Against Heresies

Summary

Against Heresies, more fully titled The Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So Called, is a five-book work written around 180 by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul. Its target is the variety of second-century movements now usually grouped as Gnosticism, especially the school of the teacher Valentinus. These groups taught that the material world was made by an ignorant or hostile lesser god, the Demiurge, and that salvation came through secret knowledge (gnosis) given to a spiritual elite. Book I sets out the Valentinian system in detail, with its heavenly beings (Aeons), the fall of Wisdom (Sophia) and the origin of the world, and then traces other teachers back to Simon Magus. Irenaeus believed that exposing these systems fully would be enough to refute them. Book II argues against them by reason, attacking the idea of a higher god above the Creator and the allegorical use of numbers. Books III to V argue from Scripture and tradition. Irenaeus appeals to the public teaching handed down in churches founded by the apostles, listing the succession of bishops at Rome from Peter and Paul to his own day. He defends four Gospels, no more and no fewer, comparing them to the four winds and the four corners of the world. He insists that the one God of the Old Testament is the Father of Jesus Christ. Irenaeus's most influential idea is recapitulation: Christ, the second Adam, sums up and renews the whole of human history, obeying where Adam disobeyed, so that humanity can grow toward the likeness of God. Mary is presented as a new Eve. Because God made matter good, he argues, the body will rise, and he ends with a vision of the renewed earth and the kingdom. The work is long and sometimes repetitive, and it was for centuries a main source for knowledge of Gnostic teaching. The discovery of Gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 allowed scholars to compare his reports with the movements' own writings. His arguments from apostolic succession, the rule of faith and the four Gospels became foundations of later Christian teaching.

Top Lessons

• Public truth versus secret knowledge

  Irenaeus argues that the apostles taught openly and that their teaching can be checked in the churches they founded.

• The goodness of creation

  Against teachers who despised matter, Irenaeus defends the body and the created world as God's work.

• Tradition and Scripture together

  Irenaeus argues that the Scriptures and the teaching handed down in the churches confirm one another.

• For the Christian reader

  Irenaeus learned the faith from Polycarp, who had known the apostle John, and he wrote to protect his flock from teachings that denied the goodness of creation and the reality of Christ's flesh. His appeal to the public teaching handed down in the churches and to the four Gospels helped shape how Christians recognized Scripture and the rule of faith.

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