The Ancient Witnesses

Chapter 4: The Unfolding of Time, Part 1 • 133

Christian life and pointing to faith and obedience as the primary means of knowing God. Finally, Irenaeus’s teaching had helped me to see the big picture of the Story of God, filling me with hope for the future. He had begun with the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God passage from Romans, using it as a kind of lens to explain Abraham’s experience of God’s promises. In other words, he connected the promise of God described in the Old Testament to the theme of hope mentioned in the New, thereby making the link between the two testaments very clear. 31 The Exodus and the Covenant at Sinai By the time I had returned to the Crux my friends had already arrived but Mentor was not there. I shared the books I had discovered with them and asked Father Greg what he thought about Irenaeus’ teaching. “Irenaeus is—or, rather, was—a great systematic theologian,” he explained. 31 That is, in Rom. 8:19, and this was an important connection to make since many people in Irenaeus’s day denied the essential unity of the Bible. The heretic Marcion, for example, rejected the Old Testament, teaching that the creator god was an inferior being to the god whom Jesus called his Father. Irenaeus insisted on the unity of the Godhead and, therefore, of the two testaments. Specifically, ever present with the Father were His “Word andWisdom,” that is “the Son and the Spirit, by whom…He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying, “Let Us make man after Our image and likeness” ( Against Heresies IV, XX.1). Moreover, the Church Father asked, “How could the (Old Testament) Scriptures testify of Him (Jesus Christ), unless they were from one and the same Father? (V.X.1). Even clearer, perhaps, is this statement in his Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching : “This is our rule of faith, the foundation of the building, and what gives support to our behavior. God the Father uncreated, who is uncontained, invisible, one God, creator of the universe; this is the first article of our faith. And the second is: