In Irenaeus on the Trinity, Jackson Lashier provides a fresh reading of Irenaeus' understanding of God, in dialogue with his opponents and sources, which reveals a more developed Trinitarian theology than traditionally thought. Key Trinitarian themes that emerge are the Fatherhood of God, the mutual indwelling relations of Father, Son, and Spirit, and the cooperative divine work of all three in the economy. The study finds Irenaeus' thought to depart in these areas from standard second century trajectories--Apologists and Gnostics--moving Trinitarian theology in the direction of more developed Trinitarian thought of later centuries. This monograph offers not only a better understanding of Irenaeus' thought, but also a fuller picture of the development of Trinitarian thought in early Christianity.

A close study of aspects of Irenaeus' pneumatology that demonstrates how Irenaeus combined Second Temple Jewish traditions of the spirit with New Testament theology to produce the most complex Jewish-Christian pneumatology of the early church.

A translation and analysis of the third book of St. Irenaeus' influential work 'Against Heresies'. This book offers a detailed critique of Gnostic teachings and provides insights into the early development of Christian theology. With an informative introduction and helpful notes, this volume is an essential resource for scholars and students of early Christian history and theology. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Pilgrim Theology is a map for Christians seeking to better understand the core beliefs of their faith. Even though it's the study of God, theology has a reputation for being dry, abstract, and irrelevant for daily living. But theology is a matter of life and death. It affects the way you think, the decisions you make, the way you relate to God and the world. Reformed theologian and professor Michael Horton wrote Pilgrim Theology as a more accessible companion to his award-winning systematic theology The Christian Faith: widely praised for its thorough treatment of the biblical and historical foundations of Christian doctrine. In Pilgrim Theology, his focus is in putting the study of theology into the daily drama of discipleship. Each chapter will orient you toward a clear understanding about: Who God is. What our relationship is to him. And what our faith in Jesus Christ means in our daily walk as well as in the context of the narrative of Scripture and the community of the church. Through accessible chapters on individual doctrines, as well as frequent "Key Distinction" boxes that succinctly explain the differences between important themes, you'll gain an understanding of doctrines that may have sounded like technical seminary terms to you before: justification, sanctification, glorification, union with Christ, and others. You have a working theology already—an existing understanding of God. It's the goal of Pilgrim Theology to help you examine that understanding more closely and have it challenged and strengthened.

What can the early church contribute to theology today? Donald Fairbairn takes us back to the biblical roots and central convictions of the early church, showing us what we have tended to overlook, especially in our understanding of God as Trinity, the person of Christ and the nature of our salvation as sharing in the Son's relationship to the Father.

St Irenaeus is the most important theologian of the second century, laying the foundation for all future Christian thinkers. Irenaeus tells us that he had known Polycarp, who had himself known the apostles and been appointed by them as the bishop of the church of Smyrna. This direct contact with the immediate successors of the apostles was of importance for Irenaeus in his later defense of Christian practice and teaching. In this work Against the Heresies, he was the first to utilize the full range of apostolic writings in his controversy with the Gnostics and others. Uniting, for the first time, the whole history of God's activity in one all-encompassing divine economy, Irenaeus demonstrates that there is but one God, who has made Himself known through His one Son, Jesus Christ, by the one Holy Spirit, to the one human race, bringing His creatures made from mud into the intimacy of communion with Himself.

Scholarship on Irenaeus has long acknowledged the centrality of creation to his theology, yet without fitting this theme securely into the Christological vision of Christ the ‘Recapitulator’. Studies have considered elements of Irenaeus’ cosmology and anthropology in extraction; but without seeing creation as an intrinsic part of his Christocentric vision, these have only partially been able to capture the intricacy and significance of his embrace of the creation saga. Drawing on the most recent Irenaean scholarship, the present volume explores in detail the Christocentric cosmology of one of the second century’s greatest writers, setting him in the context of the theological currents of his day. The result is a volume that offers new insights into the trinitarian articulation of early Christianity, the full significance of humanity as bearing God’s ‘image’, and a fuller reading of the details behind the title, ‘Irenaeus the creationist’.