central section of chapters, actually it goes from 15 to 23, but the real key chapters seem to be 17, 18, 19, and 20. And then the other ones sort of build up before that and then they trail off after that. And last time we did 17, 18, and 19, 19 which is on Eve and Mary. Now these central chapters have parallel texts in that demonstration of the apostolic preaching. Occasionally I quote them, but I don't always bother. And if somebody made a study, a real comparative study of the two, I think it would shed a lot of light. Because he wrote that demonstration of the apostolic preaching after he did these books against the heresies, it seems. And it's a different kind of treatment. He doesn't, excuse me, he doesn't go as deep, he doesn't weave the symbolism the same way he does in the books against the heresies, because he's trying to make a brief digest of Christianity, of the truth. And he's not writing against somebody, basically. So it's a condensed

[01:05]

treatment. The symbolism is there, but it's not woven. It's not systematic the way it is in the books against the heresies. It's as if he did it in a hurry, as a matter of fact, because in the books against the heresies, it's an intricate weaving, a very great craftsmanship that he's used. But probably in that demonstration there, some of his images and his ideas have matured, so we could catch them as they flowered out of this present moment. Let's take a look at Chapter 20 now, which is a very important chapter. And then we'll try to take a look at the whole. I'd like to finish Book 5 today, if we can. That means we have to be kind of sketchy about a lot of it. Oh, my goodness. It's page 547 and 548. Do you have a second batch that you were given here? Page 545, not page 546.

[02:09]

Oh, that's terrible. Well, there was another... I got the book here. I can put the book... I got the book. There were some extra pages passed out. Probably some people... There's a truance there. There's a truance there. Chapter 20 has a very... It's a terrific chapter. It's very rich. Just watch what he does with the symbolism in Chapter 20 here. Starts on the bottom of 547. I probably have some of those pages already. Some extras.

[03:10]

So the title headings were probably put in by a bishop, maybe a March bishop. This is very similar to the beginning of the demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching about the one path of light, which is the path of the Church and the path of God, and the many paths of darkness. And it reflects also Psalm 1 in the beginning of the demonstration. The path of those belonging to the Church circumscribes the whole world. Maybe circumscribe sounds strange, but it's in the whole world. It's everywhere. It's like the light of day. In fact, that image is in his mind. And then he gives the elements of the unity of the faith, which we needn't pay particular attention to except that last one. Await the same salvation of the complete man, that is, of the soul and the body. He just puts the two dimensions in there. He didn't put soul, body and spirit this time. Yeah, this is 548. You got it? 548, left-hand column, up at the top.

[04:31]

It's paragraph number one there. Now we get to the rich section here on the Church. Undoubtedly the preaching of the Church is true and steadfast in which one and the same way of salvation is shown throughout the whole world. That's something he returns to again and again. For to her is entrusted the light of God. Now he gets into his imagery. And therefore the wisdom of God, by means of which he saves all men, is declared and it's going forth, others it's forced faithfully in the streets and so on. This you recognize as the language, the idiom of the wisdom books. That's from Proverbs. For the Church preaches the truth everywhere and she is the seven-branched candlestick which bears the light of Christ. Aha! The Church is the seven-branched candlestick. Now, there's a passage in the... a very mysterious passage in the demonstration which I'll read to you. But first get the picture of the Church as a tree, actually, which bears the light of Christ, which is like the sun, and lights up the whole world with this light of Christ. And then in number two, the second paragraph there,

[05:39]

the metaphor changes and he begins to speak of the Church as the paradise of God in which the tree of life grows. He talks about the blind, those who prefer not to see. And, of course, he's talking about the Gnostics, his continual opponents. Have to be careful not to suffer injury from them, but to flee to the Church and be brought up in her bosom and be nourished with the Lord's Scriptures. You've got to let the imagery sort of sink into you here. The Church is a mother, the Church is also an earth, the Church is a garden in this world, paradises. Therefore, says the Spirit of God, you may eat freely from every tree of the garden, that is, eat from every Scripture of the Lord. The trees of the garden are the Scriptures of the Lord. And then you wonder what that tree of life in the middle of the garden would be if the trees in the garden were the Scriptures of the Lord. That would be nothing but the Word of God,

[06:40]

the one Word of God, which is Christ. And then this moral thing here, about the knowledge of the new life. So, if we eat like them, we will be cast forth. If we eat the knowledge that they have. Into this paradise the Lord has introduced those who obey his call, summing up in himself all things which are in heaven and which are on earth. And here, I'm drawn to the image of the tree of life in the middle of the garden, back in the middle of all things. Remember how the tree is in the center of the garden? And this tree of life which somehow communicates that life which belongs to God to man. So, he's putting the Word, I think, in that position here. But very often he does these things without betraying his hand. He puts them there and then leaves them for you to find, but he doesn't exactly say it. This tree of life which is Christ tying all things together, bringing all things together, in the center of the garden. Remember how he finds the ground, sort of, of creation bearing Christ, bearing the Word.

[07:41]

And so it is that this paradise of the Church is bearing the Word. As Mary was born in the Word. In three successive chapters he's got the creation, the cosmos, and the cross, the tree bearing the Word. Mary bearing the Word as a new earth. And here he's got the Church as a paradise bearing the Word, bearing it as a tree of life. In the middle. In the middle, vertically, and somehow in the middle of the garden also. We think of the paradise being in the middle of the earth. Into this paradise the Lord has introduced those who obey his call, summing up in himself, recapitulating once again. Every time you see that language summing up, that's his favorite central phrase. Recapitulation. Up in himself the Word made flesh because he is heaven and earth together. He is God and he is creation together. God and matter together. All things which are in heaven and which are on earth. The things in heaven are spiritual while those on earth constitute the dispensation of human nature. I didn't look in the original, see how this works. Now this is a mysterious conclusion.

[08:44]

These things therefore he recapitulated in himself, both, drawing them together. He presses that again and again and again. He joins the top to the bottom. By uniting man to the Spirit, the bottom to the top, as it were, the Spirit here being God, the Spirit being divinity, participation of God. And causing the Spirit to dwell in man. So it's as if an upward movement and then a downward movement. And if you go right to the end of the book, 5, that's what you find. The descent and the ascent. He is himself made the head of the Spirit. And gives the Spirit to be the head of man. For through him, the Spirit, we see and hear and speak. Isn't that astonishing language, isn't it? The thing that I have trouble with there is that he says he becomes the head of the Spirit and then gives the Spirit to become the head of man. You can picture man as receiving his head. And what he means by head, you have to not be bothered by the crudeness, the apparent crudeness of the image. He means the head is where our mind, our consciousness is. Where our consciousness is.

[09:45]

Where the light is received. Where somehow everything that's active and lively in us is centered. At least here. He's not talking about that. He doesn't talk much about the heart. He does sometimes. And that's what the Spirit becomes for us. But he could have said that's what the Word becomes for us. That's what Christ becomes for us. What does he mean when he says he becomes the head of the Spirit? I think, I can't get anything out of it except that he's the source of the Spirit. Like the fountain head. Remember the many dimensions that Irenaeus has in that word head. Kephaled or Kephaled. Because it's the core of the word recapitulation. So he deliberately plays with the different significances of it. So it's a clumsy image that Christ sounds it that way because Christ is the head of the Spirit. I would say the source of the Spirit. And then the Spirit becomes the head of us in a very literal way here. Because it's through our head, through our senses

[10:46]

that we hear and we see. Christ would be simply not the Spirit? No, I don't think so. Not here. Because Christ here has a much more basic or causal role with respect to the Spirit than simply being the articulation of the Spirit. It's the source of the Spirit here. He comes and it's through him that we receive the Spirit. And at the same time Christ seems to be the whole tree and he is as it were the fruit which gaps the tree, which crowns the tree. Just as the light which crowns that seven-branched candelabra, the tree of light which is the Church. There's a marvelous chapter in there. And then you see the kind of symmetry between the seven-branched candelabra and the tree of light. The word which is Christ in the paradise of the Church and the Church itself which bears, the tree which bears the light of Christ for the whole world to see. The Church?

[11:46]

Yes. Well, Irenaeus... Irenaeus is very sacramental about it. He thinks of the Church as the place where God can be found in this world and the candlestick as being that which bears that upon which rests the light which is Christ so everybody can see it. In some way, making visible just as the word incarnate, you see Jesus when he becomes man makes the invisible God visible so the Church makes the invisible Christ who is ascended to the Father makes invisible for us makes the light of Christ somehow accessible in this world. That's right.

[12:57]

That's right. Okay, that's right. That's why the candlestick doesn't exist to illuminate itself, does it? No, it exists to illuminate the whole house, which for him is the whole world. Okay, then there's a kind of anticlimax as you go into the succeeding chapters and you get into the struggle of Christ in the desert with the serpent. So the three kind of keystone factors seem to be 17, 18, 19 and 20, maybe 18 the one which revolves around the notion of bearing all of its fortunate, its blessed end of the earth the earth bearing, the tree bearing bearing food and bearing children bearing friction and bearing harvest Okay now something has been dawning on me

[14:07]

while we've been studying this and that is this pattern of the seven days of creation underneath what Ernest is writing It comes out explicitly when he gets into the sixth day and when he begins to talk about the Sabbath, the seventh day but it's underneath the whole thing that's why I put that up on the board and I've been trying to pry away at it and find it let's see if we can find it or let's see if I can convince you that it's there we have to go back a bit and then we'll move forward and then up to where we are now I think that the church chapter here, chapter 20 corresponds to the fourth day of creation which is the creation of the luminaries of the sun and the moon and the stars this seems a little far-fetched until you stay with it for a while the only precedent that I can find is this Theophilus of Antioch because he does give a brief treatment of the seven days of creation

[15:08]

it's much more sketchy than Irenaeus and he pays a lot of attention to the fourth day I'll read you a little something from him and then a whole bunch of Christian writers afterwards do the same thing Hexameron it's a kind of literary genre all by itself I don't know St. Basil does it Gregory of Nyssa does it St. Augustine does it Ambrose too I don't know anybody else before Irenaeus in this Theophilus I think it's in the first chapters of St. John chapters 1-3 of St. John but that's a whole other subject now let me see if if I can persuade you that it's there we have to go back to the first chapter of Genesis and this is the first account of the creation the second account of the creation of man is the molding from earth and Irenaeus gives great attention to that

[16:09]

but it doesn't say anything about the image and likeness it's the first creation account in Genesis chapter 1 where man is created in the image and likeness of God and there we see the rest of the creation now this is supposed to be by the priestly writer remember the four traditions it's a priestly tradition so it's got a kind of liturgical cast to it that comes out later in Irenaeus the sevenfold thing has a kind of liturgical significance I haven't studied that you can look in some contemporary commentary in Genesis if you want to find it this is the one in the Anchor of Augustus it's not very helpful there's another one there by Von Raad that might be better however that's just a basis for this study of Irenaeus now you may recall that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and you have this void and the spirit and then God said let there be light and there was light and that was the first day He made the day and separated it from the night

[17:09]

that was the first day on the second day God said let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters that's a mysterious thing for us there was a notion, the image of a kind of vault sometimes it was even considered in these ancient Near East texts it seems, a kind of metal ceiling a metal vault and on top of it were these waters that were up above the reservoirs of the storms and then you had these other waters a very mysterious picture for us anyway this is a kind of structure a kind of architecture of the cosmos this firmament and the word firmament actually comes from the Greek which is stereoma and it has a sense of solidity now this is going to be a key for trying to find this in Rome the third day God said this is what's going to be the stars is that right? yeah and then they pour the water through other holes

[18:14]

it's a vault, a dome stars I found a picture in a book a recent book where is it I thought it was a lovely picture too ok here it is and your firmament is that vault there ok and then you've got the waters down below and the waters up above and you've got the sun and the stars as if they're hanging like lights or chandeliers from the the only trouble was I found the author says it's a completely mistaken conception he says it's too simple modern science shows now what I mean is he says for the biblical people it was much more amorphous in other words it was much more open we try to make a closed mechanical picture out of it so he makes fun of that picture this is somebody named Thiel it's a big book on biblical symbolism

[19:21]

it would be like everything else if you look at it it's pretty much open-ended so we look at it we try to system it we try to make a machine out of it and that's what he says it gives you a general idea the image things sort of penetrating one another and never all completely gotten together into a system the third day God made the dry land gathered the waters together and let the plants come forth each of them bearing its seed in each of the trees bearing its fruit the fourth day God said let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night so God made the two great lights the sun and the moon and then the stars and that's the fifth day the fifth day

[20:26]

God said let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures let birds fly above the earth and God created the great sea monsters and everything in the water and everything that flies strangely the intermediate zone is still left vacant so that's the fifth day on the sixth day God said let the earth bring forth living creatures cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth and on the sixth day also God made man and God said let us make man in our image after our likeness and then there's this long section relatively long section special creation then God rests on the seventh day so all the work is on the sixth day ok that's very brief I don't want to do too much of this but let's see what Irenaeus does with it I think that we have to go back to chapter 15 and first you find that section where Ezekiel talks about the dry bones ok you got this valley full of dry bones a familiar prophecy

[21:29]

chapter 15 number 1 it's on page 542 and I think that there Irenaeus is setting the stage ok the valley full of dry bones is kind of the bankruptcy of the first creation here's man who was supposed to have been the center of this creation and he's completely wiped out the dry bones and then God says prophesy to the bones the word of God is prophesied to the bones and the spirit of God comes into the bones and lo and behold they rise and form a great army of people ok so the resurrection there is kind of symbolized setting the stage for what's to follow for the new creation, the second creation then he launches into in chapter 15 the story of the man born blind ok now that I think is the creation of light, let there be light ok only in the second creation each time that one of the days of creation happens it's different because why two things, it has to be

[22:31]

in the word, that is it has to be Jesus in his own life doing something and secondly it has to be the restoration of man so the new creation happens in the human person, in the human being so each of the steps of the first creation each of the days of the first creation is some kind of a symbolic restoration of the human person ok so let there be light is the healing of the man born blind and Irenaeus goes on at great length about that one and that represents for him the whole bringing of the proper image of God which is Jesus himself which is the word and the restoring of that image in man and then the giving of the likeness remember, he goes on for a couple of chapters about the man born blind and that's why and the reason why it's so important is because Christ himself is the light ok because the other days of creation do not relate as intimately to Christ the word as this one does he is the light who comes, the word is the light and so with that he lays the basis for the rest of the world and in a way you'll find that each of these restorations

[23:33]

is the whole thing that is each of these healings in some way represents the whole thing so that's the first day the man born blind in chapters 15 and 16 did he take the man born blind? oh yes well on one day he puts everything in in one place he puts everything into the sixth day he says that man was created and sinned and he died all on the same day and it's as if we've been stalled in the sixth day ever since the beginning and then Jesus by his death on the sixth day pushes us into the seventh day that comes up later these days are all recapitulated in the life of Jesus somehow the second one is a puzzle oh by the way

[24:37]

here's something from Theophilus which I stumbled upon you keep finding if you read that short work of Theophilus it's called to Autolicus or whatever his name is you find all these reflections of Irenaeus things that are very we thought of as being peculiar to Irenaeus and they happen to be there too it's surprising and even the man born blind this is at the beginning of his thing to Autolicus for God is seen by those who are unable to see him when they have the eyes of their soul open for all have eyes but in some they are overspread like with a cataract and they do not see the light of the sun yet it does not follow because the blind do not see that the light of the sun does not shine but let the blind blame themselves in their own eyes so also you, O man have the eyes of your soul overspread by your sins and evil deeds as a burnished mirror so ought man to have his soul pure when there is rust on the mirror it is not possible that a man's face be seen in the mirror so also when there is sin in a man such a man cannot behold God

[25:38]

right into the notion of the vision of God which is Irenaeus' central notion ok the second the second one is not so easy to find it's not so clear I think the key is in that Greek word for firmament stereo ok it's the healing of the paralytic the healing of the paralytic the paralytic is completely helpless he is flattened out suppose light has come into the world light has been given but man is still powerless so the paralytic is raised up he is sort of given his body given his power given his ability to move and to act in a way he is even given his world because with his physical he somehow possesses he possesses his world once again he has his space once again because he can move and act stereo the Greek word is a pretty strong indication of that the idea of solidification of man who has been completely weakened and Irenaeus spends a lot of space

[26:42]

saying that the paralysis is a result of sin do you remember the miracle it's in the three synoptic gospels they take the tiles off the roof and they lift this guy down and put him in front of Jesus and he says son your sins are forgiven and everybody says how can we forgive sin he says it's easier to forgive sins than to say get up and take your bed and walk so he says get up and take your bed and walk and he does and there is a similar miracle in St. John it's very similar but you notice in John's gospel there is always a change it's a paralytic by the pool remember, he's been waiting for 38 years and Jesus says get up, take up your pallet and walk it's on a Saturday anyway, this is closer to the synoptic gospel so somehow it's man being given the power to live and to move and to act once again after the light comes it's permanent if you read that account

[27:44]

in like in a synopsis especially you see the gospel side by side you see the various mysterious reflections I don't know if they are in Irenaeus' time or not the fact that they let him down through the roof remember that firmament with the holes in it they let it fall and they come back to the roof the fact that he tells them to take up his pallet and walk and one of the other fathers says that which carried him he picks up and carries that upon by which he was born he now takes up and bears which leads on into the further chapters actually in that patristic greek lexicon the first meaning that's given for this stereoma this word in greek word for firmament is solid body and that for me refers directly to the paralytic it's also a synonym

[28:46]

for heaven and the Gnostics gave it up meaning to so the body of man paralyzed because of sin as he had been blinded because of sin was made solid, strong, active by Jesus ok the third day the third day remembers the separation of the dry land and the sea and the bringing forth of plants and trees upon the earth and it's here I think that we find the tree image which Irenaeus gives great weight to you can say it's the central formal thing in this book 5 now the central image is the image of the tree in this second part and then towards the end of the book as well and it comes out here it's sort of interwoven with this for a while and then he's got the whole chapter 18 on in chapter 16 already and then chapter 17 he talks about each time he talks about

[29:51]

the passion and the death of Jesus he talks about the obedience upon the tree and here we have that notion of bearing it goes from chapter chapter 16 number 3 chapter 17 and chapter 18 and we have that notion of bearing because the tree is that which is able to bear so Jesus comes as the tree which somehow planted in the center of things holds everything in it's place bears everything, bears the whole cosmos the word goes and then somehow he gives man the same capacity, he gives a human person the same capacity somehow to bear and thus to bring the whole creation into it's harvest into it's fulfillment and with all the multiple senses of that word bear so that's kind of the deepest point

[30:52]

I think in Irenaeus' language if one wants to get the meaning that he really has at heart, the image of tree and the notion of bearing combined with the notion of recapitulation and with the notion of head because the head also is that which is born and yet for Irenaeus the head is that which is born and it's also the source, that which bears there's this whole mutual thing the mutual relation between God and creation if you go right to the end of the book 5 that's what he's talking about that man be able to receive the word and thus receive God the word receiving that man be able to receive basically contain, receive be penetrated by so I won't go on at length about the tree that's the third day the fourth day is the chapter that we just did the one on the lights where the sun and the moon and the stars let me read here another little bit

[31:52]

from this Theophilus actually Theophilus gives more attention to the fourth day than just any other day it doesn't seem he's very much interested in the other particular days and Irenaeus has a preference too he seems to like certain numbers and not others he gives a lot of weight to certain days and he skips over some other ones very briefly he likes 1, 3, 4 and 7 2, 5 and 6 you know are sort of passed over among the days of creation the second day, the fifth day and the sixth are more obscure in some way especially the fifth and the sixth have a shadow over them yet the strange paradox is that he's always talking about the creation of man so the whole thing in a way is the sixth day but when he gets to the sixth day here it's under a cloud it's a day of death here's Theophilus

[32:52]

these are some extracts from this part on the fourth day 180 190 contemporary of Irenaeus and who knows Theophilus might have gotten it from Irenaeus because they're that close together he was they say the sixth bishop of Antioch in Syria yeah that's right for the sun is a type of God he's talking about the luminaries the creation of the lights the light of cosmos the sun is a type of God and the moon of man Irenaeus didn't talk about the moon the three days which were before the luminaries are types of the trinity it's the first time you find the word trinity in the Christian tradition trios first time they say however the commentators say he probably wasn't the first one to use it because he uses it

[33:54]

as if it had been used before it's not like he introduces it in the temple the three days which were before the luminaries the first three days of creation are types of the trinity of God and his word and his wisdom and the fourth is the type of man who needs light so that there may be God the word wisdom and man remember Irenaeus' quaternity God the word wisdom and man that doesn't sound like Irenaeus because in the end those are his four the four ultimate realities God word wisdom which is spirit and man who is earth and in a sense is the creation now we just

[35:03]

looked at that chapter 20 and the church it seems is the great light or the great light bearer in the world or you could say that the word is the light and that the church bears the light now we don't find the great light and the lesser light there as far as I know like the sun and the moon I didn't see it there not clearly unless you say that the word is the great light and the lesser light is the church or something like that Irenaeus doesn't make that very clear but there is a reflection of that business of the stars see for Theophilus The stars The disposition of the stars too contains a type of the arrangement and order of the righteous and pious and of those who keep the law and commandments of God. The brilliant and bright stars are an imitation of the prophets and therefore they remain fixed not defined. Those which hold the second place in brightness are types of the people of the righteous that is the people of God. Those again which change their position and flee from place to place which are also called planets

[36:04]

I guess the original word must have meant there a wanderer are a type of the men who have wandered from God abandoning his law and commandments that's reflected in that number 2 of chapter 20 the number of people who don't respect the teaching of the presbyters the elders and they go their strange ways as compared to the steady light the steady simple light of the church Is there anything about the word wanderer in the Greeks Plato was grappling with the idea that it was a revival but the planets seem to confound that and he said it's blasphemous that anybody is called a wanderer is called a planet that's what planet means means ever a wandering or straying isn't it so he said he instructed his followers to fight the safety of the planets to fight the way

[37:07]

the planets are not wandering but they maintain a regular uniform course now we know they rotate right and maintain discipline which is a single mathematical curve anyway the idea of blasphemy was supposed to be used by Plato with regards to the wanderer here as compared to the Gnostics they have such a sense of order and stability right that's equal to their enemies as if a sin against order would be a sin against God it says type of since the planet is a type of this what's the word there let's see I don't have the Greek for Theophilus yet I just wondered how much is the sort of manifestation of it

[38:07]

I think it means symbol it probably says it was probably typos it could be simeon it could be sign typos probably just means symbol um there's a there's a strange chapter in the demonstration of the apostolic preaching I didn't mean to get so so weird today about this the seven heavens which enclose the earth and I don't know what to make of it but it connects with the seven branched candelabra because he mentions it at the end I'll read it to you this is number nine but the earth is encompassed by seven heavens in which dwell powers and angels and archangels giving homage to the almighty God who created all things not as to want to have any event and so on therefore the spirit of God and his indwelling is manifold so the planetary system or the heavens are compared to the indwelling of the spirit

[39:07]

in the human person you've got a cosmos outside and a cosmos inside and is enumerated by Isaiah as the prophet in the seven charismata resting on the son of God that is the word in his coming as man for he says the spirit of God shall rest upon him the spirit of wisdom and of understanding of counsel and fortitude, knowledge, godliness the spirit of the fear of God shall fill him hence the first heaven from the top which encloses the others is wisdom and the one after it that of understanding but the third is that of counsel and the fourth counting from the top downwards that of fortitude and the fifth that of knowledge and the sixth that of godliness and the seventh this firmament of ours full of the fear of this spirit who lights up the heavens for after this pattern Moses received the seven branched candlestick always burning in the sanctuary since it was on the pattern of the heavens that he received the liturgy as the word says to him you shall do according to all the pattern of what you have seen in the land so there's a whole lot there but notice the things that come together

[40:09]

the system of the heavens the planetary system then the seven days of creation implicitly because of that number seven it always has that sense then the indwelling of the gifts of the spirit in the human person hence the new creation of man new heaven and new earth a new body a new spirit and then the church itself the seven branched candlestick and the liturgy of the church but he doesn't explain it he just puts it there so that isn't confusing enough we'll find something else now ok the first, second, third, fourth day for Irenaeus I think really the fourth day is the seventh day

[41:10]

in a sense the fourth day leads the human person to his fullness so it's not like we have to look for a kind of further crescendo a further heightening after the fourth day the fact that the church has the seven branched candelabra on which from which shines the light of Christ means that somehow she's in the possession of the whole thing so after the fourth day this sort of trails off this is antipymancy now what happened in the fifth day of creation remember the reptiles and the birds now this is where Irenaeus puts Jesus' struggle with the serpent puts the temptation of the desert the struggle of the serpent and his hunger and his reliance just upon the law remember also that the law the Torah is the five books of Moses so the number five is probably one of the five too and Jesus resists the temptation to give in to his

[42:10]

animality that is to make bread out of stones and not wait as Irenaeus did for the bread which comes from God which really is spiritual bread the life which comes from God and he resists the temptation to be lifted up remember the devil tempted him to throw himself down and he lifted him up so Irenaeus builds a moral from that that when we're hungry as it were down we should not let go we should not be persuaded not to not to not waiting for it he uses the word bearing here bear the suffering of waiting for the food which comes from God instead of getting it in some other way or accepting it in some other way or attempting it and then when we're lifted up not to let ourselves be as it were carried off there's some kind of reflection

[43:11]

of the reptiles and the birds the battle with the serpent is the most explicit connection really with the fifth day of Genesis and man resists the temptation to go beneath himself or to rise above himself in this fifth day in the struggle in the desert according to Irenaeus and he replies only as man he doesn't reply as it were as the word but he takes the words of God in the law, the law of Moses and responds with them to the serpent then we get to sixth day now remember that the whole of Irenaeus' story is concerned with the sixth day that is the making of the human person in the image and likeness of God and so when we get to it here it's kind of an empty space but it's also a shadow space

[44:13]

because he uses it in his layout his sequence of the seven days here for the day of man's creation, the day of his sin, the day of his death and the day of the death of Jesus he says that Jesus died on the sixth day that's Friday the sixth day and he did it for that reason he recapitulates the whole human race himself, the whole human history and so he recapitulates also the death of man and so he dies on the same day now here we've got a kind of multiplication, a spinning out of the sixth day into six thousand years something strange happens here in other words to explain the delay of the coming of the seventh day, Irenaeus allows this sixth day to be prolonged to include the whole of human history but remember how the whole of history the history of the world for him is the making of the human person is the creating of man in the image and likeness of God

[45:14]

so for him to prolong, to allow that sixth day to be swollen in that way or extended in that way is not that much of a contradiction he's already done it in saying that the whole process that everything is simply the moulding of man into the image and likeness of God as he was taken out of clay so this is in chapter chapter 23 he's very explicit about the sixth day you see he's been kind of quiet about each of these days until he gets to this point and here he brings out the analogy with the week of creation explicitly that's on page I hope you have this, it's on page

[46:16]

551 they've even got it in the title there thus then in the day that they did eat in the same day did they die and it's also the same day they were created on so it's a strange compression of everything into here the Lord therefore recapitulating in himself this day underwent his sufferings upon the day preceding the sabbath that is the sixth day of the creation on which day man was created thus granting him a second creation by means of his passion so if we ask ourselves at the point of each of these days what is happening in man that duplicates or that recapitulates the first creation, here it's the whole thing ok, the sabbath is being ushered in by the death of Christ so it points to the end of the book there's another thing which is remember on the sixth day man was given the dominion over all of the birds and the beasts and fish and people and things and so on

[47:17]

now man however had been subjected to Satan, ok, he'd been subjected to the serpent or the dragon by his sin, so the work of the sixth day is also to subject to man's power the serpent this is at the end of 24 the word of God however the maker of all things conquering him by means of human nature as a serpent and showing him to be an apostate has on the contrary put him under the power of man for he says behold I confer upon you the power of treading upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy in order that as he obtained dominion over man by apostasy so again so as man turns back to God he gets power over the serpent so that's simply confirming the power that he was given when he was created in that sixth day now at this point there's a big space where he starts to talk about the Antichrist and the number of the name of the Antichrist

[48:18]

is 666 and he really goes into gyrations about the explanation of this number the number 6 and its products are very sinister we don't need to go through that I didn't read it very carefully it doesn't seem to offer that much now the idea of the Antichrist claiming to be the creation of the beast of the dragon and of all of those kind of shady animals in these chapters now this itself contributes to the the bringing of man around to the seventh day there's a rich section at the end of 28 I don't know if you have it it's on 557 557

[49:21]

if you don't have it I'll read it anyway now here he gets very explicit about the sixth day and the seventh day for in as many days as this world was made in so many thousand years shall it be concluded a day a thousand years are as a day for the Lord playfully God brought to a conclusion upon the sixth day the works that he had made and God rested upon the seventh day from all his works for the day of the Lord is as a thousand years and in six days created things were completed it is evident therefore that they will come to an end at the six thousandth year now here's how he integrates this war with the Antichrist with the battle of the sixth day war of the thousands of years into the picture to the molding of man and therefore throughout all time man having been molded at the beginning by the hands of God that is of the Son and of the Spirit is made after the image and likeness of God the chaff indeed which is the apostasy

[50:22]

that means the Antichrist and all of his followers being cast away but the wheat that is those who bring forth fruit to God in faith he fluctuates between the image of the wheat field and the image of the tree he talks about fruit and harvest being gathered into the barn and for this cause tribulation is necessary for those who are saved I didn't look up the original word tribulation in the latin word as a sense of being crushed as a sense of being broken hammering out the grains that having been after a manner broken up and rendered fine and sprinkled over by the patience of the word of God remember the notion of bearing you see man is learning to bear he bears affliction so he can learn to bear God and set on fire they may be fitted for the royal banquet I think set on fire here is probably an ambiguous word it means cooked as a certain man of ours said

[51:27]

when he was condemned to the wild beasts remember the image of the beast the fact that the martyrs were fed to beasts is kind of symbolic of this thing that is in the book of revelation and in the bible the idiom of the demonic manifesting itself in those poems and hence that whole struggle because of his testimony with respect to God I am the wheat of Christ and I am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts that I may be found the pure bread of God now this is the harvest the pure bread of God is the harvest so even that struggle there are two images for it one is bearing something bearing this affliction so that you learn to bear God bearing the world as it were the other is being ground into the bread of God the other is bearing the future self ok now we get into the there is more of the sixth day in chapter 29

[52:31]

and then that long thing on the name of the antichrist he says don't worry about it but he gives a lot of importance to the number the number of the name 666 there are some things in the fathers that don't exactly have too much meaning then at the end of 30 the father sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire but bringing in for the righteous the times of the kingdom that is the rest the hallowed seventh day and restoring to Abraham the promised inheritance in which kingdom the Lord declared that many coming from the east and the west should sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob so that ushers in the last section which is on the seventh day which is on the harvest and there is this thousand year period of the kingdom on earth in which the just, the followers of Christ are supposed to somehow strengthen themselves by feeding on him by feeding on the word until they are able to bear the spirit of God fully and then comes the end I'm a little fuzzy as to exactly

[53:36]

how this works he's also got a portion here in chapter 31 where the souls are separated without their bodies for a while before this thousand year end the souls of the just and then from chapter 32 to the end you've got the Sabbath, the seventh day of the harvest fairly often it's explicitly mentioned for instance in chapter 33 562 these are to take place in the times of the kingdom that is upon the seventh day which has been sanctified in which God rested from all the works which he created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous in which they shall not be engaged in any earthly occupation but shall have a table at hand prepared for them for God supplying them with all sorts of dishes now I don't know whether these dishes mean participation with God or these dishes simply mean the creation

[54:37]

because he insists again and again that the earth itself is going to be restored to a kind of multiple fertility so it's going to bring forth abundantly and that God and man will sort of feast together on this earth and then at the very end you have something else that happens which carries man up further but I think the idea of the new heaven and the new earth that earth is permanent because otherwise the prophecies would be voided it's a very I could say holistic picture and that the body and the earth remain right in the middle of it right to the end we should give some attention to the last chapter but here I'll just point to it it's chapter 36 and it starts on 566 goes to 567 since there are real men

[55:38]

so must there be a real establishment now in the new Latin thing they've got transitio instead of plantatio but plantatio is much more fitting for what Irenaeus is saying and plantatio in other words there has to be if you're going to be a tree and bear fruit there has to be a ground for you to be planted in man has to be planted somewhere he has to have a place he has to have a place for his roots because he's that kind of being he's going to bear harvest and so that's why he has to guarantee this new earth for neither is the substance nor the essence of the creation annihilated that means the earth for faithful and true is he who established it but the fashion of the world passes away we go into what he means by that fashion there's something about the world which passes away but the world itself does not pass away even when God says he makes a new heaven and a new earth there's a continuity just as there's a continuity between the body that we have now and the body that will be in the future now here's his conclusion

[56:47]

right at the end of verse 6 for there is the one son who accomplished his father's will and one human race also in which the mysteries of God are wrought which the angels desire to look into and they are not able to search out the wisdom of God by means of which his handiwork is not to be found handiwork means plasma that's the moulding of earth it goes right back to that the recapitulation is a recapitulation of what was made in the beginning confirmed and incorporated with his son incorporated is to be taken in a very concrete physical way in the same body is brought to perfection that his offspring, the first begotten word should descend to the creature that is to what has been moulded that's plasma that which has been the earth which has been moulded that it should be contained by him now the word contained there is corain in Greek which is one of those words that has a lot of meanings just like bear has a lot of meanings it means something like comprehend or receive or contain

[57:48]

all those different possibilities that it should be contained by him and on the other hand the creature should contain the word and ascend to him passing beyond the angels and be made after the image and likeness of God and that's the last word unless as the translator here suggests something has been lost or this wasn't the original conclusion I didn't look in the source Christian edition to see what they say about that but it makes a good conclusion it seems ends up like where Irenaeus sees the end of being there's something a little lacking there but that the word should descend to what had been moulded and be contained this is chapter 36 number 3 for God has wished that his firstborn the word

[58:50]

descend towards the creature that is to say towards the work he had modelled and be seized by the creature grasped by the creature and that the creature in his turn should seize the word and mount towards him towards God going beyond the angels and coming into the image and likeness of God the word should descend and be seized be grasped whatever that Greek word in the Latin it was capiatur and capiat and that the creature on its side so you see the two sides of it the word descending and being grasped and the creature from its side grasping the word and mount towards God coming into the image and likeness of God which he did somehow by grasping the word okay any questions about

[59:51]

that next time I think we could just briefly review with any comments or questions or a few conclusions we can try to sum up and then we'll go on to comment about we didn't do much with the demonstration but we don't have time glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning is now and shall be world without end Amen if you make a graph of Irenaeus' chapters those last [...] chapters

[60:44]

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