{"id":2347,"date":"2007-03-28T10:50:27","date_gmt":"2007-03-28T10:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/irenaeus.html"},"modified":"2007-03-28T10:50:27","modified_gmt":"2007-03-28T10:50:27","slug":"irenaeus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/irenaeus.html","title":{"rendered":"Irenaeus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, in the General Audience, Benedict continued his adult ed catechesis on the Church Fathers, moving on to Inrenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons, who is one of our primary sources for information about early heresies.<\/a> From AsiaNews:<\/a><\/p>\n

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As a writer \u2013said Benedict XVI \u2013 he had the twin aim of defending true doctrine from heretical attacks and of exposing with great clarity the truth of faith\u201d. His works \u201ccan be defined as a most ancient Catechism\u201d. At a time when the Church was threatened by Gnostic doctrine according to which \u201c the Church\u2019s teachings of faith were merely symbolic for the simple incapable of true comprehension\u201d, while the initiated were the only ones capable of understanding the meaning behind those symbols. But \u201cin this way a Christianity for the elite, the intelligencia was being formed\u201d, which risked diversifying itself into many different schools of thought with \u201cstrange curios yet attractive elements\u201d. <\/p>\n

A common element among the diverse Gnostic sects was their Dualism: The oneness of God was denied while the theory of evil caused by material wealth was counter posed to the idea of a kind God. Irenaeus contrasted the Gnostic pessimism which depreciated material reality. But his work \u201cgoes well beyond his confutation of heresy\u201d.   In the Popes description he is \u201c the first great Theologian who created systematic theology\u201d, at the centre of which emerges the question of the \u201crule of faith \u201d, as well as it\u2019s transmission. \u201cThe rule coincides with the apostles\u2019 creed and gives us the key to interpreting the Gospel\u201d \u201chow it must be read\u201d. <\/p>\n

The Gospel Irenaeus preached was the Gospel preached by his teacher Polycarp, who in turn received it from the Apostle John in an unbroken line of succession going back to Christ himself\u201d and that this faith was taught \u201csimply\u201d but at the same time with great \u201cdepth\u201d. \u201cThere is no secret doctrine, a superior Christianity for intellectuals, does not exist\u201d, the faith \"Baby\"<\/a> which is taught is faith for everybody, publicly transmitted by the apostles to their successors the bishops. Among these the teachings of the Church in Rome must be considered above all, as it traces its roots to the apostles Peter and Paul. All other Churches must agree themselves to it.  <\/p>\n

\u201cIn this teaching" \u2013underlined Benedict XVI \u2013 "the theory that intellectuals posses a superior faith to the one taught by the Church is contested\u201d; faith \u201cis not a privilege of the few\u201d, but anyone can pertain to reaching it through the teachings of the bishops, in particular the bishop of Rome.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

The Pope affirmed, this is where the genuine concept of tradition, which is not traditionalization, comes from, and which has three essential characteristics. First \u201cit is \u201cpublic\u201d, because it is available to all through the teaching of the Bishops; to know the true doctrine it is enough to know the faith as taught by the bishops successors. <\/p>\n

Secondly , the apostolic tradition \u201cis \u201cone\u201d, because its content remains the same despite the variety of languages and cultures;\u201d.  Benedict XVI here recalled some of the excerpts from Irenaeus book on heresies when he says \u201ceven though the Church is disseminated throughout the world, it holds the faith of the apostles as if it were one single home, spoken with one single tongue\u201d. <\/p>\n

And finally the apostolic tradition is, in the Greek word \u201cpneumatic\u201d, because, through it, the Holy Spirit continues to enliven and renew the Church even today\u201d. \u201cIt is not a case of the transmission of faith being entrusted to men who are more or less capable, but it is the Spirit of God who guarantees the truth of faith\u201d. At the same time this also guarantees a \u201cfreshness\u201d of the Church. In short \u201ca precious deposit, held within a valuable vase, which renews itself continuously also renewing the vase which contains it\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Photo from today’s audience – credit and caption here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, in the General Audience, Benedict continued his adult ed catechesis on the Church Fathers, moving on to Inrenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons, who is one of our primary sources for information about early heresies. From AsiaNews: As a writer \u2013said Benedict XVI \u2013 he had the twin aim of defending true doctrine from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIrenaeus - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/irenaeus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Irenaeus - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today, in the General Audience, Benedict continued his adult ed catechesis on the Church Fathers, moving on to Inrenaeus, the great Bishop of Lyons, who is one of our primary sources for information about early heresies. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}