"If, as St. Irenaeus claims, “one and the same way of salvation” was being “shown throughout the whole world,” and St. Irenaeus’s own explication of salvation and justification is representative of this “way of salvation” that was being preached throughout the whole Church all over the world at that time, then either the doctrine of justification St. Irenaeus lays out is the doctrine handed down by the Apostles, or the apostolic doctrine concerning justification was lost very shortly after the Apostles, and corrupted everywhere in the very same way throughout the Catholic Church around the whole world. Of course embracing the latter option presupposes (at least implicitly) ecclesial deism. But it also faces historical difficulties as well. St. Clement was a bishop of Rome toward the end of the first century. His soteriology, which I’ve discussed elsewhere, corresponds to that of St. Irenaeus. So does that of the Didache, which is also probably a first century work.6 That would require that the great corruption of the apostolic doctrine of justification took place even while the Apostle John, who died around AD 100, was still alive. It would require that this great and universal corruption of the central doctrine of the Christian faith occurred without any protest from those bishops, presbyters, deacons, and laymen who though willing to lay down their lives for Christ, refused to speak up while the apostolic doctrine of justification was being corrupted and distorted throughout the whole Church. The silence of the Church throughout the world during the first two centuries regarding some spreading corruption of the doctrine of justification within the Church, the piety and zeal of the early Christian martyrs who by their death showed themselves to be faithful to Christ and courageously willing to die for the truth He handed down to them through the Apostles, along with the uniformity of belief throughout the whole Catholic Church in AD 180 concerning the central doctrine of the way of salvation, are three pieces of evidence that in conjunction weigh against the thesis that the way of salvation St. Irenaeus taught was a corrupted version of what the Apostles had handed down. The only plausible alternative is that the doctrine of justification taught by St. Irenaeus is the Apostles’ doctrine." -- from this article by Bryan Cross at "Called to Communion" calledtocommunion/2012/07/st-irenaeus-on-justification/
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 02:30:06 +0000
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