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Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching
St Irenaeus of Lyons, tr. Robinson, 1920
Chapter 10
Now this God is glorified by His Word1 who is His Son continually,2 and by the Holy Spirit who is the Wisdom of the Father of all: and the power(s) of these, (namely) of the Word and Wisdom, which are called Cherubim and Seraphim,3 with unceasing voices glorify God; and every created thing that is in the heavens offers4 glory to God the Father of all. He by His Word has created the whole world, and in the world are the angels; and to all the world He has given laws wherein each several thing should abide, and according to that which is determined by God should not pass their bounds, each fulfilling his appointed task.
Notes
- On the glorification of the Father by the Son and the Holy Spirit, see Introd. p. 39.
- The meaning is uncertain: the word means “daily, continual, perpetual”; but it is also used as an adverb. The German translations take it in the sense of “eternal” (sein ewiger Sohn). It renders διὰ παντὸς in Lev. xxiv. 2; and that may have been the original Greek in this passage. But even so it is not clear whether it is to be taken with “who is His Son,” or with “is glorified”—For the Eternal Sonship we may compare III, xix. 1: “existens semper apud Patrem;” and IV, xxxiv. 3: “semper cum Patre erat.”
- Origen in his Commentary on Romans (III, § 8) interprets the two Cherubim over the mercy-seat as the Son and the Holy Spirit. In De Principiis (I, iii. 4, IV, iii. 26) he gives the same interpretation of the two Seraphim of Isa. vi. 3, saying that he received it from his Hebrew teacher: he adds that the same applies to the two living creatures of Hab. iii. 2 (LXX). Philo (Vit. Mos. iii. 8) had interpreted the two Cherubim as τὰς πρεσβυτάτας καὶ ἀνωτάτω δύο τοῦ ὄντος δυνάμεις, τήν τε ποιητικὴν καὶ βασιλικήν: the former ὀνομάζεται θεός, the latter κύριος. This probably paved the way for Origen’s interpretation.
- Cf. Rev. v. 13.