The Book was not written for entertainment purposes, although there are moments.
I will not get into the tedious exegetical stuff, nor the numbers games.
St. Irenaeus
Irenaeus was from Smyrna, Asia Minor. He was raised Catholic (not a convert). Was a disciple of Polycarp (Jesus --> John --> Polycarp --> Irenaeus) and missionary to Gaul whose church had been upset by heresy. Became second bishop of Lyons after Pothinus who had been martyred under Marcus Aurelius. Irenaeus, too, was later martyred (details unknown).
Wrote Against Heresies around 180.
Against Heresies, Book 1. Why was it written?
Book
One is just the beginning of his case against the heretical sects of his day…
I have felt constrained, my dear friend, to compose the following treatise in order to expose and counteract [the Gnostic’s] machinations… They… overthrow the faith of many, by drawing them away, under a pretence of [superior] knowledge… they cunningly allure the simple-minded… (Preface)
Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress… Lest, therefore, through my neglect, some should be carried off, even as sheep are by wolves, while they perceive not the true character of these men,--because they outwardly are covered with sheep's clothing…
I have deemed it my duty (after reading some of the Commentaries, as they call them, of the disciples of Valentinus, and after making myself acquainted with their tenets through personal intercourse with some of them) to unfold to thee, my friend, these portentous and profound mysteries…
I do this, in order that thou, obtaining an acquaintance with these things, mayest in turn explain them to all those with whom thou art connected, and exhort them to avoid such an abyss of madness and of blasphemy…
Process
and argumentation
Book One is largely a presentation, an exposition, of the heresies Irenaeus later promises to reveal as just that. There is little in the way of argumentation in Book One against the heresies presented, except in three or so places. There is one profound argument that is made that we will get to later. The implicit argument against the heresies in Book One is the heresies themselves, i.e., their extravagance and variation: “They have good reason, as seems to me, why they should not feel inclined to teach these things to all in public…” (4.3) More on this later.
The Nag Hammadi discovery
In Nag
Hammadi, Egypt, 1945, papyrus codices, buried in a jar were found, Gnostic treatises. These were passed around for some time before made public… priorly we had only second hand
accounts, e.g., Irenaeus. Apocryphon of John, Gospel of Thomas etc., … Gospel of Judas found in1982 (also from Nag
Hammadi)…
The
basic gnostic story...
The
Pleroma (the total of the 30)
Bythus
(Father)/Siege (Mother) --> Nous (Monogenes)/Alethea
(First Tetrad, 4)
Nous/Alethea --> Logos/Zoe --> Anthropos/Ecclesia (Second Tetrad, 4; Ogdoad, 8)
Logos/Zoe --> Ten Aeons (Decad, 10); Anthropos/Ecclesia --> twelve (Duodecad, 12)
Bythus/Siege
(Father/Mother) began to think… contemplate itself… this contemplation was Nous/Alethia,
the image of the Father. Father began differentiating aspects of itself… Aeons,
eternities. Nous (who alone knows and can contemplate the Father) sought more
from the Father… put forth Logos (Christos, self-originating one)/Zoe. The rest
(22), are the celestial forms of things, constituting the celestial Adam, which
is man’s true place within the Pleroma, conceived before the creation of the
world.
The
last and most important of the Duodecad being Sophia.
Emanation
involves conjunction.
Sophia
(without conjunction) --> The Demiurge (substance
without form (uninformed material is not enough for substance))
Sophia
wished know the Father, saw that the Father could create and envied. Her partner
unwilling to create, she brought forth a self-conception (without conjunction).
This is the Demiurge, deformed and without gnosis (the divine light). She grieved
and despaired, attempted to hide her conception. Her horror and sadness
produced material creation (somehow) through the Demiurge, who, without
knowledge, but having stolen some of the divine light from Sophia, created a
bastardized image of the Pleroma (The Demiurge is the creator of all outside
the Pleroma (but himself). Alone and without gnosis, believing that it is the one
God, he declared “There is no other God apart from me.” Sophia, desperate, sought help and forgiveness
from the Aeons. A plan was created to restore the divine light to the Pleroma.
The
plan of redemption
A
veil between the worlds, Horos (Logos). Sophia is somehow split between the Pleroma
and the material world (Sometimes represented as two Sophias’ one in the
pleroma and one, called Achamoth, in an intermediate place. This is confusing. The
idea seems to be that her passion, incapable of destruction, was separated off
from her. Our redemption is, thus, tied up with her reunification.
(Hidden
from the demiurge, she created through him, by the plan)
The
demiurge set out to create a human “Come, let us make a human being in the
image of God.” … but his creation was inanimate as it did not have the divine light.
Logos tricked the Demiurge to breath the
divine light into the man, so putting into action the plan for the return of
the divine light to the Pleroma…
Thus it came to pass, then, according to them, that, without any knowledge on the part of the Demiurge, the man formed by his inspiration was at the same time, through an unspeakable providence, rendered a spiritual man by the simultaneous inspiration received from Sophia. For, as he was ignorant of his mother, so neither did he recognise her offspring... This, then, is the kind of man whom they conceive of: he has his animal soul from the Demiurge, his body from the earth, his fleshy part from matter, and his spiritual man from the mother Achamoth.
The
Demiurge puts Adam in a body to imprison him. The garden of Eden was meant to
keep him in complacency and ignorance about who he was. That’s why he couldn’t
touch the tree of gnosis, understand his godhood and defeat the demiurge. The serpent
(Logos) was on the good side, came to wake up Adam and Eve to the truth…
The
Demiurge expels them (The Demiurge is the “evil” God of the Bible, later Satan,
who brings the flood etc. Sabaoth, a rebellious creation of the Demiurge, is
the good one who warns Noah etc.), causes them to forget who they were and
where they come from… has them focussed on earthly things…
The
story of Jesus Christ and our salvation is our coming to remember who we are
and returning the divine light to the Pleroma. We have to overcome the material
world. Through gnosis… Our spiritual aspect has to be released from its prison…
Logos was made incarnate and the crucifixion separated the pure from the
impure, destroyed the material and released the spiritual. (Judas is the hero
of the story, knew the truth about Christ, agreed to take on the role of
traitor to fulfil the Divine plan). Our own salvation is something of a
participation in his; his making ours possible. By enlightenment we, over time,
and perhaps through a series of incarnations, come to complete gnosis and are returned
to our proper home, take our place as Anthropos in the Pleroma.
Gnosis
and salvation is not for all (at least now)…
They tell us, however, that this knowledge has not been openly divulged, because all are not capable of receiving it, but has been mystically revealed by the Saviour through means of parables to those qualified for understanding it. (3.1)
Three
kinds of existence: material, animal, spiritual.
As to every animal existence (which they also denominate "on the right hand"), they hold that, inasmuch as it is a mean between the spiritual and the material, it passes to the side to which inclination draws it. (6.1)
For they affirm that He received the first-fruits of those whom He was to save [as follows], from Achamoth that which was spiritual, while He was invested by the Demiurge with the animal Christ, but was begirt by a [special] dispensation with a body endowed with an animal nature, yet constructed with unspeakable skill, so that it might be visible and tangible, and capable of enduring suffering. At the same time, they deny that He assumed anything material [into His nature], since indeed matter is incapable of salvation. They further hold that the consummation of all things will take place when all that is spiritual has been formed and perfected by Gnosis (knowledge); and by this they mean spiritual men who have attained to the perfect knowledge of God, and been initiated into these mysteries by Achamoth. And they represent themselves to be these persons. (6.1)
As
for the other possible fates of men, those who do not have gnosis are able to attain
to the intermediate place, that of Achamoth, along with the demiurge by virtue
of their works etc.
... they tell us that it is necessary for us whom they call animal men, and describe as being of the world, to practise continence and good works, that by this means we may attain at length to the intermediate habitation, but that to them who are called "the spiritual and perfect" such a course of conduct is not at all necessary. (6.4)
The
rest are consumed by fire and destroyed.
Simon Magus
Simon,
we hear (Ch. 23) presented himself as the Father, sometimes the Son, and
sometimes the Holy Spirit… was honored by many and persuaded many (again it is
noted that a statue was erected for him).
Apparently,
he carried around a woman, Helen, who he had redeemed from a slave market and
who he claimed was his first conception and the creator of the generator of the
angels and ultimately the material world in which she became entangled and
incarnate in successive bodies, including that of Helen of Troy. She is the
lost sheep in the Gospels and the one he came to redeem firstly, while
conferring salvation on men. Those who followed him lived free and as they
please, saved by the grace of gnosis, not of their righteous acts.
Tatian
I
mention Tatian (while ignoring many others discussed) because he was a disciple
of St. Justin Martyr, who, after Justin died, became a gnostic teacher,
teaching an extremely ascetic variation of gnostic salvation…
A certain man named Tatian first introduced the blasphemy. He was a hearer of Justin's, and as long as he continued with him he expressed no such views; but after his martyrdom he separated from the Church, and, excited and puffed up by the thought of being a teacher, as if he were superior to others, he composed his own peculiar type of doctrine. He invented a system of certain invisible AEons, like the followers of Valentinus; while, like Marcion and Saturninus, he declared that marriage was nothing else than corruption and fornication. (28.1)
Mosaic analogy (Chapters 8, 9)
In
Chapter 8, Irenaeus gives an illustration of a beautiful mosaic image of a King
made of fine jewels constructed by a skilled craftsman. The image is then
dismantled, by a trickster, in parts and reconfigured into an image of a dog,
the glory of the jewels and some of the skill of the craftsman remaining
present, so the trickster “by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the
ignorant who had no conception what a king's form was like, and persuade them
that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of
the king” (8.1).
For, though he will acknowledge the gems, he will certainly not receive the fox instead of the likeness of the king. But when he has restored every one of the expressions quoted to its proper position, and has fitted it to the body of the truth, he will lay bare, and prove to be without any foundation, the figment of these heretics. (9.4)
The
“unity” argument… (9.5-10)
With
this (in 9.5) he begins to deliver his principal argument (of Book 1)
But since what may prove a finishing stroke to this exhibition is wanting, so that any one, on following out their farce to the end, may then at once append an argument which shall overthrow it, we have judged it well to point out, first of all, in what respects the very fathers of this fable differ among themselves, as if they were inspired by different spirits of error. For this very fact forms an a priori proof that the truth proclaimed by the Church is immoveable, and that the theories of these men are but a tissue of falsehoods.
This reminds me a lot of St. John Henry Newman’s a priori argument from expectancy regarding a living infallible teaching authority...
Doctrines,
as originally given, are in need of development…
Since then Scripture needs completion, the question is brought to this issue, whether defect or inchoateness in its doctrines be or be not an antecedent probability in favour of a development of them. (2.1.7)
Such,
history has shown, are not secure from variation…
… it can hardly be maintained that in matter of fact a true development carries with it always its own certainty even to the learned, or that history, past or present, is secure from the possibility of a variety of interpretations. (2.2.1)
If
indeed Christianity is objective truth and the matter of the developments
objective and important for salvation, then a guarantee of their truth must be
considered part of the doctrine itself… a guarantor is to be expected…
… [Christianity] is a revelation which comes to us as a revelation, as a whole, objectively, and with a profession of infallibility; and the only question to be determined relates to the matter of the revelation. If then there are certain great truths, or duties, or observances, naturally and legitimately resulting from the doctrines originally professed, it is but reasonable to include these true results in the idea of the revelation itself, to consider them parts of it, and if the revelation be not only true, but guaranteed as true, to anticipate that they too will come under the privilege of that guarantee. (2.2.5)
And
from there he argues for the Church as that guarantor.
Returning
to Irenaeus, the argument takes shape in Chapter 10…
The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith:
[Irenaeus here provides a creed]
[She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father "to gather all things in one," and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, "every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess" to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send "spiritual wickednesses," and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.
Getting
to the point…
As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. For, although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same…
But as the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shineth everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to a knowledge of the truth…
He
observers the incredible fact of this maintenance of the faith… We can thus
know even apart from the content of that faith… We can know from the unity, the
integrity, the supernatural indivisibility of the doctrine…
But [the superior skill spoken of] is not found in this, that any one should, beyond the Creator and Framer [of the world], conceive of the Enthymesis of an erring AEon, their mother and his, and should thus proceed to such a pitch of blasphemy; nor does it consist in this, that he should again falsely imagine, as being above this [fancied being], a Pleroma at one time supposed to contain thirty, and at another time an innumerable tribe of AEons, as these teachers who are destitute of truly divine wisdom maintain; while the Catholic Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world, as we have already said.
Public
confession
In
Chapter 13 we leant that public confession was required. Some were unwilling to
confess publicly, and chose apostasy.
The “nuptial couch” (a mystic right of conjunction)
Some
Christian women were lured into the cults and were led to give themselves
sexually to the purveyors of the lies, and were ashamed…
Such are the words and deeds by which, in our own district of the Rhone, they have deluded many women, who have their consciences seared as with a hot iron. Some of them, indeed, make a public confession of their sins; but others of them are ashamed to do this, and in a tacit kind of way, despairing of [attaining to] the life of God, have, some of them, apostatized altogether; while others hesitate between the two courses, and incur that which is implied in the proverb, "neither without nor within;" possessing this as the fruit from the seed of the children of knowledge.
DSMW
