Paul is the only New Testament author to make explicit reference to the Adam-Christ typology, so it is sometimes assumed that Irenaeus—who develops it more fully—was building upon a largely, even exclusively, Pauline foundation.1 For example, Jean Daniélou claims that Irenaeus integrated Paul’s “scattered remarks” about Jesus being the new Adam into a robust theological system,2 while John VanMaaren, noting Irenaeus’s frequent use of Pauline passages when discussing the Adam-Christ typology, concludes that his teaching on the subject “was derived from and highly dependent on Paul.”3

While it is true that Paul’s writings contain the earliest evidence of the “new Adam” doctrine, and while there can be no doubt that Irenaeus depends on them to a significant degree, the fact that the second century bishop oftentimes goes beyond the Pauline data prompts several questions: was his teaching on this subject indebted exclusively to Paul? Or did he supplement Paul’s “new Adam” doctrine with insights of his own? Or did he learn aspects of the Adam-Christ typology from another apostolic authority? That Irenaeus seems to use non-Pauline material when writing about Jesus as the new Adam, whilst maintaining that he teaches nothing but that which was “handed over by the apostles and handed down by the Church,”4 certainly speaks in favor of the latter possibility.

1. Doctrine of Recapitulation

Before considering who else might have informed Irenaeus’s treatment of the Adam-Christ typology, the doctrine to which it is closely tied, namely, the doctrine of recapitulation, needs to be examined.

Recapitulation gets its name from the following passage in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians: “[God the Father] has made known to us … the mystery of his will, … to ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι [‘recapitulate,’ ‘sum up,’ ‘go over’] all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:9–10). According to Irenaeus, the doctrine was a key component of the apostolic kerygma,5 yet a comprehensive explication of how it worked and why it was necessary for salvation was a task which fell, in large part, to the bishop of Lyons.

A crucial aspect of Christ’s recapitulation of all things was his recapitulation of the first man in himself. This was necessary because, since Adam’s “trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Rom 5:18) and “in Adam all die” (1 Cor 15:22), the human race needed a new Adam who could atone for the trespass and who, by incorporating us into his glorified body, could restore us to communion and life with God (see Rom 6:3–4; 1 Cor 15:22).

The recapitulation of Adam is said to have taken place on two levels. First, the Word recapitulated the first man in a physical sense, not only by being born of the race of Adam, but even by sharing in “the same kind of birth.”6 Indeed, “just as the first-fashioned Adam got his substance from untilled and as yet virgin soil,” says Irenaeus, so the Word was born of a virgin so that his birth would be a recapitulation of Adam’s.7 This physical recapitulation of Adam was important, he says, because it meant that sin could be destroyed “by means of that same flesh through which it had gained the mastery” (see Heb 2:14, 17).8 In other words, the Word physically became like Adam as a precondition for “[overcoming] through Adam what had stricken us through Adam.”9 The second level of Jesus’s recapitulation of Adam involved him “re-living,” as it were, Adam’s life. This culminated in his “going over” the day of Adam’s death: having re-entered the garden, he was able to undo the old disobedience wrought in the tree by obediently dying on the tree.10 Johannes Quasten gives a good summary of the doctrine as it is presented by Irenaeus: recapitulation is “a taking up in Christ of all since the beginning. God rehabilitates the earlier divine plan … which was interrupted by the Fall of Adam, and gathers up his entire work from the beginning to renew, to restore, to reorganize it in his incarnate Son, … a second Adam.”11

2. Irenaeus: A Johannine Theologian

While Irenaeus’s recapitulative doctrine clearly contains many Pauline elements, his numerous references to the “Word” when expounding it give it a distinctly Johannine flavor (cf. John 1:1; 1:14). The possibility is therefore raised that the non-Pauline elements found within Irenaeus’s “new Adam” material came down to him from John the Evangelist, a person whom he may be referring to in his Letter to Florinus. Recalling his memories of Polycarp in Asia Minor, he writes:

I distinctly remember the incidents of that time better than events of recent occurrence…. I can describe the very place in which blessed Polycarp used to sit … and the discourses which he held before the people; and how he would describe his intercourse with John and the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he would relate their words. And what were the accounts he had heard from them about the Lord, and about His miracles, and about His teaching, how Polycarp, as having received them from eyewitnesses of the life of the Word, used to give an account harmonising on all points with the Scriptures. To these (discourses) I used to listen at the time … and by the grace of God, I constantly ruminate upon them faithfully.12

So, Polycarp would relate to Irenaeus what John and others had taught concerning Christ’s miracles and teaching, while showing how these things accorded with the Scriptures. If the John in question was in fact the Evangelist (be he the son of Zebedee or the Elder), then it follows from this that Irenaeus was a privileged inheritor of his christological exegesis of “the law and … the prophets” (John 1:45). In which case, Irenaeus’s writings ought to contain a significant amount of Johannine theology—the same theology we find in the Fourth Gospel.

3. The Genesis–John Chiasm

But what evidence is there that Irenaeus’s recapitulative teaching is partly Johannine and not just a “Johannified” version of what Paul had taught? The following passage from Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching contains some clues which, by ultimately revealing the workings of the doctrine of recapitulation and the Adam-Christ typology in the Gospel of John, show that much of Irenaeus’s knowledge on these matters came from the beloved disciple. The passage reads:

Great, then, was the mercy of God the Father: He sent his creative Word, who, when He came to save us, put Himself in our position, and in the same situation in which we lost life; and He loosed the prison-bonds … loosing those same bonds by which we were held.13

The first aspect of this claim—that the Word incarnate put himself “in our position, and in the same situation in which we lost life”—is an unmistakable reference to Adam’s predicament in the Garden of Eden. Put simply, Irenaeus is saying that Jesus put himself in the situation Adam had been in in Genesis 3. And since only John speaks of the Word coming to save us (see John 1:14), of entering a garden (see John 18:1), and of loosing the works of the devil (see 1 John 3:8), the Johannine basis of Irenaeus’s claim ought to be obvious. Two questions are thus raised:

(1) Might Jesus be recapitulating Adam’s experience (as narrated in Genesis 3) from the moment he enters the garden in John 18:1?

(2) If so, what indications are there subsequent to John 18:1 that Jesus is loosing “the prison bonds” which had bound Adam and his progeny?

Regarding the latter question, Genesis 3 turns up five actions that may be construed as “prison bonds” or “works of the devil.” The first bond arises from Adam’s decision to sin by eating the fruit in disobedience (3:6). Other bonds soon follow: Adam clothes himself out of shame (3:7); he hides from God out of fear (3:8); he shirks responsibility for his actions by casting blame on his wife (3:12); and he is exiled from the garden in disgrace (3:23).

Turning to John 18–19, Jesus can be observed performing an inverse series of five counteractions: he enters a garden (18:1); he confronts his enemies (18:4); he shoulders responsibility and has his companions spared (18:8–9); he is stripped naked (19:23); and he drinks “the cup” of sour wine in obedience (19:30, see 18:11). Provided that Genesis 3:8 and 3:12, and John 18:4 and 18:8–9 are grouped together, these actions (as described in the LXX) and counteractions form the chiastic pattern I call the Gen-John chiasm.14 Here is the simplified version:

(A) Adam disobediently eats the fruit (Gen 3:6; see 2:16–17)
(B) Adam, who was naked, clothes himself (Gen 3:7)
(C) Adam hides from God and blames his companion (Gen 3:8; 3:12)
(D) Adam departs from the garden (Gen 3:23–24)
(D’) Jesus enters a garden (John 18:1)
(C’) Jesus confronts his enemies and has his companions spared (John 18:4; 8–9)
(B’) Jesus, who was clothed, is stripped naked (John 19:23)
(A’) Jesus obediently drinks the sour wine (John 19:30; see 18:11)

The chiasm communicates the idea that Jesus is a new Adam who makes his way back through the Fall.15 Moving from the center of the chiasm outward, Jesus retraces the steps and corrects the missteps of Adam, but from the opposite direction: Adam departed the garden, Jesus enters the garden;16 Adam hid, Jesus comes forward; Adam blamed the companion God had given him, Jesus has the companions God has given him spared; Adam, who was naked, clothed himself with an apron of sewn fig leaves, Jesus, who was clothed with an unsewn tunic, is stripped naked; Adam ate the fruit in disobedience, Jesus drinks the sour wine in obedience (see 18:11).

Interestingly, Jesus seems to anticipate this process of recapitulative reversal when he says in John 8:34–36 that “every one who commits sin is a slave to sin” but that the Son sets people free. For how does this “setting free” occur if not with the “loosing of the prison bonds” in John 18–19? As for how he sets individual men free, this he achieves by uniting them to himself – the new man – through baptism (John 3:5; see also Gal 3:27; 1 Cor 12:13).17

While Irenaeus does not speak of Jesus undoing Adam’s actions in the reverse order to which they were performed, his awareness of this process in the recapitulative economy is attested to in his remarks about Mary’s “undoing” of the sin of Eve at the Annunciation. Using the analogy of a knot to describe how Mary’s virginal obedience reversed the virginal disobedience of Eve, Irenaeus writes:

For in no other way is that which is tied together loosed, except that the cords of the tying are untied in the reverse order, so that the first cords are loosed by [loosing] the second; in other words, the second cords release the first. And so it happens that the first cord is untied by the second cord, and the second cord serves as the first’s untying. With this in view the Lord said, the first will be last, and the last first.18

Although this passage is convoluted, the process of reversal is clear: “the cords of the tying are untied in the reverse order … [so that] the first [cord] will be [untied] last, and the last [cord untied] first.” Applied to the Gen-John chiasm, the last “cord”—Adam’s expulsion from the garden—is the first “cord” Jesus unties, while the first “cord”—Adam’s disobedient eating—is the last “cord” untied by Jesus. In terms of why the passage is confusing, one possibility is that Irenaeus has taken the recapitulative principle of methodical reversal—something which works well when applied to a series of events such as we find in John 18–19—and has tried, with only limited success, to apply it to a singular event, namely Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation.

As for whether Irenaeus was aware of the Gen-John chiasm specifically, while he does not tie the five recapitulative reversals together in a single passage of writing (although, as we have seen, he does make general reference to “the loosing of the prison bonds by which we were held”), a survey of his works nevertheless indicates his knowledge of three of them. With respect to the Johannine side of the D/D’ parallel (i.e., Jesus’s entry into the garden), Irenaeus’s claim that the Word put himself “in our position, and in the same situation in which we lost life” assumes Christ’s entry into a garden context as the setting for his atoning work.

As for the Johannine side of the C/C’ parallel (i.e., Jesus’s confrontation of his enemies), Irenaeus could well be referring to this event when he writes that “the coming of the serpent is conquered by the harmlessness of the dove, those bonds being unloosed by which we had been fast bound to death.”19 But on what grounds? As has been seen, the loosing of the bonds “by which we had been fast bound to death” occurs between John 18:1 and 19:30. Within those limits, the only event which could be understood as “the coming of the serpent” would be the “coming” of Judas (John 18:3), whose body Satan—whom Johannine theology identifies as the “ancient serpent” (Rev 12:9) and “the father of lies” (John 8:44, cf. Gen 3:4–5, 13)—was in possession of (see John 13:27).20 If this is an accurate reading, then Irenaeus’s description of Judas-possessed as “the serpent” once again indicates that he is interpreting the saving acts of Christ’s Passion through an Edenic lens.

As for the Johannine side of the B/B’ parallel (i.e., the stripping of Christ), the bishop makes no obvious reference to it in his extant writings. However, the opposite is true of the A/A’ parallel (i.e., Jesus’s drinking of the sour wine). He writes: “[The Lord] was making a recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience which [he exhibited when he hung] upon a tree, [the effects] also of that deception being done away with.”21 Since the specific disobedience which had occurred in connection with the tree was the eating of the forbidden fruit, it stands to reason that Christ’s recapitulation of this disobedience would involve him consuming a fruit or something akin to it. And this is precisely what we see in John 19:28–30 when Jesus, in obedience to the Father (see 18:11), drinks the “cup” of sour wine—that which Luke calls “the fruit of the vine” (Luke 22:18). John thus seems to be presenting the same idea we find in Romans 5:18–19 and which I take the liberty of paraphrasing to emphasise the correspondence:

As [Adam’s] trespass [at the tree] led to condemnation for all men, so [Christ’s] act of righteousness [on the tree] leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by [Adam’s] disobedience [at the tree] many were made sinners, so by [Christ’s] obedience [on the tree] many will be made righteous.” (cf. Col 2:13–14)

So, Paul and John seem to be largely in agreement, the main difference being that whereas the former speaks in general terms about Jesus’s act of righteousness and his obedience, the latter sees Jesus’s act of righteousness and his obedience encapsulated within a specific action, namely, the consumption of the sour wine in John 19:30.

Having thus ascertained that Irenaeus only makes incomplete and piecemeal references to the Gen-John chiasm, it would seem that his knowledge on this front had been learned, not from his exegesis of John’s Gospel, but from Polycarp who, as the chiasm shows, in all likelihood learned it from John the Evangelist.

4. Recapitulating Adam’s Death

Given Jesus’s recapitulation of Adam’s sin, a question arises: if the consequence of Adam’s sin was death, and Jesus recapitulated Adam’s sin, did he also recapitulate Adam’s death? Irenaeus certainly thinks so. He asserts that, because Jesus “summ[ed] up in Himself the whole human race from the beginning to the end,” he “also summed up its death”—a death, he says, which was experienced by Adam on the day he disobediently ate of the fruit (see Gen 2:17).22 It follows from this that because Adam “died” on the same day in which he disobediently ate the fruit, so the new Adam ought to have died on the same day in which he obediently drank the sour wine. And this is precisely what happens to the new Adam in John’s Gospel: having recapitulated Adam’s disobedient eating of the fruit by obediently drinking of the sour wine, Jesus dies immediately thereafter: “When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished’; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (19:30).

So, there is a plausible case to be made based on Irenaeus’s testimony that Jesus’s consumption of the sour wine and his death are theologically connected. As for what was “finished,” this would seem to refer to the undoing of Adam’s first fault and thus the completion of Jesus’s atoning work.23

Looking at the larger passage in which the aforementioned quote from Irenaeus fits, the bishop of Lyons makes additional remarks about the new Adam’s death which warrant closer examination:

According to the cycle and progress of the days [of creation], after which one is termed first, another second, and another third, if anybody seeks diligently to learn upon what day out of the seven it was that Adam died, he will find it by examining the dispensation of the Lord. For by summing up in Himself the whole human race from the beginning to the end, He has also summed up its death. From this it is clear that the Lord suffered death, in obedience to His Father, upon that day on which Adam died while he disobeyed God. Now [Adam] died on the same day in which he ate. For God said, “In that day on which you shall eat of it, you shall die by death.” The Lord, therefore, recapitulating in Himself this day, underwent His sufferings upon the day preceding the Sabbath, that is, the sixth day of the creation, on which day man was created; thus granting him a second creation by means of His passion, which is that [creation] out of death.24

Operating on the assumption that Adam and Jesus are such close typological counterparts that the details of the latter’s life can be mapped onto the life of the former (and vice versa), Irenaeus is able to determine the day of Adam’s death with confidence: since the sabbath is the seventh day of the week and Jesus died on the day preceding the sabbath, so Adam must have died on the day preceding the sabbath, which is to say, the sixth day. Yet notice that Irenaeus does not simply say that Jesus underwent his sufferings on the sixth day of the week, but on the sixth day of creation. It is a specific and peculiar claim. So, from whom did he inherit this teaching? As the following analysis bears out, he would seem to be indebted to John the Evangelist once again.

5. The Seven Recapitulated Days of Creation

At this point, it is necessary to view Jesus, no longer through the lens of Adam Christology but of Logos Christology. This is because the argument that follows is not about Jesus, in his humanity, recapitulating the life of Adam, but about Jesus, in his divinity, recapitulating the creative work of God.

It has often been observed that, with the opening line of his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word” (1:1), John is making a naked allusion to Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.” But to what end? For a few scholars at least, the evangelist is signaling his intention to tell the story of new creation, a notion supported by the fact that, as in the first Genesis creation account, a numbering of days ensues.25 Note the time markers:

In the beginning … (John 1:1)
The next day … (John 1:29)
The next day … (John 1:35)
The next day … (John 1:43)
On the third day … (John 2:1)

Although the numbering of days within John 1:1–2:1 has been a source of debate, with some claiming that John enumerates seven days, the explicit time markers clearly indicate six days. John 1:1–28 (or 1:19–28, if one excludes the Prologue) amounts to the first day, 1:29–34 amounts to the second day, 1:35–42 amounts to the third day, and 1:43–51 amounts to the fourth day. As for the phrase “on the third day” (τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ) in John 2:1, this does not refer to three additional days—which would round out the Johannine week—but to two. As R. H. Lightfoot points out: “In the [New Testament] the expression ‘the third day’ or ‘after three days’ usually means what we should describe as ‘the day following the morrow’, or ‘after two days.’”26 In other words, “on the third day” is inclusive of the fourth day of John’s week which brings us to the sixth day in 2:1. Origen corroborates this view: “And on the third day after the fourth, which is the sixth from the beginning of those enumerated by us, the wedding occurs in Cana of Galilee.”27

So, 2:1 signals the beginning of the sixth “day” in John’s account. With this in mind, one turns to Genesis 2:2 which says that, at the end of the sixth day, God “finished” (συνετέλεσεν) his work of creation and rested on the seventh day. Can these elements also be mapped on to John’s Gospel? Indeed, they can—but only after some searching. For while John’s sixth “day” begins at the wedding at Cana, there is no indication that Jesus’s work was finished at the conclusion of that episode. On the contrary, he says in 5:17 that “my Father is working still, and I am working,” and in 9:4 he says, “we must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work” (see also 4:34; 5:36). This raises the possibility that the Word—in collaboration with the Father (cf. Gen 1:26)—is engaged in one long day of work: a recapitulation of the sixth day of creation which begins with his production of the good wine at Cana and ends with his consumption of the poor wine at Golgotha (cf. 2:10). For it is only then that he proclaims, “It is finished” (Τετέλεσται; 19:30).28 Additional support for this reading comes from the fact that, just like in Genesis 2:2, reference is made to the sabbath rest immediately after the work is brought to an end: “Since it was the day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the sabbath (for that sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away” (19:31).29 The work of God in Genesis and the work of the Word in John are thus completed at parallel points in time, namely, at the end of the sixth “day.” And just as God “ceased on the seventh day from all his works” (Gen 2:2), so Jesus spends the seventh “day” (which is to say, the period between his death and resurrection) in the sleep of death.30 He then rises “on the first day of the [new] week” (20:1), which is to say, the theologically-significant eighth day.31 The full pattern of correspondence between the two books may be illustrated thus:

Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7   8

Genesis 1–2 In the beginning … … the first day (1:5) … the second day (1:8) … the third day (1:13) … the fourth day (1:19) … the fifth day (1:23) … the sixth day (1:31) … And God finished … (2:2) … the seventh day (2:2)

Gospel of John In the beginning… (1:1) The next day … (1:29) The next day … (1:35) The next day … (1:43) On the third day … (2:1) “It is finished” (19:30)   the first day of the week … (20:1)

So, the Word recapitulates the sixth day of creation between 2:1–19:30, at the end of which he, as the new Adam, dies. Irenaeus’s claim that Jesus recapitulated the sixth day of creation and that “the Lord … underwent His sufferings upon … the sixth day of creation” thus accords with the Johannine data.

6. Conclusion

Having shown that important components of Irenaeus’s “new Adam” teaching seem to derive from John the Evangelist, the assumption that Irenaeus was exclusively indebted to Paul in this regard can be laid to rest. Yet, far from simply debunking an inaccurate supposition, this article has also unearthed a variety of important insights. For example, it shows that typological recapitulation permeates the theology of John’s Gospel.32 It also shows how John (and, as the appendix reveals, the author of Genesis 6–7) has used chiasmus as a narratological tool—a fact which speaks against those who would dismiss chiastic patterns as mere “literary curiosities” with “little significance for interpreting the meaning of a text.”33
And then there are the as-yet-unanswered questions which this article gives rise to. For example, since John seems to have chiastically tied the consumption of the sour wine to the consumption of the forbidden fruit, then, since the old Eve gave the fruit to the old Adam, is John suggesting that a new Eve gave the sour wine to the new Adam (notwithstanding his identification of plural givers in 19:29)? And how does John’s inclusion of an eschatologically significant “eighth day” in his narrative impact our interpretation of his Gospel? And are there other aspects of the Adam-Christ typology in the text which remain unelaborated? Suffice it to say, in the process of unearthing the theological gems hitherto discussed, I have become convinced that John’s Gospel is akin to the field mentioned in Matthew 13:44—a text full of theological riches which, although covered up, are nevertheless accessible to those who are prepared to do some digging. The good news is that, with Irenaeus having been proven to be an important and accurate transmitter of Johannine theology, there are likely many more keys to the riches of the Fourth Gospel to be found within his writings, as well as in the writings of John’s other spiritual sons, most notably Ignatius of Antioch.

7. Appendix

It has been observed that John uses a chiastic pattern to depict Jesus’s recapitulative reversal of Adam’s actions in the Garden of Eden. Interestingly, the employment of chiasmus in this way is also found in the book of Genesis. For instance, in Genesis 6:7, God says that he will destroy “man and cattle and creeping things and birds of the air” because he regrets having made them. Bernard M. Levison points out that the order of creaturely destruction reverses the order of creaturely creation, for in Genesis 1 it was the birds which were made first (Gen 1:20), then the cattle and creeping things (Gen 1:24), then man (Gen 1:26).34
By pairing these two sequences chiastically, one gets:

(A) creation of “birds” (Gen 1:20)
(B) creation of “cattle and creeping things” (Gen 1:24)
(C) creation “man” (Gen 1:26)
(C’) destruction of “man” (Gen 6:7)
(B’) destruction of “cattle and creeping things” (Gen 6:7)
(A’) destruction of “birds” (Gen 6:7)

Levinson thus observes that the sequence in which the creatures are listed in Genesis 6:7 “ominously concretizes”35 God’s intention to destroy his creation by indicating a kind of systematic undoing. Indeed, further confirmation that Levinson’s observation accords with authorial intent is to be found in Genesis 7:21–23, which makes it clear that the author was thinking of the earth’s destruction in chiastic terms:

(A) And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, (Gen 7:21)
(B) bird (Gen 7:21)
(C) and cattle and beast and every creeping thing [הַשֶּׁ֖רֶץ] that creeps upon the earth, (Gen 7:21)
(D) and every man; (Gen 7:21)
(E ) All that had the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils, all that was on dry land died. (Gen 7:22)
(E’) He destroyed all living things which were upon the face of the ground, (Gen 7:23)
(D’) from man (Gen 7:23)
(C’) to cattle, to creeping thing [רֶ֙מֶשׂ֙] (Gen 7:23)
(B’) to bird of the air (Gen 7:23)
(A’) they were destroyed from the earth. (Gen 7:23)

And so it is that in Genesis, God destroys his creation by means of a recapitulative undoing of Genesis 1, while in John, God renews his creation by means of a recapitulative undoing of Genesis 3.

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[1] For passages involving the Adam-Christ typology, see Rom 5:12–21; 1 Cor 15:21–22, 45, 47–49; and, perhaps, Eph 5:31–32.[2] Jean Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Typology of the Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960), 31.[3] John VanMaaren, “The Adam-Christ Typology in Paul and its Development in the Early Church Fathers,” Tyn B 64.2 (2013): 282.

4 Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 98. All quotations taken from Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, trans. Joseph P. Smith, ACW 16 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1952).

[5] On the central role of recapitulation in the apostolic kerygma, see Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 6, 98–99.

[6] Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 3.21.10. All quotations from Book 3 of Against the Heresies are taken from Irenaeus, Against the Heresies (Book 3), trans. Dominic J. Unger, ACW 64 (New York: Newman Press, 2012). All quotations from Books 4–5 of Against the Heresies are taken from The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume 1: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature, 1885).

[7] Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 3.21.10. See also Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 17; Tertullian, An Answer to the Jews 13.

8 Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31. See also Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 5.1.3; 5.21.1; Hippolytus, Against Noetus 17.

9 Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31.

10 See Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 34.

11 Johannes Quasten, Patrology, Vol. 1: The Beginnings of Patristic Literature (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1950), 296.

12 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.20.6–7. Quoted from J. B. Lightfoot, The Gospel of John: A Newly Discovered Commentary: Volume 2, ed. Ben Witherington III and Todd D. Still (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 212.

13 Irenaeus, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 38.

14 While rarely noted, the use of chiasmus to tie together elements of different biblical books occurs throughout the Old Testament. Indeed, a whole chapter is devoted to this phenomenon in Isaac Kalimi, The Reshaping of Ancient Israelite History in Chronicles (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 232–74.

[15] Gustaf Wingren writes, “Christ recapitulates the history of Adam in the opposite direction and with the opposite result…. Christ moves triumphantly forward over the battle-ground where previously—in Adam—the battle had surged in the opposite direction, when the Devil who has now been defeated in Christ and loses his captives, himself advanced and conquered…. The whole of the course of evil must be reversed, in order that man may return behind the Fall to the uncorrupted and undestroyed Creation.” See Wingren, Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 46–47.

For For a strikingly similar interpretation of Abraham’s mission in Genesis, see Bernard Och, “Abraham and Moriah—A Journey to Fulfillment,” Judaism 38.3 (1989): 294.

[16] On the typological connection between the two gardens, see Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 13.19; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John 11.12.

17 For Irenaeus’s baptismal interpretation of John 3:5, see Against the Heresies 3.17.2; Demonstration 3; Fragment 34.

Some of the implications for believers being “in Christ” (see John 17:21, 23) are spelled out by John elsewhere. With the old man’s disobedience, shame, cowardice, recrimination, and estrangement from God having been undone by the new man’s obedience, innocence, courage, responsibility, and union with God, it follows that one who is truly “in Christ” (or who has “put on” Christ, to use Paul’s words) will demonstrate Christ’s virtues and will follow him into his Passion (see Col 1:24). As the evangelist says in 1 John 2:5–6: “By this we may be sure that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” Indeed, such teaching was evidently embraced by Ignatius of Antioch who, on his way to martyrdom in Rome, pleaded with the Christians there not to save him: “Permit me to be an imitator of the passion of my God. If any one has Him within himself, let him consider what I desire, and let him have sympathy with me, as knowing how I am straitened.” See Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans 6 (ANF 1:76).

18 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 3.22.4, italics added. For more on the knot analogy, see Maria Del Fiat Miola, “Mary as Un-tier and Tier of Knots,” JECS 24.3 (2016): 337–61; Christophe Guignard, “Untying Knots: A New Interpretation of Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.22.4,” HTR 114.2 (2021): 203–18.

[19] Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 5.19.1.

[20] It has been pointed out that, when Judas “comes” to the garden in John 18:3, it signals the arrival of the one whom Jesus said was “coming” in John 14:30, namely, Satan, “the ruler of this world.” See Steven A. Hunt, “The Roman Soldiers,” in Character Studies in the Fourth Gospel: Narrative Approaches to Seventy Figures in John, ed. Steven A. Hunt, D. Francois Tolmie, and Ruben Zimmermann, WUNT 314 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013),560–61.

That Judas and others “draw back and fall to the ground” in 18:6 may also indicate that the devil is present at Jesus’s arrest. This is because the devil is said not to “stand” (στήκω) in the truth (8:44; cf. 3:20)—“the truth” being Jesus himself (14:6).

[21] Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 5.19.1 (quote slightly emended by the author). Cyril of Alexandria says something similar: “Just as by the tree, the sin of our falling away was brought to completion, so also by the tree, our return to our original state was brought about … as Christ recapitulated for us in himself the source of our disease, as it were.” Quoted from Joel C. Elowsky, Commentary on John, Cyril of Alexandria, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 2:345.

[22] Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 5.23.2.

[23] The relationship between the forbidden fruit and the sour wine was recognized for many centuries. Leo the Great writes in the fifth century, “The food which occasioned sin is washed out by the taste of gall and vinegar” (Tractatus 57.4), while Bonaventure, in the thirteenth century, and with specific reference to John 19:28–30, writes, “It was as if in the taste of vinegar and gall his bitter passion reached its fulness and completion. For since it was by tasting the sweetness of the forbidden tree that the prevaricator Adam became the cause of all our perdition, it was appropriate and fitting that a remedy for our salvation should be found in the opposite direction” (The Tree of Life 28). Quotes taken from St. Leo the Great Sermons, trans. J. P. Freeland and A. J. Conway (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 246; Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God—The Tree of Life—The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 151. See also Athanasius, Second Letter to Virgins 2.

24 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 5.23.2.

[25] Those who interpret the allusion to Genesis 1:1 as indicative of a new creation story include Jeannine K. Brown, “Creation’s Renewal in the Gospel of John,” CBQ 72 (2010): 277; Mary L. Coloe, “The Cosmological Vision of John: The Evangelist as Observer and Interpreter,” in Creation Stories in Dialogue: The Bible, Science, and Folk Traditions, ed. Jan G. van der Watt and R. Alan Culpepper, BibInt 139 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 274.

26 R. H. Lightfoot, St. John’s Gospel: A Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 105. See also C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John, 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 1978), 190.

27 Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John 6.259. Quoted from Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John Books 1–10 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 239.

[28] The recapitulation of the sixth day of creation between John 2:1 and John 19:30 would seem to imply that a major theme of John’s Gospel is the remaking of man by the Godhead—a theme also found throughout Irenaeus’s writings.

The mapping of the six-day creation paradigm on to John 1–19 has already been done by Mary Coloe. See Mary Coloe, “Johannine Pentecost,” ABR 55 (2007): 42–43.

29 See Brown, “Creation’s Renewal,” 286.

[30] While Jesus’s death is not described as “sleep” in John’s Gospel, Lazarus’s death—which prefigures Jesus’s death—is (see John 11:11–14). Given the episodes are paired, reading the details of one into the other seems like a reasonable exegetical move.

[31] Regarding the theological significance of the eighth day, see Epistle of Barnabas 15.8; Basil, Homily 2.8; Basil, On the Holy Spirit 27, 66. For a treatment of the subject within early Christianity, see Jean Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), 262–86.

One scholar who has speculated that the eschatological “eighth day” is being implied in John 20 is Jeannine K. Brown. See Brown, “Creation’s Renewal,” 283–84.

[32] Edward H. Gerber agrees: “Jesus fulfills scripture specifically by means of recapitulation, or typological re-enactment.… Jesus does what scriptural personages and figures did or were meant to do, but Jesus does them better, and thus fulfills the intention for which they were either called or existed.” Gerber, The Scriptural Tale in the Fourth Gospel, BibInt 147 (Boston: Brill, 2016), 16.

[33] John Breck, The Shape of Biblical Language: Chiasmus in the Scriptures and Beyond (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 297.

[34] “The Right Chorale”: Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 17.

[35] Levinson, The Right Chorale, 17.

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