The Persecutions of Irenaeus In His Own Words

Well the point of course is that scholars don't want to let go of Irenaeus silly 'list of heresies' in AH Book 1. It has the air of authority this list. Everything is neatly categorized and 'ready to use' in order to explain the rise of 'alternate factions' in the Church. But is this really so? Is Irenaeus' list of heresies any more believable than his stupid argument for the origin of the fourfold canon or his stupid explanation about why other older gospels pre-dated his quaternion?

I certainly don't think so.

But in order to actually prove how stupid this list really is let's begin by doing an overview of the document as a whole.

The first mistake that most scholars make when using this list is that they fail to recognize that it clearly developed in two parts. The work did not originally attribute the origins of the heresies to Simon Magus. Simon is only introduced in chapter XXIII and initiates a wholly separate discussion of heresies OUTSIDE the Church.

The purpose of Irenaeus' work is to help identify two principle heresies WITHIN the Church - the followers of Valentine and Mark.

I have already demonstrated elsewhere that the followers of Mark are WITHOUT A DOUBT the Alexandrian Church of Clement. A comparison of the material in Chapters XIII through XXII and Clement Stromata Book VI Chapter 11 prove this definitively.

In other words the 'Marcus' spotted in Lyons and Asia Minor represents the worldwide Markan Church remembered and reinforced as 'Alexandrian history' in the writings of the Coptic Church Fathers.

The intriguing question of course is why Irenaeus subordinates the Marcosians as a subgroup of the Valentinians. The answer must have something to do with the fact that Polycarp's 'other student' - the guy who spent more time with him than Irenaeus as must have been considered a greater authority on the Smyrnaean teacher - was himself always identified as a Valentinian.

Does that mean that the real Polycarp of history was likely Valentine? Yes, I have developed that argument in my book Against Polycarp and will demonstrate that here in what follows.

The only point that we have to consider here in the limited space we have available to us is the fact that the followers of 'Valentine' and Mark are clearly members of the Catholic Church who only pretended to give up their original beliefs. To this end Irenaeus says that he wrote Against the Heresies in order to:

certain men who have set the truth aside, and bring in lying words and vain genealogies ... and by means of their craftily-constructed plausibilities draw away the minds of the inexperienced and take them captive, I have felt constrained, my dear friend, to compose the following treatise in order to expose and counteract their machinations.

Who are these men? Valentine and Mark and notice in the line which immediately follows they are identified as 'gospel writers' viz:

These men falsify the oracles of God [i.e. the gospels], and prove themselves evil interpreters of the good word of revelation.

In what immediately follows this again Irenaeus immediately goes on to explain what 'evil' the Devil inspired them to inject into the gospels viz:

They also overthrow the faith of many, by drawing them away, under a pretence of knowledge ... as if, forsooth, they had something more excellent and sublime to reveal ... [b]y means of specious and plausible words, they cunningly allure the simple-minded to inquire into their system; but they nevertheless clumsily destroy them, while they initiate them into their blasphemous and impious opinions ... and these simple ones are unable, even in such a matter, to distinguish falsehood from truth.

So we should now see that Valentine and Mark are evangelists who essentially say the same things that Clement was recently discovered to say about the Alexandrian autograph copy of the gospel of Mark namely:

he composed a more spiritual Gospel for the use of those who were being perfected ... not divulging the things not to be uttered, nor writing down the hierophantic teaching of the Lord, but ... brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would, as a mystagogue, lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of that truth hidden by seven veils. Thus, in sum, he prepared matters, neither grudgingly nor incautiously, in my opinion, and, dying, he left his composition to the church in 1, verso Alexandria, where it even yet is most carefully guarded, being read only to those who are being initiated into the great mysteries.

So what the accusers of Morton Smith don't realize is that they essentially saying is that the discoverer of the Letter to Theodore essentially sought to 'fabricate' the very text Irenaeus and his successors successfully destroyed in the third century.

Compare Irenaeus' description of a 'secret gospel' with what we just saw in Clement's acknowledgement of THE secret gospel of Mark in Alexandria. In the place of Clement's insistence on a truth hidden by seven veils Irenaeus speaks of error:

never being set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.

Is it just me or does anyone else hear in the mocking of the followers of Mark emphasis on a truth more true than truth an echo of Clement's statement in to Theodore "[f]or not all true things are the truth, nor should that truth which merely seems true according to human opinions be preferred to the true truth, that according to the faith." The same echo is found in Hippolytus' recycling of Irenaeus' original treatment of the Marcosian sect.

Irenaeus thus speaks of the heretical gospels of Mark and Valentine as 'error' rather than truth or as we see in what follows deliberate 'knock offs' of the original thing which Irenaeus alone knows and preserved for the world:

One far superior to me has well said, in reference to this point, "A clever imitation in glass casts contempt, as it were, on that precious jewel the emerald (which is most highly esteemed by some), unless it come under the eye of one able to test and expose the counterfeit. Or, again, what inexperienced person can with ease detect the presence of brass when it has been mixed up with silver?"

Much speculation has been devoted to who this original author is cited by Irenaeus. I think I have the answer - he is John from the lost original Acts of John. It certainly sounds like Irenaeus is citing the original speech of John after he has miraculously transformed pebbles into jewels.

The point of course is that John is the standard bearer of the orthodox message into the second century. It is claimed that he not only reproved Cerinthus but Marcion too. Here the (lost) original speech about jewels is now applied to the gospels. The heretics compose counterfeit gems made of glass which will fool almost everyone or better yet injecting brass into silver (a metaphor suggesting that they will corrupt the original teaching with new additions).

The point is that Irenaeus is clearly reporting common accusations against the followers of Mark and Valentinus who add new things to the original gospel. Irenaeus is clearly holding himself as being able to spot the counterfeits and ultimately to separate the brass from the silver of the gospel.

Irenaeus goes on to make clear that the Valentinians are not 'out there' in the world beyond the Church but false members of the Catholic community only pretending to hold orthodox doctrines. As he notes in what immediately follows again:

their language resembles ours, while their sentiments are very different,--I have deemed it my duty (after reading some of the Commentaries, as they call them, of the disciples of Valentinus, and after making myself acquainted with their tenets through personal intercourse with some of them) to unfold to thee, my friend, these portentous and profound mysteries, which do not fall within the range of every intellect, because all have not sufficiently purged their brains.

When Irenaeus here clearly alludes to having personally met 'Valentinians' he is necessarily alluding to Florinus who was the rival authority on Polycarp and always identified as a 'Valentinian.'

If Florinus represents one part of the 'cancer' that Irenaeus wants to remove from the Church then it follows that what he is ultimately proposing is a 'night of the long knives' where members of his own tradition - the original followers who sat in the court of Polycarp - are going to suffer persecution and rejection from the new Church of Commodus.

Of course he doesn't recast this as a 'cleansing' of contrary opinions within the school of Polycarp and related sects. No he says instead that he wrote the present work

in order that thou, obtaining an acquaintance with these things, mayest in turn explain them to all those with whom thou art connected, and exhort them to avoid such an abyss of madness ... [and] I intend, then, to the best of my ability, with brevity and clearness to set forth the opinions of those who are now promulgating heresy.

Irenaeus not only speaks of 'overthrowing these heretics' but also 'exposing those doctrines which have been kept in concealment until now.' Yet what does he mean by this? How will Irenaeus manage to force these beliefs out in the open? The answer is found in the conclusion of the first book where Irenaeus says in no uncertain terms that nothing short of a persecution will be raised against all members of the church in order to discover whether they represent the 'silver' or 'brass' in the structure of the Church.

He ends his long list of heresies by noting that:

It was necessary clearly to prove, that, as their very opinions and regulations exhibit them, those who are of the school of Valentinus derive their origin ... and also to bring forward their doctrines, with the hope that perchance some of them, exercising repentance and ... may obtain salvation, and that others may not henceforth be drown away by their wicked, although plausible, persuasions, imagining that they will obtain from them the knowledge of some greater and more sublime mysteries.

But let them rather, learning to good effect from us the wicked tenets of these men, look with contempt upon their doctrines, while at the same time they pity those who, still cleaving to these miserable and baseless fables ... have now been fully exposed; and to simply exhibit their sentiments, is to obtain a victory over them.

Wherefore I have laboured to bring forward, and make clearly manifest, the utterly ill-conditioned carcase of this miserable little fox. For there will not now be need of many words to overturn their system of doctrine, when it has been made manifest to all. It is as when, on a beast hiding itself in a wood, and by rushing forth from it is in the habit of destroying multitudes, one who beats round the wood and thoroughly explores it, so as to compel the animal to break cover, does not strive to capture it, seeing that it is truly a ferocious beast; but those present can then watch and avoid its assaults, and can cast darts at it from all sides, and wound it, and finally slay that destructive brute. So, in our case, since we have brought their hidden mysteries, which they keep in silence among themselves, to the light, it will not now be necessary to use many words in destroying their system of opinions. For it is now in thy power, and in the power of all thy associates, to familiarize yourselves with what has been said, to overthrow their wicked and undigested doctrines, and to set forth doctrines agreeable to the truth. Since then the case is so, I shall, according to promise, and as my ability serves, labour to overthrow them, by refuting them all in the following book. Even to give an account of them is a tedious affair, as thou seest. But I shall furnish means for overthrowing them, by meeting all their opinions in the order in which they have been described, that I may not only expose the wild beast to view, but may inflict wounds upon it from every side.

For God's sake people. Doesn't anyone recognize what Irenaeus is saying here? The members of the Church are being hunted down like foxes. They are being 'chased from their dens' in an Imperial persecution which would radically transform the composition of the Church. Do we now finally see 'how the West was won'?