Abstract

Irenaeus of Lyon uses the tale of Abraham as biblical proof for his thesis on the unity of God and of the history of salvation. In order to do this, however, he must first refute the Gnostic and Marcionite interpretations of Abraham, and so the episode of Isaac’s sacrifice. In Irenaeus’s exegesis of Gn 22:1–19, Abraham becomes the progenitor of the apostles and gentiles who are welcomed into the Church and an ante litteram disciple of Mt 4:22 and 16:24; he, who prophetically foresees the day of Jesus’s passion, offers his son Isaac as a sacrifice, just as God would offer his son, the incarnate Logos, as a sacrifice for the salvation of his descendants.