western Turkey, in Asia Minor. He received the best and finest education. He was well versed in Holy Scripture, Greek, poetics philosophy rhetoric, literature and the rest of the classical sciences that were necessary for the young men of his time. He had the rare privilege of sitting at the feet of men who had known the Apostles or their immediate disciples. Of these, the one who influenced him and guided him during his youth on Christian faith was St. Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, who himself, was a disciple of the Apostle John the Theologian. His Christian upbringing from youth days, helps to explain his string sense of Orthodoxy.

The Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, and Saint Irenaeus of Lyons are three links in an unbroken chain of the grace of succession, which goes back to the Original Minister, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The successors of the Apostles have received from God the certain gift of truth, which St Irenaeus links to the succession of the episcopate. “Anyone who desires to know the truth ought to turn to the Church, since through Her alone did the apostles expound the Divine Truth. She is the door to life.”

St. Irenaeus, one of the most important theologians of the second century, was baptized by St Polycarp in his youth and afterwards ordained him presbyter and sent him to a city in Gaul then named Lugdunum in the Church of Lyons in France, to assist the dying bishop Pothinus. In the year A.D. 177 he was commissioned to Rome, with a peace-making mission and to deliver a letter from the confessors of Lugdunum by his bishop Pothinus to Pope Eleutherius of Rome. When Victor, Bishop of Rome, was preparing to excommunicate the Christians of Asia Minor for following a different tradition celebrating Resurrection of Christ, Irenaeus persuaded him to moderate his zeal, and mediated peace. He was thus, also a peace-maker within the Church.

Irenaeus returned to Lyons in c. A.D. 178 and by that time St. Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons, was martyred and several others were persecuted and all the known Christians were thrown into prison under Marcus Aurelius. St. Irenaeus was chosen to become the bishop of Lyons in the same or the following year. “During this time,” Saint Gregory of Tours, writes concerning him, “by his preaching he transformed all Lugdunum into a Christian city!”

When the persecutions against Christians diminished down, he expounded upon the Orthodox teachings of faith in one of his fundamental works under the title: Detection and Refutation of the Pretended but False Gnosis. It is usually called Five Books against Heresy (Adversus Haereses). His writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology. Irenaeus was one of the first Christian writers to refer to the principle of Apostolic Succession to refute his opponents.

Apart from the evangelization of the neighbouring lands, and besides the assaults of paganism, Irenaeus had to deal with Gnosticism which was wide spread in Gaul. The word Gnostics (Docetists) comes from the Greek word meaning ‘Docetism – to seem’. They taught that Christ did not really have a material body, but only seemed to have one. It was in opposition to early Gnostic teachers that the Apostle John wrote that anyone who denies that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of anti-Christ (1 John 4: 1-3). He produced treatises on doctrines of the Church, based on the teachings of Apostles and the text of Holy Scriptures, to counter the heretic viewpoints of Gnosticism. He wrote the ‘rule of faith’ that encompasses all ‘the riches of Christian truth’. There was another dispute regarding the date of Resurrection between Pope and a group of Christians in Asia Minor in which Irenaeus acted as a mediator to settle the issue. The Roman bishop Victor (190-202) forcefully demanded uniformity, and his harsh demands fomented a schism. In the name of the Christians of Gaul, St Irenaeus wrote to Bishop Victor and others, urging them to make peace.

His principal work is the Refutation of Heresies, a defense of Orthodox Christianity against its Gnostic rivals. A shorter work is his Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, a brief summary of Christian teaching, which is largely concerned with Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Irenaeus was perhaps the first to speak of the Church as “Catholic” (Universal), thus the overall Church with the single local congregation.

In his old age, Saint Irenaeus wrote to his old friend the priest Florinus,  “When I was still a boy, I knew you… in Polycarp’s house.… I remember what happened in those days more clearly than what happens now…. I can describe for you the place where blessed Polycarp usually sat and conversed, the character of his life, the appearance of his body, and the discourses which he spoke to the people, how he spoke of the conversations which he had with John and others who had seen the Lord, how he remembered their words, and what he heard from them about the Lord … I listened eagerly to these things, by the mercy of God, and wrote them, not on paper, but in my heart.”

After this incident, Saint Irenaeus drops out of sight, and we do not even know the exact year of his death. Saint Gregory of Tours, suggests that St Irenaeus was beheaded by the sword for his confession of faith. He was bound and burned at the stake, then stabbed when the fire failed to consume his body in the year AD 202, during the reign of Severus. St. Irenaeus, the noted theologian, who emphasized the Canon of Scriptures, the Episcopate and the tradition of Church, passed away at Lyons. He made Lyons an illustrious bastion of Orthodoxy and a school of piety, and sealed his confession with martyrdom about the year AD 202, during the reign of Septimius Severus. The date of death of Irenaeus is usually assigned around the year A.D. 202. Irenaeus was entombed at the Church of St. John in Lyons. The feast of Irenaeus is celebrated in the Orthodox Churches on August 23 and 21 December.