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To further explain this paradox we might turn to the other contrast
between Adam and Christ mentioned by Irenaeus in the passage just cited,
which is again based upon Paul and the distinction he makes between the way
in which the ?rst Adam was animated by a breath of life and the last Adam,
Christ, as a life-creating spirit (1 Cor 15:45). Adam was animated by a breath of
life, and could have used this breath not for himself but for others. But Adam,
as we all from our very ?rst breath, did all he could to preserve it, to perpetuate
it, to make it secure. But a breath is inherently transitory – it is snatched, and
will expire, no matter how secure we try to make it. As Christ says: If you try to
preserve your life, you will lose it. But, he continues: if you lose it for my sake
and for the gospel, you will gain it (Mark 8:35; Matt. 10:39, 16:25; Luke 9:24,
17:33). Christ has shown us what it is to be God in the way that he dies as a
human being, by laying down his life in love. And by showing us the way of life,
and freeing us from the fear of death, he enables us to follow him in using our
breath to live a life of self-sacri?cial love, a life which is that of the Spirit him-
self, the life of God.

In this way, then, the death which we have introduced into this world
has been, as I put it, turned inside out, and now becomes the way of life. Suf-
fering, sickness, and death, while on one level do indeed result from our sin, yet
on another, more profoundly theological level, can be see as the means by
which God trains us, fashions us, into human beings in his own image and like-
ness.

To help us understand how this is so, Irenaeus points out that there are
two types of knowledge: that gained through experience and that arrived at by
opinion. It is only through experience that the tongue learns of bitterness and
sweetness; and, in the same way, we only come to have a knowledge of good
(that is obedience to God, which is life for human beings), through the experi-
ence of both good and evil (that is, disobedience, which is death), so that we
are in a position to reject the evil and adhere to the good. In this way, through
experience of both, and casting away disobedience through repentance, human
beings become ever more tenacious in their obedience to God. But if someone
tries to avoid the knowledge of both of these, and the twofold faculty of
knowledge, he will, in Irenaeus’ striking language, both forget himself and kill
his humanity (Haer. 4.39.1).

Irenaeus further claims that as the heavenly kingdom is more precious
to those who have known the earthly kingdom, and, that if they prize it more,
so also will they love it more: and loving it the more, they will be more glori?ed
by God. He then concludes:

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