If we want to understand how Irenaeus views the atonement, we need to do so within his understanding of the single overarching economy of God….An example of Irenaeus’s approach to these issues is found in the scriptural image used by Christ to explain his own work: the sign of Jonah. Irenaeus gives the case of Jonah, who, by God’s arrangement, was swallowed up by the whale, not that he should perish, but that, having been cast out, he might be more obedient to God, and so glorify more the One who had unexpectedly saved him ( Haer. 3.20.1). For Irenaeus, God has borne the human race, from the beginning, while the great whale swallowed it up. Thre is no lost golden age of primordial perfection when we might not have needed Christ. Such language sounds strange to us, accustomed to thinking of God in all- too- human, temporal terms, imagining him “before” creation, deciding what he is going to do (plan A), and responding (plan B) aft er we messed up. However, as Irenaeus asserts repeatedly throughout his work, theological reflection is not to start from any other (hypothetical or counterfactual) position than the one proclaimed by the apostles, in accordance with the Scriptures ( Haer. 1.10.3). We are, he insists, to seek out the wisdom of God made manifest in the Christ preached by the apostles, the Word, Wisdom, and Power of God.
For Irenaeus, the starting point for all theological reflection (including the Fall) is the given fact of the work of Christ, his life- giving and saving death (cf. Barr, 89). So it is that in the passage we are considering Irenaeus speaks of God “arranging in advance the finding of salvation, which was accomplished by the Word through the sign of Jonah.” Creation and salvation, for Irenaeus, cohere as the one economy of God, which culminates in the work of Christ, to be understood and told from this point.
According to Irenaeus, this does not mitigate human responsibility for their action of apostasy, nor the reality of the work of the devil in beguiling Adam and Eve under “the pretext of immortality” ( Haer. 3.23.5; 4.Pref. 4). For Irenaeus, death is the result of human apostasy, turning away from the one and only Source of life, instigated by the devil. But death is also embraced within the divine economy, the way everything fi ts together in God’s hand. When viewed from the perspective of the salvation granted by Christ through “the sign of Jonah,” we can see that, as it was God himself who appointed the whale to swallow up Jonah, so also the engulfing of the human race by the great whale was “borne” by God in his arrangement, his economy, which culminates in the finding of salvation accomplished by the sign of Jonah.
—T&T Clark Companion to Atonement, ed. Adam J. Johnson (London: T and T Clark, 2017), pp. 569-570
Today is the feast of St Irenaeus of Lyons. I did my masters dissertation on Irenaeus. Absolutely key is his notion of divine economy. If by creation God gave us life, then we gain eternal life in Christ for 'The Son of God became what we are so we may become what He is' AH 3,19 pic.twitter.com/AI2rkJ9Dp0
— Revd Dr Thomas W Ruston (SCP) (@thomaswruston) June 28, 2024