th itself, this being merely
illustrated and explained, developed and by that very process
established, as far as "stands in the Holy Scripture," and--let us
add--as far as reason requires. But Irenaeus was already obliged to
decline answering the question as to how far unexplained faith can be
sufficient for most Christians, though nothing but this explanation can
solve the great problems, "why more covenants than one were given to
mankind, what was the character of each covenant, why God shut up every
man unto unbelief, why the Word became flesh and suffered, why the
advent of the Son of God only took place in the last times etc." (I. 10.
3). The relation of faith and theological Gnosis was fixed by Irenaeus to
the effect that the latter is simply a continuation of the former.[495]
At the same time, however, he did not clearly show how the collection of
historical statements found in the confession can of itself guarantee a
sufficient and tenable knowledge of Christianity. Here the speculative
theories are as a matter of fact quite imbedded in the historical
propositions of tradition. Will these obscurities remain when once the
Church is forced to compete in its theological system with the whole
philosophical science of the Greeks, or may it be expected that, instead
of this system of eclecticism and compromise, a method will find
acceptance which, distinguishing between faith and theology, will
interpret in a new and speculative sense the whole complex of tradition?
Irenaeus' process has at least this one advantage over the other method:
according to it everything can be reckoned part of the faith, providing
it bears the stamp of truth, without the faith seeming to alter its
nature. It is incorporated in the theology of facts which the faith here
appears to be.[496] The latter, however, imperceptibly becomes a
revealed system of doctrine and history; and though Irenaeus himself
always seeks to refer everything again to the "simple faith" ([Greek:
phile pistis]), and to believing simplicity, that is, to the belief in
the Creator and the Son of God who became man, yet it was not in his
power to stop the development destined to transform the faith into
knowledge of a theological system. The pronounced hellenising of the
Gospel, brought about by the Gnostic systems, was averted by Irenaeus and
the later ecclesiastical teachers by preserving a great portion of the
early Christian tradition, partly as regards its letter, par