Fragments of the Lost Writing of Irenaeus

Saint Irenaeus (? – 202 A.D.) was Bishop of Lugdunum (now Lyons) in Gaul, then a part of the Roman Empire. He was an early church father and apologist, and his writings were formative in the early development of Christian theology. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was brought up in a Christian family rather than converting as an adult. The central point of Irenaeus' theology is the unity and the goodness of God, in opposition to the Gnostics' division of God into a number of divine "Aeons", and their distinction between the utterly transcendent "High God" and the inferior "Demiurge" who created the world. Irenaeus uses the Logos theology he inherited from Justin Martyr. Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp, who was said to have been tutored by John the Apostle. (John had used Logos terminology in the Gospel of John and the letter of 1 John). Irenaeus prefers to speak of the Son and the Spirit as the "hands of God".

Irenaeus' best-known book, Adversus Haereses or Against Heresies (c. 180) is a detailed attack on Gnosticism, which was then a serious threat to the Church, and especially on the system of the Gnostic Valentinus. As one of the first great Christian theologians, he emphasized the traditional elements in the Church, especially the episcopate, Scripture, and tradition.  Irenaeus wrote that the only way for Christians to retain unity was to humbly accept one doctrinal authority—episcopal councils in union with the bishop of Rome.  Against the Gnostics, who said that they possessed a secret oral tradition from Jesus himself, Irenaeus maintained that the bishops in different cities are known as far back as the Apostles — and none of them were Gnostics — and that the bishops provided the only safe guide to the interpretation of Scripture. His writings, with those of Clement and Ignatius, are taken to hint at papal primacy.Irenaeus is the earliest witness to recognition of the canonical character of all four gospels.

Irenaeus is recognized as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Roman Catholic Church. His feast day is on June 28 in the Roman Catholic calendar of saints, where it was inserted for the first time in 1920; in 1960 it was transferred to July 3, leaving June 28 for the Vigil of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, but in 1969 it was returned to June 28, the day of his birth to heaven.