FEAST JUNE 28
Bishop and Martyr
Irenaeus was born around the year 125 in a province in Asia Minor.
His own works establish a few biographical points, such as that he, as a child, heard and saw St Polycarp, the last known living connection with the Apostles, in Smyrna, before that aged Christian was martyred in 155.
According to tradition, St John the Apostle, as a very old man who had “seen the Lord” (i.e., Jesus), lived at Ephesus in the days when Polycarp was young. Thus, there were three generations between Jesus of Nazareth and Irenaeus of southern France.
He was a brilliant student and well versed in the Holy Scriptures, which led him to serve as a priest under St Pothinus, the first bishop of a local church.
His fellow clergy thought highly of him, so highly, in fact, that in 177 when the persecution of Catholics in Lyon in France began, they sent him away to Rome because St Pothinus wanted to preserve him from martyrdom.
Irenaeus returned to Lyon and the bishop of Lugdunum (Lyon, in France), an Apologist, a doctor of the church, and a leading Christian theologian of the 2nd century.
All his known writings are devoted to the conflict with the gnostics. His principal work consists of five books in a work titled Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), written about 180, was a refutation of gnosticism. In the course of his writings, Irenaeus advanced the development of an authoritative canon of Scriptures, the creed, and the authority of the episcopal office.
The era in which Irenaeus lived was a time of expansion and inner tensions in the church. In many cases Irenaeus acted as mediator between various contending factions. The churches of Asia Minor continued to celebrate Easter on the same date (the 14th of Nisan) as the Jews celebrated Passover, whereas the Roman church maintained that Easter should always be celebrated on a Sunday (the day of the Resurrection of Christ). Mediating between the parties, Irenaeus stated that differences in external factors, such as dates of festivals, need not be so serious as to destroy church unity.
Irenaeus asserted in a positive manner the validity of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), which the gnostics denied, claiming that it upheld the laws of the Creator God of wrath. Though Irenaeus did not actually refer to two testaments, one old and one new, he prepared the way for this terminology. He asserted the validity of the two testaments at a time when concern for the unity and the difference between the two parts of the Bible was developing. Many works claiming scriptural authority, which included a large number by gnostics, flourished in the 2nd century. By his attacks on the gnostics, Irenaeus helped to diminish the importance of such works and to establish a canon of scriptures.
The development of the creed and the office of bishop also can be traced to his conflicts with the gnostics. On the basis of the New Testament alone, which is concerned with the salvation of humankind, the creed would not be expected to begin with an article about the creation of the world and humans. But, because the gnostics denied that the God revealed in the New Testament was the Creator, the first article of the creed was for polemical reasons directly connected with Genesis (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”). Irenaeus refers to the creed as a “Rule of Truth” used to combat heresy.
The oldest lists of bishops also were countermeasures against the gnostics, who said that they possessed a secret oral tradition from Jesus himself. Against such statements Irenaeus maintains that the bishops in different cities are known as far back as the Apostles—and none of them was a gnostic—and that the bishops provided the only safe guide to the interpretation of scripture. With these lists of bishops, the later doctrine of “the apostolic succession” of the bishops could be linked. Even the unique position of authority of the bishop of Rome is emphasized by Irenaeus, though in an obscure passage.
Though there is no evidence, other than legendary, about his death, the last decade of the 2nd century is generally assumed to be the period in which Irenaeus died. In 2022 Irenaeus was declared a doctor of the church by Pope Francis.
Note: Taken from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Irenaeus