Irenaeus’ doctrine of recapitulation, as soteriology and hermeneutic, is a continuation of focus on the rule of faith or the apostolic preaching (as found, for example, in Justin Martyr). Recapitulation is the summing up that is the Gospel and a soteriological summing up of all things, but to understand its saving work it has to be understood as a way of reading the Bible. The term cannot be separated from its literary application as a means of understanding Scripture, but this in turn cannot be separated from the whole economy of salvation. In other words, the apostolic preaching, or the presentation of Christ in the Gospel according to the Scriptures, is the recapitulation that saves.
The term has its background in rhetorical or literary theory, in which recapitulation is a restatement or compendium aimed at a unified picture. As a briefer and unified summary, it has greater impact. As Irenaeus writes, salvation is not through the “prolixity of the Law, but according to the brevity of faith and love” (Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, 87). He quotes Isaiah as saying: “A word brief and short in righteousness: for a short word will God make in the whole world” (Is. 10:23). Irenaeus references Paul as precedent, as he uses the notion of literary recapitulation in writing that the commandments of Scripture are “summed up in this word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Rom. 13:19). He explains, “On these two commandments, He says, depend all the law and the prophets. So then by our faith in Him He has made our love to God and our neighbor to grow, making us godly and righteous and good” (Dem. 87). The Gospel is this concise Word of recapitulation, apart from which Scripture is obscure, but the epitome or resume of Scripture (recapitulation/Gospel) makes the invisible visible and the incomprehensible comprehensible. This concise Word of recapitulation, summing up Scripture, is the Gospel.
What may be important in understanding Irenaeus is what he is not saying. He is not using the language of prophecy and fulfillment, the notion of old and new covenant, or the idea of separate ages, to explain the singular economy of the Gospel found in Scripture. The Gospel is always present in the Hebrew Scriptures, so that there is nothing new in the Gospel other than Jesus, but Jesus Christ was and is found throughout Scripture. The apostles’ reflection upon Jesus Christ “according to the Scriptures,” John Behr explains, “directs attention back to Scripture, to reflect yet further on the identity of Christ.”[1] Scripture and Gospel do not exist separately, but neither are they identical. The Gospel unveils Scripture and Scripture informs the Gospel.
Irenaeus concern is to combat the notion that a division or disunity read into Scripture, between the Old and New Testament, results in division that is read into God and salvation. He is combating the sort of plan A plan B understanding that presently predominates in Christian theology. In this understanding, God had a plan, and humans sinned and messed it up, and so now we are on plan B. Law is pitted against grace, creation is pitted against salvation, and there is the supposition that if humans had avoided sin, God’s plan would not have been changed up. Recapitulation establishes a singular economy in Scripture and a unified understanding of God. There is, according to Irenaeus, “one God the Father and one Christ Jesus, who is coming throughout the whole economy, recapitulating all things in himself” (AH 3.16.6). There is a singular continuum between creation and salvation as God’s plan, from the foundation of the world, was to complete creation and the image of the first Adam in that of the second Adam.
Irenaeus pictures salvation as corporate, coming to Adam and his whole race: “we are all from him: and as we are from him, therefore have we all inherited his title. But inasmuch as man is saved, it is fitting that he who was created the original man should be saved” (AH 3.23.2). All are found alike in the first Adam and in the second Adam: “When therefore the Lord vivifies man, that is, Adam, death is at the same time destroyed” (AH 3.23.7). Irenaeus pictures a universal and corporate captivity to death and a universal and corporate deliverance in the second Adam. He speaks of those who are left in death but at the same time speaks of a complete abolition and defeat of death – anything less would be a defeat of God in his estimate:
For if man, who had been created by God that he might live, after losing life, through being injured by the serpent that had corrupted him, should not any more return to life, but should be utterly [and forever] abandoned to death, God would [in that case] have been conquered, and the wickedness of the serpent would have prevailed over the will of God (AH 3.23.1).
Irenaeus is not concerned to deal with the experience of every individual, and he does not focus on human interiority, but as with Paul in Romans 5, the focus is upon the two representative individuals. The two Adams represent the corporate, embodied experience of the race. Ultimately the second Adam incorporates all of humanity into God: “But in every respect, too, He is man, the formation of God; and thus He took up man into Himself.” Irenaeus poses the sort of oppositional differences which might be linked to the two Testaments or to alternative portrayals of God, and links them to the recapitulation accomplished by Jesus Christ in which absolute difference is overcome: “the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible becoming capable of suffering, and the Word being made man, thus summing up all things in Himself” (AH 3.16.6). In the same way that Scripture is recapitulated in Him, so too all things are summed up and recapitulated so that what might have once appeared an impossible difference is bridged. As Behr puts it, “The recapitulation of the whole economy unfolded in Scripture, the subject throughout which is the Gospel of Christ, in a concise epitome makes visible and comprehensible what had previously been hidden in the prolixity of the Law.”[2] There is the obscurity of the law and the reality of death, but these do not compete or interfere with the economy of salvation, which Irenaeus at various points indicates is all inclusive.
In countering those who would divide Scripture and God, Irenaeus emphasizes that Jesus Christ is not only the unifying subject of Scripture but its ultimate author, and this unified authorship is the point of entry into understanding the work of the Trinity. The alternative, such as that posed by the Marcionites, is to believe in two gods aligned with the two Testaments (“no god at all” according to Irenaeus). As Irenaeus poses the choice:
shall it be he whom the Marcionites or the others have invented as god (whom I indeed have amply demonstrated to be no god at all); or shall it be (what is really the case) the Maker of heaven and earth, whom also the prophets proclaimed — whom Christ, too, confesses as His Father — whom also the law announces, saying: Hear, O Israel; The Lord your God is one God? Deuteronomy 6:4 (AH 4.2.2).
Irenaeus’ hermeneutic of unification is aimed at establishing that there is one God, the Father of Jesus Christ, and this affirmation is the basis of belief in Christ. As Irenaeus puts it, “the writings of Moses are the words of Christ,” referencing Jesus’ words in John: “If you had believed Moses, you would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me. But if you believe not his writings, neither will you believe My words” (John 5:46-47). Irenaeus extends this understanding to include all of the prophets:
If, then, [this be the case with regard] to Moses, so also, beyond a doubt, the words of the other prophets are His [words], as I have pointed out. And again, the Lord Himself exhibits Abraham as having said to the rich man, with reference to all those who were still alive: If they do not obey Moses and the prophets, neither, if any one were to rise from the dead and go to them, will they believe him. Luke 16:31 (AH 4.2.3).
The relation between Gospel and Scripture is not here focused on an unfolding history, but on Jesus Christ. The point is not that the Old Testament was simply prophetic or a precursor to Christ, but the Gospel is proclaimed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Irenaeus describes Jesus Christ as being inseminated throughout Scripture: inseminatus est ubique in Scripturis ejus Filius Dei. Behr describes this, not as an unknown Logos, but as the preexistence of Christ: “That is, the preexistence of Christ, the Word of God, is inextricably connected with his seminal presence in Scripture, the word of God.”[3] The crucified and risen Christ is the singular subject of Scripture revealed in the Gospel – the Gospel found throughout Scripture.
Where Marcion pictures a complete break between the old (the old covenant, the Old Testament, the old god) and the new (the new covenant, the New Testament, and the new god), for Irenaeus there is nothing new in the Gospel. The Gospel economy is the singular economy, the singular revelation, the singular God, revealed throughout Scripture. Given this understanding, Irenaeus exhorts Marcion: “read with earnest care that Gospel which has been given to us by the apostles, and read with earnest care the prophets, and you will find that the whole conduct, and all the doctrine and all the sufferings of our Lord, were predicted through them. {AH 4.34.1) “To those who, presented with such a claim, ask, ‘what new thing then did the Lord bring by his advent?’ Irenaeus simply answers, ‘Christ himself!’” [4]
Irenaeus acknowledges that there are a variety of figures and dispensations, but this variety has as its center Jesus Christ and his Gospel. In refuting the Gnostics, who attach a significance to Jesus living to be 30 years old, “that He might show forth the thirty silent Æons of their system, otherwise they must first of all separate and eject [the Saviour] Himself from the Pleroma of all” (AH 2.22.1), Irenaeus argues that Jesus lived closer to age 50, thus fulfilling the Jewish sense of being a Master and providing a coherence to the life course of man. As Behr notes, “The literary coherence of Scripture, and the rhetorical coherence derived by engaging with Scripture to interpret Christ, is the ultimate criterion for Irenaeus’ reflections on the eternal Word of God.”[5] Though his argument as to Jesus’ age may lack evidence, his point is that Jesus is present in every age of man, both the normal growth through infancy to old age but the passage of the ages of history. Adam and Eve represent the age of childhood, and all of human history is part of the process of being brought to maturity. There is not an age before and after Jesus Christ, as in his passage through the various stages of human growth Jesus Christ also recapitulates every age of history, from infancy (on the order of that of Adam and Eve) to the full maturity of the defeat of death.
In this lengthy but key quote he summarizes the all-inclusive recapitulation of Christ:
Being a Master, therefore, He also possessed the age of a Master, not despising or evading any condition of humanity, nor setting aside in Himself that law which He had appointed for the human race, but sanctifying every age, by that period corresponding to it which belonged to Himself He therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of piety, righteousness, and submission; a youth for youths, becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord. So likewise He was an old man for old men, that He might be a perfect Master for all, not merely as respects the setting forth of the truth, but also as regards age, sanctifying at the same time the aged also, and becoming an example to them likewise. Then, at last, He came on to death itself, that He might be the first-born from the dead, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence, Colossians 1:18 the Prince of life, Acts 3:15 existing before all, and going before all. (AH2.22.4).
In summary: the “brief” or “compendium” or “resume” that is recapitulation furnished salvation “so that what we had lost in Adam — namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God — that we might recover in Christ Jesus” (AH 3.18.1). Or as Behr writes, “Recapitulating in himself the exposition of the economy, Jesus Christ furnishes us with salvation through a resume, an epitome, which condenses or concentrates, and so makes visible and comprehensible, what had previously been invisible and incomprehensible.”[6] The key point: the literary recapitulation in which the apostolic preaching sums up Scripture cannot be separated from the entire economy of salvation brought about in Jesus Christ. Or to state it negatively: where Jesus Christ is not the lens through which Scripture is interpreted, the economy of the Gospel of salvation cannot be properly grasped.
[1] John Behr, Formation of Christian Theology: The Way to Nicaea, Vol. 1 (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 133.
[2] Behr, 127.
[3] Behr, 117.
[4] Behr, 116.
[5] Behr, 131.
[6] Behr, Ibid., 128.