Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
A demonstration, from the Lord's own words, that he confessed himself sent by God the Father, from whom also the prophets came and the fathers were chosen.
For whom does the Lord not show to have spoken the prophets from any other God, but from his own Father, nor from any other substance, but from one and the same Father — and that no one else made the things that are in this world, but his own Father — teaching in this manner: "A certain man, master of an estate, laid out a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug within it a wine-vat, raised a watchtower over it, leased it to farmers, and journeyed abroad. When harvest-time approached, he dispatched his slaves to the farmers to collect his share of the produce. The farmers, laying hold of his slaves, flogged one, hurled stones at another, and put a third to death. He dispatched further slaves, greater in number than before, and they treated these the same way. Finally he dispatched to them his own son, thinking, 'They will surely show my son deference.' Yet on seeing the son the farmers said to one another, 'Here is the one who will inherit; come, let us do away with him and seize his inheritance.' So they laid hold of him, threw him outside the vineyard, and killed him. When, then, the vineyard's master arrives, what will he do to those farmers?" And they answered him: "He will bring those villains to a wretched end, and lease his vineyard to other farmers, who will pay him the produce at the proper seasons." The Lord then continues: "Have you not read this: 'The stone the builders discarded has become the very cornerstone; this has come about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our sight'? Therefore I tell you, God's kingdom will be taken away from you, and handed to a people who will yield its produce." By these words he showed his disciples plainly that the estate's master was one and the same — namely, the one God and Father, who fashioned all things through his own agency — while the cultivators varied: some arrogant, insolent, and barren, murderers of their own Lord; others yielding produce at the proper seasons with full obedience; and that this same master at one point dispatched slaves, and at another his own Son. It is from that identical Father, then, from whom the Son was dispatched to those farmers who murdered him, that the slaves too had been dispatched. Yet the Son came from the Father bearing supreme authority, saying, "But I tell you"; whereas the slaves, speaking merely as slaves on their master's behalf, did not for that reason declare, "Thus says the Lord."
The Lord, then, whom those tenants were proclaiming to unbelievers, is the very one whom Christ delivered over to those who obey him; and those whom God had earlier called first — first through the servile legislation — this same God took up afterward, later, through adoption. For God laid out the vineyard, that is, the human race, first through the shaping of Adam and the choosing of the patriarchs; and he handed it over to tenants through that legislation which came through Moses; and he set a hedge around it, that is, he marked out the bounds of their cultivation; and he built a tower, choosing Jerusalem; and he dug a winepress, preparing a receptacle for the prophetic Spirit; and thus he sent prophets before the deportation into Babylon, and after the deportation others again, more than the first, seeking the fruits, saying to them: "Thus says the Lord: Make your hearts clean, and show mercy each to his brother; do not oppress the widow and the orphan and the sojourner and the poor, and let none of you remember in your hearts the malice of his brother, and do not love a false oath. Wash yourselves, be clean, put away your wicked deeds from your hearts, learn to do good, pursue justice, rescue the one who is wronged, render judgment for the orphan, take up the cause of the widow, and come, let us settle the matter together, says the Lord." And again: "Guard your tongue against evil, and let your lips speak no falsehood. Depart from wickedness and do good; look for peace and go after it." These things the prophets proclaimed, seeking the fruit of righteousness. But when the people did not believe them, at last he dispatched his own offspring, our Lord Jesus Christ, and him too, once the wicked farmers had put him to death, they threw outside the vineyard. For this reason the Lord God handed the vineyard over — no longer walled about, but spread out over the whole world — to other tenants, who render the fruits in their seasons, the tower of election now raised up and made glorious everywhere. For everywhere the Church is renowned, and everywhere the winepress is dug round about; for everywhere there are those who receive the Spirit. For since they spurned the Son of God and, having killed him, flung him outside the vineyard, God justly spurned them in turn, and gave to the nations, who were outside the vineyard, the fruit of its cultivation. As also the prophet Jeremiah declares: "The Lord has spurned and abandoned the nation that acts in such a way: for the people of Judah have committed evil before my eyes, says the Lord." And Jeremiah again: "I stationed lookouts over you; listen for the trumpet's blast"; and they replied, "We will not listen." Therefore it was the nations who listened, together with those among them who shepherd flocks. There is, then, a single God and Father — the very one who laid out the vineyard, who brought forth the people, who commissioned the prophets, who afterward commissioned his own offspring, and who granted the vineyard to other farmers, to those who yield its fruits in their proper seasons.
And for this reason the Lord said to his disciples, preparing us to be good workers: "Take heed to yourselves, and watch always at every season, lest your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly. For it will come as a snare on everyone who dwells across the whole earth's surface. Gird your loins, then, and keep your lamps burning, and be like servants awaiting the return of their master from the marriage feast. For as it happened in the days of Noah: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, marrying and given to marriage, unaware of anything until Noah went into the ark; then the flood arrived and swept every one of them away. And as it happened in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, until Lot went out from Sodom; it rained fire from heaven and destroyed them all: so shall it be also at the coming of the Son of Man. Watch, therefore, since you do not know on what day your Lord will come." He is proclaiming a single, identical Lord, one who in Noah's era, on account of humanity's rebellion, brought the deluge; and in Lot's era, owing to the great mass of Sodomite wrongdoing, rained down fire from the sky; and who, in these last times, owing to that very rebellion and comparable wrongdoing, shall usher in the reckoning day, concerning which he declared that things will go easier for Sodom and Gomorrah than for whatever town and household refuses the message brought by his Apostles. And: "You shall go down even unto hell. For if the mighty works that were done in you had occurred instead within Sodom, that city would still be standing today. Nevertheless I say to you, things will go easier for Sodom on the reckoning day than for you."
Since the Word of God remains ever one and unchanging, giving to those who believe in him a spring of water unto eternal life, but immediately withering the barren fig tree; and in the days of Noah justly bringing on the flood, that he might blot out that most wicked generation of men then living, who could no longer bear fruit for God, since the transgressor angels had mingled themselves with them; and yet, so as to restrain their sins, preserving the type of the shaping of Adam: and I find this passage so allegorized by the Father of the Greek interpreters of Irenaeus. In the days of Lot, then, who rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from heaven, an example of the just judgment of God, that all might know that every tree failing to yield good fruit gets felled and thrown on the blaze: and in the universal judgment it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for those who saw his mighty works and did not believe in him, nor received his teaching. For as he gave greater grace through his coming to those who believed in him and do his will, so he signified that a greater punishment in the judgment awaits those who did not believe in him, being himself just and equal toward all, and requiring more from those to whom more was given — more, not because he thereby shows the knowledge of another Father, as we have shown at such length elsewhere, but because he poured out through his coming a greater gift of the Father's grace upon the human race.
But if what we have already said does not suffice for anyone to believe that the prophets were sent by one and the same Father from whom our Lord also was sent, let him open the ears of his heart, and calling upon Christ Jesus the Lord as his teacher, hear him say: "The kingdom of heaven resembles a certain king who arranged a wedding banquet for his son, and dispatched his servants to summon the invited guests to the celebration. And they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, Tell those who are invited: See, my banquet stands ready, my bulls and fattened animals are slaughtered, everything is prepared; come to the celebration. But they shrugged it off and went their own ways, one to his field, another to his trade; while the rest laid hold of his servants and abused some and murdered others. But when the king heard of it he was angry, and sending his armies he destroyed those murderers and burned their city, and said to his servants: Everything is ready for the feast, but those invited did not deserve it. Go out, then, to the open roads, and bring in whomever you find to the celebration. So his servants went out and gathered everyone they could find, both wicked and worthy, until the hall was packed with those attending. Yet once the king entered to look over those attending, he noticed among them a man not dressed for the wedding, and asked him: Friend, how did you get in here lacking wedding clothing? And he said, 'Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the outer darkness: where there will be wailing and the grinding of teeth. Many receive the invitation, yet few are among the chosen."
For by these words the Lord clearly showed both that all things and one King and Lord of all are the Father, of whom he had also said before: "Do not swear an oath by Jerusalem, since it belongs to the great King as his city"; and that from the beginning he prepared the wedding for his Son, and because of his immense goodness called the first through his servants to the wedding banquet; and when they would not obey, again he sent other servants calling them, and even so they did not obey him, but stoned and killed those who announced the invitation: those he destroyed, sending his armies, and burned their city; and from all the roads, that is, from all the nations, he called men to the wedding banquet of his Son, just as he also said through Jeremiah: "I sent to you my servants the prophets, saying: Turn, each of you, from your most wicked way, and make your works better." And again through the same: "I have sent," he says, "to you all my servants the prophets, day and night, and they did not obey me, nor did they incline their ears; and you shall say to them this word: This is the nation which did not obey the voice of the Lord, nor received discipline; faith has perished from their mouth." He, then, who called us through the Apostles from every quarter, is the same who through the prophets called those who lived long ago, as is shown from the words of the Lord; and it is not that the prophets were from one, and the Apostles from another, even though they preached to different nations; but from one and the same, some announced the Lord, others preached the gospel of the Father, some foretold the coming of the Son of God in advance, others proclaimed him already present to those who were far off.
Further, he also made clear that we must be adorned both with the calling and with upright deeds, so that God's Spirit might come to dwell within us; for this, as also in Jeremiah, or so the interpreter of Irenaeus wrongly has it, is the wedding garment of which the Apostle also speaks... immortality. But those who were called to God's supper and, on account of their evil manner of life, did not receive the Spirit — for the same king who called the faithful together from every quarter to the wedding of his Son, and granted the incorruptible banquet, commands that the man who has no wedding garment, that is, the scorner, be cast into outer darkness. For just as in the former Testament he was not well pleased with many of them, so here too, invitations go out widely though the chosen are few. There are not, then, a God who passes judgment and a separate Father extending the call to salvation; nor a giver of everlasting light distinct from the one ordering that those lacking wedding garments be thrown into the outer dark. Rather, a single, undivided God is at work, the Father of our Lord, by whom also the prophets were sent: calling the unworthy on account of his immense goodness, yet examining those who have been called, to see whether they have a garment fitting and suitable for the wedding of his Son; since nothing unfitting, nothing evil, is pleasing to him. Just as the Lord told the man he had cured: "Behold, you are made whole: sin no more, lest something worse happen to you." For he who is good, and just, and clean, and unblemished will tolerate nothing evil, nothing unjust, nothing abominable in his own bridal chamber.
He, then, is the Father of our Lord, the one whose foresight sustains everything in existence and whose ordinance governs it all; who freely gives to those to whom it is fitting, but according to merit most justly distributes retribution against the ungrateful, who do not perceive his goodness, being a most just rewarder. And for this reason he says: "Sending his armies he destroyed those murderers and burned their city." His armies, moreover, are said to be all men of God: since the whole earth belongs to the Lord, together with everything filling it, the world and all its inhabitants. And for this reason the Apostle Paul, in the epistle to the Romans, says: "For there is no power but from God. But the powers that are, are ordained by God. Therefore whoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God; and those who resist bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the power? Do good, and you will have praise from it: for it is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword without cause. For it is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who does evil. Therefore be subject, not merely out of fear of retribution, but for the sake of a clear conscience. For this reason you also pay tribute; since they serve as God's officers, devoted persistently to this very task." So the Lord and the Apostles alike proclaim one God the Father, who established the law, who sent the prophets, who made all things; and for this reason he says: "Sending his armies," since every man, insofar as he is a man, is his own creation, though he may not know his God. For he himself provides for all that they should exist, he who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.
And not only through what has already been said, but also through the parable of the two sons, of whom the younger squandered his substance in riotous living, dwelling with harlots, he taught that the Father is one and the same, refusing even a kid to the elder son, but for the sake of him who had been lost, his younger son, commanding the fatted calf to be killed and the first robe to be given to him. And through the parable of the laborers who at various times were sent into the vineyard, one and the same Lord is shown: calling some at the very beginning of the world's fashioning, others afterward, others about the middle of the times, others when the times had already advanced, and yet others at the end; so that there are indeed many laborers according to their own respective times, but one who calls them together, the master of the household. For there is one vineyard, since there is also one righteousness, and one steward: since a single Spirit belonging to God orders all things; and likewise one reward, for all received a single denarius each — the image and inscription of the King, that is, the knowledge of God, which is incorruption. And for this reason he began to give the reward from the last, because in the last times the Lord was manifested, presenting himself to all.
And the publican too, who in prayer surpassed the Pharisee, got the Lord's own witness that he left more justified, not because he worshiped another Father, but because with great humility, without arrogance and without boasting, he made confession to that same God. And the parable of the two sons who were sent into the vineyard, of whom one refused his father and afterward repented — when his repentance profited him nothing — while the other promised to go, at once assenting to his father, but did not go (since every man is a liar, and the will indeed lies ready at hand, but he does not find the means to carry it out) — this too shows one and the same Father. And the parable of the fig tree also, of which the Lord says, "Behold, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none" (signifying by this his coming through the prophets, through whom he came on many occasions in search of the upright fruit they owed him, and did not discover it), openly made clear that the fig tree would be cut down for the reason stated: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you desolate." For what was said in the parable, "Behold, for three years I have come seeking fruit," and again plainly, "How often would I have gathered your children," would be a falsehood unless we understand it of his coming through the prophets; given that he visited them just the once, and that being his first appearance among them in person. But since it is the same Word of God who chose the patriarchs, and who always visited them through the prophetic Spirit, and who has now called us together from every quarter through his own coming, he was truly speaking of these very things when he said: "Many shall arrive from east and from west, taking their place at table alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob within the kingdom of heaven; while the heirs of the kingdom will be driven out into the darkness beyond, a place of wailing and the grinding of teeth." If, then, those who through the preaching of his Apostles have believed in him from the east and the west, and shall take their place at table alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob within the kingdom of heaven, sharing the feast with them, then one and the same God is shown, who chose the patriarchs, visited the people, and called the Gentiles.