Voices and influences
Irenaeus
The bishop of Lyons who traced his teaching to the apostle John and wrote the great takedown of the gnostics.
Summary
This site quotes Irenaeus 323 times across 35 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 202.
- Quoted here most in Luke: 46 of 323.
Irenaeus
- Lived
- died 202
- Tradition
- Early Church
5 of 323 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Irenaeus died in 202 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
And they arose and came from the land of the east; and, as they went through the land, they chanced upon the land of Shinar, which was exceeding broad; where they took in hand to build a tower.
The rest of the quotation
They sought means thereby to go up to heaven, and be able to leave their work as a memorial to those men who should come after them.
Genesis 11:4 “Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.” BSB
If, then, neither Moses, nor Elias, nor Ezekiel, who had all many celestial visions, did see God; but if what they did see were similitudes of the splendour of the Lord, and prophecies of things to come; it is manifest that the Father is indeed…
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invisible, of whom also the Lord said, "No man hath seen God at any time."
Daniel 3:25 “Look!” he exclaimed. “I see four men, unbound and unharmed, walking around in the fire—and the fourth looks like a son of the gods!” BSB
And Zechariah also, among the twelve prophets, pointing out to the people the will of God, says: "These things does the Lord Omnipotent declare: Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassion each one to his brother.
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And oppress not the widow, and the orphan, and the proselyte, and the poor; and let none imagine evil against your brother in his heart." And again, he says: "These are the words which ye shall utter.
Zechariah 7:10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. And do not plot evil in your hearts against one another.’ BSB
And that we may not have to ask, Of what God was the Word made flesh? he does himself previously teach us, saying, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
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The same came as a witness, that he might bear witness of that Light. He was not that Light, but [came] that he might testify of the Light." By what God, then, was John, the forerunner, who testifies of the Light, sent [into the world]?
Malachi 3:1 “Behold, I will send My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple—the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight—see, He is coming,” says the LORD of Hosts. BSB
Let our opponents-that is, they who speak against their own salvation-inform us [as to this point]: The deceased daughter of the high priest; the widow's dead son, who was being carded out [to burial] near the gate [of the city]; and Lazarus, who had lain…
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four days in the tomb, -in what bodies did they rise again? In those same, no doubt, in which they had also died. For if it were not in the very same, then certainly those same individuals who had died did not rise again.
Mark 5:22 A synagogue leader named Jairus arrived, and seeing Jesus, he fell at His feet BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Irenaeus 323 times across 35 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Irenaeus was born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor, around 130. As a boy he sat and listened to Polycarp, the old bishop of that city, and he never forgot it. Writing decades later to a former friend who had drifted into heresy, he described the scene from memory: where Polycarp sat as he taught, how he walked, how he looked, and how he told what he had heard from John and from the others who had seen the Lord with their own eyes. That is the chain Irenaeus stood in — John to Polycarp to Irenaeus — and it is the thing he leaned on hardest when the fight came. He went west, to Lugdunum in Gaul, the city now called Lyons, and served as a presbyter there. In 177 the church of Lyons was torn apart by a savage local persecution; the bishop Pothinus, over ninety years old, died in prison, and Christians were tortured in the amphitheatre before crowds. Irenaeus was away when the worst of it happened. The confessors in prison had sent him to Rome with a letter, on a peacemaking errand about Montanism. He came back to find his bishop dead, and was made bishop in his place. His great work is Against Heresies, in five books. The gnostic teachers, above all the school of Valentinus, taught an elaborate scheme of thirty divine beings, a botched creation by a lesser god, and a secret knowledge that saved an elite few. Irenaeus's method was to set their systems out in full, in their own words — the first two books are largely description — on the theory that the plain statement would do half the work. Then he answered: one God, who made the world and called it good; one Christ, truly human and truly divine; a resurrection of the body, not an escape from it; and no secret teaching anywhere, because the apostles founded churches and appointed successors whose names anyone could look up. He also fixed the number of the Gospels at four, no more and no fewer, and argued Christ as the second Adam who runs the whole human story again and gets it right — what he called recapitulation. A second work, the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, was lost for centuries and turned up in an Armenian manuscript in 1904. When Victor of Rome moved to excommunicate the churches of Asia over the date of Easter around 190, Irenaeus wrote to him and told him to stop — the difference in practice, he said, had never broken the peace before, and the man whose name means peaceable ought to keep it. He died about 202. Later writers, Jerome among them, call him a martyr; Eusebius does not say so, and the record of how he died is not firm. Sources: Irenaeus, Against Heresies and Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching; Eusebius, Church History V.1–8, V.20, V.24; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2.
323 quotations across 35 books
Where this voice is quoted
There came a man who was sent from God. His name was John.
“And that we may not have to ask, Of what God was the Word made flesh? he does himself previously teach us, saying, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him.
“And to these things does John also, the disciple of the Lord, bear witness, when he speaks thus in the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God.”
children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.
“Vain also are the Ebionites, who do not receive by faith into their soul the union of God and man, but who remain in the old leaven of [the natural] birth, and who do not choose to understand that the Holy Ghost came upon Mary…”
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.
“If, then, neither Moses, nor Elias, nor Ezekiel, who had all many celestial visions, did see God; but if what they did see were similitudes of the splendour of the Lord, and prophecies of things to come; it is manifest that the Father is indeed…”
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.
“For "no man," he says, "hath seen God at any time," unless "the only-begotten Son of God, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared [Him]."”
“Rabbi,” Nathanael answered, “You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
“For He, the Son who is in His bosom, declares to all the Father who is invisible. Wherefore they know Him to whom the Son reveals Him; and again, the Father, by means of the Son, gives knowledge of His Son to those who love…”
When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to Him, “They have no more wine.”
“That wine, which was produced by God in a vineyard, and which was first consumed, was good. None of those who drank of it found fault with it; and the Lord partook of it also.”
“Woman, why does this concern us?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
“With Him is nothing incomplete or out of due season, just as with the Father there is nothing incongruous. For all these things were foreknown by the Father; but the Son works them out at the proper time in perfect order and sequence.”
Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.”
“Whence also he says, that this handiwork is "the temple of God," thus declaring: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”
He did not need any testimony about man, for He knew what was in a man.
“For inasmuch as the Word of God was man from the root of Jesse, and son of Abraham, in this respect did the Spirit of God rest upon Him, and anoint Him to preach the Gospel to the lowly.”
Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
“And to as many as continue in their love towards God, does He grant communion with Him. But communion with God is life and light, and the enjoyment of all the benefits which He has in store.”
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.”
“And not merely in works, but also in faith, has God preserved the will of man free and under his own control, saying, "According to thy faith be it unto thee;" thus showing that there is a faith specially belonging to man, since he has…”
Do you not say, ‘There are still four months until the harvest’? I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are ripe for harvest.
“For which reason the Lord declared to the disciples: "Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look upon the districts (regiones), for they are white [already] to harvest.”
For in this case the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true.
“For although Abraham was one, he did in himself prefigure the two covenants, in which some indeed have sown, while others have reaped; for it is said, "In this is the saying true, that it is one `people' who sows, but another who shall reap…”
And many more believed because of His message.
“But as many as feared God, and were anxious about His law, these ran to Christ, and were all saved. For He said to His disciples: "Go ye to the sheep of the house of Israel, which have perished."”
One man there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
“Moreover, there was also a certain other person healed by the Lord, after he had suffered for eight-and-thirty years: they ought therefore to affirm that the Aeon who occupies the thirty-eighth place suffered.”
Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice
“Let our opponents-that is, they who speak against their own salvation-inform us [as to this point]: The deceased daughter of the high priest; the widow's dead son, who was being carried out [to burial] near the gate [of the city]; and Lazarus, who had lain…”
John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you were willing for a season to bask in his light.
“The birth of John [the Baptist] brought the dumbness of Zacharias to an end. For he did not burden his father, when the voice issued forth from silence; but as when not believed it rendered him tongue-tied, so did the voice sounding out clearly set…”
You pore over the Scriptures because you presume that by them you possess eternal life. These are the very words that testify about Me,
“Wherefore also John does appropriately relate that the Lord said to the Jews: "Ye search the Scriptures, in which ye think ye have eternal life; these are they which testify of me.”
I have come in My Father’s name, and you have not received Me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will receive him.
“The Lord also spoke as follows to those who did not believe in Him: "I have come in my Father's name, and ye have not received Me: when another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive," calling Antichrist "the other," because he…”
If you had believed Moses, you would believe Me, because he wrote about Me.
“But since the writings of Moses are the words of Christ, He does Himself declare to the Jews, as John has recorded in the Gospel: "If ye had believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me.”
“Here is a boy with five barley loaves and two small fish. But what difference will these make among so many?”
“But that this point is true, that that number which is called five, which agrees in no respect with their argument, and does not harmonize with their system, nor is suitable for a typical manifestation of the things in the Pleroma, [yet has a wide…”
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.
“For as it certainly is in the power of a mother to give strong food to her infant, [but she does not do so], as the child is not yet able to receive more substantial nourishment; so also it was possible for God Himself to…”
Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
“Then, again, how can they say that the flesh, which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with His blood, goes to corruption, and does not partake of life?”
But because Moses gave you circumcision, you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath (not that it is from Moses, but from the patriarchs.)
“It is clear therefore, that He loosed and vivified those who believe in Him as Abraham did, doing nothing contrary to the law when He healed upon the Sabbath-day.”