02 — Against Heresies
St. Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses (c. 180), the foundational work of Christian anti-Gnostic theology: its five-book plan and targets, and the architecture of its argument. These files treat both the work as a literary and historical object and the theology it advances.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Against Heresies — properly Detection and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-Called — is the single most important second-century theological work to survive, and the foundation of the Orthodox response to Gnosticism. Written in Greek around 180 during Irenaeus’ episcopate at Lyons, it both describes the Gnostic systems with an accuracy later vindicated by the Nag Hammadi discoveries and answers them with principles that became permanent: the Rule of Faith as the key to Scripture, the public apostolic tradition against secret gnōsis, the oneness of God as Creator and Father, and the goodness of matter sealed by the resurrection of the flesh. This section’s two files divide the work between description and argument, with all quotations drawn from the public-domain ANF translation and cited by book.chapter.section.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Work and Its Targets | Adversus Haereses (c. 180): the five-book plan; the Gnostic systems described (Valentinus, Marcus, Basilides, Marcion) and Irenaeus’ ethnographic method; the Nag Hammadi vindication of his accuracy; the transmission (complete only in Latin, Greek fragments, Armenian of Books IV–V). |
| The Refutation | The argument’s architecture: exposure as half the battle; the public apostolic teaching against secret tradition and the Rule of Faith; God as one (Creator = Father, against the Demiurge split); the goodness of matter and the body, and the anti-docetic stakes of the resurrection — with key passages quoted from ANF 1. |
See Also
- Foundations — the life of the bishop who wrote the work
- Apostolic Succession — the doctrine at the heart of the refutation
- The Church Fathers — Irenaeus among the Ante-Nicene Fathers
- Holy Tradition — paradosis and the Rule of Faith
References
- Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1885.
- Behr, John. Irenaeus of Lyons: Identifying Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Grant, Robert M. Irenaeus of Lyons. London: Routledge, 1997.
- Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures. New York: Doubleday, 1987.
- Osborn, Eric. Irenaeus of Lyons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.