Irenaeus--Defender of the Faith

I recently wrote a short reflection on Irenaeus's treatment of Genesis 2:7 in Book V of his massive work Against Heresies. Imagine...he uses this verse in his refutation of those who claimed that there would be no bodily resurrection!

Genesis 2:7 -- then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

Here's my paper:
(If you want to read the pertinent sections, check out the link to "My Google Notebook.")


In order to prove that flesh can inherit eternal life, Irenaeus returns to the Creation narrative in Genesis 2. Specifically, he emphasizes the fact that God not only formed man out of the dust, but He animated him by breathing life into him. It was not until the breath of life, proceeding from God, was united to the fashioned dust that man was animated and endowed with reason. God had the power to breathe life into mere dust.

In a similar way, says Irenaeus (V.I.3), the Word and the Spirit are being united with the “ancient substance of Adam’s formation” in the last days, thus rendering man living and perfect. Irenaeus here ties Genesis 2 to 1 Corinthians 15 (“for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”). The giving of the Spirit (“breath”) is paralleled with the animating breath of God given to Adam. Now, concerning the resurrection, Irenaeus says that if God can create life out of dust, He is surely capable of reanimating that which had once been alive and has now decomposed into earth. “If He does not vivify what is mortal, and does not bring back the corruptible to incorruption, He is not a God of power.” (V.III.2) Precisely because He did breathe life into dust, we now know He is able to reconstitute that which has decayed. Our very existence shows that God is able to confer life on flesh, so why would anyone say that “the flesh is not qualified to be a partaker of life”?

Irenaeus goes on to show that a human being was not complete before receiving the breath, and that the breath was not a living body until it entered the dust. It was incorporeal. (V.VII.1) Just as God brought physical life through the breath, He now brings spiritual life through the Spirit. The breath, says Irenaeus, is poured out on all humanity. Meanwhile, the Spirit is given only to those whom God has adopted as His children. “The breath, then, is temporal, but the Spirit eternal.” (V.XII.2) The breath enters for a certain time, then departs. The Spirit pervades and never leaves. Irenaeus says that the first Adam forfeited life when he “turned aside to what was evil,” but because of the second Adam humans may now turn back to what is good, receive the Spirit, and find life. Just as Adam received life through the breath of God, so we may receive eternal life through the Spirit. Irenaeus refers again to 1 Corinthians 15 in his argument:
45 Thus it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.
47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. (1 Cor 15:45-47)

In Adam, and in our turning aside from God, our bodies will die. In Christ, and in our turning back to Him, they will live again through the life-giving power of the Spirit.