at Christ's real work of
salvation consists in his death on the cross; and so he tried to
amalgamate the two propositions, "_filius dei filius hominis factus est
propter nos_" ("the Son of God became Son of man for us") and "filius
dei passus est propter nos" ("the Son of God suffered for us") as the
most vital ones. He did not, however, clearly show which of these
doctrines is the more important. Here the speculation of Irenaeus is
already involved in the same ambiguity as was destined to be the
permanent characteristic of Church speculation as to Christ's work in
succeeding times. For on the one hand, Paul led one to lay all the
emphasis on the death on the cross, and on the other, the logical result
of dogmatic thinking only pointed to the appearance of God in the flesh,
but not to a particular work of Christ that had not been already
involved in the appearance of the Divine Teacher himself. Still, Irenaeus
contrived to reconcile the discrepancy better than his successors,
because, being in earnest with his idea of Christ as the second Adam, he
was able to contemplate the whole life of Jesus as redemption in so far
as he conceived it as a recapitulation. We see this at once not only
from his conception of the virgin birth as a fact of salvation, but also
from his way of describing redemption as deliverance from the devil.
For, as the birth of Christ from the Virgin Mary is the recapitulating
counterpart of Adam's birth from the virgin earth, and as the obedience
of the mother of Jesus is the counterpart of Eve's disobedience, so the
story of Jesus' temptation is to him the recapitulating counterpart of
the story of Adam's temptation. In the way that Jesus overcame the
temptation by the devil (Matt. IV.) Irenaeus already sees the redemption
of mankind from Satan; even then Jesus bound the strong one. But,
whereas the devil seized upon man unlawfully and deceitfully, no
injustice, untruthfulness, or violence is displayed in the means by
which Jesus resisted Satan's temptation.[613] As yet Irenaeus is quite as
free from the thought that the devil has real rights upon man, as he is
from the immoral idea that God accomplished his work of redemption by an
act of deceit. But, on the strength of Pauline passages, many of his
teachings rather view redemption from the devil as accomplished by the
_death_ of Christ, and accordingly represent this death as a ransom paid
to the "apostasy" for men who had fallen into captivity. He d