Combatting the Heresy of the So-Called Gnosis

Combatting the Heresy of the So-Called Gnosis

HS1102
Sept 16, 1994
note: this paper is a response to an assignment to discuss the rhetorical devices used by Irenaus in his polemic against the gnostics.


Combatting the Heresy of the So-Called Gnosis
You, sibling in the faith and fellow teacher of the church, ask both why I am so angry with the Gnostics and with what rhetorical and theological weapons I fight them. To be brief, I am angry at the ways they alter the faith I hold dear and at the success they have at leading souls astray—souls to which I have a pastoral responsibility as bishop. I fight this heresy with all the classical rhetorical weapons at my disposal, relying especially on the theological authority of the Scriptures, the Gospels, and the tradition of the apostles.
Let me first discuss these offenses and the ways in which I combat them. (The quotations I give and the details of my arguments you can easily find in my book,   “The Refutation and Overthrow of the Knowledge Falsely So Called”.)
Anger
I have said that I am angry with the Gnostic teachers because they alter the teachings of the true faith. By changing the doctrine given to the church through the apostles they make Jesus and the apostles out to be liars. Specifically:
• The Gnostics consider the God of the Jews and of the Catholic faith to be the author of evils.
• They deny original sin: “weakness and suffering were brought about by ignorance…and knowledge is the redemption of the inner man.”
• They deny the physical reality of Jesus, the incarnation, and the passion. This makes a mockery of Jesus’s life and death.
• They deny salvation through Christ, “They need nothing more than the knowledge of all things—and this is the true redemption.”
• They deny the bodily resurrection. Their denial of the bodily resurrection also denies the nature of the Eucharist and contradicts Paul’s writings about it.
• They deny that the Holy Spirit has been given to the church.
I have also said that I am angry with them for pastoral...