Today, as our Church celebrates the Solemnity of Pentecost we are invited to reflect on a passage from the letter of the apostle Paul to the Romans (8:5-27) entitled "All who are led by the Spirit of God are God's children". Our treasure, which follows, is from a treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop.
Saint Irenaeus was a late second century Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology.
On Jan. 21, 2022, Pope Francis named a Saint Irenaeus as a Doctor of the Church. Although he has just now been named a doctor of the Church, St. Irenaeus has always been known as a brilliant and orthodox teacher of the faith. The documents of the Second Vatican Council cite 14 references to his work, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church cites him 29 times.
Pope Francis assigned St. Irenaeus the title "doctor of unity" for his efforts to unite the Church, which was competing against the heresy of Gnosticism. Gnosticism taught that the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, the demiurge, and that Christ was an emissary of the remote supreme divine being, esoteric knowledge (gnosis) of whom enabled the redemption of the human spirit.
St. Irenaeus might also be the first doctor of the Church to die as a martyr. St. Irenaeus is known mainly for his clear and systematic teaching of the Christian faith because he considered the role of a bishop primarily as a teacher. He was particularly interested in apostolic succession, and he produced one of the earliest lists of the first bishops, going back to the time of the Apostles.
He is most known, though, for his treatises Against All Heresies, written about the year 180. Most of these heresies, as already mentioned, were from Gnosticism. He clearly understood the need to articulate the orthodox faith taught by the Apostles and against those who promoted other ideas that threatened the Apostles' teachings. All this was more than 100 years prior to the Council of Nicaea, which began to codify Christian dogma.
Saint Irenaeus was the last known living connection with the apostles. He is the earliest surviving witness to regard all four of the canonical gospels as essential.
Against Heresies is a work of Christian theology written in Greek about the year 180 by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in France. In it, Irenaeus identifies and describes several schools of Gnosticism, and other schools of Christian thought, whose beliefs he rejects as heresy. He contrasts them with orthodox Christianity.
Of all the letters of Paul, that to the Christians at Rome has long held pride of place. It is the longest and most systematic unfolding of the apostle's thought, expounding the gospel of God's righteousness that saves all who believe; it reflects a universal outlook, with special implications for Israel's relation to the church. Yet, like all Paul's letters, Romans too arose out of a specific situation, when the apostle wrote from Greece, likely Corinth, between A.D. 56 and 58.
Paul at that time was about to leave for Jerusalem with a collection of funds for the impoverished Jewish Christian believers there, taken up from his predominantly Gentile congregations. He planned then to travel on to Rome and to enlist support there for a mission to Spain. Such a journey had long been on his mind. Now, with much missionary preaching successfully accomplished in the East, he sought new opportunities in the West, to complete the divine plan of evangelization in the Roman world. Yet he recognized that the visit to Jerusalem would be hazardous, and we know from Acts that Paul was arrested there and came to Rome only in chains, as a prisoner.
