Killing the human being within: Irenaeus and moral injury

This chapter explores the theme of moral injury from the perspective of early Christian anthropology. Seeing Christ’s words on the Cross, “It is finished!”, as a reference to the project of God announced in Genesis, “Let us make a human being in our image,” early Christian writers such as Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons held that to be a human being is to follow Christ on the path of the cross, laying down our life, as an entrance into immortal life, in love for him and our neighbor. This opens up a space for seeing the human being, in the words of the Letter of Barnabas, as “earth that suffers,” so seeing in the pathos of our being the birth pangs of truly human existence. This does not entail a mere passivity in the face of suffering, but a creative, active, passivity, transforming the experience of passive suffering into an active movement of growth into the stature of human existence revealed by Christ.