The death of a man is unique, and yet it is universal. The straight line would symbolize its uniqueness, the circle its universality. But how can one figure symbolize both?

Christianity declares that in the life and death of Jesus Christ the unique and the universal concur. Perhaps no church father saw this concurrence of the unique and the universal as clearly, or formulated it as precisely, as Irenaeus. To be the Savior and the Lord, Jesus Christ has to be a historical individual with a biography all his own; he dare not be a cosmic aeon that swoops to earth for a while but never identifies itself with man's history. Yet this utterly individual historical person must also contain within himself the common history of mankind. His history is his alone, yet each man must recognize his own history in it. His death is his alone, yet each man can see his own death in the crucifixion of Jesus. Each man can identify himself with the history and the death of Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ has identified himself with human history and human death, coming as the head of a new humanity. Not a circle, then, nor a straight line, but a spiral represents the shape of death as Irenaeus sees it; for a spiral has motion as well as recurrence. As represented by a spiral, history may, in some sense, be said to repeat itself; yet each historical event remains unique. Christ is both unique and universal.