Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Natural Law in Ireneus from Stoic Platonic philosophy

 Given the substantial familiarity with, and borrowing of, Stoic concepts of metaphysical natural law by the Christian intellectuals from the very beginning, it is highly dubious, in my mind, that a metaphysical natural law was not part of the presuppositions of the Apostolic Fathers, including St. Irenaeus. 

https://lexchristianorum.blogspot.com/2010/03/st-ireneaus-of-lyons-natural-law-in.html 

 "In his blend of love and truth, Ireneaus joined Paul and Plato. In his blend of love and natural law, he united Paul and the Stoics." Eric Osborn, Ireneaus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 11.2.2, p. 239.

 Irenaeus's treatment of the natural law is found in Book IV of his Adversus Haereses. Man, for St. Irenaeus, must be understood within the various stages of salvation history. "Now man is a mixed organization of soul and flesh, who was formed after the likeness of God, and molded by His hands, that is by the Son and the Holy Spirit to whom also He said, 'Let Us make man.'" adv. haer., iv.pref.[4]. St. Irenaeus rejects outright any notion that would posit a strict dualism between flesh and spirit, and assign the creation of the flesh to someone other than God, some Demiurge that is less than, or separate from, God. Likewise, he rejects any notion that would begrudge to Jesus, at any moment of his post-incarnate existence, real fleshly existence.

 Benedict Guevin, O.S.B., "The Natural Law in Irenaeus of Lyon's Adversus Haereses: A Metaphysical or Soteriological Reality?, XXXVI Studia Patristica (Leuven: Peters 2001), 222-25,

 http://t4.stthom.edu/users/smith/portfolio/Irenaeus%20and%20Aquinas%20on%20Natural%20Law.pdf

 Irenaeus’s text to the laws which are “natural, noble, and common to all,” which Irenaeus identifies with “love God” and
“love your neighbor as yourself,” just as Thomas centuries later will refer to
them as “first and common” (prima et communia). 21 Note also Irenaeus’s re-
peated insistence that these “natural” laws have received their “growth and
completion” in Christ’s gift whereby we become adopted sons of the Father.
This freedom born of love is something Thomas would say is achieved with the
gift of the Holy Spirit in the New Law.

 By integrating the classical natural law tradition with the Jewish-Christian
account of the written Mosaic Law, Irenaeus bequeathed to future generations
a fertile intellectual heritage from which Thomas, in his own account of the law,
in the Summa would produce much fruit.

 

 

 

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