2. To this disposition many nations of the barbarians who believe in
Christ give assent, having salvation written
in their hearts through the Spirit, without paper and ink, and guarding
carefully the ancient tradition. They believe, namely, in one God the Creator
of heaven and earth and of all things which are in them,5 and [in]
Christ Jesus the Son of God, who, because of His surpassing love toward the creature He fashioned, accepted to
be born of the Virgin. And so, by Himself He united man with God, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, rose again, was taken up in glory and will come in glory
as Savior of those who are saved and as Judge of those who are judged, hurling
into eternal fire those who disfigure the truth and the condemners of His
Father and of His own coming. Those who believed this faith, without writings,
are barbarians with respect to their language; but as regards doctrine and practices
and conduct they are most wise and pleasing to God on account of the faith,
conducting themselves as they do in all justice and chastity and wisdom.
If anyone speaking in their language were to tell them about the
fictions of the heretics, they would immediately stop up their ears and flee
far away, tolerating not even to listen to such blasphemous discourse. So,
because of the ancient tradition of the apostles, they do not allow even in the
thought of their minds any of these heretics’ monstrous assertions whatever. In
fact, among them there has been neither an assembly [of the heretics], nor any
instruction in doctrine [by the heretics]. (Irenaeus, Against
Heresies 3.4.2, in St. Irenaeus of
Lyons: Against the Heresies, Book 3 [trans. Dominic J. Unger, vol. 64,
Ancient Christian Writers 64; New York: The Newman Press, 2012], 35)
The final criterions for recognizing the authentic Christian message,
in other words—the interpretation of the world and human history that is
genuinely based on the teaching and works of Jesus—is not any written text in
itself, for Irenaeus, but rather the tradition of faith, maintained in properly
constituted communities of faith, in which the texts that summarize that
tradition are received and understood. Those who have been trained in this
tradition develop, in his view, an ability to recognize Christian teaching
intuitively, simply on the basis of living it. (Brian E. Daly, “’In Many and
Various Ways:’ Towards a Theology of Theological Exegesis,” in Biblical
Interpretation and Doctrine in Early Christianity: Collected Essays [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2025], 68)
