Accusations of Heresy

Finally, that troublesome accuser writes in the last place that this Apostolic Man one who lived during or near the time of the Apostles turned away most disgracefully from the true, Apostolic doctrine. If accusing is enough, who remains innocent original: "Si accusasse sufficit, quis innocens?"? Simon, Nicholas, Ebion, and many others turned away from that doctrine: but they were soon marked with charcoal branded as infamous or condemned by the Fathers, openly rebuked, and damned, and were thus removed from the holy Christian gatherings. But concerning the Blessed Irenaeus, who ever even dreamed of such a thing? Who ever placed him in the number of heretics or deserters of the faith? Which of the ancient writers ever burned this most shameful stain upon him, besides this furious and filthy minister of Calvinist slander? But this is the last resort of heretics, as Jerome says: when they see their cause is failing and they are about to be condemned, they begin to spread poison with a serpentine tongue; and when they see themselves defeated, they burst forth into insults.

A small decorative initial C marks the beginning of the section criticizing the Lutheran historians. The Lutheran Rhapsodes of Magdeburg the authors of the Magdeburg Centuries, a major Lutheran history of the church take up the rear for the Calvinists, but they are more cunning in that they strive more to plaster and cover their slanders with certain words of Irenaeus. Bursting out as if from an ambush of composed speech, they attack the throat of this most holy man in many ways. First, they tear apart and finish off the entire choir of the holy Fathers of that same time, as much as they can, saying: "Even though this age was very near to the Apostles, nevertheless the doctrine of Christ and the Apostles began to be obscured in no small way. For many monstrous and inconvenient opinions are found everywhere among false teachers" Century 2, column 55. Surely these are the things that oppose your fanatical heresies, such as what you suggest regarding free will, the sacrifice of the Eucharist, the primacy of the Roman Church, the invocation of Saints, and many other points of Christian piety which you desire to see completely uprooted. Then, as if the apostate Luther alone, with his corrupt teacher Satan, of whom he so often boasts, were the only one to rightly understand and preach the doctrine of Christ and the Apostles, and deliver it to the world as a new Evangelist: and thus, the writings of all the ancient, holy, and proven Doctors are ordered to be bid a long farewell, while the insulting and ruinous books of the most impure apostates of this age are worn out by use, and all the heresies of ancient times are restored.

Century 2, column 227. From this, they accuse him of speaking too seldom of the Holy Spirit. Yet he speaks of Him elsewhere several times, and speaks of Him according to the doctrine of Christ and the Apostles, as you confess by your silent agreement. This ought to be enough for all pious people to free him from your slanders in this matter. He speaks, I say, so rightly and piously of the Divinity of the Holy Spirit that Basil the Great, one thousand two hundred years ago, studiously and gladly approved his opinions against enemies, as we indicate in the proper places. He speaks Book 5, chapters 8 and 9. again and again, in more than ten chapters, demonstrating from divine works such as creation, justification, and our salvation that He is the true and omnipotent God, as we have noted throughout, and especially in the ninth chapter of the third book. But let us pretend with you that he spoke of Him rather rarely. What then? He also speaks rather rarely of the eternal election of men, of predestination, and reprobation: did he therefore err in these? He speaks rather rarely of the creation, orders, fall, and offices of both good and evil angels: is he therefore to be plucked at and harassed? He speaks rather rarely of Baptism, its form, matter, and effects: is he therefore to be brought among the accused? Who does not see that these conclusions of yours are both most foolish and most wicked?

Century 2, column 40 But these men say they can only wonder at this in Irenaeus: that he nowhere seems to explicitly call the Holy Spirit "God." Let it be so. Neither do Moses, David, Isaiah, and the other Prophets do so very explicitly or uniquely; nor does Paul in most of his Epistles; nor the Evangelists and other Apostles, until the Macedonians a 4th-century heretical group that denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit denied His eternal Divinity. Did they therefore, and Irenaeus with them, sin against the Holy Spirit by their silence? Or did they provide an opportunity for His attackers? Far from it. For it was enough for those holy men to call and signify the Holy Spirit as God as many times as they mentioned Him in the midst of the name of God common to the three persons: especially since those had not yet arisen in the world who later brought His personal and divine majesty into question. Indeed, I would not easily concede to them what they charge: since at the very start of the first book, in the second chapter, Irenaeus writes that the Catholic Church received from the Apostles that faith which is in one God, namely the Father almighty; and in one Jesus Christ His Son; and in the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the Prophets. He encompasses, names, and professes the Spirit equally as the Father and the Son under the name of God. Then, we attribute all the works of God to Him, as we have said, and especially the most divine mystery of the incarnation of the Word: he acknowledges and preaches that He is God clearly and constantly enough.

Century 2, column 227. Then they make it a crime for Irenaeus that he often uses the term Verbum or Logos Word so obscurely and perplexingly that he does not seem to distinguish clearly between the Substantial Word and the vocal word of the mouth. So it seems to you, whom malice has blinded and the madness of slandering has driven headlong. To pure minds, on the contrary, he seems to be specifically refuting the Gnostics because they attributed Logos, that is, the internal conception and successive utterance of human speech (which he calls "suffocation," "evanescence," and many other imperfections), to the Logos, that is, the Word of God. Since He is God—simple, uncomposed, and free from all accidents—He is all Mind, all Logos, thinking the same thing that He speaks, and speaking what He thinks. He concludes: "You, divining the generation of the Divine Word, and transferring the utterance of human words through the tongue to the Word of God, are rightly wiped away because you know neither human nor Divine things" Book 2, chapters 47, 48, 49.. And a little later, to those asking: "How was the Son brought forth from the Father?" he wisely replies: "No one knows His ineffable generation, not Valentinus, nor Marcion, nor Angels, nor Archangels, except only the Father who generated Him, and the Son who was born." Does he not sufficiently explain by this distinction the Word who is God and subsists substantially by Himself, and distinguish Him from the word of the human mouth which, being produced, immediately—

Antidotes in Defense of Blessed Irenaeus.

—immediately vanishes into the air? It is added that he not rarely professes that the Word who is God Book 1, chapter 19; Book 2, chapter 43; Book 3, chapters 6 and 17; Book 4, chapters 14 and 17. Century 2, column 56. was not created or made, but always co-existed with God the Father, and created all things with Him. By these descriptions, he sufficiently separates the Substantial Word, divine and permanent, from our flowing and falling word. Now, approaching their parent, that is, the spirit of blasphemy, they say: "Irenaeus thinks the Devil only then began to fall when he seduced man." For so he seems to think in Book 4, chapter 78. On the contrary, from the very words of Irenaeus, it is clear that you are truly diabolos the Greek word for slanders or false accusers, that is, wicked informers. For he does not say he "only then began to fall when he seduced man," as you falsely invent: but that "from that time he became an apostate and enemy," from the moment he became zealous or envious of God's creation. Furthermore, he was zealous and envied the happiness of the man created and fashioned by God before he attacked him and cast him into ruin with his persuasions. Therefore, in Irenaeus's opinion, the Devil had defected from God and was a wicked and damned spirit before he invaded man and seduced him through the woman.

But they claim he thought the Devil was also first cursed and cast away only after the fall of man when God said: Century 2, column 56. "The seed of the woman shall crush your head." Likewise: "Cursed shall you be," etc. For so he seems to think in Book 4, chapter 78. Irenaeus never thought or taught such things as you devise: but he only meant that the frauds, crimes, plans, and consequently the curse and damnation of the Devil were then first manifested to us by the Word of God, when it is recorded that he was cursed and proscribed by God. For nothing had been revealed or recorded about these things by Moses before the fall of man. This is so true and certain that even the leaders of the heresy in their commentaries on Genesis, and others everywhere in their commonplaces, voluntarily confess it.

They immediately add: "It is a similar thing that the same Irenaeus in Book 5, from the tradition of Justin (which Eusebius also indicates in Book 4, chapter 18), thinks the Devil before the coming of Christ did not dare to blaspheme God, because he did not yet know his own damnation." Not only did Justin and Irenaeus, two most brave martyrs, think this, but also Clement, Origen, and Epiphanius, and many more most illustrious and ancient ecclesiastical writers, as we have noted in Book 1, chapter 26. Since the Catholic Church has not yet condemned their opinion (as far as I can now remember), we ought not to condemn it either. For many Divine judgments were hidden from the Demons, and they have always dreaded the eternal punishments destined for them in the lower places as much as can be said, as those cries of theirs indicate: "Why have you come to torment us before the time?" Matthew 8, Luke 8. "Drive us out, send us into the pigs." They begged Him not to command them to go into the abyss. And Peter clearly says that the demons are reserved to be tortured; when did they then perfectly penetrate the hidden judgments? Finally, many things can still be investigated among learned men and variously disputed regarding the sins, fall, knowledge, ignorance, and punishments of the cacodemons evil spirits or demons. Since these do not pertain to the already defined articles of the Catholic faith, those who previously thought otherwise ought not to be condemned.

They pursue their accusations thus: Irenaeus said, not without error, in Book 4, chapter 72, that man was not created perfect by God. And later: "Concerning man, he seems to think as if he were not created perfect by God" Century 2, columns 56 and 227.. Irenaeus constantly preaches that man had from the beginning every essential perfection, which consists in the union of the body and the rational soul: but he so truly denies accidental perfection that it would be impious to think or say otherwise. For he proves by open scriptures, examples, and reasons that not only man, but every creature—since it stands at an infinite distance from the Creator—was surrounded and involved in many and great imperfections even from the beginning. And to speak of man alone, he was fashioned from the most vile mud of the earth, capable of being tempted, overcome, sinning, dying, and being damned: which are without doubt the greatest imperfections. Nor do these things conflict (as you pretend) with those words of creation: "God saw all the things he had made, and they were very good": since these things were said of natural and gratuitous goods, in which man abounded, being created in justice, innocence, and knowledge of all things. These do not take away the imperfections of animate life itself, nor the freedom and flexible lot of the soul toward good and evil, in which he was established. Therefore, Blessed Irenaeus does not err when he thinks this: but you, through your wicked madness for slandering, dwell in foul errors when you gnaw at these and similar things in the holy Fathers of the Church in your consistories, pluck at them in your books, and carp at them everywhere, so that you alone may seem to be rightly wise.

They say again: "Irenaeus thought man was not created in the image of God" column 57.. This is a great and impudent lie, since he writes: "The hands of God did not fashion Adam, to whom the Father speaking says: 'Let us make man in our image and likeness'" Book 5, chapters 1 and 2.. And again: "And because of this in the end, not from the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but from the good pleasure of the Father, His hands perfected the living man, so that Adam might become according to the image and likeness of God" column 56.. And a little later: "Christ restored his own handiwork, of which it was said, 'In the beginning man was made according to the image and likeness of God'." Our Irenaeus therefore only teaches elsewhere that the image of God was greatly defiled and deformed by sin, but reformed by the grace of Christ: which is a plainly Apostolic dogma.

They continue to rave and slander, saying: "Irenaeus speaks very dangerously about the image of God when he affirms in Book 5 that the saying, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness,' pertained to Christ, who at a certain time was to become man and represent that image" column 57.. And as if it were not enough to have accused him once, they say again: "Concerning man, he seems to think that by the sentence about making him in the image of God, Christ is signified." Does any Christian man not know that the most principal and beautiful reason for the image of God shines forth in the man Christ? And for that reason, He is called by Paul by antonomasia by a descriptive title used as a proper name the image of the invisible God Colossians 1.: likewise, the "brightness of His glory, and the character" or "express image of His substance" Hebrews 1.? Likewise, that Christ is the image, but man is the image of Christ 1 Corinthians 4.? Irenaeus, as an Apostolic man, wants this perfect image of God and of Christ His Son to be made far more splendid and illustrious in us through the benefits of Christ's coming: and that it will be the most illustrious of all when we are like Him in glory. Also, when with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, we shall be transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord 2 Corinthians 3; 1 John 3.. These words of his concerning Christ manifest this very thing: "Conformed..."