The Journal of Theological Studies, 2024, 75, 148–169

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Irenaeus’ Theology in Second-Century
Platonism and Christianity
Grayden McCashen
Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

[email protected]

ABSTR ACT
As scholars have come to appreciate Irenaeus’ use of philosophy, emphasis has fallen on his use
of pre-Socratic traditions. This emphasis stands in stark contrast to the typical emphasis scholars
place on Platonic themes in second-century Christian theologies. This article argues that Platonic
resources, the definition of God as simple and incomposite, the Platonic viae, and reasoning from
‘oneness’ to ‘unlimitedness’, play a key role in Irenaeus’ theology, governing his interpretation of
pre-Socratic materials, including Irenaeus’ version of the well-known Xenophanes quotation (fr.
24) and materials Irenaeus apparently draws from Pseudo-Aristotle’s On Melissus, Xenophanes, and
Gorgias. Irenaeus, furthermore, draws a logical connection between God’s simplicity and the doc-
trine that there is one God to the exclusion of others, as he says, thereby pressing Platonic doctrine
into the service of his distinctly Christian theological convictions. The upshot of all this is a deeper
appreciation first for the sophistication of Irenaeus’ own theology, and second for Irenaeus’ role in
engaging and advancing Christian philosophical theology.

1. INTRODUCTION
Generations of scholars have played Irenaeus’ ‘unphilosophical’ theology against the more phil-
osophical approaches found in second-century Christian apologies and the myths of Irenaeus’
opponents.1 These judgements partly owed themselves to a method that evaluated Irenaeus’
philosophical acumen by examining his quotations of philosophical writings rather than by

1
See the conclusions of two eminent twentieth-century scholars: Abbé G. Bardy, The Greek Literature of the Early Christian
Church, trans. Mary Reginald (London: Sands & Co., 1929), p. 35; Jean Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, trans.
J. A. Baker (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973), p. 357. For a negative assessment of Irenaeus’ use of philosophy in his
doctrine of God, see J. Kunze, Die Gotteslehre des Irenaeus (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1891), pp. 65–71.

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 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 149

searching ‘for the creative use of philosophical themes buried below the surface’.2 Evaluated by
this standard Irenaeus’ use of philosophical doxographies in Adversus haereses (AH) 2.14 and
2.28 suggested that ‘Irenaeus’ knowledge and use of philosophy is somewhat superficial’.3 But,
as scholars have come to look ‘below the surface’—sometimes only just below it—appreciation

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for Irenaeus’ use of philosophical materials has increased. Above all, scholars have emphasized
Irenaeus’ appropriation of pre-Socratic materials, including arguments ascribed to Melissus
in Pseudo-Aristotle’s On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias (MXG) and a modified version of
Xenophanes’ statement: ‘all he sees, and all he thinks, and all he hears’.4
Noteworthy as Irenaeus’ use of pre-Socratic philosophy is, other traditions that arguably play
a more essential role in his metaphysical reasoning have been neglected. As a result, the complex-
ity of Irenaeus’ philosophical theology has been lost, and with it, appreciation for Irenaeus’ place
in the development of Christian theology.5 Nowhere is this truer than in respect to Irenaeus’
use of Platonic philosophy. In Irenaeus’ era, Christian philosophical theologians often found
Platonic theology more useful than the theology of any other school. Irenaeus’ teacher Justin, for
example, is well known for rendering Christian theology into a Platonic idiom,6 and Apocryphon
of John, a seminal Gnostic text which Irenaeus apparently read,7 is celebrated for drawing upon
Plato’s Parmenides and Timaeus.8 The attention paid to Irenaeus’ use of Platonic theology pales

2
William R. Schoedel, ‘Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus’, VC 13 (1959), p. 22. Others suspected
Irenaeus had more ‘philosophical talent’: see Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), p. 90; Robert M. Grant, Jesus after the Gospels: The Christ of the Second Century (Louisville: Westminster/
John Knox: 1990), p. 96.
3
Schoedel, ‘Philosophy’, p. 22; cf. pp. 31–2; cf. André Benoît, Saint Irénée: Introduction à l’étude de sa théologie (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1960), pp. 65–73. Modern research on Irenaeus’ use of doxographies goes back to H. Diels, Doxographi
graeci (Berlin: G. Reimeri, 1879; repr. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), pp. 171–2. See also R. M. Grant, ‘Irenaeus and Hellenistic
Culture’, HTR 42 (1949), pp. 41–51; W. C. van Unnik, ‘Theological Speculation and its Limits’, in William R. Schoedel and
Robert L. Wilken (eds.), Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition: In honorem Robert M. Grant (Paris:
Éditions Beauchesne, 1979), pp. 33–43, and ‘Two Notes on Irenaeus’, VC 30 (1976), pp. 201–9, where van Unnik shows a parallel
between Atticus’ use of Plato and Irenaeus’ in AH 3.25.5. On the latter passage, see too J. C. Alby, ‘El trasfondo platónico del con-
cepto de Lex divina en Ireneo de Lyon’, SP 76 (2017), pp. 23–35, where Irenaeus, who has ‘no … simpatía’ for philosophy, uses
Plato to refute Valentinian appropriations of Platonic/Neopythagorean ideas of providence (pp. 23, 34–5).
4
Fr. 24, in J. H. Lesher, Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), from Sextus
Empiricus, Adv. Prof. 9.144 (Adv. Phys. 1.144 in LCL). See n. 48 below for text. Scholars have noted Irenaeus’ parallel with
Xenophanes for centuries: see Bertrand Hemmerdinger, ‘Observations critiques sur Irénée, IV (Sources Chrétiennes 100) ou les
mésaventures d’un philologue’, JTS, ns 17 (1966), pp. 308–9. For pre-Socratic thought in Irenaeus, see more recently Schoedel,
‘Philosophy’, p. 26; Schoedel, ‘“Topological” Theology and Some Monistic Tendencies in Gnosticism’, in Martin Krause (ed.),
Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Alexander Böhlig (Leiden: Brill, 1972), pp. 99–102; Schoedel, ‘Enclosing, Not
Enclosed: The Early Christian Doctrine of God’, in Schoedel and Wilken (eds.), Early Christian Literature, pp. 78–80; R. A.
Norris, ‘The Transcendence and Freedom of God: Irenaeus, the Greek Tradition and Gnosticism’, in Schoedel and Wilken (eds.),
Early Christian Literature, p. 96; Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), esp. p. 38;
Anthony Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 76–7, 92–7; finally, various articles
by Grant, cited below. Scholars have also shown that Irenaeus appropriates Sceptic or Empiric arguments—see Grant, ‘Irenaeus
and Hellenistic Culture’, pp. 46–7; Schoedel, ‘Theological Method in Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 2.25–28)’, JTS, ns 35 (1984),
pp. 31–49, followed by R. A. Norris, ‘The Insufficiency of Scripture: Adversus haereses 2 and the Role of Scripture in Irenaeus’s
Anti-Gnostic Polemic’, in Charles A. Bobertz and David Brakke (eds.), Reading in Christian Communities: Essays on Interpretation
in the Early Church (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), p. 71; with important criticism by Briggman, God,
pp. 39–51—and Stoic terminology: Michel R. Barnes, ‘Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology’, Nova et Vetera 7 (2009), pp. 68, 78–9.
For a status quaestionis on Irenaeus’ philosophy see Agnès Bastit, ‘Irénée philosophe? L’arrière-plan philosophique grec de l’œuvre
d’un polémiste et théologien chrétien’, in Sophie Aubert-Baillot, Charles Guérin, and Sébastien Morlet (eds.), La philosophie des
non-philosophes dans l’empire Romain du Ier au IIIe siècle (Paris: Éditions de Boccard, 2019), pp. 237–69.
5
Throughout ‘theology’ refers to doctrine of God.
6
E.g. Mark Edwards, ‘On the Platonic Schooling of Justin Martyr’, JTS, ns 42 (1991), pp. 17–34.
7
Cf. AH 1.29.
8
See Michael Waldstein, ‘The Primal Triad in the Apocryphon of John’, in John D. Turner and Anne McGuire (eds.), The Nag
Hammadi Library after Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical Literature Commemoration (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp.
154–62; Zlatko Pleše, Poetics of the Gnostic Universe: Narrative and Cosmology in the Apocryphon of John (Leiden: Brill, 2006).
150 • G. McCashen

in comparison.9 The difference between scholarly treatments of Irenaeus and of cotemporane-

ous Christian theologians creates the impression that Irenaeus as a philosopher was something
of a dinosaur. While his friends and foes engage second-century philosophical theology to great
effect—the latter soon demanding a response from Plotinus himself—Irenaeus finds the pillars

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of his theology in pre-Socratic material that serves only as a foil for a Pyrrhonian philosopher’s
criticism.10 If this is the case, Irenaeus is no longer an exclusive biblicist as he was once thought
to be, but neither does he advance Christian philosophical theology. Rather, the conservative
Irenaeus calls upon an antedated philosophy to restrain the creative speculations of Christians
whose fascination with Platonic philosophy had gone too far.
This article reevaluates Irenaeus’ theology and its place in the development of Christian phil-
osophical theology by arguing that Irenaeus, like Justin and Irenaeus’ opponents, appropriated
key ideas from second-century Platonic theology. In the first half of AH Book 2, Irenaeus uses
a definition of God as a simple incomposite widely found in second-century Platonism along
with correlates of that doctrine, above all the Platonic ‘ways’ of knowing or thinking of God and
Platonic reasoning from oneness to limitlessness, in order to interpret pre-Socratic materials
and ultimately to defend the Christian doctrine that the Scriptures ‘proclaim the one and only
God, to the exclusion of others’.11
The upshot of all this is twofold. As the body of the paper shows, recognizing Irenaeus’ use
of Platonic materials reveals a greater depth and coherence in his theology, including where
the so-called Xenophanes material rests uneasily with other tenets of Irenaeus’ theology. Then,
having proposed a revised view of Irenaeus’ theology in the main body of the article, the conclu-
sion offers some prospective comments on Irenaeus’ place in the development of philosophical
Christian theology.

9
For Platonism in Irenaeus, in addition to the literature discussed below, see passim, E. P. Meijering, ‘Irenaeus’ Relation to
Philosophy in the Light of His Concept of Free Will’, in God Being History: Studies in Patristic Philosophy (Amsterdam: North-
Holland Publishing Company, 1975), pp. 19–30, Meijering, ‘Some Observations on Irenaeus’ Polemics Against the Gnostics’,
ibid., pp. 31–8, and Meijering, ‘Irenäus zum zeitlichen Anfang der Welt’, VC 54 (2000), pp. 1–11; Briggman, ‘Revisiting Irenaeus’
Philosophical Acumen’, VC 65 (2011), pp. 115–24; R. A. Norris, ‘Who is the Demiurge? Irenaeus’ Picture of God in Adversus
Haereses 2’, in Andrew B. McGowan, Brian E. Daley, and Timothy J. Gaden (eds.), God in Early Christian Thought: Essays in
Memory of Lloyd G. Patterson (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 13, and, dismissively, ‘Transcendence’, p. 92; Norris’s earlier God and World
in Early Christian Theology (New York: Seabury, 1965) is ambivalent; Norris suggests that Alcinous ‘would have perfectly under-
stood’ AH 2.13.3 (p. 85), but also maintains that Irenaeus’ debt to philosophy in AH 2 is ‘largely, though not wholly, deceptive’ (p.
81–2, at 81). Norris’s most positive assessment of Irenaeus’ engagement with Platonism comes in ‘Irenaeus and Plotinus Answer
the Gnostics: A Note on the Relation between Christian Thought and Platonism’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36 (1980),
pp. 16–19 (cf. Osborn, Irenaeus, pp. 44–6), but, here again, ‘Irenaeus is not a very good philosopher’ (p. 23). Scholars often affirm
that Irenaeus’ comments on God, the Forms, and matter in 2.14.3 reflect Middle Platonism: see Meijering, ‘Irenaeus’ Relation
to Philosophy’, p. 20. Some scholars compare aspects of Irenaeus’ thought considered below to Platonic writers, who are said to
represent philosophical commonplaces: e.g. Jackson Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 87. Denis Minns sees
the Platonic distinction between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ (Tim. 27d–28a) as underlying ‘the whole of his theological conception’:
Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), p. 34. Briggman compares Irenaeus to Philo at God, pp. 77–9, 85–7, 101, though
he does not discuss whether Philo is mediating Platonic thought to Irenaeus. The question of Philo’s influence on Irenaeus is
unresolved (cf. David Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey [Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993], pp. 116–18—P. Smulders,
‘A Quotation of Philo in Irenaeus’, VC 12 (1958), pp. 154–6 is unconvincing) and is not strictly relevant here. If the Platonic back-
ground of the doctrines outlined below is correct, it is another issue whether Irenaeus learned that Platonic material from Philo.
10
On Pseudo-Aristotle’s philosophy, see J. Mansfeld, ‘DE MELISSO XENOPHANE GORGIA: Pyrrhonizing Aristotelianism’,
Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 131 (1988), pp. 239–76, with unpersuasive criticism in Lesher, Xenophanes, pp. 192–4.
Xenophanes is a ‘pillar’ of Irenaeus’ theology in Grant, ‘Early Christianity and Pre-Socratic Philosophy’, in S. Lieberman et al.
(eds.), Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of his Seventy-fifth Birthday, vol. 1 ( Jerusalem: American Academy
for Jewish Research, 1965), p. 378.
11
AH 2.27.2. Irenaeus’ texts are from A. Rousseau et al. in Sources Chrétiennes (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf). Translations
are mine except where noted.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 151

2. GOD A S SIMPLE AND INCOMPOSITE IN IRENAEUS AND

PL ATONISM
Irenaeus’ definition of God as simple exemplifies his use of philosophical theology, especially
Platonic theology, but it is only with Anthony Briggman’s recent work that this definition has

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been proven central to Irenaeus’ theology.12 The key passage is AH 2.13.3, where Irenaeus writes:

For the Father of all is far removed from these dispositions and passions which arise in humans,
and simple, and non-composite, and like-in-parts; and he is all similar and equal to himself,
since he is all mind, and all spirit, and all understanding, and all thought, and all reason,13 and
all hearing, and all eye, and all light, and all fount of all good things, in which way religious and
pious people rightly speak of God.14

The context for this passage is Irenaeus’ discussion of the psychological imagery which the
Ptolemaeans use to describe the aeons that comprise the fullness of God. To use psychology
to describe God is, according to Irenaeus here and in 2.28, to represent God as a human being.
Since the human psychē undergoes temporal processes owing to the corporeal and composite
nature of the human being, the Ptolemaeans’ representation of God with psychological imagery
implies that God is temporal and composite. Their imagery is inappropriate, Irenaeus avers in
the above quotation, because God is simple and non-composite. In speaking of God as all mind,
all spirit, and so on, Irenaeus maintains that one avoids the blasphemous or impious suggestion
that God is subject to the same chronological processes as composite human beings.
Though in studies of AH 2.13 and divine simplicity in Irenaeus the ‘all mind’ statement has
garnered the lion’s share of attention, this pithy material is hardly self-explanatory. It requires
interpretation, some of which, as scholars have pointed out, Irenaeus provides in later para-
graphs.15 Scholars have, however, said little of the predicates simplex et non compositus (ἁπλοῦς
καὶ ἀσύνθετος), which stand out as potentially valuable indications of Irenaeus’ understanding
of the ‘all mind’ statement for two reasons.
First, Irenaeus gives them primacy of place in his theological statement. Second, although
Robert Grant groups ‘simple’ and ‘non-composite’ with the ‘all mind’ statement, ‘similar’, ‘equal’,

12
See Briggman, God, ch. 2. See also John Behr, ‘Synchronic and Diachronic Harmony: St. Irenaeus on Divine Simplicity’,
Modern Theology 35 (2019), pp. 428–41; Jonatán Simons, ‘Divine Simplicity in the Theology of Irenaeus’ (unpubl. PhD diss.,
Australian Catholic University, Australia, 2020); and Pui Him Ip, Origen and the Emergence of Divine Simplicity before Nicaea (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022), ch. 3, which was released after this article had been accepted. In older scholarship,
see G. Nathanael Bonwetsch, Die Theologie des Irenäus (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1925), p. 53, where the ‘philosophische’ unity
of God is one of two chief characteristics of Irenaeus’ thought; Juan Ochagavía, Visibile Patris Filius: A Study of Irenaeus’ Teaching
on Revelation and Tradition (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1964), pp. 75–6; Jakob Birrer, Der Mensch als
Medium und Adressat der Schöpfungsoffenbarung: Eine dogmengeschichtliche Untersuchung zur Frage der Gotteserkenntnis bei Irenäus
von Lyon (Bern: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 171–2; J. Fantino, La théologie d’Irénée: Lecture des Écritures en réponse à l’exégèse gnostique
(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1994), pp. 372–3; Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), pp. 109, 187–9.
In Lashier, Trinity, pp. 87–90, divine simplicity is key to God’s ‘absolute transcendence’—a defining aspect of Irenaeus’ theology.
13
On ratio here and Christology, see A. Houssiau, La Christologie de Saint Irénée (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de
Louvain, 1955), p. 165; Barnes, ‘Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology’, p. 75; Lashier, Trinity, p. 87.
14
Multum enim distat omnium Pater ab his quae proveniunt hominibus adfectionibus et passionibus, et simplex et non compositus
et similimembrius et totus ipse sibimetipsi similis et aequalis est (Rousseau’s Greek, SC 293, p. 241: καὶ ἁπλοῦς καὶ ἀσύνθετος καὶ
ὁμοιομελὴς καὶ ὅλος ἑαυτῷ ὅμοιός τε καὶ ἴσος ὑπάρχει), totus cum sit sensus et totus spiritus et totus sensuabilitas et totus ennoia et totus
ratio et totus auditus et totus oculus et totus lumen et totus fons omnium bonorum, quemadmodum adest religiosis ac piis dicere de Deo.
Irenaeus refers back to this statement at 2.17.7. Similar ‘all mind’ statements occur at AH 1.12.2, 2.13.8–9, 2.28.4–5, 4.11.2. Cf.
the fragment, usually considered forged, in Marcel Richard, ‘Un Faux Dithélite: le Traité de S. Irénée au Diacre Démétrius’, in
Peter Wirth (ed.), Polychronion: Festschrift Franz Dölger zum 75. Geburtstag (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1966), pp. 431–40.
15
See AH 2.13.8–9, 2.28.4–5, discussed below.
152 • G. McCashen

and similimembrius (like-in-parts) as reflecting Xenophanes' views,16 ‘simple and non-composite’

are not as easily attached to Xenophanes as the other expressions. To my knowledge they do
not occur in the extant fragments or testimonia of Xenophanes, nor do they appear in prior
iterations of the ‘all mind’ statement in antiquity. To the contrary, one of the closest parallels

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to Irenaeus’ version of the ‘all mind’ statement rests uneasily with Irenaeus’ definition of God
as simple and incomposite.17 It appears, then, that simplex et non compositus has been added to
the Xenophanes material, which runs from similimembrius through the ‘all mind’ statement that
follows. If so, simplex et non compositus reflects an understanding of the ‘all mind’ statement
which is unique to Irenaeus, and therefore likely to be instructive for understanding Irenaeus’
interpretation of the Xenophanes material and Irenaeus’ broader theology.
Irenaeus does not define simplex or non compositus in 2.13.3, but his use of the terms through-
out Adversus haereses sheds light on their meaning. Two points are crucial. The first is that in
2.13.8 when Irenaeus recalls his ‘all mind’ statement and doctrine of divine simplicity,18 the
Latin translation has uno where simplex had been a few paragraphs earlier. ‘Simple’, then, for
Irenaeus as for some Platonists is a term that indicates God’s oneness.19 A second point that
elucidates the meaning of simplex in Irenaeus is that every time simplex appears in a theological
context it does so in conjunction with incompositus or non compositus. In AH 5.7.1, for example,
Irenaeus pairs simplex and incompositus just as he had three books earlier.20 Likewise, in 2.17.2,
Irenaeus asks of his opponents’ aeons, ‘are they simple and uniform, and altogether equal and
similar … or are they composite and different, dissimilar in their members?’21When Irenaeus
posits simplex as the alternative to compositus in an ‘either … or’ dichotomy, he implies that what
is simple is not composite, and what is composite is not simple. Conceptually, then, ‘simple’ and
‘incomposite’ are synonyms. For Irenaeus the terms represent the same idea, one with a gram-
matically positive expression, the other with a grammatically negative expression.22
Irenaeus’ description of God as ‘simple and incomposite’ echoes an idea often found in the
theologies of first- and second-century Platonists. In Didaskalikos 10.7, Alcinous writes:

God is partless (ἀμερῆ),23 by reason of the fact that there is nothing prior to him. For the
part, and that out of which [a thing is composed], exists prior to that of which it is a part …
if God were a body, he would be [composed] of form and matter, because every body is a

16
Grant, ‘Early Christianity and Pre-Socratic Philosophy’, p. 378. For God as having ‘members’ or ‘parts’ (μέρη) which are
‘similar’ (ὅμοιον) and seemingly ‘equal’ (ἴσως), see Ps.-Aristotle, MXG, 977a 29–977b3. To my knowledge no Greek equivalent of
‘similimembrius’ (see n. 26 below) has been attributed to Xenophanes. Irenaeus or his source is presumably borrowing a common
philosophical term to describe Xenophanes’ views.
17
Pliny the Elder, Nat. Hist. 2.14, writes, ‘I deem it a mark of human weakness to seek to discover the shape and form of God.
Whoever God is—provided there is a God—and in whatever region he is (et quacumque in parte), he consists wholly of sense,
sight and hearing, wholly of soul, wholly of mind, wholly of himself ’ (LCL 330). Here Pliny leaves open the possibility that God
has a form and is located in a ‘region’ or ‘place’. Either proposition would be incompatible with Platonic theology—and with
Irenaeus’.
18
Cf. Briggman, God, p. 98.
19
See Speusippus, quoted in Dillon, The Middle Platonists: 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (rev. edn., Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1996), p. 14; anonymous Parmenides commentary, fr. 6, p. 35 and elsewhere (Gerald Bechtle, The Anonymous Commentary on
Plato’s ‘Parmenides’ [Bern: Paul Haupt, 1999]); cf. Origen, CmJohn 1.119.
20
‘For spirit is incomposite and simple … not able to be resolved’ (incompositus est enim et simplex spiritus … resolvi non
potest). Cf. 2.7.6, 2.7.2, where what is spiritaliter emitted is ‘neither moulded nor composed’ (neque plasmati neque compositi).
21
Et utrum simplices quidam et uniformes et undique sibi aequales et similes, quemadmodum spiritus et lumina emissa sunt, an
compositi et differentes, dissimiles membris suis? (2.17.2). For ‘spirit’ and simplicity in Irenaeus, see Lashier, Trinity, p. 90; Briggman,
God, p. 100–101.
22
Cf. Plotinus, En. 5.5.6, where ‘one’ (τὸ ἕν), a name ‘completely indicative of simplicity’ (ὃ πάντως ἁπλότητός ἐστι σημαντικόν),
was best defined negatively, as ‘a denial of multiplicity’ (ἄρσιν … τὰ πολλά; LCL 444). It is interesting that Plotinus also uses
divine simplicity against the Gnostics at the beginning of En. 2.9.
23
Cf. Parmenides 137c, where Plato reasons, ‘if the one exists, the one cannot be many … there can be no parts of it’ (εἰ ἕν
ἐστιν, ἄλλο τι οὐκ ἂν εἴη πολλὰ τὸ ἕν … οὔτε ἄρα μέρος αὐτοῦ; LCL 167). Here as in Theaetetus 204a ἀμερής means ‘without parts’,
as is clear from the contrast between the ‘part’ and the ‘whole’.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 153

combination of matter and form with it (εἰ γὰρ σῶμα ὁ θεός, ἐξ ὕλης ἂν εἴη καὶ εἴδους διὰ τὸ
πᾶν σῶμα συνδύασμά τι εἶναι ἔκ τε ὕλης καὶ τοῦ σὺν αὐτῇ εἴδους) … but it is absurd that God
should be [composed] of matter and form, for he could not then be simple or primordial; so
God must be incorporeal (ἄτοπον δὲ τὸν θεὸν ἐξ ὕλης εἶναι καὶ εἴδους· οὐ γὰρ ἔσται ἁπλοῦς οὐδὲ

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ἀρχικός· ὥστε ἀσώματος ἂν εἴη ὁ θεός).24

Here I give Dillon’s translation with ‘composed’ in brackets since, though the term correlates
to nothing in the Greek text, it is elsewise difficult to render Alcinous’ Greek into English.25 To
be sure, Alcinous’ discussion of God as ‘simple’ does not match every aspect of AH 2.13.3. Most
importantly, Alcinous uses ἀμερής (‘partless’), whereas Irenaeus wrote ὁμοιομερής (similimem-
brius, ‘like-in-parts’) or an equivalent.26 This discrepancy is addressed below. For the present it
suffices to note that Christopher Stead describes ἁπλοῦς and ἀσύνθετος as conceptual ‘equiva-
lents’ of ἀμερής in ancient philosophy.27 And indeed, the logic by which Alcinous describes God
as ‘simple’ parallels Irenaeus’ in many ways.
The first and most basic correspondence between Alcinous’ and Irenaeus’ theologies is that
both authors explicitly refer to God as ‘simple’. The loss of Irenaeus’ Greek text makes establish-
ing a lexical link impossible, but other scholars have suggested that Irenaeus like Alcinous used
ἁπλοῦς.28 The significance of this correspondence should not be overlooked. The term ἁπλοῦς
was used theologically far more often in Platonic literature than in the theological speculations
of other schools. Second, as Briggman has argued, Irenaeus understands God’s atemporality to
correspond to his simplicity,29 which fits Alcinous’ reasoning that God is ‘partless’ and ‘simple’
because ‘there is nothing prior to him’ and he is ‘primordial’.30 Third, the idea that simplicity log-
ically entails incompositeness is present in both authors. Alcinous implies a logical relationship
between simplicity and incompositeness by relating what is simple to what is incorporeal rather
than corporeal—terms he later correlates with ἀσύνθετος and σύνθετος.31 A body, Alcinous
writes, is ‘a combination of two elements’—‘of matter and form with it’. In Didask. 10, Alcinous
reasons that since God is simple, he must be incorporeal because Alcinous understands sim-
plicity to correspond to incompositeness and corporeality to necessarily entail composition.
In reasoning from simplicity to incorporeality through incompositeness, Alcinous parallels
Irenaeus, for whom maintaining God is simplex et non compositus is incompatible with maintain-
ing God is ‘of a composite nature, subsisting of body and soul’ (2.13.3) or ‘composite and cor-
poreal’ (2.13.5).32 In both authors, corporeality or anthropomorphism is rejected because it is
incompatible with a view of God as ‘simple’ in the sense of ‘incomposite’, not being ‘of ’ or ‘from’

24
Text in John Whittaker and Pierre Louis, Alcinoos: Enseignement des doctrines de Platon (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1990).
25
John Dillon, Alcinous: The Handbook of Platonism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
26
Multiple Greek terms have been conjectured for similimembrius. The two most important are Rousseau’s ὁμοιομελής (SC
293, pp. 241–4) and ὁμοιομερής, which the majority of scholars before and after Rousseau have favoured (see W. W. Harvey,
Sancti Irenaei Episcopi Lugdunensis Libros Quinque Adversus Haereses [Cambridge, 1857], vol. 1, p. 282, n. 2; Bonwetsch, Irenäus,
p. 54, n. 1; Grant, ‘Early Christianity and Pre-Socratic Philosophy’, p. 92; Briggman, God, p. 92, n. 108). Rousseau’s suggestion is
based on 1 Cor. 12:17 and a parallel in the fifth-century monastic, Macarius—the only writer known to use ὁμοιομελής. I prefer
ὁμοιομερής because it was far more common, appearing, for example, in the doxographical literature such as Irenaeus read (cf.
Aristotle, Metaph. 984a; Ps.-Plutarch, Plac. phil. 1.3.5, and MXG, 976a) and because the Macarius parallels are not strong.
27
Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, p. 130.
28
Lewis and Short equates simplex and ἁπλοῦς. The Greek terms ἁπλοῦς and ἀσύνθετος are considered ‘largement assurée’ by
Rousseau, SC 293, p. 241; cf. Winfried Overbeck, Menschwerdung: Eine Untersuchung zur literarischen und theologischen Einheit des
fünften Buches ‘Adversus Haereses’ des Irenäus von Lyon (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 173. None of Latin Irenaeus’ uses of simplex
in theological contexts has a surviving Greek fragment, but the Latin translator uses cognates of simplex to translate cognates of
ἁπλοῦς elsewhere (AH 1.pr.3, 1.21.1, and twice in 5.30.1). The vast majority of times (in)compositus matches a Greek fragment it
translates, (ἀ)σύνθετος, including a theological discussion (1.15.5).
29
See AH 2.13.8–9, 2.28.4–5, with Briggman, God, pp. 97–9.
30
Cf. AH 2.13.8.
31
Didask. 25.1.
32
compositi natura et ex corpore et anima subsistentes (2.13.3); compositus et corporalis (2.13.5).
154 • G. McCashen

multiple components.33 Alcinous, then, represents a Platonist whose reasoning on the simplic-
ity of God parallels Irenaeus’, and Alcinous is not an isolated example. Plutarch speaks of God as
simple in the sense that he is ἀσύνθετος in a passage that reasons just as Alcinous does, and many
other Platonists also pair ἁπλοῦς and ἀσύνθετος in theological and metaphysical discussions.34

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3. IRENAEUS, XENOPHANES, AND PL ATONISM
That Irenaeus echoes an understanding of divine simplicity found in Platonic theology is an
important indication that he was more engaged with cotemporaneous philosophical theology
than is often thought. This alone, however, does not prove that Irenaeus’ doctrine of divine sim-
plicity is governed by Platonic reasoning. Indeed, the Xenophanes material he appends to his
definition of God as simplex et non compositus rests uneasily with Platonic thinking on God’s
simplicity. Above all, Irenaeus’ predicate similimembrius formally contradicts Platonists like
Alcinous for whom the simple God is ἀμερής, and furthermore, Irenaeus’ ‘all mind’ statement
does not obviously express a negative understanding of ‘simplicity’ as ‘incompositeness’. These
incongruities could be explained if Irenaeus misunderstood or disregarded the implications of
his Platonic definition of God as simple and incomposite, but, as we will see in the following
paragraphs, there is reason to believe Irenaeus reconciled the Xenophanes material to his theol-
ogy by interpreting it by means of Platonic theology.

Pre-Socratics and Middle Platonism

Two preliminary observations will help build the case for Irenaeus’ Platonic understanding
of the Xenophanes material. First, though for convenience scholars regularly refer to the ‘all
mind’ statement as a ‘quotation’ of Xenophanes, just as for convenience the present study uses
‘Xenophanes’ to refer to receptions of Xenophanes available in the second century, the mate-
rial Irenaeus presents has strayed far from Xenophanes’ expression and thought. This is true
first at the level of Irenaeus’ wording. Sextus Empiricus’ unattributed quotation runs: ‘all he
sees, and all he thinks, and all he hears’.35 Here Sextus’ formula parallels the Pseudo-Aristotelian
testimony Irenaeus may have known by using verbs: ‘to see’, ‘to think’, ‘to hear’.36 In contrast,

33
Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum 3.34, where to be simplex is the opposite of being ex pluribus naturis. According to Birrer,
Irenaeus only uses ‘incorporeal’ in his own language (rather than in his reports of his opponents’ theology) three times, and never
directly calls God ‘incorporeal’ (Der Mensch, p. 168). Birrer is correct, but it seems nonetheless that Irenaeus thought of God as
incorporeal for several reasons. First, I regard ἀσώματος in 1.15.5 as a term Irenaeus assumes is appropriate to apply to God (cf.
Briggman, God, p. 78, n. 41; Schoedel, ‘“Topological” Theology’, p. 91). Second, infiguratus in 2.12.1 expresses a similar idea.
Third, the ‘simple’ and incomposite ‘spirit’ would seem to be incorporalis in 5.7–8. Since for Irenaeus God is ‘spirit’ (2.28.4, Dem.
5), we might infer that God is incorporeal as spirit is. Fourth, when Irenaeus complains his opponents suggest God is corporeal
the implication is that God is properly thought of as incorporeal. Birrer himself regards Irenaeus as maintaining God’s incorpore-
ality, perhaps under the influence of Timaeus.
34
Plutarch complains that ‘Stoics, by making god, while a principle, an intellectual body, that is intelligence in matter, make
him out to be not pure or simple or incomposite’ (οὐ καθαρὸν οὐδὲ ἁπλοῦν οὐδ᾽ ἀσύνθετον): On Common Conceptions, 1085b, in
LCL 470. Compositeness (σύνθεσιν), multiplicity, and difference cannot apply to what is ‘simple’ (ἁπλοῦν) and ‘one’ (ἕν) in the
anonymous Parmenides Commentary, fr. 1 p. 21.6–10. For a recent overview of the date of this text, which is uncertain, see Dennis
Clark, ‘The Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides’, in Harold Tarrant et al. (eds.), Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato
in Antiquity (Brill: Leiden, 2018), pp. 351–65. In Numenius fr. 11 the first God is ἁπλοῦς in the sense that the first God is indivis-
ible (É. Des Place, Numénius: Fragments, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1973). Indivisibility does not necessarily imply incomposite-
ness or simplicity, but the ideas often go together: see AH 1.15.5, 2.17.3; 2.28.4. For the pairing of ‘simple’ and ‘incomposite’ in
sources influenced by Platonism see Corp.Herm. 14.6, where the ‘maker’ is μόνον, ἁπλοῦν, ἀσύνθετον (text in A. D. Nock, Corpus
Hermeticum [4th edn., Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1983]), and Ref. 7.21.1 on Basilides. For the Forms as simple, see Apuleius,
On Plato 1.6; Cicero, Acad. 1.30. Outside metaphysical contexts, see ‘simple and incomposite’ knowledge in the anonymous
Theaetetus commentary, 2 line 20, with line 15. In discussions of the soul, ‘simple’ and ‘incomposite’ have the same relationship.
See Severus in Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 13.17.3–4; Tertullian, De anima 14.1–2 with 10.1; Plutarch, De vir. 441f.
35
Sextus Empiricus Adv. Prof. 9.144. See n. 48 below for text. For commentary see Lesher, Xenophanes, pp. 105–6.
36
MXG 977a38–39. Diogenes Laertius’ version mixes nouns and verbs: οὐσίαν θεοῦ σφαιροειδῆ, μηδὲν ὅμοιον ἔχουσαν
ἀνθρώπῳ· ὅλον δὲ ὁρᾶν καὶ ὅλον ἀκούειν, μὴ μέντοι ἀναπνεῖν· σύμπαντά τε εἶναι νοῦν καὶ φρόνησιν καὶ ἀΐδιον (Lives 9.19, LCL 185).
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 155

Irenaeus formulates his ‘all mind’ statements with nouns: God is ‘all hearing’, ‘all eye’, and so
on. Irenaeus, furthermore, includes a higher number of expressions than do the Xenophanes
witnesses and most other ancient variations of the formula.37 Yet, Irenaeus’ version is not wholly
distinctive. Pliny’s Natural History gives an iteration of the ‘all mind’ statement in the same ‘all

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noun’ form as Irenaeus’.38 Because of this, it is usually thought that Irenaeus adapts an ‘all noun’
version of the formula that was already in circulation. The formula Irenaeus appropriates, in the
course of evolving from Xenophanes’ aphorism, had mutated significantly,39 and as Stead and
Rousseau have noticed, the formal mutations entailed mutations in the doctrine the formula
expresses. Irenaeus’ version puts ‘en un relief bien plus vigoureux l’absolue simplicité de Dieu’.40
In light of the differences between Irenaeus’ formula and its antecedents in Xenophanes’ wit-
nesses, we are justified in investigating what resources Irenaeus used to reform and reinterpret
the Xenophanes tradition.
This leads to a second observation: Platonism is an obvious candidate for a second-century
philosophy that would allow Irenaeus to interpret the Xenophanes material for his own pur-
poses.41 This is so first because second-century Platonic theology was largely indebted to inter-
pretations of pre-Socratics. The most obvious example is the root of Middle Platonic theology,
with its emphasis on divine unity and apophaticism, in Pythagoreanism and in Plato’s reception
of pre-Socratic thought in Parmenides.42 Furthermore, Jaap Mansfeld has argued that Middle
Platonism was heavily influenced by interpretations of Xenophanes—an argument which, as we
shall see, he supports with AH 2.13.3–4.43 These points speak to the desire of many Platonists to
claim roots that reach back even further than their school’s founder.
Of this phenomenon, Maximus of Tyre’s Oration 11, a standard expression of Platonic the-
ology, provides a more specific example—and this in a passage with many similarities to AH
2.13.3–4. Like Irenaeus, Maximus mixes apophatic and kataphatic language, uses the titles
‘Father of all’ (cf. Tim. 28c) and ‘fount’ (πήγη/fons; cf. AH 1.12.2),44 and compares God to

37
For additional parallels see Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (The Early Church Fathers; London and New York: Routledge, 1997),
pp. 44, 193; Schoedel, ‘Enclosing, Not Enclosed’, p. 78, n. 19.
38
See R. M. Grant, ‘Place de Basilide dans la théologie chrétienne ancienne’, Revue des Études Augustiniennes 25 (1979),
pp. 211–12, Stead, Divine Substance, p. 189, and recently Agnès Bastit, ‘Simplicité de l’intellect et perception divine chez Pline
l’Ancien et Irénée de Lyon: aperçu de la réception d’une sentence de Xénophane à l’époque impériale’, in Élisabeth Gavoille and
Sophie Roesch (eds.), Diuina studia: Mélanges de religion et de philosophie anciennes offerts à François Guillaumont (Bordeaux:
Ausonius, 2018), pp. 139–53. Bastit emphasizes the influence of Homer and Hesiod on the formula as well as Xenophanes.
39
Grant, ‘Place de Basilide’, pp. 212–3. Stead, Divine Substance, pp. 188–9; Rousseau, SC 263, pp. 237–8; SC 219, p. 242.
Rousseau, SC 293, pp. 243–4, suggests Irenaeus blended Xenophanes or a reception thereof with 1 Cor. 12:17–20, but this
appears unnecessary.
40
Rousseau, SC 263, p. 238; SC 293, pp. 242–3. Cf. Stead, Divine Substance, pp. 105–9, 186–9.
41
To my knowledge, besides J. Mansfeld, ‘Compatible Alternatives: Middle Platonist Theology and the Xenophanes
Reception’, in R. van den Broek et al. (eds.), Knowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden: Brill, 1988), only Grant has
argued in detail that Irenaeus’ ‘all mind’ statement is indebted to Platonism. His most developed argument is in Jesus after the
Gospels (1990), pp. 96–8 (followed passim by Michael Slusser, ‘The Heart of Irenaeus’s Theology’, in Paul Foster and Sara Parvis
[eds.], Irenaeus: Life, Scripture, Legacy [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012], p. 134), though his rationale is mostly unconvincing.
Grant’s Irenaeus (1997) does not relate 2.13.3–4 to Platonism, though he does in his review of Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons in The
Journal of Religion 85 (2005), p. 312. Birrer, Der Mensch, p. 169, relates 4.11.2 to Tim. 37e. Ip briefly relates Irenaeus’ doctrine of
simplicity to the Platonic tradition: Origen, pp. 67–8. See too Bastit, ‘Irénée philosophe?’, p. 247, n. 55 and p. 263. Stead recog-
nizes the philosophical nature of Irenaeus’ ‘all mind’ statement but does not suggest a more specific milieu: Divine Substance, p.
189. Lashier, Trinity, pp. 87–8, downplays the passage’s philosophical provenance.
42
See E.R. Dodds, ‘The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic “One”’, CQ 22 (1928), pp. 129–42; J.
Whittaker, ‘Neopythagoreanism and the Transcendent Absolute’, SO 48 (1973), pp. 77–86.
43
Mansfeld, ‘Compatible Alternatives’, pp. 112–14.
44
Scholars have emphasized Irenaeus’ use of Father as a Trinitarian title rather than the ‘Platonic’ use of ‘Father’ as cause or
source of all things. See Peter Widdicombe, ‘Irenaeus and the Knowledge of God as Father: Text and Context’, in Foster and
Parvis (eds.), Irenaeus, pp. 141–9; Lashier downplays Irenaeus’ use of the ‘Platonic’ ‘Father of all’ at 2.13.3 and elsewhere (Trinity,
pp. 73–8). It is unnecessary to minimize Irenaeus’ use of the ‘Platonic’ title ‘Father’ in order to appreciate Irenaeus’ use of ‘Father’
in a Trinitarian sense. The two ideas do not contradict one another. Cf. Dem. 40, and Luis Ladaria, ‘Tam Pater nemo: Quelques
156 • G. McCashen

simple Mind.45 To support his Platonic doctrine, Maximus like Irenaeus quotes a pre-Socratic
aphorism: ‘mind sees and mind hears’.46 This line, a quotation of Xenophanes’ contemporary
Epicharmus,47 has obvious similarity to the original Xenophanes quotation:

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Epicharmus/Maximus: νοῦς ὁρῇ καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει.
Xenophanes/Sextus: οὖλος ὁρᾷ, οὖλος νοεῖ, οὖλος ἀκούει.48

The difference all but disappears when Maximus’ earlier statement is added: mind ‘thinks
always and all and at once’.49 Here, Maximus assimilates pre-Socratic material with form and
thought nearly indistinguishable from Irenaeus’ into his own theology. The way our Platonist
uses pre-Socratic material stands in stark contrast to the way Xenophanes is used by, for exam-
ple, Sextus or Pseudo-Aristotle, who take little interest in integrating Xenophanes’ theology into
their own philosophy.

God as Simple, Incomposite, and Similimembrius

Given the strong correspondence between AH 2.13.3–4 and Platonic theologies like Alcinous’
and Maximus’, it is surprising Irenaeus includes an expression that contradicts Alcinous’ ‘part-
less’ (ἀμερής) as clearly as ‘like-in-parts’ (ὁμοιομερής/similimembrius).50 The difficulty of recon-
ciling similimembrius with God’s simplicity has been noticed already by Rousseau. Rousseau,
however, does not propose an adequate explanation, and so this unique term requires renewed
attention.51
In doxographies of pre-Socratic philosophy the expression ‘like-in-parts’ describes sub-
stances that are limited, knowable, and admit of physical or conceptual division into parts, but
whose parts were homogeneous with one another, as one part of a bone is identical with any
other part of the bone.52 Such substances were regarded as ‘simple’ not in the sense that they
were absolutely one along the lines of the first hypothesis of Plato’s Parmenides but only in the
sense that they were uniform. Understood in this way, ὁμοιομερής was not typically a theological
expression, so it is not immediately clear why it appears in AH 2.13.3. The best explanation is

réflexions sur la paternité de Dieu’, Transversalités 107 (2008), pp. 98–100. The Platonic antecedents of ‘fount’ have been noted
by Grant, Irenaeus, p. 148, n. 15; ‘Early Christianity and Pre-Socratic Philosophy’, p. 377, and elsewhere; Briggman, God, p. 92;
A. Bastit-Kalinowska, ‘“Dieu, source de tous biens” dans la théologie philosophique grecque et la première pensée chrétienne’,
in Guilhem Golfin (ed.), De l’action à l’acte: Mélanges de philosophie offerts à Michel Bastit (Paris, 2020), pp. 175–200. Briggman
also notes James 1:17 (God, p. 92, n. 111). Both ‘Father of all’ and ‘fount’ are Platonic terms that Irenaeus selects because they
express his own theology.
45
So Or. 11.7; cf. Apuleius, On Plato, 2.1.
46
Or. 11.10: trans. and text in Ryan C. Fowler, Imperial Plato: Albinus, Maximus, Apuleius (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing,
2016). Clement of Alexandria quotes the same line: Strom. 2.5.24.
47
Epicharmus was considered a contemporary of Xenophanes (Clement, Strom. 1.64.2) and pupil of Pythagoras (Diogenes
Laertius, Lives 8.78). Diogenes Laertius records Plato’s alleged dependence on Epicharmus at Lives 3.9–17.
48
Here I give Sextus’ quotation with the particles removed. The full text is: οὖλος ὁρᾷ, οὖλος δὲ νοεῖ, οὖλος δέ τ᾽ ἀκούει.
49
ὁ νοῶν ἀεί καὶ πάντα καὶ ἅμα: Or. 11.8. My trans.
50
The expressions ‘similar’ and ‘equal’ used to express God’s simplicity in 2.13.3 (cf. 2.13.9, 2.7.3) also contradict Parmenides
139e–140d. I omit discussion of them first because they seem to add little to the problem that is not already implied by similimem-
brius, and secondly because later Platonism allowed that which was ‘simple’ to be described as ‘like’ or ‘equal’. See, for example,
Apuleius’ description of the Forms: On Plato 1.6.1.
51
SC 293, pp. 241–2. Rousseau writes only, ‘il [similimembrius] ne fait, qu’évoquer, d’une manière imagée, cette absolue sim-
plicité de l’être divin’. Cf. Birrer, Der Mensch, p. 172.
52
See Aristotle, De gen. et cor. 314a; Chrysippus, fr. 772. For a concise discussion, see R. W. Sharples, ‘Strato of Lampsacus:
The Sources, Texts and Translations’, in Marie-Laurence Desclos and William W. Fortenbaugh (eds.), Strato of Lampsacus: Text,
Translation, and Discussion (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2011), p. 109, n. 1.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 157

that similimembrius summarizes Xenophanes’ affirmation of the likeness and equality of God’s
parts.53 But in receptions of Xenophanes the likeness of God’s parts is not a conclusion, but
rather a premiss in a broader line of theological reasoning. In Pseudo-Aristotle’s account, the
similarity or equality of God’s parts means that each of God’s parts is equidistant from the centre

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of God’s being, which leads to the conclusion that God is spherical, which may in turn support
an identification of God with the cosmos itself.54
Each of these points is quite foreign to Irenaeus’ theology.55 Irenaeus is, then, at least a step
removed from Xenophanes, and a step closer to Plato and subsequent Platonists who cannot
accept that God is spherical because such a doctrine implies that God is limited and composed
of parts.56 This does not reveal how Irenaeus related ‘simple and incomposite’ to similimembrius,
but one such reading already circulates in scholarly literature. Many, apparently interpreting
‘similimembrius’, have asserted that 2.13.3 teaches that God is ‘partless’.57 Such a reading would
bring Irenaeus’ idea of God’s simplicity into line with Platonic theology, but the validity of this
reading is not obvious. It requires justification.
In order to understand Irenaeus’ choice of similimembrius it will be helpful to turn first to
the problem that Irenaeus calls upon similimembrius to solve. Christopher Stead has suggested
that the ‘all mind’ statement in 2.13.3 is intended to be Irenaeus’ answer to the question of how
the simple God is to be reconciled with the ‘diversity of attributes’ ascribed to him in Christian
tradition.58 For Stead, the ‘all mind’ statement accomplishes this because, in Irenaeus’ interpre-
tation, the statement means that ‘the divine attributes are identical with each other and with
their possessor’.59 With each attribute ultimately identical with God himself and, using Jonatan
Simons’s phrase, with each attribute ‘mutually entailing’ each other attribute,60 it becomes diffi-
cult to envision multiplicity within God. In this way a conception of God as simple and incom-
posite is preserved. This is not to say that the ‘all mind’ statement is a technical equivalent to the
doctrine of God as ‘simple and incomposite’. As we will see in the next section, Irenaeus regards
the ‘all mind’ statement as an imperfect description of the transcendent God. The formula pro-
vides useful analogical language which allows composite human beings to speak of and concep-
tualize the simple God, but it is not a technical description of God’s nature.
Much the same explanation makes sense of why Irenaeus would refer to the simple and
incomposite God as similimembrius just before the ‘all mind’ statement. In this reading, simili-
membrius like the ‘all mind’ statement is not a technical term which Irenaeus intends to describe
God’s nature. It is, rather, an expression which in the context of Irenaeus’ polemic directs the
reader’s mind away from an inadequate image of God as composite towards a more pious notion
of God—one which is a better, though still imperfect, representation of God’s incomposite
simplicity. In 2.13.3, Irenaeus is criticizing and replacing the Valentinians’ representation of

53
See n. 16 above.
54
See MXG 977b1–3: ‘Again, Xenophanes says that being alike in all parts He must be spherical (πάντῃ δ᾽ ὅμοιον ὄντα
σφαιροειδῆ); for He cannot be of such a kind in one direction and not in another, but must be of that kind in every part’ (πάντῃ).
See also Aristotle, Metaph. 986b with G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (2nd edn., Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), pp. 171–2; Lesher, Xenophanes, pp. 100–102.
55
The cosmos, a θεός, is spherical in Timaeus 33b–34b, but the demiurge and First God of Middle Platonism is not.
56
See Plato, Parm. 137c–e, cited below, and 138c–d. For Alcinous, see Mansfeld, ‘Compatible Alternatives’, p. 111–12.
Another Christian heresiologist does not miss that Xenophanes’ ‘likeness in all parts’ is connected to God’s sphericity: see Ref.
1.14.2.
57
Lashier, Trinity, p. 87; Jonatán Simons, ‘God and eiusdem substantiae in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.17–8’, SP 109 (2021),
pp. 61–2; Norris glosses similimembrius with ‘not composed of parts’ (‘Transcendence’, p. 92).
58
Stead, Divine Substance, p. 187.
59
Divine Substance, p. 187, see with AH 2.13.8–9, 17.7, 28.4–5. Cf. already Kunze, Gotteslehre, p. 37, and recently, Briggman,
God, pp. 90–99.
60
Cf. Simons, ‘God and eiusdem substantiae’, p. 63.
158 • G. McCashen

the divine through the personification of a multiplicity of psychological faculties or ‘parts’.61

Irenaeus asserts that such imagery violates a correct notion of God’s simple oneness, particularly
since in their myths each ‘part’ of God’s fullness is emitted or ‘projected’ and therefore divided
from a prior ‘part’. Yet, since Irenaeus’ own Scriptures speak of God’s logos, he cannot dismiss the

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use of psychological imagery to represent God. Irenaeus needs, therefore, a way of speaking of
the ‘parts’ implied by Scripture which still allows the reader to conceive of God as one.
Irenaeus apparently regards similimembrius as meeting this need. By equating God’s various
‘members’, God’s mind, logos, etc., to each other by describing them as ‘similar’ in an absolute
sense, Irenaeus eliminates the possibility of imagining any one ‘member’ apart from any other.
Left without the ability to conceive of one part distinct from another, one’s conception of God
will better approximate God’s oneness. Functioning in this way, Irenaeus’ similimembrius is still
not as precise an expression of God’s incomposite simplicity as Alcinous’ ἀμερής, but neither
does it contradict a Platonic definition of God’s simplicity. It rather serves as an analogical way
of speaking of God that helps transition the reader from a Valentinian image of God as compos-
ite towards an understanding of God’s simple partlessness.
That Irenaeus does not mean similimembrius to imply God has ‘parts’ is corroborated by
two related passages. First, two paragraphs later Irenaeus complains that in his opponents’
system, God’s mind is ‘divided into parts’ (partiuntur), which suggests Irenaeus does not
view his expressions in 2.13.3 as affirming God is composed of parts. The same conclusion
follows from 2.28.4. There, Irenaeus contrasts the ‘composite’ human, whose actions are
slow because they must be administered ‘through parts’ (per partes), to God, who is ‘all
mind, all reason … always existing the same and similarly’, and whose actions are there-
fore instantaneous, involving no ‘affections and divisions’ (adfectus et divisiones). Irenaeus’
contrast of the human who acts per partes and God who does not implies that Irenaeus sees
God as not having parts. It is reasonable to assume this is Irenaeus’ perspective in 2.13 as
well because 2.28.4 alludes back to 2.13 with praediximus (‘we have said above’). In light
of this, it seems similimembrius is not meant to affirm that God has equal parts, but rather
to support a doctrine of God as simple and incomposite in the sense that he does not act
‘through parts’, ‘is not divided into parts’, or is, in a word, ‘partless’.

Platonism and the ‘All Mind’ Statement

This brings us to Irenaeus’ famous ‘all mind’ statement. Scholars often regard the statement as
a ‘pillar’ of Irenaeus’ theology and the key to his doctrine of divine simplicity. Irenaeus’ own
evaluations of the ‘all mind’ statement, however, do not present it as the apex of his theology. In
2.13.3, the statement is characteristic of ‘pious and religious’ speech, but Irenaeus immediately
offers a qualification that many scholars overlook:62

He is beyond these, and on account of this, ineffable (est autem et super haec, et propter hoc
inenarrabilis). He may well and rightly be called mind that comprehends all things, but not
like a human mind. He may most rightly be called light, but he is nothing like our light. In the
same manner in regard to all the remaining points; the Father of all things is in no way similar

61
For the components of the psychological imagery of the Valentinians as ‘parts’ see A. Orbe, Hacia la primera teologia de la
procesion del Verbo (Rome: Apud Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1958), pp. 373–6.
62
See Birrer, Der Mensch, p. 242, n. 350. Grant comments that Irenaeus’ doctrine is that God is ‘all mind’, not ‘beyond mind’:
‘The Fragments of the Greek Apologists and Irenaeus’, in J. Neville Birdsall and Robert W. Thomson (eds.), Biblical and Patristic
Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), p. 207. The neglect of 2.13.4 is further seen in Osborn’s empha-
sis on God as divine mind in Irenaeus’ thought: Irenaeus, pp. 27–48.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 159

to humanity’s littleness (Sic autem et in reliquis omnibus nulli similis erit omnium Pater hominum
pusillitati). Indeed we speak of him in such [terms] because of love,63 but it is understood that
he is above them by virtue of his greatness (2.13.4).64

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In this passage Irenaeus takes two terms from the ‘all mind’ statement, ‘mind’ and ‘light’, and
notes their inadequacy: both can be used to describe God, but God is nothing like the mind
and light with which human beings are familiar. The same applies, Irenaeus tells us, to ‘all the
remaining points’—the predicates in the ‘all mind’ statement, one presumes, but possibly also
other positive predicates such as similimembrius. Later in the same chapter Irenaeus’ devaluation
of the ‘all mind’ statement is even stronger. Explicitly referring to 2.13.3,65 Irenaeus says of the
one who regards God as ‘all mind’: ‘even he will think less of the Father of all’.66 Here even more
than in 2.13.4, Irenaeus does not treat the ‘all mind’ statement as the key to proper theology. His
criticism of the formula is odd. It stands in contrast with the significance the formula has been
assigned in scholarship, with Irenaeus’ unqualified use of it elsewhere, and with his praise of it
in 2.13.3.
The tension in Irenaeus’ disparate evaluations of the ‘all mind’ passage in 2.13 is amplified by
propositions that seem to contradict the ‘all mind’ statement. On one hand, Irenaeus turns to
Xenophanes for a positive way to speak (dicere) of God, but on the other hand, Irenaeus refers
to God as ‘ineffable’ (inenarrabilis, ἄρρητος), not able to be spoken of.67 It is likely that ‘inef-
fable’ is another expression that Irenaeus borrows from Platonic theology.68 Here again, then,
an apparent tension or contradiction in Irenaeus’ theology corresponds to his juxtaposition of
pre-Socratic and Platonic materials.
As before, it is likely that Irenaeus made sense of the apparently conflicting materials by inter-
preting the Xenophanes material in light of Platonic theology. A parallel situation in Alcinous
is instructive on this point. Like Irenaeus, Alcinous makes apparently contradictory statements
about God:

The first God is eternal (ἀΐδιός), ineffable (ἄρρητος), self-perfect—that is, un-needful
(ἀπροσδεής); ever-perfect—that is, always perfect; all-perfect—that is, perfect in all; deity,
essentiality, truth, symmetry, good. But I speak not as if these things were separate, but under-
standing all these to be one (ἀλλ᾽ ὡς κατὰ πάντα ἑνὸς νοουμένου).69

63
Scholars usually identify ‘love’ in this and parallel passages with God’s economic activities and ‘greatness’ with God’s nature:
cf. 4.20.1, 4–5, 3.24.2, 2.6.1; Ysabel de Andia, Homo Vivens: Incorruptibilité et divinisation de l’homme selon Irénée de Lyon (Paris:
Études Augustiniennes, 1986) p. 30; Briggman, God, pp. 83–5; Slusser, ‘Heart’; alternatively, see Ochagavía, Visibile Patris Filius,
p. 76. Similarly, according to Dillon, Alcinous correlates negative language with God’s nature and positive language to God’s ‘rela-
tions with the world’: Handbook, p. 108. The correspondence suggests Irenaeus is pressing a Platonic interpretation of kataphatic
language into the service of his Christian theology.
64
Trans. modified from Dominic J. Unger, St. Irenaeus of Lyons: Against the Heresies, Book 2 (Ancient Christian Writers; New
York: Paulist Press, 2012), hereafter ACW. For the last phrase cf. Apuleius, De deo Soc. 3.5.
65
With the phrase quemadmodum praediximus.
66
2.13.8: minus quidem adhuc de Patre omnium sentiet.
67
Widdicombe notes this ‘tension’—of which he believes Irenaeus was oblivious: ‘Irenaeus and the Knowledge of God’ p. 143.
For criticism see Briggman, God, pp. 96–7, n. 133.
68
H. A. Wolfson has pointed out that in the extant literature Philo is the first to refer to God as ἄρρητος, which is a predicate
he reasons to from God’s simplicity (Philo, vol. 2 [rev. edn., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962], pp. 111–17). Since
ἄρρητος appears soon after in authors who did not know Philo, Dillon supposes that Philo reflects a tradition of God’s ineffability
in Alexandrian Platonism: Middle Platonists, p. 155; cf. Daniélou, Gospel Message, p. 331. For second-century uses of ἄρρητος for
God see Didask.10.4 quoted below, Maximus, Or. 11.9, anonymous Parmenides commentary, fr. 1, p. 21.3, Apoc. John 6.16–17,
indictum in Apuleius, On Plato 1.5.1 (cf. De deo Soc. 3.5, Apol. 64.7), Justin, 1 Apol. 9.3, 2 Apol. 10.8, Theophilus, Ad Autol. 1.3. Cf.
too Dem. 8. For ἄρρητος in the New Testament, 2 Cor. 12:4. The term would have appeared to Irenaeus another item of Platonic
philosophy compatible with his Christian Scriptures and tradition.
69
Didask. 10.3.
160 • G. McCashen

Alcinous’ statement has long struck scholars as ‘incoherent’.70 The apparent contradiction lies
in Alcinous’ statement that God is ‘ineffable’, the same term Irenaeus juxtaposes with his posi-
tive description of God in 2.13.3–4,71 followed by positive predicates: ‘self-perfect’, which is at
least glossed with a negative expression, ‘deity, essentiality, symmetry, good’. After his positive

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description of God, Alcinous becomes even more apophatic: God is neither whole nor part,
same nor different, mover nor moved.72 Moreover, God does not possess ‘any attributes’, includ-
ing bad, good, and indifferent.73 When Alcinous both offers a positive description of God and
refers to God as ineffable and beyond attribution, he like Irenaeus appears to contradict himself
in the same breath.
Mansfeld solves the apparent contradiction in Alcinous’ thought by appealing to the three
‘ways’ of knowing God that Alcinous describes later in Didaskalikos 10.74 Essential as they are
for understanding both Alcinous and Irenaeus, they must be described in some detail. The first
‘way’ Alcinous calls ‘knowing according to abstraction’ (νόησις ἡ κατὰ ἀφαίρεσιν), or the via neg-
ativa.75 Alcinous defines this method as the removal of ideas which misrepresent God until one
arrives at a worthier notion of God, as one might do by removing the idea of depth from a plane,
and width from the resultant line. The result of this process is a notion of a ‘point’ (τὸ σημεῖον)
that is more suited to represent the simple God.
The geometrical example Alcinous gives to illustrate his first ‘way’ is Neopythagorean,76 but
the broader rationale for this ‘way’ of thinking about God and the apophatic theologies that
often accompanied it reaches back to Plato’s Parmenides 137–42.77 There, Plato argues that for
Oneness to be truly one, it must have no internal divisions or multiplicity, including the multi-
plicity that would be entailed if the one participated in any other form. Since predication entails
the subject’s participation in that which is predicated of it, it is accurate to speak of Oneness, or,
interpreted theologically, it is accurate to speak of the God who is one, only in terms of what
God is not: the ‘One’ is not limited and has no parts (131d, 137d), has no beginning, middle, or
end (137d; cf. AH 2.1.2), cannot be enclosed (περιέχοιτο; cf. AH 2.1.1ff.), cannot experience
motion (138c–e; cf. AH 2.13.5), and cannot have relation to time (141a; cf. 2.13.1–3, 8–9).
This rationale led later Platonists to develop modes of theological discourse which allowed the
deity to be described without violating a notion of God’s simplicity or utter oneness. Among
these formulaic or ‘stereotyped’ modes of expression is the denial of pairs of opposite predi-
cates, such as Alcinous and Apocryphon of John offer, but a simpler and more common method
was to deny the deity predicates by means of the alpha-privative.78 Thus, as we see in Alcinous,
God is not σῶμα, but is ἀσώματος. He is not ῥητός but ἄρρητος, and so on. Since these adjectives

70
So Mansfeld, ‘Compatible Alternatives’, p. 92. Cf. Dillon, Handbook, p. 103, with pp. 107–8 and 111.
71
Cf. Norris, ‘Transcendence’, p. 92. For inenarrabilis as ἄρρητος in the Greek fragments: see esp. 1.15.5, 1.16.3, 5.5.1, and
Irenaeus’ echo of 2 Cor. 12:2–4 (quoted at 2.30.7) at 2.30.8 (cf. 3.14.1).
72
10.4, drawing on Parmenides 137c–d, 139b–e, 138b–139b, according to Dillon, Handbook, pp. 108, 110.
73
10.4, trans. Dillon.
74
‘Compatible Alternatives’, esp. pp. 107–12. Pleše raises objections to Mansfeld’s ‘ingenious’ reading: Poetics, pp. 82–91,
at 85. Pleše points out that Alcinous’ examples of the viae do not always correspond to the ways in which Mansfeld suggests
Alcinous practises them earlier in Didask. 10. Possibly Alcinous’ examples are not the only way of practising the respective viae.
Mansfeld himself notes that the viae were not practised as systematically as Alcinous’ discussion implies. Henny Fiskå Hägg fol-
lows Mansfeld’s reading at Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006), pp. 121–5.
75
Dillon, Handbook, p. 107, notes that Celsus (Origen, Cels. 7.42) and Clement, Strom. 5.11.71 use the term ἀνάλυσις for this
method.
76
So E. R. Dodds, Proclus: The Elements of Theology (2nd edn., Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), p. 312. John Whittaker confirms
Dodds’s suggestion in ‘Neopythagoreanism and Negative Theology’, SO 44 (1969), pp. 109–25. The parallels adduced by these
scholars show the analogy was widespread.
77
Indeed, Alcinous draws several negations from this passage. See n. 72 above. For ‘partless’ Dillon also notes Sophist 245a.
78
See Pleše, Poetics, p. 77.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 161

say what God is not rather than what God is, they provide a means of describing and praising
the deity without involving the simple deity in the multiplicity that predication would entail.
The radical apophaticism of Alcinous is, then, thoroughly rooted in Platonic tradition and
logic, above all reasoning from the absolute oneness or simplicity of God.79 But Platonists had

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to reconcile the logic of God’s utter oneness or simplicity with the positive language for God
in the texts of their school’s founder. To meet this need Didask. 10.5–6 presents two additional
modes of ‘knowing’. In Alcinous’ second ‘way’, the via analogiae (ἡ κατὰ ἀναλογίαν), sense-
perceptible objects provide analogies by which one might arrive at a notion of God. So, Alcinous
explains, the sun is not identical with the first Mind (ὁ πρῶτος νοῦς), but provides a way of
conceiving how the Mind illuminates the soul.80 Similarly, Alcinous’ third ‘way’, the via eminen-
tiae, relies on sense-perceptible objects to obtain knowledge of the divine. Alcinous, following
Plato’s Symposium 210, explains that one can conceive of God’s beauty by comprehending first
the beauty in bodies and increasingly eminent objects and ideas until one arrives at a notion of
Beauty itself.
These three ‘ways’ of knowing or speaking of God, according to Mansfeld, reveal the logic
behind the apparently contradictory mixture of positive and negative predicates in Alcinous’
theological discussion. The positive epithets represent Alcinous practising the kataphatic viae,
the via eminentiae and via analogiae, while the negative predicates are examples of Alcinous prac-
ticing the apophatic via negativa. Alcinous’ mixture of the viae does not represent confusion, but
rather the practice of three methods for arriving at a conception of God. It may remain the case
that the apophatic and kataphatic viae appear paradoxical, but according to Mansfeld Alcinous
intended the via negativa to be recognized as superior to the kataphatic viae in the sense that its
propositions are technically more accurate. Analogical and eminential language is valid in so far
as certain positive expressions can direct one’s mind toward the divine, but its validity depends
upon the speaker remaining aware of the limitations of positive language.81
The Platonic ‘ways’ have clear potential for explaining why Irenaeus thought he could call
God both ‘ineffable’ and ‘all mind’, a statement which Irenaeus labels both ‘pious’ and at the
same time ‘lesser’. Mansfeld related Irenaeus’ 2.13.3–4 to the Platonic viae, but Irenaeus schol-
ars have rarely followed his reading.82 Quite the opposite—many maintain that Irenaeus is not
operating philosophically in 2.13.4.83 It is necessary, therefore, to take up the question anew.
We begin by rooting Irenaeus’ use of the Platonic viae in two correspondences between
Alcinous and Irenaeus that Mansfeld does not mention. First, Irenaeus like Alcinous claims that
his various positive expressions are not to be understood as separate from each other, but as
‘one’. In 2.13.9, Irenaeus writes, ‘For mind and word and life and incorruptibility and truth and
wisdom and goodness, and all such are heard together with the appellation of God’ (appella-
tioni Dei coobaudiuntur). Irenaeus’ thought is virtually indistinguishable from Alcinous’ inter-
pretation of his own positive language in 10.3: ‘I speak not as if these things were separate, but
understanding all these to be one’. In both cases, each ‘attribute’ goes ‘together with’ or is not

79
So Hägg, Clement, p. 127.
80
Cf. Maximus, Or. 11.9; the anonymous Parmenides commentary, fr. 2, p. 23, line 13ff.
81
‘Compatible Alternatives’, pp. 109–10.
82
For exceptions, see Bastit, ‘Irénée philosophe?’, who cites Mansfeld’s article on p. 247 and relates the viae to Irenaeus with-
out reference to Mansfeld at pp. 250–51; and Osborn’s unclear remarks: Irenaeus, pp. 37–8, n. 30. Scholars who see the Platonic
viae here have often focused on just one: for the via analogiae: de Andia, Homo Vivens, p. 31; for the via eminentiae, Birrer, Der
Mensch, p. 242, n. 350; Briggman, God, pp. 96–7, n. 133. P. Beuzart describes Irenaeus as moving from the ‘via eminentiae’ to the
‘via negationis’: Essai sur la Théologie d’Irénée (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1908), p. 38.
83
See recently Slusser, ‘Heart’, p. 135; Widdicombe contrasts Irenaeus with the apologists, whom Widdicombe credits with
using Alcinous’ methods (‘Irenaeus and the Knowledge of God’, p. 143). See earlier, Th.-André Audet, ‘Orientations théologiques
chez Saint Irénée: Le contexte mental d’une ΓΝΩΣΙΣ ΑΛΗΘΗΣ’, Traditio 1 (1943), p. 39. Ochagavía, Visibile Patris Filius, pp.
27–8. Ochagavía elsewhere relates Irenaeus’ apophaticism to Stoicism (p. 76).
162 • G. McCashen

‘separate’ from every other attribute. Christopher Stead has shown that this allows Irenaeus to
maintain his doctrine of divine simplicity without giving up traditional positive language about
God.84 In Stead’s account, Irenaeus’ solution contrasts with ‘Platonic’ solutions used by other
early Christians. But to the contrary, it appears that Irenaeus reconciled kataphatic theology

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with divine simplicity by drawing a different resource from the same Platonic tradition that
other early Christian theologians also found fruitful.
A second parallel between Alcinous and Irenaeus further grounds Irenaeus’ treatment of the
Xenophanes material in a Platonic framework. Two books later, Irenaeus begins his final ‘all
mind’ statement with perfectus in omnibus (4.11.2). As his discussion unfolds, Irenaeus twice
describes that which is perfectus as that which is not lacking: in 4.13.4, God is not needful (indi-
gentiam) of Abraham’s friendship, for God is perfectus. In the next paragraph, God is ‘rich, per-
fect, and without need’.85 If the association of the perfect with that which lacks deficiency can
be applied to 4.11.2, it would appear that Irenaeus thinks of God’s ‘perfections’ in the ‘all mind’
statement as denoting God’s lack of deficiency in each area. God is ‘all mind’ because he does
not lack intellect, all light because, as Irenaeus emphasizes in 2.8.2, his light is not deficient,
and so on. Here again Irenaeus appears close to Alcinous, who, in the passage quoted above,
considers positive predications as perfections, and furthermore, defines ‘perfection’ as lack-of-
deficiency (ἀπροσδεής).86
These two correspondences in the ways Irenaeus and Alcinous reconcile positive language
with their views of God make Irenaeus’ use the Platonic viae in 2.13.3–4 the more striking.
Irenaeus does not define the viae as Alcinous does,87 and like Alcinous and others Irenaeus does
not practise one via in isolation from the others. Yet, key tropes from each of the three viae are
discernible. In 2.13.4, Irenaeus draws in the via negativa when he writes, ‘He is, however, beyond
(super) these, and on account of this, ineffable’ (inenarrabilis). This statement fits a typical
expression of the via negativa in Platonic theology. If inenarrabilis translates ἄρρητος, Irenaeus
is expressing the via negativa using the same expression used by Alcinous, Celsus, and others in
connection with the Platonic viae.88 When Irenaeus says God is super ‘mind’ and ‘light’, Irenaeus
implies that God is neither mind nor light, and when he writes that the Father ‘is in no way
similar to humankind’s littleness’—the ‘littleness’ implied by the ‘remaining’ points of the ‘all
mind’ statement—he effectively negates each predicate in Xenophanes’ pious ‘all mind’ state-
ment. Finally, when Irenaeus qualifies the biblical predicates ‘life’, ‘incorruption’, and ‘truth’ with
the phrase ‘as far as it is possible and dignified for humans to hear and speak of God’ (2.13.9), he
implies that strictly speaking, it is not possible to hear and speak of God.
Space precludes detailed discussion of passages outside 2.13,89 but it is noteworthy that
Irenaeus balances alpha-privatives that emphasize God’s inscrutability with alpha-privatives
that emphasize God’s incompositeness and incorporeality in AH 1.15.5. It appears, then, that
he understood God’s ineffability and simplicity to be logically related. There is no clear indi-
cation he would have made such a connection by following through Platonic reasoning com-
pletely—by associating predication itself with participation in something other than oneness,

84
Divine Substance, pp. 186–9.
85
dives, perfectus et sine indigentia; 4.14.1.
86
Cf. 3.8.3, nullius indigens, ipse sibi sufficiens et adhuc reliquis omnibus ut sint hoc ipsum praestans; for sufficiency or lack of need
as perfection in Platonic literature, see Apuleius, On Plato, 1.8.1; Pleše, Poetics, p. 88; Dillon, Handbook, p. 104. This is another
Platonic definition Christian theologians found useful: see Apology of Aristides 1.2c, Syriac and Armenian columns, in Michael
Lattke, Aristides ‘Apologie’: übersetzt und erklärt (Freiburg: Herder, 2018); Apoc. John 6.4–6.
87
He does, however, describe a Pythagorean doctrine in which the mind can ascend until it arrives, exhausted, at the notion
of utter oneness, ‘the one and indivisible being’ (2.14.6).
88
For Celsus, see Origen, Cels. 7.42 with p. 429, n. 4 in Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1953, repr. 1980). See also the literature in n. 68 above.
89
E.g. 4.20.5.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 163

and thereby with multiplicity. All that 2.13.3 demands is that Irenaeus regarded God’s simple
incompositeness as so distinguishing divine nature from humanity that composite and bodily
human beings had no experience by which to form an adequate notion of the divine. This caveat
aside, Irenaeus has gone far in incorporating the theological idiom of Platonism along with a

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substantial amount of the reasoning that justifies the idiom.
Also present in AH 2.13.4 are key tropes from the kataphatic viae. Irenaeus distinguishes
between positive words used to represent God and the reality of the simple God’s ineffability in
2.13.4: ‘He may well and rightly be called mind that comprehends all things, but not like human
mind. He may most rightly be called light, but he is nothing like our light’. Irenaeus’ explanation
accords with the via analogiae in that it takes two items from the ‘all mind’ statement represent-
ative of common human experience and recognizes them as valid symbols or analogies for the
divine. In so doing, he selects two items from the Xenophanes material that echo two elements
of Alcinous’ own analogy in Didask. 10.5—the mind and the light of the sun. Yet, as Briggman
recently maintained, Irenaeus’ claim that God transcends these perceptible objects is suggestive
of Alcinous’ via eminentiae.90 The same can be said of Irenaeus’ ‘fount of all good things’—a
phrase which echoes many texts unanimously regarded as employing the Platonic viae.91 For
our purposes it is unnecessary to decide whether any given expression of 2.13.3–4 falls into
the via analogiae or via eminentiae. As Mansfeld explains, the viae were not always practised
with the systematic distinctions that Alcinous describes in Didask. 10.5–6. Indeed, Clement of
Alexandria’s rather technical discussion does not differentiate between the two kataphatic viae.92
The salient point is that Irenaeus draws upon tropes from the kataphatic viae in conjunction
with tropes from the via negativa of Platonic theology.
In light of Irenaeus’ use of the Platonic viae, his use of the ‘all mind’ statement to describe
the ‘ineffable’ God and ambivalent assessments of the statement no longer appear contradic-
tory. Irenaeus uses the ‘all mind’ statement which evolved from Xenophanes as a practice of
the kataphatic viae. The expressions in the ‘all mind’ statement and likely similimembrius are
useful for arriving at a conception of God but are not, Irenaeus explains, sufficient to account
for the simple and ineffable deity. Furthermore, Irenaeus’ definition of the predicates of the ‘all
mind’ statement as ‘perfections’ or non-deficiencies, each of which is to be understood together
with every other, accords with Alcinous’ rationale for using positive predicates of the divine.
Irenaeus, therefore, interprets the Xenophanes material through Platonic philosophy current in
the second century—the same traditions which his Christian colleagues and opponents used to
develop their theologies.

4. PL ATONIC THEOLOGY IN SUPPORT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

This final section turns from Irenaeus’ use of Platonic theology as a means of interpreting the
Xenophanes material to his use of Platonic reasoning to advance Christian theology. It is nec-
essary to begin with a categorical distinction. John Peter Kenney and others have differentiated
the Platonic way of thinking of the oneness of the divine from a Jewish or Christian way of
thinking of God’s oneness.93 In Kenney’s account, a Platonist is likely to define God’s oneness in
terms of his primal causation of all subsequent things and the simplicity of the divine nature. In
contrast, while Jewish writers like Philo and some early Christians accepted Platonic notions of
God’s oneness, such an approach was not common through the second century. Rather, most

90
God, pp. 96–7, n. 133.
91
See Alcinous, Didask. 10.3, Maximus, Or. 11.11, Apoc. John 8.14–9.6.
92
‘Compatible Alternatives’, pp. 114–15.
93
Cf. Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, p. 127.
164 • G. McCashen

Christians followed the Scriptures in approaching God’s oneness by ‘establishing a single deity
against a plurality of gods’,94 or in Irenaeus’ words, by establishing the one and only God, ‘to the
exclusion of others’.95
It is the former Platonic way of considering God’s oneness that has been the focus of this

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study. The relationship between Irenaeus’ appropriation of Platonic theology and his Christian
doctrine, especially his use of simplicity to distinguish the Creator from his creation, we have
had little occasion to unpack.96 Nor have we delineated Irenaeus’ disagreements with Platonic
metaphysics.97 In emphasizing Irenaeus’ oft-neglected appropriation of Platonic theology I by
no means wish to imply that Irenaeus is less of a Christian theologian. Indeed, Irenaeus’ concern
in Adversus haereses is to defend God’s exclusive or numerical oneness. To this project God’s
simple oneness is ancillary, but its ancillary role does not make Irenaeus’ philosophical theol-
ogy less interesting. It is, in fact, in defending God’s numerical oneness that Irenaeus advances
Christian philosophical theology by bringing it into logical connection with Platonic reflections
on the simple oneness of God.
Irenaeus’ use of Platonic reasoning, specifically, reasoning out the implications of absolute
oneness, to advance a Christian idea of God as exclusively one comes in the argumentation of
AH 2.1.2ff. The argument begins,

Really, how would it be possible for another Fullness (plenitudo) or Beginning (initium)
or Power (potestas) or another God (alius Deus) to be beyond (extra) him, since God, the
Fullness of all things, necessarily contains them all without limit (in immenso; R: ἐν τῷ ἀπείρῳ)
and is not contained by anyone?98

Here Irenaeus is arguing that there is not ‘another God’ besides the Creator. The premisses
of the argument Irenaeus will use to defend God’s exclusive oneness are built into the opening
rhetorical question, where ‘God’ is synonymous with plenitudo, initium, and potestas. Irenaeus
quickly moves from ‘Fullness’ to ‘Fullness of all things’ and infers that God contains all things in
immenso without being contained himself.99 Irenaeus then slows to consider the implications of
each half of his ‘containing all, uncontained’ formula.
In the text immediately following the above quotation, Irenaeus, perhaps drawing on Stoic
ideas, uses the first half of the formula to argue for God’s oneness,100 but we are interested in
Irenaeus’ use of the negative half of the formula, his argument that there can be no other God
because God is ‘uncontained’.101 Irenaeus argues:

94
J. P. Kenney, Mystical Monotheism: A Study in Ancient Platonic Theology (Hanover: Brown University, 1991), p. 151, with
pp. 40–43.
95
In contrast, Platonists assimilate other ‘gods’ into a hierarchy of deities: Apuleius, On Plato, 1.11; Origen, Cels. 1.24, 5.45;
Plutarch’s De Is. et Os., Maximus, Or. 2.10.
96
Such work is carried out in, for example, Lashier, Trinity, ch. 2; Briggman, God, p. 161. For createdness as a correlate of
compositeness see Calvenus Taurus in Dillon, Platonists, p. 243.
97
See especially his rejection of the divinity of the human mind, and consequent insistence that God is incomprehensibilis in
animo (4.19.2), which contradicts Maximus’ Or. 11.
98
Trans. ACW. See SC 293, p. 203 for Rousseau’s Greek.
99
The significance of the ‘containing all, uncontained’ formula in Irenaeus’ thought has been recognized at least since Kunze,
Gotteslehre, p. 30.
100
See Barnes, ‘Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology’, pp. 78–9, with AH 2.13.7. The relationship between 2.13.7, Stoicism, and
Christian Scripture ( John 4:24, Ps. 138:7–8) and tradition (e.g. Hermas, Sim. 1, quoted at AH 4.20.2) deserves more scrutiny
than can be given here.
101
Briggman notes that in Philo the negative half of the formula ‘has the basic function of establishing the supreme God over
against lesser entities’: God, p. 77.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 165

If there were anything outside [God] … He would have a beginning, a middle, and an end in
relation to the things which are outside him (terminum autem et medietatem et finem habebit ad
eos qui sunt extra eum).102 If, however, he is an end (finis) to things which are below, he is also a
beginning (initium) to things which are above. Similarly, it is entirely necessary that he experi-

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ence the very same in relation to the remaining parts (ex reliquis partibus) and to be contained
and limited and enclosed (contineri et determinari et includi) by things which are beyond. For
the one who is the end of the things below him necessarily and in all ways circumscribes and
surrounds the thing of which he is the end (is enim qui est deorsum finis necessario omni modo
circumscribit et circumdat eum qui finiatur in eum).103

In this paragraph, Irenaeus argues that if one rejects God’s exclusive oneness by positing
another God, one must necessarily hold an improper understanding of the nature of the first
God. The first God, Irenaeus argues, will have beginning, middle, and end, and he will be cir-
cumscribed or limited by the second God—the second Fullness.104 Irenaeus proceeds by teasing
out further absurdities that follow from conceiving of God as limited by a beginning and end:
there would be something ‘greater … more stable and more powerful’ than God, and thus God’s
omnipotence would be destroyed (2.1.2). Furthermore, there would arise an infinite regress of
gods (2.1.3),105 with the result that God could only act within and be known within his own
small sphere (2.1.5, 2.6.1–3). In each case, Irenaeus is arguing that to posit a God outside the
true God requires one to maintain that God is limited in some way, which is unacceptable.
Though scholars often malign this argument as unphilosophical,106 the premiss that God
is without finis, ‘unlimited’ or ‘infinite’, in 2.1.2 is informed by the Platonic definition of God
as simple and incomposite along with Platonic reasoning on absolute oneness.107 Admittedly
Irenaeus does not spell this out. In 2.1.2 Irenaeus assumes the reader will recognize that God
should be thought of as unlimited just as in 2.13.3 he expects the reader to agree that God
should be conceived of as simple and incomposite.108 In neither case does Irenaeus justify the
premiss by explaining the philosophical reasoning underlying his claim. Nonetheless, Irenaeus’
comments imply that his assertion of God’s lack of limit is an informed philosophical position.
Indeed, Irenaeus’ remarks suggest the influence of philosophical reasoning that linked oneness
to partlessness and partlessness to infinity, reasoning that can be found in the writing of Plato
himself.109

102
For terminum as ‘beginning’, see Briggman, God, p. 73, n. 9. Having ‘beginning’, ‘middle’, and ‘increase’, distinguishes crea-
tures from the uncreated God in 4.11.2.
103
Trans. modified from ACW. Irenaeus refers to God as indeterminabilis in his own theological formulation (AH 2.25.4). Sine
initio et sine fine features at AH 3.8.3. ‘Unmeasured’ is also common.
104
For explicit comments that these conclusions are unacceptable, see 2.1.2, 2.8.3: ‘It is irrational and impious to invent a place
in which the one who is according to them Fore-Father ceases and has end’ (cessat et finem habet).
105
The argument of infinite regress is, as Norris notes (‘Irenaeus and Plotinus’, p. 18), comparable to Plato, Parmenides
131e–132b; Aristotle, Metaph. 990b, 1038b.
106
See e.g. R. Greer, ‘The Dog and the Mushrooms: Irenaeus’s View of the Valentinians Assessed’, in B. Layton (ed.), The
Rediscovery of Gnosticism: The School of Valentinus (Leiden: Brill, 1980), pp. 156–7: Irenaeus argues without ‘any degree of phil-
osophical sophistication’. Greer cites Irenaeus’ use of ‘rather crude spatial terms’ and an alleged unawareness of the connection
between God’s being uncontained and ineffable. On the latter, see Briggman, God, pp. 80–87. Irenaeus certainly criticizes the
myth that uses spatial imagery in spatial terms, but he also considers figurative interpretations: e.g. 2.5.2. Irenaeus’ use of dilemma
may appear unphilosophical (so Audet, ‘Orientations théologiques’, p. 53), but the device is employed by Aristotle, Chrysippus
(see Birrer, Der Mensch, pp. 49, 65–7), and Plotinus (En. II.9, Against the Gnostics).
107
Briggman, God, pp. 72–9, has shown Irenaeus held a positive notion of God’s infinity, or omnipresence. Here I focus on the
negative sense of ‘infinity’, which I use as a less cumbersome equivalent of ‘unlimitedness’.
108
This premiss has been granted to a degree by his opponents’ language: see Schoedel, ‘“Topological” Theology’, pp. 100,
102–3, with Norris, ‘Insufficiency of Scripture’, p. 76.
109
Compare Schoedel’s comment, early Christians found in ‘Greek sources … arguments that linked the Oneness of Being
with its infinity’: ‘Enclosing, Not Enclosed’, p. 77. Aristotle Metaph. 1067a coordinates ‘simple’ and ‘infinite’.
166 • G. McCashen

It will be instructive to see how oneness and limitlessness connect in Platonic reasoning
before examining Irenaeus’ parallel logic. In Parmenides, Plato argues:

And if it [the one] has no parts (μέρος), it can have no beginning, or end, or middle, for those

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would be parts of it (οὔτ᾽ ἂν ἀρχὴν οὔτε τελευτὴν οὔτε μέσον ἔχοι· μέρη γὰρ ἂν ἤδη αὐτοῦ τὰ
τοιαῦτα εἴη) … End and beginning are, however, the limits of everything (καὶ μὴν τελευτή γε
καὶ ἀρχὴ πέρας ἑκάστου) … so the one, if it has neither beginning nor end, is unlimited … and
it is without form, for it partakes neither of the round nor of the straight (ἄπειρον ἄρα τὸ ἕν, εἰ
μήτε ἀρχὴν μήτε τελευτὴν ἔχει … καὶ ἄνευ σχήματος ἄρα· οὔτε γὰρ ἂν στρογγύλου οὔτε εὐθέος
μετέχει).110

It is uncertain when this passage was first interpreted theologically or metaphysically.111

Alcinous cites it in his discussion of syllogisms (Didask. 6.5–6), but that Alcinous is inter-
ested in the logic of Parmenides need not mean he was uninterested in its theological potential.
Indeed, Didask. 10.4 draws its negations from the same passage of Parmenides.112 Furthermore,
in Didask. 10.7 as in Parmenides, God’s oneness or simplicity entails his partlessness. Moreover,
the anonymous Parmenides commentary clearly treats Parmenides’ first hypothesis as God, and
some scholars would date it in the pre-Plotinian era.113
Irenaeus, then, may have encountered the reasoning of Parm. 137 in handbook discussions
on God or logic, or it may simply be that his commitment to the Platonic doctrine of God’s
incomposite partlessness influenced the way he read other philosophies or reasoned himself.
Whatever the case, his own theological reasoning has a distinct affinity with Plato’s reasoning
from oneness to partlessness to infinity, which, in a second-century context, could easily sup-
port a connection between divine simplicity and divine infinity.114 The key here is that both
Parmenides and AH 2.1.2 connect what is ‘unlimited’ to that which is without ‘beginning, mid-
dle, and end’. To be sure, Irenaeus’ use of the ‘beginning, middle, end’ formula does not neces-
sarily indicate dependence on Platonism. Scholars have pointed out similar formulae in other
traditions that Irenaeus appears to use.115 In MXG, for example, Melissus argues that what is
unlimited or infinite (ἄπειρον) has no beginning (ἀρχὴν) or end (τελευτὴν). Melissus reasons
further that what is ἄπειρον must also be ἕν, since if there were more than one ‘unlimited’, each
‘unlimited’ would limit (περαίνειν) the other, which is absurd.116 Undoubtedly Irenaeus’ argu-
ments echo Melissus’, but if Irenaeus has drawn on MXG, he has again read pre-Socratic material
through a Platonic lens.
The influence of Platonic reasoning on AH 2.1.2 can be seen both by comparing Irenaeus’
comments in AH 2.1.2 with AH 2.13 and by examining 2.1.2 itself. In respect to the former, it is

110
Parmenides 137d–e, LCL 167, modified for concision. Laws 715e places God beyond beginning, middle, and end. Irenaeus
is among the many ancients to quote the passage: see AH 3.25.5.
111
For an overview, see Clark, ‘Anonymous Commentary’.
112
See n. 72 above and Ip, Origen, p. 34. See too Numenius, who refers to God as ‘simple’ in fr. 11 and ‘one’ in fr. 19. According
to Dillon, Platonists, p. 368, Numenius attributes to God many characteristics of Parmenides’ first hypothesis in fr. 5.
113
Kevin Corrigan, ‘Platonism and Gnosticism: The Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides, Middle or Neoplatonic?’,
in John D. Turner and R. Majercik (eds.), Gnosticism and Later Platonism: Themes, Figures, and Texts (Atlanta: SBL, 2001), pp.
141–77.
114
In the Latin text of AH 2.13.8 simplex becomes uno. We have, of course, already seen the relationship between ‘simple’ and
‘partless’.
115
Cf. MXG 977a, 4–6 on Xenophanes, where non-being rather than the One is unlimited. Plutarch agrees with Chrysippus
that ‘what is infinite has no beginning, middle, or end’ (Stoic Self-contradictions, ch. 44, 1054b, LCL 470) but rejects the Stoic idea
that there is infinite void outside the universe. Irenaeus also rejects any notion of void (2.3.1, 2.4), and the argument of 2.1.1ff.
precludes any ‘infinite’ thing being outside anything else.
116
MXG, 974a10–17, which Schoedel compares to Philo, Aet. Mund. 106, Plotinus, En. 5.1.8, and Proclus, In Plat. Tim. 161a
(‘“Topological” Theology’, pp. 100–102).
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 167

telling that many of the terms that Irenaeus uses in AH 2.1.2 to describe what God would be if
he were not unlimited (contineo, circumscribo/circumscriptio, and circumdo) are said in AH 2.13.6
to imply that God has a ‘form’ (figura) or ‘body’ (corpora). As we have seen, the discussion
immediately preceding 2.13.6 denies that the simple and incomposite God is corporeal. We

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might infer, though from this alone it is not proven that Irenaeus inferred, that God is unlimited
because he is simple, since what is limited is corporeal, and what is corporeal is not simple as
God is. In this way Irenaeus’ statements in 2.13 and 2.1.2 imply a logical connection between
God’s simplicity and infinity.
Given the latent connection between simplicity and infinity in Adversus haereses, it is the
more significant that Irenaeus unlike Melissus uses the Platonic tripartite formula, ‘beginning,
middle, and end’. In Pseudo-Aristotle’s presentation Melissus is concerned only with establish-
ing the lack of limit on either ‘side’ of God, not necessarily with God’s utter unity or partlessness.
This preoccupation leaves Pseudo-Aristotle’s Melissus no reason to deny that God has a ‘mid-
dle’—and indeed, he does not. Like Pseudo-Aristotle’s Melissus, Irenaeus’ argument is most
concerned with establishing the lack of limit on either side of God, for it is this lack of limit that
guarantees there is no ‘second God’ extra the true deity. Reference to God’s ‘middle’ plays no
role on his argumentation, but nonetheless, Irenaeus uses Parmenides’ tripartite formula, ‘begin-
ning, middle, and end’.117
The likely explanation is that Irenaeus’ retention of ‘middle’ reflects the impact of the Platonic
doctrine of God as simple, incomposite, and partless on his thinking. As Irenaeus refers to God’s
limitlessness, he is also presuming that God lacks ‘parts’, beginning, middle, or end, as might a
Platonist who took it as an axiom that what is one and incomposite is also partless, and therefore
unlimited.118 That Irenaeus has ‘partlessness’ in mind is clear from his comment, ‘Similarly, it is
entirely necessary that he experience the very same in relation to the remaining parts’ (ex reliquis
partibus).119 When Irenaeus refers to God’s hypothetical ‘remaining’ parts, he implies that what
he had already considered, ‘beginning’, ‘end’, and implicitly ‘middle’, are also ‘parts’.
To deny, then, that God has beginning, middle, and end, is for Irenaeus as for Plato to deny
that God is composed of various parts, which is synonymous with maintaining the doctrine
of divine simplicity as Irenaeus presents it in AH 2.13.3. Thus, while it may be the case that
Irenaeus is drawing on pre-Socratic arguments as received in Pseudo-Aristotle, his understand-
ing of those arguments is informed by Platonic doctrine and reasoning. He is, furthermore,
drawing on these philosophical traditions to advance his Christian doctrine of ‘one God, to
the exclusion of all others’. In so doing, he places the Platonic and Christian doctrines of God’s
oneness into logical relationship with one another.

5. CONCLUSION
I conclude with a brief summary of the above account of Irenaeus’ theology and some comments
on its implications for Irenaeus’ place in the development of Christian philosophical theology
that are, relative to the question, even briefer. I have maintained that Irenaeus uses a Platonic
definition of God as simple and incomposite to interpret material received from Xenophanes,
including the term ‘similimembrius’ and the ‘all mind’ statement. Both function as analogical
ways of directing the mind to a notion of God’s simplicity, which is properly beyond human
description. It also appears that in 2.1.2, Irenaeus understands the pre-Socratic arguments for

117
This also distinguishes Irenaeus’ argument from a similar passage in the Syriac and Armenian of Apol. Arist. 1.2c.
118
For ‘middle’ as a ‘limit’ which the ‘unlimited’ cannot have, cf. Plutarch, De fac. 925f.
119
Cf. the expression omnem partem in 2.1.4, 2.1.5, 2.31.1.
168 • G. McCashen

the exclusive oneness of God in light of Platonic reasoning from the oneness or simplicity of
God, which implies a logical relationship between God’s simple oneness and God’s exclusive
oneness.
If these readings are correct, they not only uncover a depth to Irenaeus’ engagement with phil-

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osophical theology not usually acknowledged in scholarship, but also reveal an important devel-
opment in the history of Christian philosophical theology. Though one recent commentator
treats Irenaeus’ doctrine of divine simplicity as a natural translation of Jewish monotheism into
his polemical context, the extant Christian literature suggests the transition was not as intuitive as
such an account implies.120 Although Christians within Irenaeus’ tradition often used elements of
Platonic theology in their own writings, especially apophatic descriptions of God, the extant liter-
ature shows little reference to God’s incomposite simplicity, the doctrine that served as the logical
basis for Platonic apophaticism.121 Justin, for example, claims to have advanced in Platonism,122
and there is a ring of Platonic doctrine when Justin criticizes his opponents for thinking of ‘the
Father of all and ingenerate God’ (τὸν πατέρα τῶν ὅλων καὶ ἀγέννητον θεόν) as having ‘hands and
feet and fingers and a soul like composite living beings’ (σύνθετον ζῷον; Dial. 114.3).123 But in his
extant works, Justin fails to articulate a doctrine of God’s simplicity outside this polemical pas-
sage. For example, when Justin writes that God’s ‘glory and form’ are ‘ineffable’,124 he implies not
that God has no body composed of parts, but that whatever body God may have is beyond the
capacity of human beings to express.125 Athenagoras’ formulation is much clearer at Leg. 8.3,126
where Athenagoras expresses a doctrine of God’s simplicity to eliminate the possibility of a pol-
ytheism in which multiple gods are conceived of as ‘parts’ of a single organism.127 This polemical
argument, however, is as far as Athenagoras’ use of divine simplicity goes.128
In contrast to Athenagoras, Irenaeus implies a connection between the doctrine of God as
simple and incomposite and several core tenets of his theology. We have seen that Irenaeus makes
God’s simplicity and correlate infinity a logical foundation for the doctrine of God’s exclusive
oneness—the first tenet of Irenaeus’ rule of faith.129 Furthermore, Anthony Briggman has argued
that divine simplicity and infinity are the two foundations of Irenaeus’ metaphysical reasoning.130
Briggman shows that for Irenaeus God’s incomprehensibility and transcendence are logical cor-
relates of his infinity. If, as I have maintained, Irenaeus followed Platonic reasoning in under-
standing God’s infinity to be a consequence of his simplicity, then God’s simplicity becomes the
sole foundation of Irenaeus’ metaphysical reasoning. The logical foundation of God’s incompre-
hensibility would be traced through God’s infinity back to God’s simple and incomposite nature.
One would likely wish to add divine omnipotence as an attribute of God grounded in God’s

120
Lashier, Trinity, p. 88. Philo achieved the transition, but the example of one ingenious writer in a period of centuries hardly
proves a general rule.
121
See D. W. Palmer, ‘Atheism, Apologetic, and Negative Theology in the Greek Apologists of the Second Century’, VC 37
(1983), pp. 234–59; Daniélou, Gospel Message, pp. 324–35.
122
Dial. 2.6; cf. 2 Apol. 12.1.
123
Text in Philippe Bobichon, Justin Martyr: Dialogue avec Tryphon (2 vols.; Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2003).
124
ἄρρητον δόξαν καὶ μορφὴν; 1 Apol. 9.3. Cf. the locution ‘incorporeal image’ at 1 Apol. 63.10 and 16—these passages are as
close as Justin comes to applying ἀσώματος to God, though Justin’s Platonic persona denies God has σχῆμα (Dial. 4.1).
125
So too Theophilus, Ad Autol. 1.3, which is often compared to AH 2.13.3–4—sometimes more favourably (see Widdicombe,
‘Irenaeus and the Knowledge of God’, p. 143).
126
‘God is ingenerate and impassible and indivisible; he does not consist of parts (ὁ θεὸς ἀγένητος καὶ ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἀδιαίρετος·
οὐκ ἄρα συνεστὼς ἐκ μερῶν).’ Text and trans. (modified here) in W. R. Schoedel, Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione
(OECT; Oxford: Clarendon, 1972). See Pui Him Ip, ‘Athenagoras of Athens and the Genesis of Divine Simplicity in Christian
Theology’, SP 100 (2020), pp. 61–70.
127
Cf. Schoedel, Athenagoras, p. 17, n. 1.
128
In Leg. 6.3, ‘Aristotle and his school’ teach ‘one God whom they liken to a composite living being (ζῷον σύνθετον) and say
that he consists of soul and body’. Athenagoras does not criticize Aristotle here, but holds him up as a monotheist.
129
See AH 1.10.1.
130
God, ch. 2. Simons’s dissertation, ‘Divine Simplicity’, argues that divine simplicity plays a crucial role throughout Irenaeus’
theology.
 Irenaeus’s Theology in Second-Century Platonism and Christianity • 169

infinity and ultimately therefore in his simplicity.131 If this is so, then the gap between the extent
of Irenaeus’ appropriation of the philosophical doctrine and that of his colleagues becomes the
more pronounced. Irenaeus’ assimilation of a Platonic notion of God’s oneness into his theology
constitutes a significant advancement of Christian philosophical theology.

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Irenaeus’ use of Platonic doctrine and reasoning also sheds new light on the theological con-
troversy that he wrote Adversus haereses to address. Rather than proffering an alternative and ante-
dated philosophy, Irenaeus engages his opponents through a philosophical tradition they hold in
common. In some cases, furthermore, Irenaeus incorporates Platonic reasoning to an even greater
degree. To take an example Irenaeus apparently knew,132 the opening discourse of Apocryphon of
John famously uses the Platonic viae to describe the Father.133 Irenaeus uses the same philosophical
resource, but incorporates the reasoning that underlies the via negativa to a greater degree. At least,
his appeal to the Platonic doctrine of divine simplicity in which the apophatic discourse of Platonic
theology was logically grounded is more explicit than any such appeal in the Gnostic hymn.134
More importantly, understanding Irenaeus’ use of Platonic theology elucidates his polemic. It
has long been maintained that the aeonology Irenaeus reports can be interpreted as representing
‘a doctrine in itself far from heretical’.135 It is, furthermore, often maintained in scholarship as it
was by Irenaeus that Valentinian aeonology draws upon Platonism and related Neopythagorean
traditions.136 If Irenaeus himself employed that philosophical tradition, or at least a strand of it,
the question of why Irenaeus refused to acknowledge the validity of his opponents’ psychologi-
cal imagery becomes even more perplexing.
The answer is not, I think, simply that Irenaeus, failing—or refusing—to see the philosoph-
ical potential of the Valentinian myth, took their psychological symbolism literally.137 Though
Irenaeus’ polemic can give that impression, he also makes more perceptive comments. In 2.14.9,
Irenaeus writes: ‘the images (imaginibus) [proposed by the pagans whom the Valentinians copy]
have names (nomina) that are much more becoming and more powerful to lead through the
word’s etymology (per etymologian) to a conception of divinity’ (ad intentionem divinitatis).138
Here Irenaeus tacitly acknowledges that the Ptolemaean aeonology is intended not as a plain
account of the divine, but as an ‘image’ intended to lead the reader’s thought to God. For Irenaeus
the difference between the Ptolemaean myth, where thought begets mind, and mind begets logos,
and the statement that God ‘is all mind … and all thought, and all logos’ is not simply that one
is false and the other is true. Both, Irenaeus knows, fail to fully describe the ineffable God. The
difference for Irenaeus is that one image, which represents the deity’s fullness in fractured ways,
does not lead the reader to a notion of God’s simplicity, whereas the latter, while still inadequate
as a description of the God whose essence cannot be described, directs the mind toward a notion
of the oneness of God. As for Alcinous so also for Irenaeus, what is pious does not necessarily
capture the fullness of the infinite God, but, ‘What is false cannot be reconciled with the theology
according to the correct modes’.139 Beneath Irenaeus’ polemic is an objection that is valid within
the philosophical context that both Irenaeus and his opponents use to develop their theologies.

131
See AH 2.1.2, 2.1.5. In 1.12.2, another ‘all mind’ passage, Irenaeus equates power to atemporal action (cf. 2.3.2). Thus, for
Irenaeus God’s simple, unlimited nature entails atemporality, which entails a lack of limit to God’s power. Cf. Simons, ‘Divine
Simplicity’, ch. 3.
132
See AH 1.29, with A. Logan, Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy: A Study in the History of Gnosticism (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1996), pp. 74–5.
133
See Waldstein, ‘Primal Triad’.
134
See Grayden McCashen, ‘The Apocryphon of John’s Father Discourse as Christian Theology’, JTS, ns 73 (2022), pp. 611–48.
135
Henry Longueville Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries (London: John Murray, 1875), p. 182.
136
See Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the ‘Valentinians’ (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 269–314.
137
So, e.g. G. May, Creatio ex nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall
(London: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 166. Cf. Birrer, Der Mensch, pp. 44–5, on AH 2.14.
138
Intentio translates ἔννοια in 1.15.5.
139
This is Mansfeld’s comment on Alcinous: ‘Compatible Alternatives’, p. 111.