ABSTRACT

This chapter reveals that in section 52-66 of Demonstration, it becomes clear that Irenaeus links inseparably and in substance the incarnation of the Word and our redemption. Redemption is not a transaction of which Christ is the agent; He is redemption embodied, for it is worked out and fulfilled in His Person and particularly through His active and passive obedience to the Father. Irenaeus states these apparently contrary facts concerning both the Person of Christ and the acts of Christ. It is these contraries in which Irenaeus sees the interaction of the presence of the Word in, and bearing, the realities of creation, with that created dimension in its Adamic estate. They are the inescapable, prophesied reactions in a creation in its disobedience grasped by the Word, by whom all things were made, in his obedience to the Father, and in the constancy of God towards His handiwork.