The Ancient Witnesses

130 • The Ancient Witnesses: A Journey to Discover Our Sacred Roots

of Christian principles. 23 I was eager to read more, and decided to carry them back with to the Crux, thinking that I could always return them later. My friends were nowhere in sight when I left, but the gardener whom I had seen earlier was working next to the chapel. Looking up, he nodded toward a path that led into a grassy pasture. I followed it down into a ravine where I found a rustic shelter built into the side of a hill. A sign over the gate said ovile ovium —the Sheepfold. I entered the gate, but the shelter was filled with people. Through a crack in the wall I could see a Christian teacher surrounded by hearers, all huddled together on a dirt floor. The teacher was Irenaeus, whom I recognized from the Crux. He was teaching about the coming “dominion of the righteous over the creation,” based on a Bible passage that one of his hearers read with some difficulty: 24 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 25

23 This summation is based on Marcia Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs . Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press (2005).

24 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, V. XXXII. Here, Irenaeus reports his view of the millennium—the thousand-year reign of Christ hinted at in Rev. 20:4-6. For an analysis of the ancient Church’s perspective see Charles E. Hill, Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity, 2nd ed . Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 2001. 25 Rom. 8:19–21, quoted from the King James Version which, like the Latin version used by Irenaeus, speaks of the creature awaiting redemption instead of the creation , as most modern translations have it.