Polycarp, Irenaeus and the Hermeneutic of Continuity

Today’s saint St Polycarp (ca. 69 – ca. 155) is a direct link between the Apostles and what we now regard as Catholic Theology.

Polycarp’s most famous pupil was St Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202), who saw Polycarp as a direct link to the Apostles. Irenaeus sets great store by the fact that Polycarp had conversed with St John the Evangelist and with others who had seen Jesus, and that he had been converted by the Apostles before being consecrated as a Bishop and finally martyred.

The first real synthesis of Catholic theology is found in the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus, who produced a theology of Tradition, a theology of Apostolicity, and a theology of the Atonement which lie at the heart of all subsequent Catholic theology.

For many (including those who have accepted the silly claims of The Da Vinci Code), the theology of the Church Fathers – of Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria, Hilary, Ambrose and Augustine – marks a falling-away from the pure doctrine of the Apostolic Age under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy and ecclesiastical authoritarianism.

Against this point of view, the insistence by Irenaeus that his own teacher Polycarp was himself taught by the Apostles emphases the fundamental continuity between the teaching of the Apostles and that of Irenaeus himself, the “founder of Catholic theology”.

The same “hermeneutic of rupture” theologians who emphasize the alleged discontinuity between the pre-Vatican 2 Church and the post-Vatican 2 Church are also accustomed to affirm a radical discontinuity between the theology of the New Testament authors (and, indeed, of Jesus himself) and that of the Church Fathers.

The testimony of Irenaeus is that there is no such discontinuity, and, as the link between the Apostles and Irenaeus, the martyr Polycarp bears witness to the “hermeneutic of continuity” between Jesus, the Apostles, and Catholic theology.