Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)

2012 / 3-4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Martien E. Brinkman: Az igazvoltról és a gonoszról alkotott fogalmaink isteni transzcendenciája

Abraham van de Beek

those who were not owned by Him. That would not be justice and righteousness but a crime. Thus the salvation theory of Gnostics and Marcionites is a criminal doctrine about injustice. They confess an evil god, precisely when they claim to teach salvation of people by Christ.

Irenaeus confronts these ideas with orthodox Christian faith: because Christ is the Creator of the world Christ came to his own.12 Those powers who intruded upon the world and kept it in captivity are evil spirits and this Christ is faithful by coming and saving his own creatures from these powers. ‘The Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by such violent means as the [apostasy] had obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own.’13

Here Irenaeus comes to the core of his doctrine of salvation. We cannot play off creation and salvation, because salvation is liberation of Christ’s own creation. Because He created the world and He is faithful, He did not leave his people in the power of dark spirits, sin and death. Precisely because there is no injustice in God Christ has come and saved his own people. Christians confess this just and good God. Therefore they confess God as both Creator and Savior. Irenaeus does not get tired from stressing that the world is Christ’s own creation and that He saves his own handiwork.

It is in the conflict with the Gnostics and Marcion that Christian doctrine of creation reached its apex. The doctrine of creation and providence is not a mere general idea about the power of a caring or a capricious God, as it was often conceived in later times—especially in Reformed circles. Creation has to do with the legitimacy of salvation. Salvation would be injustice—and thus not salvation at all—if Christ is not the Creator and Owner of the universe.

Irenaeus did not invent this relation of Christ and creation. It is very much rooted in the New Testament and is broadly present in the main New Testament corpora. Because Irenaeus himself claims to stand in the Johannean tradition, it is obvious to first look in the Johannean corpus of the New Testament. This begins immediately with the theme of Irenaeus: Tn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.’14 John continues: ‘He came to that what was his own.’15 He is not a stranger, but the expression and revelation of the Father. ‘No one has ever seen God, but the only begotten God ... has made him known.’16

12 Against heresies IV,20,2. See also Proof 3: ‘God is not ruler and Lord over the things of another, but over His own.’

13 Against heresies V, 1,1,

14 John 1:1-3 (NIV).

15 John 1:11.

16 John 1:18. The greek teksthas monogenes theos. Most translations do not like this expression and opt for a minimizing translation.

S VI'AKl FÜZETEK 2012/3-4