Irenaeus
Per Wikipedia (Saint Irenaeus), until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in 1945, Irenaeus' writings, "Against Heresies", was the best description of Gnosticism. Iranaeus was the first Christian writer to list the canonical gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - as divinely inspired. Irenaeus' writings were designed to explain the unity of God as opposed to the Gnostics' division of God into devine Aeons. However, per Elaine Pagels' book, "Beyond Belief", Iranaeus was instrumental in making Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the only gospels that constitute the whole gospel, which became a powerful tool in Iranaeus' quest to unify the Christian movement during his life(130 - 202 C.E.). Ms. Pagels states that it's the inclusion of The Gospel of John with the other three gospels that has influenced Christians to read the three earlier gospels from John's perspective - just as Irenaeus intended.
posted by Ranmac at 11:36 PM
1 Comments:
We highly recommend reading the Apostolic Fathers (such as Irenaeus) on heresies. In fact, during the Reformation, the Vatican forebade reading such material because it led to heretical understanding.
There is a huge body of extant literature from the gnostic tradition. The fruits of the gnostic tree are abundant and inspiring. The value of Irenaeus is that he gives us an idea of how thoroughly wrong the Apostolic Fathers were.
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