Lived Theology: Spirit, Economy, and Asceticism in Irenaeus and His Readers

Abstract

Abstract Salvation lies at the heart of Irenaeus’ thought. His two surviving works not only declare helping his readers’ communities toward salvation as their purpose, but even contain prayers and meditations for the Valentinians’ salvation. However, following the paradigm set down by Harnack more than a century ago, scholars have tended to separate what Irenaeus insists “rejoice together”: “truth in the mind” and “holiness in the body” (Dem 3). By reconsidering the history of Irenaean scholarship on the nature of the divine economy and the infancy of Adam, I show that Adam’s infancy is temporal rather than physical and that Irenaeus’ interpretation of Adam’s growth is at the same time the phenomenological structure of temptation, maturation, and askesis experienced by the living reader. Irenaeus’ soteriology was not simply a metaphysical theory but an ascetic and even phenomenological discourse structuring a way of life—it was a lived theology.