Theological Studies

59 (1998)

QUAESTIO DISPUTATA: IRENAEUS ON THE

BAPTISM OF JESUS

[Editor's note: Daniel Smith objected to Kilian McDonnell's

statement that Irenaeus did not view Jesus as the Christ before
his baptism. McDonnell here maintains that the intent behind
that wording is correct. Nor does Irenaeus identify the Spirit
simply with the Father's power; the Spirit and the Son are the
two hands of the Father. Smith agrees below that before his
baptism Jesus was not functionally the Christ, since his human
nature was not divinely equipped. But Irenaeus's reflection on
inner-trinitarian dynamics is subordinated to his conviction
that such things are beyond human capacity to understand.]

A REJOINDER TO DANIEL A. SMITH

KILIAN MCDONNELL, O.S.B.

I AM GRATEFUL to Daniel A. Smith for his fine contribution to Irenaeus

research. In his article on "Irenaeus and the Baptism of Jesus" he
objects to my formulation "Before the baptism Jesus is not the Christ.
The baptism is a clear messianic boundary." 1 1 agree with Smith that
my formulation, which I share with Enrique Fabbri, 2 can be mislead-
ing, but the intent behind the formulation is, in my opinion, correct.
The issue is function. Irenaeus clearly rejects the belief that "there was
a pretended Christ who descended on Jesus; one cannot pretend that
the Christ is one [being] and Jesus is another."3 I quote Adversus
haereses where the Word of God becomes Jesus, who is the Christ,
because his humanity has been anointed: "the Word of God, who is
Savior of all and who rules the earth and the heaven, who is Jesus—as
we have demonstrated—who has taken flesh and has been anointed of
the Spirit by the Father, has been made Jesus-Christ." 4 The anointing
makes Jesus to be the Christ. Irenaeus may be borrowing the language

KILIAN MCDONNELL, O.S.B., is president of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural
Research, Collegeville, Minnesota. He received his S.T.D.fromthe Theological Faculty
in Trier, Germany. His latest monograph is The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: the
Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation (Liturgical, 1996); he also published recently
"Spirit and Experience in Bernard of Clairvaux," TS 58 (1997) 3-18.
1
Daniel A. Smith, "Irenaeus and the Baptism of Jesus," TS 58 (1997) 618-42, at 625.
2
"El bautismo de Jesús y la unción del Espíritu en la teología de Ireneo," Ciencia y Fe
12 (1956) 9.
3
3.9.3; Sources Chrétiennes ( = SC) 211.108.
4
Ibid. 'The Word of God... has become Jesus Christ" is a translation of the Greek: all'
317
318 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

of Luke found in Acts 2:36: "God has made him both Lord and Messiah,
this Jesus whom you crucified."
Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, the editors of the critical
text sum up the meaning of the text from Irenaeus just cited above:
"On the one hand, having assumed flesh, the eternal Word has become
'Jesus'; on the other hand, having been anointed by the Father by
means of the Spirit, the incarnate Word or 'Jesus' has become the
'Christ' = the 'Anointed One.' " 5
For Irenaeus, "the Logos of the Father and the Holy Spirit" bring
about the Incarnation. 6 Further, there is the anointing with the Spirit
at the Jordan. So the Spirit belongs constitutively to the identity of
Jesus Christ at two moments, Incarnation and baptism. But what is
the purpose of the descent of the Spirit on Jesus at the Jordan? How
does it function? Irenaeus answers, "It is the Spirit of God who has
descended on him . . . so that, receiving from the plenitude of his unc-
tion, we might be saved. This is the witness of Matthew."7 In other
words, the intent of the baptism of Jesus is that we might participate
in the pouring out of the Spirit on the humanity of Jesus. "Jesus" is
the very name of the Word. "Christ" is the name given to Jesus in
virtue of his anointing by the Spirit, and this anointing supposes that
the Word has assumed flesh. As Albert Houssiau concludes, "It is
through the anointing of the Spirit that Jesus becomes Jesus Christ."9
This is the function of the baptism of Jesus to which I alluded. In
Irenaeus Jesus Christ usually designates the incarnate Word anointed
by the Spirit at his baptism. 10 In no way is this in opposition to Ire-
naeus's conviction that Jesus is the Christ from his conception.11 Je-
sus, who is the Word of God, eternally anointed, the Christ constitu-
tively, begins at his baptism to function in a new way as the Christ
because now we can share in the plenitude of the Spirit poured out on
him without measure.
Smith suggests that Ysabel de Andia and I are not justified in re-
garding a formulation of Irenaeus in Adversus haereses 3.18.3 as trini-
tarian because "Irenaeus did not appear to conceive of the Spirit as a
distinct person" (624). This means that Irenaeus did not have a true
trinitarian doctrine. In support he cites Antonio Orbe. I take it for
granted that Smith is not judging second-century Irenaeus by the stan-
dards of the fourth-century Cappadocian settlement.
These early texts are groping, and therefore there is ground for dif-
ferences among scholars. But Smith does not cite Harry A. Wolfson,

ho Logos tou Theou . .. Iesous Christos egeneto. The Latin reads: Verbum Dei. .. Iesus
Christus factus est.
5 6
SC 210.267. Adv. haer. 5.1.3; SC 153.26.
7
Ibid.
8
Albert Houssiau, La Christologie de Saint Irénée (Louvain: Publications Universi-
taires, 1955) 180-81.
9 10
Ibid. 174. Ibid. 174-75.
11
Adv. haer. 3.16.2; SC 211.294.
 IRENAEUS ON JESUS' BAPTISM 319
Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Adelin Rousseau, or Hans-Jocken Jaschke.
Wolfson made a study of the early authors who do differentiate be-
tween Spirit and Logos, and those who do not. He places Irenaeus
among those who differentiate. 12 Hauschild concludes that Irenaeus
has a true trinitarian doctrine, as does Adelin Rousseau. 13 Jaschke has
written the most extensive monograph on Irenaeus's doctrine of the
Holy Spirit. He vigorously and repeatedly rejects an identification be-
tween the Spirit and the Logos. 14 Nor does Irenaeus identify the Spirit
simply with the power of the Father. 15 The Spirit and the Son are the
two hands of the Father. If the Son is distinct from the Father, so is the
Spirit. Irenaeus's interest is soteriological and economic.

12
The Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University,
1964) 238.
13
Gottes Geist und der Mensch: Studien zur früchristlichen Pneumatologie (Munich:
Kaiser, 1972) 220; see Adelin Rousseau in SC 406.302.
14
Der Heilige Geist im Bekenntnis der Kirche (Münster: Aschendorff, 1976) 222-26,
229, 240.
15
See Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 5; SC 406.90; see also Adv. haer.
2.30.9; SC 294.320.

A RESPONSE TO KILIAN MCDONNELL

DANIELA. SMITH

N HIS REJOINDER to my article "Irenaeus and the Baptism of Jesus,"

I Kilian McDonnell raises two issues. The first is whether, for Ire-
naeus, Jesus became the Christ at the baptism. Here I do not believe
McDonnell and I are in substantial disagreement. According to Adver-
sus haereses 3.9.3, the baptism made Jesus the Christ since the Spirit-
anointing equipped him, by a gift of divine attributes, for the messianic
ministry. 1 McDonnell is right to point out that before the baptism
Jesus was not functionally the Christ, since the human nature was not
divinely equipped. The main focus of my article is to explore the im-
plications of this functional equipment. But Irenaeus also called Jesus
the Christ before the baptism, insisting "that we should not imagine
that Jesus was one, and Christ another, but should know them to be
one and the same" {Adv. haer. 3.16.2). McDonnell is also correct to
raise Irenaeus's concept of the precosmic anointing of the Word (Dem-

DANIEL A. SMITH received his M. Rei. degree in New Testament studies from Wycliffe
College within the University of Toronto. He is now completing his doctoral studies in
the Toronto School of Theology and serving as an instructor in biblical Greek at Wycliffe.
1
In addition to the texts McDonnell cites, I would add Adv. haer. 3.12.7: "[The apostle
Peter] witnessed that Jesus was himself the Son of God, who also, having been anointed
with the Holy Spirit, is called Jesus Christ."
320 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

onstration of the Apostolic Preaching 53) in this connection, since by

virtue of this anointing even the pre-incarnate Word is called Christ. 2
The second issue, whether Irenaeus had a "trinitarian" understand-
ing of the Spirit, is rather more complex. My suggestion t h a t the for-
mulation in Adv. haer. 3.18.3 should not be seen as "trinitarian" is
based on two considerations. The first concerns how Irenaeus under-
stood "Spirit" in the baptism of Jesus, since the passage in question
refers to t h a t context. Irenaeus believed t h a t the baptism was the
occasion of an empowering gift of divine attributes, an anointing "by
the Father with the Spirit" (Adv. haer. 3.9.3); therefore, it seems best
to follow Orbe, who says t h a t "the chrism is the dynamic Pneuma that
comes from the substance of the Father (that is, the power of the
Father)." 3 The second consideration is the ambiguity I perceive else-
where in Irenaeus concerning the Spirit's role in the conception and
Incarnation. Following Luke 1:35, Irenaeus affirmed consistently t h a t
the conception was the work of the Spirit (see, for example, Demo. 59).
In Adv. haer. 5.1.3, however, Irenaeus seems to equate the Spirit t h a t
came upon Mary with the power of the Most High, writing t h a t the
F a t h e r effected the Incarnation; Demo. 51 and 53 display a similar
view. In other places he appears to suggest that the conception is the
work of the Word, and to identify the Word with the Spirit (Adv. haer.
3.10.2; Demo. 71). In light of this ambiguity, I would hesitate to con-
clude t h a t Irenaeus consistently distinguished the Spirit from both the
Father and the Word.
Admittedly, there are difficulties with this position. There are nu-
merous passages where it appears t h a t Irenaeus is beginning to have
a clearer understanding of the distinction of the Spirit from the Father
and the Word t h a n is suggested by the texts I have just cited. Though
he nowhere used the term "trinity," Irenaeus referred to Father, Son,
and Spirit as the three "articles" of the faith (Demo. 6), echoing the
baptismal words of Matthew 28:19 (Demo. 3, 7). Other significant texts
seem to be of two types: those which attribute to the Spirit an economic
function distinct from t h a t of the Father or the Word, and those which
depict the Son and Spirit as the two "hands" of God active in creation. 5

2
See McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic
Order of Salvation (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1996) 58.
3
Antonio Orbe, Introducción a la teología de los siglos II y III, 2 vols., Analecta
Gregoriana 248 (Rome: Gregorian University, 1987) 2.677.
4
See, e.g., Adv. haer. 4.20.6: in the economy of salvation, "the Spirit [was] working,
and the Son ministering, while the Father was approving." References could be multi-
plied.
5
McDonnell refers to Demo. 5 and Adv. haer. 2.30.9; see also Ysabel de Andia, Homo
vivens: Incorruptibilité et divinisation de l'homme selon Irénée de Lyon (Paris: Études
Augustiniennes, 1986) 64-67, who collates several important texts and argues that Ire-
naeus "attributes to each Person of the Trinity a different function in the common work
of creation" (ibid. 65).
 IRENAEUS ON JESUS* BAPTISM 321
However, Manlio Simonetti has pointed out that whereas in some
passages the Spirit (or Wisdom) appears in threefold descriptions of
salvation or creation, in other similar contexts the Spirit does not
appear. 7 Simonetti suggested that in some instances Word and Wis-
dom appear to be only operative faculties of the one God, and concluded
that this pattern of reflection would lead to monarchianism.8 More to
the point, I believe, is Mary Ann Donovan's recent comment: "While
the association of the Father with his 'Hands' may suggest an internal
relationship between them (and so, in the language of a later theologi-
cal development, the 'immanent trinity'), that association is more ex-
plicitly external and for the economy (and so, in that same later lan-
guage, suggests the 'economic trinity')."9 The interest of Irenaeus is, as
McDonnell points out, "soteriological and economic." His reflection on
inner-trinitarian dynamics is suborbinated first of all to his conviction,
against his Gnostic opponents, that such things are beyond human
capacity to understand, and secondly to his insistence on the unity of
God's plan and activity in creation and in the salvation of humanity. 10
I wish to thank Kilian McDonnell for providing me with the oppor-
tunity to discuss these important points further.

6
Manlio Simonetti, "Il problema dell'unità di Dio da Giustino a Ireneo," Rivista di
storia e letteratura religiosa 22 (1986) 210-240, esp. 229-37.
7
Ibid. 230-34. Compare, for instance, Adv. haer. 4.20.1 and 5.6.1 (where Irenaeus
identified the hands of God with Word and Wisdom, Son and Spirit) with Adv. haer.
5.12.6, 5.15.2-4 and 5.18.3 (where the Word alone is mentioned as the fashioner of
humanity).
8
Ibid. 235, 239-40.
9
Mary Ann Donovan, One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus (Collegeville: Liturgi-
cal, 1997) 104.
10
See Joseph Wolinski's comments in Bernard Sesboüé and Joseph Wolinski, Le Dieu
du salut: La tradition, la règle de foi et les symboles, l'économie du salut, le développement
des dogmes trinitaire et christologique. Histoire des dogmes, tome 1 (Paris: Desclée, 1994)
160-64.