Leviticus 24 –A perpetual flame of
olive oil shall burn regularly in the lamp-stand of the sanctuary. “It shall burn there before YHWH from evening
to morning continually. This is a perpetual law for your descendants: Aaron is to
see to the lamps on the pure lamp-stand before YHWH, continually” (24:3-4).
Showbread
of fine flour shall be baked into twelve cakes and put in two piles on the gold
table that stands before YHWH (24:6). On each row, there must be frankincense.
They are to be set out fresh each Sabbath, and they shall be eaten by Aaron and
his sons in a holy place (24:9).
A
story is told about a man “whose mother was an Israelite woman and whose father
was an Egyptian” 24:10). He got into a quarrel with an Israelite and
“blasphemed the name and curse it” (24:11). Moses meditated on what to do and
“YHWH spoke to Moses” (24:13) and instructed him to have the man taken outside
the camp and killed – stoned to death (24:16). This precedent becomes a law:
blasphemers are to be stoned by everyone in the community after everyone who
heard him lays hands on his head.
Murderers
are to die too; killers of animals must make restitution. “Limb for limb, eye for eye, tooth for tooth! The same
injury that a man gives another shall be inflicted on him in return” (24:19-20)—everyone,
alien and Israelite alike—is to be treated the same.
Leviticus 25 – The land too is to keep a Sabbath for the
Lord. Sow fields for six years, but
in the seventh, the land should rest, leaving the after-growth to be eaten by
anyone.
The
Jubilee year comes after 7 times 7
years. On the 10th day of 7th
month, let the trumpet sound. “You shall
make [this 50th year] sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for
all its inhabitants” (25:10). There shall be no sowing, nor reaping the
after-growth except directly from fields and vines. Return to your own property, and let there be
no unfair dealing in repurchasing lands transferred during the preceding 50
years. No lands shall be alienated in
perpetuity, except in walled towns. No kinsmen may be slaves.
Alien slaves may be bought and sold, but you must not ‘lord it over
them” harshly.
Irenaeus (c. 180)
Selections from the Work Against Heresies
The Faith of the
Church
10 – Irenaeus’
words are so to the point, it is hard not to just write every word out, so
there will be a lot of quoting.
“Now
the Church, although scattered over the whole civilized world to the end of the
earth, received from the apostles and their disciples its faith in one God, the
Father Almighty, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all that
is in them, and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our
salvation, and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets proclaimed the
dispensations of God—the comings, the birth of a virgin, the suffering, the
resurrection from the dead, and the bodily reception into the heavens of the
beloved, Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from the heavens in the glory of
the Father to restore all things, and to raise up all flesh, that is, the whole
human race, so that every knee may bow, of things in heaven and on earth and
under the earth, to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Savior and King,
according to the pleasure of the invisible Father, and every tongue may confess
him, and that he may execute righteous judgment on all.”
The
power of wickedness and the “angels who transgress and fell into apostasy, and
the godless and wicked and lawless and blasphemers among men he will send into
the eternal firs. But to the righteous and holy, and those who have kept his
commandments and have remained in his love, some from the beginning [of life]
and some since their repentance, he will by his grace give life incorrupt, and
will clothe them with eternal glory.”
“Having
received this preaching and this faith, as I have said, the Church, although
scattered in the whole world, carefully preserves it, as if living in one
house. She believes these things [everywhere] alike, as if she had but one
heart and one soul, and preaches them harmoniously, teaches them, and hands
them down, as if she had but one mouth.”
The
languages of the world may be varied, but the message of the Church is the same
wherever the faithful are.
It
is true that some have more understanding than others of the basic idea, and
can articulate it better, but the “faith is one and the same, [and] he who can
say much about it does not add to it, nor does he who can say little diminish
it.”
He
addresses the mistaken view of the Gnostics who “imagine another God above
[what they call] the Demiurge and Maker and Nourisher of this universe, as if
he were not enough for us.” What the Gnostics called
the Demiurge was the Old Testament Creator-God depicted in Genesis. They
thought that the narrative of God that in so many ways personifies or
“humanizes” him could never really be the eternal and fathomless deity they
imagined God to be. But Irenaeus thinks they just don’t get the complex truth
of the Old Testament narrative.
“[I]t
consists in working out the things that have been said in parables, and
building them into the foundation of the faith: in expounding the activity and
dispensation of God for the sake of mankind; in showing clearly how God was
long-suffering over the apostasy of the angels who transgressed, and over the
disobedience of men; in declaring why one and the same God made some things
subject to time, others eternal, some heavenly, and some earthly; in
understanding why God, being invisible, appeared to the prophets, not in one
form, but differently to different ones; in showing why there were a number of
covenants with mankind, and in teaching what is the character of each of the
covenants; in searching out why God shut up all in disobedience that he might
have mercy on all; in giving thanks that the Word of God was made flesh, and
suffered; in declaring why the coming of the Son of God [was] at the last
times, that is, the Beginning was made manifest at the end; in unfolding what
is found in the prophets about the end and the things to come; in not being
silent that God has made the despaired-of Gentiles fellow heirs and of the same
body and partners with the saints . . .”
He
ends the section with discussion of terms that modern people are completely
ignorant of – I was at least. Aeons and Pleroma. Gnostics believed that Aeons
[30 of them] were emanations from the Pleroma, which is the fullness of the highest God.
Irenaeus’ goal in most of his writings was to refute the claims of the
Gnostics, so there will be a lot of very detailed discussion of their ideas,
most of which I have only the lamest understanding of. I am hoping I will not
have to go too deeply into these details. I am just looking forward to his
explanation of the apostolic message that he embraced.
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