Course Description
In Verbum Domini (2010), Pope Benedict XVI spoke of a “symphony of the Word”: a single Word of God heard in varied ways, as “a symphony of many voices” (Incarnation, Creation, History of Salvation, Church’s living Tradition, Sacred Scripture). This “analogy” has a strong patristic tone. It is particularly prevalent in Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, who is both the most recent Doctor of the Church (2022) and the oldest systematic theologian (180s). Following in the footsteps of this second-century Greek Father, we will reflect on a theological hermeneutic that is resolutely “Catholic” – that is, attentive to the harmony of the mysteries of faith understood in the light of an overall coherence, according to an approach to God’s plan that joins the sapiential vision of the Sacra doctrina of Saint Thomas Aquinas and that of the contemporary Magisterium on “ecotheology”.
Bibliography
IRENAEUS OF LYONS, Against Heresies : The Complete English Translation from the First Volume of The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ex Fontibus, 2017.
IRENAEUS OF LYONS, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching: A Theological Commentary and Translation, ed. by Iain M. MacKenzie, trans. by J. Armitage Robinson Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
ANTHONY BRIGGMAN, God and Christ in Irenaeus, Oxford University Press, 2019.
JOHN BEHR, Irenaeus of Lyons. Identifying Christianity, Oxford University Press, 2013.
ERIC OSBORN, Irenaeus of Lyons Cambridge University Press, 2001.