From the treatise Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus, bishop: Eve and Mary (Catholic Caucus)

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From the treatise Against Heresies by

       Saint Irenaeus, bishop (125-202)  

Eve and Mary

     The Lord, coming into his own creation in visible form, was sustained by his own creation which he himself sustains in being. His obedience on the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden; the good news of the truth announced by an angel to Mary, a virgin subject to a husband, undid the evil lie that seduced Eve, a virgin espoused to a husband.
     As Eve was seduced by the word of an angel and so fled from God after disobeying his word, Mary in her turn was given the good news by the word of an angel, and bore God in obedience to his word. As Eve was seduced into disobedience to God, so Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve.
     Christ gathered all things into one, by gathering them into himself. He declared war against our enemy, crushed him who at the beginning had taken us captive in Adam, and trampled on his head, in accordance with God's words to the serpent in Genesis: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall lie in wait for your head, and you shall lie in wait for his heel.
     The one lying in wait for the serpent's head is the one who was born in the likeness of Adam from the woman, the Virgin. This is the seed spoken of by Paul in the letter to the Galatians: The law of works was in force until the seed should come to whom the promise was made. He shows this even more clearly in the same letter when he says: When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman. The enemy would not have been defeated fairly if his vanquisher had not have been born of a woman, because it was through a woman that he had gained mastery over man in the beginning, and set himself up as man's adversary.
     That is why the Lord proclaims himself the Son of man, the one who renews in himself that first man from whom the race born of woman was formed; as by a man's defeat our race fell into bondage of death, so by a man's victory we were to rise again to life.   
  Source:  The Liturgy of the Hours - Office of Readings

St. Irenaeus  (125-202) was born is Asia Minor, probably at Smyrna. He was well educated and probably knew and was influenced by men who knew the Apostles, especially St. Polycarp, who had been a pupil of St. John the evangelist. According to Gregory of Tours, Polycarp sent Irenaeus as a missionary to Gaul, where he was a priest under St. Pothinus at Lyons. Irenaeus was sent to Rome in 177 with a letter from his fellow Christians to Pope St. Eleutherius pleading for leniency to the Montanists in Phrygia. In Irenaeus' absence a violent persecution of Christians broke out at Lyons, claiming Pothinus as one of its martyrs. Irenaeus was named Bishop of Lyons on his return in 178. He was the first great Catholic theologian. Irenaeus wrote in Greek and two of his profound works  survived in tact. His five-book treatise against the heresy of Gnosticism constitutes an invaluable source of information on Church Christ established from its beginnings to the end of the second century .  His work also conveys the apostolic tradition in it and is a powerful testimony to the primacy of the Pope.

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From the treatise Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus, bishop: Eve and Mary (Catholic Caucus)

St. Irenaeus of Lyons: The First Great Theologian of the Church

St. Irenaeus on Free Will (Adversus Haereses IV, 37)

Saint Irenaeus, Doctor of the Church[Martyr]

[johngrace]

THE SECOND EVE

What is the great rudimental teaching of Antiquity from its earliest date concerning her? By
“rudimental teaching” I mean the prima facie view of her person and office, the broad outline laid
down of her, the aspect under which she comes to us, in the writings of the Fathers. She is the Second Eve. Now let us consider what this implies. Eve had a definite, essential position in the First Covenant.
The fate of the human race lay with Adam; he it was who represented us. It was in Adam that we fell;
though Eve had fallen, still, if Adam had stood, we should not have lost those supernatural privileges
which were bestowed upon him as our first father. Yet though Eve was not the head of the race, still,
even as regards the race, she had a place of her own; for Adam, to whom was divinely committed the
naming of all things, entitled her “the Mother of all the living”, a name surely expressive, not of
a fact only, but of a dignity; but further, as she thus had her own general relation to the human race,
so again had she her own special place as regards its trial and its fall in Adam. In those primeval
events, Eve had an integral share. “The woman, being seduced, was in the transgression.” She
listened to the Evil Angel; she offered the fruit to her husband, and he ate of it. She co-operated,
not as an irresponsible instrument, but intimately and personally in the sin; she brought it about. As the history stands, she was a sine-qua-non, a positive, active, cause of it. And she had her share in its punishment; in the sentence pronounced on her, she was recognised as a real agent in the temptation and its issue, and she suffered accordingly. In that awful transaction there were three parties concerned,-the serpent, the woman, and the man; and at the time of their sentence, an event was announced for the future, in which the three same parties were to meet again, the serpent, the woman, and the man; but it was to be a second Adam and a second Eve, and the new Eve was to be the mother of the new Adam. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.” The Seed of the woman is the Word Incarnate, and the Woman, whose seed or son He is, is His mother Mary. This interpretation, and the parallelism it involves, seem to me undeniable; but at all events (and this is my point) the parallelism is the doctrine of the Fathers, from the earliest times; and, this being established, we are able, by the position and office of Eve in our fall, to determine the position and office of Mary in our restoration.

I shall adduce passages from their writings, with their respective countries and dates; and the dates shall extend from their births 6r conversions to their deaths, since what they propound is at once the doctrine which they had received from the generation before them, and the doctrine which was accepted and recognised as true by the generation to whom they transmitted it.

First, then, St. Justin Martyr (A.D. 120-165), St. Irenaeus (12O-200), and Tertullian (160-240). Of these Tertian represents Africa and Rome; St. Justin represents Palestine; and St. Irenaeus Asia Minor and Gaul;-or rather he represents St. John the Evangelist, for he had been taught by the Martyr St. Polycarp, who was the intimate associate as of St. John, so of the other Apostles.

1. St. Justin:

“We know that He, before all creatures, proceeded from the Father by His power and will,. ..and by means of the Virgin became man, that by what way the disobedience arising from the serpent had its beginning, by that way also it might have an undoing. For Eve, being a virgin and undefiled, conceiving the word that was from the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death; but the Virgin Mary, taking faith and joy, when the Angel told her the good tidings, that the Spirit of the Lord should come upon her and the power of the Highest overshadow her, and therefore the Holy One that was born of her was Son of God, answered, ‘Be it to me according to Thy word.’”
-Tryph. 100.

[johngrace]

http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/marian/newman1.html

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Mary as the New Eve