Theology in the Democracy of the Dead

A Dialogue with the Living Tradition

Matt Jenson

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780801049439
• eBook ISBN: 9781493419647
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

G. K. Chesterton wrote, "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." This book pays homage to major theologians of the Christian tradition that tell the history of theology. Matt Jenson engages in charitable yet critical exposition and dialogue with eleven select thinkers, offering a lucid, synthetic account of their theology with a view to ongoing systematic theological issues. He engages directly with core primary texts and treats individual theologians in greater depth and nuance than most overview textbooks.

1
A King or a Fox?

Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of Scripture

When I was a boy, I had a strategy for avoiding things I did not want to hear and see. I would put my hands over my ears, close my eyes, chew my tongue, and drone, confident that this, too, would pass. Really, it’s a perfect approach to the scary bits in movies, and it correctly estimates the formative power of images and sounds for good or ill. It cannot, though, be applied to all appearances of evil. Some must be faced head on. Otherwise, one may meet the fate of Pliny’s ostriches, who “imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed.”1 The problem is not so much the parochialism of buried heads but the comical—and dangerous—illusion that the rest of one’s body is safe from attack.

So it is as one encounters theological disagreement (leaving aside for the moment whether that disagreement is legitimate or heretical). One may bury one’s head or, like the younger me, stop one’s ears and close one’s eyes, but that response serves only to expose one’s flank to attack. What, then, are we to make of the apostle Paul’s counsel to Timothy? “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge,’ for by professing it some have swerved from the faith” (1 Tim. 6:20–21). The metaphors seem at first glance to work at cross-purposes. Timothy is to “guard” the deposit of faith, to defend it against attackers and ensure its safekeeping in the church. Surely this means a fight, should false teachers seek to rob the church of its treasure. Yet Paul suggests it is best to “avoid” the fatuous volleys of these teachers, perhaps on the principle that the best way to get false teachers to go away is to ignore them.

Therapists speak of fight and flight as default mechanisms for handling conflict. While Paul’s counsel of avoidance may often be the tack to take, the church can avoid false teachers for only so long; at some point, direct engagement is called for, with flight being exchanged for fight. In what follows, we’ll consider Irenaeus, a second-century bishop and apologist, and his approach to false teaching in the church. Irenaeus saw a change in the weather and battened down the hatches of the faith against a Gnosticism threatening to sink the church’s ship. But in guarding the faith, he neither pretended the threat was illusory nor reduced the faith to the size of an answer to the Gnostics’ question. Every apologist knows the temptation to fit the defense of the faith to the mold of one’s opponent, but a temptation it is, and a Procrustean one resulting in a curtailed faith. Irenaeus’s tack is different. He confidently begins his response to the Gnostics by laying bare their variegated myths, trusting that exposition alone will do much of his work. From there, he elegantly lays out a vision of the Christian faith and, indeed, the world as seen through the lens of the apostolic preaching. In the end, “his chief concern is positive; the response far exceeds the stimulus.”2

A Very Brief Life

Though this summary of his life is brief, Irenaeus himself lived to a ripe old age (as, so he strangely thought, did Jesus).3 Born around AD 130, he died around the turn of the century. The details about his life, though, are scant. We know he knew Polycarp (d. 155/156) in his youth, and he may have been from Smyrna (İzmir, in modern Turkey), where Polycarp was bishop.4 Given that Polycarp knew the apostles and had been appointed bishop by them, Irenaeus stands only one generation removed from the apostles, which grants him significant authority as he demonstrates the apostolic preaching.

From Smyrna, Irenaeus went west, likely spending time in Rome receiving instruction. He may have been taught by Justin Martyr, whose thought Irenaeus followed at a number of points. He eventually arrived in the region of Gaul, in Lyons, a major city at the meeting of the Rhone and Saône Rivers.5 The church was young there, having first emerged mid-century, but it had quickly come under attack. In 177 Irenaeus went on a mission to Rome, carrying a letter to Pope Eleutherus from Lyons on behalf of a group of Montanists from Asia Minor. When he returned, the ninety-year-old bishop Pothinus was in prison, where he died. Irenaeus succeeded him, becoming bishop of Lyons and Vienne.6

Aside from his answer to Marcion and the Gnostics, to which we will return, the other major event in Irenaeus’s bishopric was the Quartodeciman controversy, a debate between the churches in Asia Minor and Rome regarding the dating of Pascha (or Easter). The churches in Asia Minor kept it on Nisan 14, following Jewish custom; but Victor, bishop of Rome (189–198), demanded it be kept the following Sunday, the day of the resurrection, threatening excommunication to those who disobeyed.7 Irenaeu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. A King or a Fox?
• 2. The Word Who Became Flesh
• 3. “The Lovely Things Kept Me Far from You”
• 4. “That Most Biblical of Theologians”
• 5. Faith Seeking Understanding—or Understanding Seeking Faith?
• 6. “St. Thomas of the Creator”
• 7. “One Little Word Shall Fell Him”
• 8. “What Do You Have That You Did Not Receive?”
• 9. The Beauty of Holiness
• 10. A Pietist of a Higher Order
• 11. “The Happiest Theologian of Our Age”
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover