Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Did Ireneus get his "Natural Law" focus from Platonic philosophy? I ask Prof. Marian Hillar

 

Hi Professor Marian Hillar: Happy Spring! https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/7.4.2.pdf This pdf points out Ireneus emphasizing "Natural law" and I wonder if you know of any connection to the natural law of Platonic philosophy? https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3935&context=vlr Plato and the Doctrine of Natural Law 1960 Plato and the Doctrine of Natural Law Hans Kelsen
thanks,
drew w. hempel

 Just as the body
of Adam was drawn from virgin soil, so Christ owes His human origin
to a virgin.94 Those Gnostics who claim that St. Joseph was the father
of Jesus in the ordinary meaning of that word, might have reason on
their side if they could point to a human father of Adam.95 As Adam
was tempted by Satan in the garden and was overcome, so Christ was
tempted in the desert and vanquished His assailant.96 It was on the
sixth day of creation that Adam disobeyed and died a spiritual death;
it was on the sixth day of the week that Christ consummated His
obedience by His physical death on Calvary.97 A similar parallelism
is drawn between Eve and the Blessed Virgin

https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/7.4.2.pdf 

 Christ, he says, "rectifying that disobedience which had occurred by reason of a tree, through that
obedience which was [wrought out] upon a tree," showed that one and the same Father was concerned in the estrangement and the reconciliation...before he could, in a strange context, compare the
manner of Christ's death with that of Adam's fall, the soteriological
implication of that death had to be acknowledged. 

 St. Irenaeus speaks of Abraham as being ready to offer his only and beloved son as a sacrifice to God "in order that God also might be pleased to offer up for all his seed His own beloved and only-begotten Son, as a sacrifice for our redemption."142 That the offering on Calvary is a true sacrifice is clearly implied in those texts in which the priesthood of Christ is vindicated

 Finally, although by his union with the Spirit, man possesses within himself a principle of supernatural activity, his own nature is not thereby changed:
"But as the engrafted wild olive does not certainly lose the substance of its wood,
but changes the quality of its fruit, and receives another name, being now not a
wild olive, but a fruit-bearing olive, and is called so; so also, when man is grafted
in by faith and receives the Spirit of God, he certainly does not lose the substance
of flesh, but changes the quality of the fruit of his works,
and receives another
name"

 Ireneus held a view that was disowned by the Church in the 12th Century:

AI says: The postponement of the Beatific Vision (direct vision of God) until the resurrection of the body is a theological position historically held by some, suggesting that full, perfect enjoyment of God is linked to the re-embodied state
. However, this view is largely considered a minority opinion or heresy in Roman Catholic theology....

 https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/2015/04/day398028

The Serpent in the Garden of Eden of Sumeria - evil or not?

  My research reveals the Sumerian god of Eridug, Enki, bore the epithet ushumgal "great serpent." Later, by 2500 BC (according to Sumeriologist Samuel Noah Kramer) Enki had been recast as the Babylonian god Ea. Only someone aware of Ea's formerly being known as ushumgal Enki would realize serpent associations existed behind the Adapa myth. Mesopotamian scribes would most likely possess this esoteric knowledge. Sumerian words were still being used in the Epic of Gilgamesh down to Neo Babylonian times, often as logograms. As for example logogram edin being used in lieu of Seru, "the plain" that Enkidu meets Shamhat in, recast as Adam meeting Eve in Eden according to Professor Morris Jastrow Jr in publications of 1898-1899.

 

 

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