From Alvan Lamson:
Irenaeus has left on record a summary or summaries of the faith of Christians of his day, in language, however, which will not satisfy the demands of a later orthodoxy. With the
preceding Fathers...he agreed in assigning to the Son a separate existence, making him inferior to the Father; but the mode of his generation he would not discuss, deeming it inexplicable. In his antagonism to the Gnostic doctrine of emanations, he was led to connect with the Son the terms "always " and "eternal"; it is difficult to define in what sense. He wants clearness, and his notions seem not to have been well defined even to himself. "Who," he asks, with the prophet, "can declare his generation? No one. No one knows it; not Valentinus, not Marcion, neither Saturninus, nor Basilides, nor angels, nor archangels, nor princes, nor powers, none but the Father who begat, and the Son who was begotten." He is very careful, however, on all occasions to distinguish the Son from the "One true and only God," who is "supreme over all, and besides whom there is no other." Take two or three passages as specimens. "The Father is above all, and is himself the head of Christ." "John preached one God supreme over all, and one only-begotten Son Jesus Christ." "The Church dispersed throughout all the world has received from the Apostles and their disciples this belief—in one God the Father, supreme over all ... and in one Jesus Christ .... and in the Holy Spirit, that through the prophets preached the dispensations," etc. We could fill pages with similar passages. No language could more clearly and positively assert the supremacy of the Father.
The Father sends, the Son is sent; the Father commands, the Son executes, ministering to his will. The Father grants, the Son receives power and dominion. The Father gives him the "heritage of the nations," and "subjects all his enemies to him." These and similar expressions which form his current phraseology, — which are interwoven, in fact, with the texture of his whole work against heresies, — could not have been employed by one who conceived of the Son as numerically the same being with the Father, or as in any sense his equal.
Again: he quotes the words of the Saviour (Mark xiii. 32)
"But of that day and that hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father," without any attempt to explain them away, or evade the obvious inference. He admits their truth in the simplest and broadest sense, and thence adduces an argument for humility. "If the Son," says he, "was not ashamed to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father, neither should we be ashamed to reserve the solution of difficult questions to God." He goes further. Far from denying the inference to be drawn from the expression referred to, he expressly admits it. Our Saviour, he observes, used this expression that "we might learn from him that the Father is above all; for 'the Father,' he says, 'is greater than I.' The doctrine of two natures, by the help of which modern Trinitarians attempt to evade the force of this and similar passages, was not as yet invented.
From Joseph Priestley:
Irenaeus seems to have considered the Holy Spirit as a divine influence. "By the name of Christ," he says, "we are given to understand one who annoints, one who is annointed. It is the Father who annoints, but the Son is annointed in the Spirit."
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