The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

St. Paul and St. John had begun the struggle against Gnosticism, which in their time was in its early stages. Even so, it was already showing its pernicious tendencies: promoting its seductive secret knowledge in the Chr…

Given the fantastic forms of the mythology of the time, it all seems exotically remote. In fact, when we look more closely, we can see that we are dealing with a confrontation which has never ended and is constantly assu…

So-called gnosis'was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church. By contrast, persecution, even the bloodiest, posed far less of a threat to the Church's continuing purity and further development. Gnosticism ha…