Talk:Irenaeus/Comments
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Additional important themes of Irenaeus' work, often noted by scholars,[1] are 1) the rule of truth, and 2) the defense of the "Old Testament" against its abandonment by Marcion and other gnostics. The rule of truth is Irenaeus' way of talking about the original content of the Christian gospel, that precedes in authority as well as time even the writings of the New Testament. It is the underlying authority of the rule--a consensus of truth shared by the majority of the faithful, and delivered by the Holy Spirit--that underlies both the selection of the canonical scriptures and the description of the continuing Church as "apostolic".[2] The decision to keep the books of the Jewish Scriptures, and to rename them as the "Old Testament," is not a foregone conclusion for the late second-century Church. Irenaeus resists gnostic claims that the Jewish Scriptures represent the work of a demi-urge or lesser divine being. He does so by insisting on the continuation of a practice already evident in New Testament writings: the reading of the whole Law and Prophets through a relentlessly Christ-centered perspective.[3] This shaped the interpretation of the Old Testament at least until the Renaissance, when allegory and prefiguration were challenged as intepretive strategies.
Jphwilliams (talk) 01:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
