Life and significance
A witness to the apostolic rule of faith
St Irenaeus was raised in the Christian East and remembered hearing St Polycarp of Smyrna, who had known the apostolic generation. Irenaeus later served the Church in Gaul and became Bishop of Lyons. His best-known work, Against Heresies, answered Gnostic teachers who divided creation from salvation and claimed secret spiritual knowledge. Irenaeus appealed instead to the public faith handed down in the churches from the apostles, expressed in Scripture, preaching, and the succession of bishops.
At the heart of Irenaeus’s theology is the unity of God’s saving work. The God who created the world is the same God who saves it, and the Son truly became human to heal and renew humanity. Irenaeus describes Christ as “recapitulating,” or gathering up and restoring, human life in himself. He also emphasizes the unity of the Old and New Testaments and the bodily hope of resurrection. The Orthodox Church honors him as an early and powerful witness to apostolic tradition.