And the Word ‘used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend’ (Ex 33:11). Moses longed for an unveiled sight of the One with whom he spoke, and so he was addressed as follows: ‘Stand on the top of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand. When my splendour passes by, you will see me from behind, but my face will not be shown you, for no man shall see my face and live’ (cf Ex 33:20ff). This signifies two things: first, that it is impossible for man to see God, and secondly, that, through the wisdom of God, in the last days, man will see God ‘on the top of the rock’, that is to say, in His coming as man. That is why, as the Gospel tells us, [the Lord] conversed with [Moses] face to face on the top of a mountain, in the presence also of Elijah. At the end He fulfilled the ancient promise. Against Heresies IV 20, 9
Not one of the heretics is of the opinion that the Word was made flesh. If you examine their creeds carefully, you will find that, in every one of them, the Word of God is presented as without flesh and incapable of suffering, as is ‘the Christ who is above’. Some say that He revealed Himself as a transfigured man, but was not bom or made flesh. Others deny that He took human form at all. They say that He descended, in the form of a dove, on the Jesus born of Mary . . . and after He had announced the ‘unknown Father’, He went up again into the ‘divine Pleroma’. . . The Lord’s disciple shows all these people to be false witnesses when he says: ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14). Against Heresies III 11, 3
By His obedience unto death on the Cross, He wiped out the ancient disobedience wrought on the tree. He is Himself the Word of almighty God, who in His invisible form pervades us all and encompasses the breadth and length, the height and depth, of the whole world, for by God’s Word all things are guided and ordered. Now God’s Son was also crucified in them [the four dimensions], since He has imprinted the form of the Cross on the universe. In becoming visible, He had to reveal the participation of the universe in His Cross. He wanted to display, in visible form, His activity in the visible realm, namely, that it is He who makes bright the heights, that is, what is in heaven, and reaches down into the depths, to what is under the earth, and spreads out the length from East to West, and, like a pilot, guides the breadth from North to South, and calls together all the dispersed, from all the comers of the earth, to the knowledge of the Father. Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching 34.
He appeared as man in the fulness of time, and, being God’s Word, He summed up in Himself all things in heaven and on earth. He united man with God and brought about communion between God and man. Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching 30f
Only if Christ has suffered, can He impose suffering If [as the Gnostics say] Christ was not supposed to suffer but fled from Jesus [during the Passion], what right did He have to exhort His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him (cf Matt 16:24f)? For, according to the Gnostics, He Himself did not take up the Cross and abandoned the plan of suffering. He was not talking about the ‘knowledge of the Cross above’, as some of them have the audacity to claim, but about the suffering which He was to endure, and which awaited His disciples in the future. He proved this when He said: ‘Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will find it’ (cf Matt 16:25). . . The same argument applies against those who say that He suffered only in appearance. If He did not really suffer, no gratitude is due to Him, since there was no Passion. And when He tells us, in our real sufferings, to endure the blows and to turn the other cheek, it will look like deception if He Himself has not suffered this in reality first . . . In fact, we should be ‘above the Master’, were we to suffer and sustain what the Master Himself had not suffered and sustained beforehand. Against Heresies III 18, 5-6
The Father of all is far removed from the affections and passions proper to human beings. He is simple, non-composite, not made up of different members, altogether like and equal to Himself, because He is wholly intellect, wholly spirit, wholly mind, wholly thought, wholly reason, wholly hearing, wholly seeing, wholly light, and the whole source of all that is good. That is how men of religion and piety speak of God. But He is above all these properties too and therefore indescribable. He is rightly called the all comprehending intellect, but He is not like the intellect of men. He is most aptly called ‘light’, but He is nothing like the light we know. Against Heresies II 13, 3
Thus the Father is Lord, and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God, and the Son is God, for He who is begotten of God is God. And in this way God is shown in His being and in the power of His nature to be one God, but in the administration and accomplishment of our redemption, He is Father and Son. For the Father is invisible and inaccessible to all creatures, and so it needed the Son to lead those who are to reach God into submission to the Father. David, too, speaks clearly and splendidly of Father and Son: ‘Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; you have loved justice, and hated iniquity, therefore God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows’ (cf Ps 44:7f). What this means is that the Son, being God, receives the throne of the everlasting kingdom from the Father, and the oil of anointing above His fellows. The oil of anointing is the Spirit, with whom He is anointed. And His ‘fellows’ are the prophets, the just, the apostles, and all who share in His Kingdom, in other words, His disciples. Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching 47
{All quotes are taken from Fr. John Saward’s translation of St. Irenaeus as they are found in The Scandal of the Incarnation.}
