The Knot Loosed

The New Adam and the New Eve

by St. Irenaeus of Lyons

Forefeast of the Exaltation of the Cross

Anno Domini 2026, September 13

THE FIRST issue of Dr. Doom's Patristic Word included the final lines of this passage—St. Irenaeus’s celebrated account of the knot tied by Eve and loosed by the Theotokos. Here is the fuller reading from Against Heresies III.22.4.

From Against Heresies III.22.4

In accordance with this design, the Virgin Mary was found obedient when she said, “Behold your handmaid, O Lord; let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). But Eve disobeyed, and she did so while still a virgin.

Even though Eve had Adam for a husband, she was still a virgin. For “they were both naked” in paradise “and were unashamed” (Gen 2:25), since they had been created a short time previously and had no idea about the generation of children; indeed, they first had to become adults, and only then did they begin to multiply. By disobeying, Eve became the cause of death for herself and for the whole human race. In the same way Mary, though she also had a husband, was still a virgin, and by obeying, she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.

For this reason, the law calls a woman engaged to a man his wife, even though she is still a virgin; this indicates the parallel [recirculatio] between Mary and Eve. Just as, once something has been bound, it cannot be loosed except by undoing the knot in reverse order, even so the first knots were untied by the [undoing of the] second ones, and, inversely, these last free the first. It works out that the first knot is untied by the second, and the second causes the loosing of the first.

This is the reason why the Lord declared that the first would be last and the last would be first (cf. Mt 19:30). And the prophet affirms the same thing when he says, “Sons shall be born to you in place of your fathers” (Ps 45:16). The Lord, having become “the firstborn of the dead” (cf. Col 1:18) and having received the ancient fathers in his bosom, regenerated them into the life of God, becoming himself the first of the living (cf. Col 1:18), as Adam had become the first of the dying. That is why Luke began his genealogy from the Lord and then worked back to Adam: to show that it was not the fathers who regenerated the Son, but rather the Son who regenerated them into the gospel of life.

And so the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience. What Eve bound through her unbelief, Mary loosed by her faith.

Text as presented in Luigi Gambero, S.M., Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought, translated by Thomas Buffer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 57–58.

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