The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

II. Devastating Exposure of Gnostic Errors and Countering Truth

Book one of Against Heresies contains an analytical description of the tenets of the various Gnostic sects, exposing their crass absurdities and antiscriptural character, and at the same time reaffirming the truths with which they were in direct conflict. Book two constitutes a complete demolition of their vicious teachings, principally on the grounds of reason. Here the foe, masquerading as “Christian,” is effectively unmasked. Then, books three and five present the true doctrines of revelation as the complete antithesis of the speculations of Gnosticism. Note the specifics: CFF1 888.2

Chapter one (of book one) deals with Valentinus and his “fancied” and “ever-existing” Aeons contention—that of alleged emanations, or “fructifications,” from the divine substance, subsisting coordinately with the Deity, but dwelling outside the Pleroma (divine fullness). The Valentinians claimed that these various Aeons, which are listed, ³ “possess perpetual existence” and are coeternal with the divine nature. ⁴ A description of Gnosticism’s grotesque origin of the visible world fills chapters four and five, and their concept of the Demiurge, himself created, but the “Framer” of all other things yet outside the Pliroma. ⁵ CFF1 888.3

This caution may well be given. In this systematic and searching analysis of Irenaeus, one must beware of taking certain of his descriptions of the fallacies of Gnostic notions to be the expression of his own positions, as some have unjustifiably done. In chapters six and seven the three categories of men—spiritual, material, and animal, that are “feigned by these heretics”—are rehearsed. That their alleged “animal men” and “animal souls” are noted, together with the sacrilegious Gnostic references to the “animal Christ”—though not in the “material” category, as is differentiated in note 2. ⁶ CFF1 889.1

Chapter seven concerns their “blasphemous opinions against the true incarnation of Christ by the Virgin Mary.” ⁷ The material and animal souls are, they say, destined to “corruption”—if they do not make the right choice—and pass to “destruction.” And chapter eight notes their twisting perversions of Scripture, to “support their own impious opinions,” ⁸ with refutations following. CFF1 889.2