Texts in Conversation
James says Abraham believed God and was called God’s friend. Irenaeus echoes this to describe Abraham following the Torah by free choice and becoming his friend through faith rather than compulsion.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
James 2:23
New Testament
22 You see that his faith was working together with his works and his faith was perfected by works. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Now Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Irenaeus Against Heresies 4.13
Early Christian
4 Inasmuch, then, as all natural precepts are common to us and to them (the Jews), they had in them indeed the beginning and origin; but in us they have received growth and completion. For to yield assent to God, and to follow His Word, and to love Him above all, and one's neighbour as one's self (now man is neighbour to man), and to abstain from every evil deed, and all other things of a like nature which are common to both [covenants], do reveal one and the same God. But this is our Lord, the Word of God, who in the first instance certainly drew slaves to God, but afterwards He set those free who were subject to Him, as He does Himself declare to His disciples: I will not now call you servants, for the servant knows not what his lord does; but I have called you friends, for all things which I have heard from My Father I have made known. For in that which He says, I will not now call you servants, He indicates in the most marked manner that it was Himself who did originally appoint for men that bondage with respect to God through the law, and then afterwards conferred upon them freedom. And in that He says, For the servant knows not what his lord does, He points out, by means of His own advent, the ignorance of a people in a servile condition. But when He terms His disciples the friends of God, He plainly declares Himself to be the Word of God, whom Abraham also followed voluntarily and under no compulsion (sine vinculis), because of the noble nature of his faith, and so became the friend of God. But the Word of God did not accept of the friendship of Abraham, as though He stood in need of it, for He was perfect from the beginning (Before Abraham was, He says, I am), but that He in His goodness might bestow eternal life upon Abraham himself, inasmuch as the friendship of God imparts immortality to those who embrace it.
Date: 175-190 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... Similarly, Irenaeus uses the phrase, “behold the judge is near,” which echoes James 5:9. Irenaeus also says twice of Abraham, “he believed God and it was reputed to him as righteousness and he was called friend of God,” which echoes James 2:23. The possibility in this last instance that James was being used is muted by the fact that the designation “friend of God” was available elsewhere. But the question remains, where would it most likely have been available to Irenaeus? ...
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