Does Irenaeus indicate that people were raised from the dead in the 2nd century? The following words of Irenaeus are recorded in Eusebius's Church History:


  For some of them drive out demons effectually and truly, so that those who have been cleansed from evil spirits frequently believe and unite with the Church. Others have a foreknowledge of future events, and visions, and prophetic revelations. Still others heal the sick by the laying on of hands, and restore them to health. And, as we have said, even dead persons have been raised, and remained with us many years.


This passage was satirized by Edward Gibbon in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2.15.3; he sees no other credible evidence for this during this time and mockingly overstates Irenaeus's quote:


  In the days of Irenaeus, about the end of the second century, the resurrection of the dead was very far from being esteemed an uncommon event; that the miracle was frequently performed on necessary occasions, by great fasting and the joint supplication of the church of the place, and that the persons thus restored to their prayers had lived afterwards among them may years.


Is there an alternative interpretation here?  Is Irenaeus really saying that people were being raised from the dead during his lifetime at the end of the 2nd century?
Christians from both sides of the continuation of spiritual gifts debate understand Irenaeus's quote here more charitably than Gibbon, and do not see it as evidence that people were being raised from the dead in the late 2nd century.  I'll refer to the writings of cessationist B. B. Warfield and charismatic Ronald A. N. Kydd.

Warfield addresses Gibbon directly and agrees with his assessment of the period, saying "Irenaeus alone of all the writers of this period speaks of raisings of the dead at all."  Eusebius mentions one raising told by Papias from the apostolic age, but his overall work indicates the scarcity of such events:


  It is very clear that Eusebius was not familiar with raisings from the dead in his own day, and also that Papias was not familiar with them in his day; and it is equally clear that Eusebius did not know of numerous instances of such a transaction having been recorded as occurring in the course of the early history of the church, which history he was in the act of transcribing. (14)


Warfield cites the writings of several other early authors, such as Theophilus of Antioch and Tertullian.  The latter in particular, in On Modesty, XXI, contrasts the spiritual powers of the apostles from their successors, saying that the former "raised the dead."  Warfield concludes:


  It is an understatement to say that Irenaeus's contemporaries were unaware that the dead were being raised in their day.  What they say amounts to testimony that they were not being raised. (14)


So why, then, does Irenaeus say this?  Kydd defends Irenaeus as a scholar, citing the vindication of his writings on Gnosticism following the discovery of the Gnostic Nag Hammadi documents in the 1940s.  And based on their analysis of the passage, Kydd and Warfield hold that Irenaeus is actually refering to the apostolic-era raisings of the dead, not ones happening in his own day. Warfield writes:


  Irenaeus throws the raisings from the dead well into the past.  This is made evident not only from the past tenses employed, which are markedly contrasted with the present tenses used in the rest of the passage, but also from the statement that those who were thus raised had lived after their resuscitation a considerable number of years, which shows that recent resuscitations are not in view. (242)


Warfield also notes the phrase, "as we said," which he argues points back to Irenaeus's mention of raisings from the dead in the apostolic era (5.7.2), not recent instances.  Kydd summarizes:


  Warfield concludes by saying that "there is no reason why the cases he [Irenaeus] has in mind may not have occurred during the lifetime of the Apostles or of Apostolic men," and I think he is right. (45)





Eusebius, Church History, from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume 1
Kydd, Charismatic Gifts in the Early Church, 43–45
Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles, "The Cessation of the Charismata," 11–16, 241ff.