From Against All Heresies v.19.1; 20.2; 21.1 (ca. 180)
The Lord came to his own creation in a visible way; his own creation sustained him who sustains everything in being. His obedience on the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden; the good news of the truth announced by an angel to Mary, a virgin who was shortly to be married, undid the evil lie that had seduced Eve, a virgin also espoused to a husband.
Just as Eve was seduced by the word of an angel and fled from God after disobeying his word, so Mary in her turn welcomed the good news by the word of an angel that she should sustain God in obedience to his word. As Eve was seduced into disobeying God, so Mary was persuaded into obeying God; thus the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve. Just as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so now it is rescued by a virgin. The disobedience of one has been counterbalanced by the obedience of the other.
Christ gathered all things into one by gathering them into himself. He declared war against our enemy, crushed and trampled on the head of the one who at the beginning had taken us captive in Adam, in accordance with God’s words to the serpent in Genesis: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall watch for your head, and you shall watch for his heel.”
The One who is described as watching for the serpent’s head is the One who was born in the likeness of Adam from the Virgin. This is the seed spoken of by Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians: “The Law of works was in place until the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” This fact is stated even more clearly in the same epistle when he says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman.” Indeed, the enemy would not have been defeated fairly if the vanquisher had not been born of a woman, because it was through a woman that the enemy had gained mastery over humanity in the beginning, setting himself up as our adversary.
This is why the Lord proclaims himself to be the Son of Man, the One who renews in himself that first man from whom the race born of woman has derived. As by one man’s defeat our race fell into the bondage of death, so by another’s victory we were to arise again into life.
St. Irenaeus (ca.130 – ca. 202) was a Greek theologian and missionary, who served as Bishop of Lyons. His Against All Heresies, which is primarily concerned with refuting the Gnostic heresy, was the first major surviving work of theology written after the New Testament. His feast is on June 28.
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