IRENAEUS
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MORE TRUE THAN THE TRUTH?
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Some people abandon the teachings of the Church and fail to understand how a simple and devout person can have more worth than a philosopher who blasphemes without restraint. Heretics are like that. |
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Heretics are always wanting to find something more true than the truth. They are always choosing new and unreliable ways. Yet like the blind led by the blind, they will fall into the abyss of ignorance by their own fault. |
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The Church is like paradise on earth. ‘You may eat freely of the fruit of every tree in the garden,’ says the Spirit of God. In our case he means: Feed on the whole of Scripture, but do not do it with intellectual pride, and do not swallow the opinions of the heretics. They pretend to possess the knowledge of good and evil, but they are impiously elevating their own intelligence above their Creator. |
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Beware! By devouring the ideas of the heretics we banish ourselves from the paradise of life. |
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Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5, 20 (Harvey II, p.379) |
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GOD DOES NOT NEED
US, BUT HE LONGS |
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TO SHOWER US WITH
GIFTS |
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God created Adam in the beginning, not because he needs the human race, but so that he might have a recipient of his generosity. |
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Moreover, God commanded us to follow Christ, not because he has any need of our service, but because he wants to give us salvation. To follow the saviour is to share in salvation, just as to follow the light is to gain the light. |
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People who ate in the light do not themselves provide the light but are illuminated and made bright by it; they do not contribute anything to it but, by being illuminated, they receive the benefit of the light. |
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Similarly, to serve God does not mean giving him any gift, nor has God any need of our service. On the contrary, it is he who gives to those who serve him life, immortality and eternal glory. He rewards those who serve him without deriving any benefit himself from their service: he is rich, he is perfect, he has no needs. |
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God requests human obedience so that his love and his pity may have an opportunity of doing good to those who serve him diligently. The less God has need of anything, the more human beings need to be united with him. Consequently, a human being's true glory is to persevere in the service of God. |
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Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, 4, 25 (Harvey II, p.184) |
IRENAEUS
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GROWING UP IN THE WORD
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‘Could
not God make people perfect right at the beginning?’ someone may ask. |
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Take
the example of a very small child. The mother can give her baby grown-up
food, but the baby is still unable to take adult nourishment. Similarly, God
could have given humanity perfection right at the beginning, but humanity
could not have received it because it was only a child. |
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For
that reason Our Lord, who sums up all things in himself, when he came on
earth in these last days, came not in the full glory which he could have
done, but in a form we could see. Certainly, he could have come in his
imperishable glory, but we should not have been able to bear the greatness of
his majesty. |
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Therefore, like giving milk to infants,
the perfect Bread of the Father revealed himself to us on earth in human
form, so that we might be nourished by his Word like babes at the breast and
so by degrees become strong enough to digest the whole Word of God. |
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Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4,
62 ( |