Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Against those who say, "What new thing did Christ bring by his coming?"; and, that Christ fulfilled all the things which the prophets foretold. But if this kind of thought occurs to you, so that you say, "What new thing, then, did the Lord bring by his coming?" — know that he brought all newness by bringing his own self, who had been foretold. This very thing was the life-giving of man. For the coming of a king is announced beforehand by those who are sent as his servants, for the preparation and readiness of those who are about to receive their Lord. But once the King has arrived, and his subjects have been filled with the gladness that was promised beforehand, and have obtained the liberty coming from him, and take part in beholding him, and have listened to his sayings, and have delighted in his gifts, no one keeps asking what fresh thing the King has brought beyond what his heralds already proclaimed — that is, no one among those with understanding. For he brought his own self, and the good things already foretold; and Christ, arriving in the manner he had been announced, brought their sayings to completion. For this reason he stated: "do not suppose that I arrived to tear down the Law or the prophets — I did not arrive to tear down but to bring to completion. Truly I tell you, until sky and ground give way, not a single letter or stroke will ever give way from the Law and the prophets, until every part is accomplished." For by his own arrival he brought all things to completion, and continues bringing to completion within the Church, right up to the final consummation, the fresh covenant that the Law had foretold. Just as his Apostle Paul likewise states in the letter to the Romans: "but now God's righteousness, apart from the Law, has been revealed, attested by both the Law and the prophets — for the righteous one will live by trust." This same point — that the righteous one will live by trust — had already been foretold by the prophets.
But how could the prophets have foretold the coming of the King, and have preached beforehand the freedom that was to be given by him, and have announced beforehand all that was done by Christ, and foretold his word and his work and his passion, and foretold the new covenant, if they had received prophetic inspiration from another God — being ignorant, according to you, of the ineffable Father and his kingdom and his dispositions, which the Son of God, coming in the last of days, fulfilled on earth? For you cannot say that these things happened by some chance, as though spoken by the prophets of one person, but happening, as it turned out, to the Lord by coincidence. For every prophet declared the very same matters; yet none of these events befell any man of ancient days. Had any of these events befallen one of the ancients, then those who prophesied at a later time surely would not have gone on foretelling these same events as still lying ahead in the final age. Furthermore there exists no one — not among the patriarchs, not among the prophets, not among the kings of old — concerning whom any of these matters was rightly and precisely brought to pass. For while every one of them indeed foretold the sufferings belonging to Christ, they themselves stood far removed from suffering in the fashion these things had been described. And likewise the signs foretold regarding the Lord's suffering were realized in no one else at all. The sun did not darken at noon over the death of any man of former ages, nor was the temple curtain torn apart, nor did the ground quake, nor did boulders split open, nor did the dead come back to life, nor did any such man rise up on the third day, nor was any such man carried up into heaven, nor did the sky open at his ascent, nor did the nations put faith in any other's name, nor did any of them, once having died and been raised, inaugurate a fresh covenant of liberty. It was not, therefore, of another, but of the Lord, in whom all the foretold signs met together, that the prophets spoke.
But if someone, pleading the Jews' case, should say that this new covenant is the rebuilding of the temple that took place under Zerubbabel after they had been carried away into Babylon, and the departure of the people that took place after seventy years, let him understand that at that time only the stone temple was rebuilt (for the Law that had been written on stone tablets was still being kept), but no new covenant was given; rather, they continued to use the law that had been given through Moses right up to the Lord's coming. But from the Lord's coming there went out into all the earth a new covenant that reconciles to peace, and a law that gives life, just as the prophets declared: "From Zion a law will issue, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, and he will correct many nations; and they will beat their swords into plough-blades, refashion their spears as pruning-hooks, and no longer learn the ways of combat." If, therefore, this other law and this message, having its source in Jerusalem, conferred such abundant peace upon the nations that welcomed it, and thereby corrected a vast multitude for their folly, it is plain the prophets were speaking of a different law altogether.
But if it was the law of freedom, that is, the word of God announced by the apostles who went out from Jerusalem into all the earth, that produced so great a change that men forged their swords and spears of war into ploughshares, and turned the sickles given for reaping grain into instruments of peace, and no longer know how to fight but, when struck, offer the other cheek as well — then the prophets were not speaking of some other, but of him who brought these things about. And this is our Lord, and in this the word is true: for he it is who made the plough and set the sickle to work — that is, the first sowing of man, which was the formation of man according to Adam, and, in the last times, the fruit gathered through the Word. And because he joined the beginning to the end, being Lord of both, at the end he displayed the plough — wood joined to iron — and thus cleansed the earth: because the steadfast Word, united to flesh and fastened in its frame, purified the wild earth. In the beginning he prefigured the sickle through Abel, signifying the gathering-in of the righteous human race; for it says, "Behold, the just man is perishing, and none takes it to heart; and upright men are being swept away, and no one gives it a thought." These things were foreshadowed in Abel, proclaimed beforehand by the prophets, brought to completion in the Lord, and in us the very same thing continues, the body following its own head. Against those, then, who say that the prophets came from one god and our Lord from another, a different Father, such arguments are fitting — if by any means they might at last rest from so much unreason. For this is why we take pains to bring forward proofs from the Scriptures, that by refuting them from their very words, so far as lies in us, we may restrain them.