Alister E. McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, Oxford.

Irenaeus remarked that The Church has been planted as a garden (paradisus) in this world, and developed a complex account of the life of the church on the assumption that it was a means of bearing and restoring the lost values of Eden to the world (65). For Irenaeus, redemption involved the recapitulation in Christ the history of the human race. Developing the contrast between Adam and Christ that is found in the New Testament letters of Paul, Irenaeus argues that Christ traverses the entire trajectory of human history, correcting Adams failings and errors. There is thus a correspondence between what was lost by Adam in Eden and what was regained by Christ on the Cross. Fascinated by the symbolism of these two histories, Irenaeus points up the congruity between Adam and Christ. Our innocence was lost by the disobedience of Adam, and restored through the obedience of Christ. Human innocence was lost in one garden (Eden), yet regained in another (Gethsemane). In Eden, the tree of life became a tree fo death; in Gethsemane, a tree of death (the cross) became a tree of life. And so on. For Irenaeus, the history of human salvation is shaped by the events of Eden, just as our final place of restoration will bring to perfection the conditions of that paradise (47-49). A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction, William C. Placher, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1983. About 170 another biship, Irenaeus (of Lyons in southern France), explicitly stated the doctrine of apostolic succession: Christ shoes the apostles, who chose a first generation of bishops, who chose their successors, and so on. If Christ had had any secret wisdom to teach, these people would know itand they were not Gnostics (49). Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons in southern France in the late second century who developed the theory of apostolic succession, sought the basis for a fuller account of Christs saving work in Pauls references to Christ as the second Adam. When Adam, out of pride and disobedience, sinned, something went wrong with humanity. Christ put things right. He undid what Adam had done by living a human life of humility and obedience, even to death. Historians call this the theory of recapitulation (Christ repeated Adam, only in reverse), and it has undergirded most accounts of the work of Christ ever since. Accepting recapitulation, however, left a need to define what Adam had done wrong and how Christ put it right (70). (Branching into different atonement theoriessatans trickery, sacrifice & law courts, etche went on to criticize thembut its not to question that this theory underlies all theories of atonement). Irenaeus and other theologians had described Mary as the second Eve who undid the sin of the first Eve just as Christ, the second Adam, undid the sin of the first Adam (82). Fred Sanders Prezi on Holy Spirit the name Christ implies him who anoints, him who has been anointed, and the unction with which he is anointed. He who anoints is the Father, and the Son has been anointed in the Spirit, which is the unction; as the Word said through Isaiah, The Spirit of God is upon me, because he anointed me, signifying the Father as anointing, the Son as anointed, and the unction which is the Spirit. Irenaeus of Lyons, AH Book III