The first turn of the spiral is the primeval history of humanity in Adam. As Origen interprets the end of history on the basis of its beginning, so Irenaeus portrays the story of Adam on the basis of the story of Christ. ``Whence, then, comes the substance of the first man? From God's Will and Wisdom, and from virgin earth. For' God had not rained', says the Scripture, before man was made,' and there was no man to till the earth'. From this earth, then, while it was still virgin God took dust and fashioned the man, the beginning of humanity.'' Irenaeus does not regard Adam and Eve merely as private individuals, but as universal human beings, who were and are all of humanity. Adam and Eve were perfect, not in the sense that they possessed perfection, but in the sense that they were capable of development toward perfection. They were, in fact, children. Irenaeus does not claim pre-existence for the human soul; therefore there is no need for him, as there is for Origen, to identify existence itself with the fall. Existence is created and willed by God and is not the consequence of a pre-existent rebellion or of a cosmic descent from eternity into history. Historical existence is a created good.

The biblical symbol for this affirmation is expressed in the words: ``So God created man in his own image; in the similitude of God he created him.'' There are some passages in the writings of Irenaeus where the image of God and the similitude are sharply distinguished, so most notably in the statement: ``If the [Holy] Spirit is absent from the soul, such a man is indeed of an animal nature; and, being left carnal, he will be an imperfect being, possessing the image [of God] in his formation, but not receiving the similitude [of God] through the Spirit.'' Thus the image of God is that which makes a man a man and not an oyster; the similitude of God, by contrast, is that which makes a man a child of God and not merely a rational creature. Recent research on Irenaeus, however, makes it evident that he does not consistently maintain this distinction. He does not mean to say that Adam lost the similitude of God and his immortality through the fall; for he was created not exactly immortal, nor yet exactly mortal, but capable of immortality as well as of mortality.