I'm trying to rework that scheme of Valentinus, of the Gnostic plan of salvation, just to make it more intelligible. And it's simplified, there may be mistakes on it, but you can get the general idea. The colours don't come across on the copies. The other one of Irenaeus' plan, which is much simpler, as you can see, and much more beautiful, despite it doesn't have a rainbow, but much more beautiful in that it's centred and brings the whole of creation back into that. We talked about that last time, so I won't go over it again. Today what I'd like to do is simply continue with the text that we started on, because we don't want to bog down in Irenaeus, we could spend a year on him, but if we try to understand his theology, we're going to be boneless, so we'll have to move through the texts. Last time we read that first text from book one of his books against the heresies, against

[01:10]

the Gnostics, the pseudo-Gnostics, chapter ten, on the unity of the faith of the Church. Remember, this was just after he had given his first account of the Gnostic system, the pseudo-Gnostic systems, in their pluralism, in their diversity, in their complexity. So now he's showing the simplicity and the unity of the faith, that it's the same everywhere, basically, that no matter who brings it across, he doesn't add anything or subtract anything, and that it is utterly simple. In fact, it keeps returning to unities, the unity of God, the Father and the Creator, the unity of Jesus Christ, who is both the Son of God and the Son of Man, and finally, the unity of those who believe in Christ, and they're thus joined to God, living the life of God, so that there's one life that flows through the whole of his plan, which brings it all together, which we can call life, or the Holy Spirit, or the glory of God, or whatever, we'll get to that later. So it's utterly simple, this plan. And the simplifying element, I suppose, in the Gnostic system would be that plural, into

[02:11]

which everything is brought, ultimately, which is saved. But as you see, everything doesn't get there, because material, and the body too, goes up into the vent, goes up into this fire, which again is a kind of Gnostic hell, but it isn't any taller. And then the psychic dimension goes up into a kind of limbo, goes up into a kind of intermediate space. It doesn't go back into the firm, because the only thing that can go into the firm is spirit. And so, the saviour comes down and brings, sort of, steams up that level of the creation of the human person, and brings it back up into the firm, the space. I don't think they work that out. They don't have a problem with dividing up the human person, just as sometimes the Greeks would, I think, because they thought that the human person was essentially intellect.

[03:11]

So, for the Gnostics, for these particular Gnostics, the human person would be essentially intellect or spirit, human. So, the other doesn't really matter. You're better off without it. The idea is that the other keeps you from being full of yourself. That is, the psychic, the soulish, the anima, and the physical keep you from being full of yourself, rather than making you full of yourself, as they do in the Jewish scheme, and in our own way of thinking, of course. So, it's rather parallel to the Greek thing. Okay, the next text is a brief one I want to read to you. I don't think you've read it. It's Book 2, Chapter 26, Number 1, on page 397. Now, there are a series of three chapters.

[04:17]

Let's see. You have 28, at least. I don't know if you have 26 and 27. I don't think you do. So, I'll just read this and comment on it a bit, because it leads into the other. Now, this, once again, is a general refutation, rebuttal of the pseudo-Gnostics, rather than particular. It is therefore better and more profitable to belong to the simple and unlettered class, and by means of love to attain to nearness to God, and by imagining ourselves learned and skillful, to be found among those who are blasphemous against their own God, inasmuch as they conjure up another God as the Father. See, instead of accepting a God who has made them, they make a God, they replace Him. He says you can't sin through pride or blasphemy, much worse than that. By disowning the God who made you, and in whom is your only life, your only salvation.

[05:20]

And for this reason, Paul explained, knowledge pops up but love edifies. Not that he meant to inveigh against a true knowledge of God. Not that he meant to inveigh against a true Gnosis. That's the word. We don't have the Greek for this, unfortunately. All we have is the Latin, and there it's scientia. But the word in Greek would certainly be Gnosis. So, St. Paul is not inveighing against a true Gnosis, and neither is Irenaeus. In fact, he's trying to distinguish it from the phony. For in that case, he would have accused himself, because he was a man of Gnosis. But because he knew that some puffed up by the pretense of knowledge, fall away from the love of God, and imagine that they themselves are perfect, for this reason that they set forth an imperfect creator. With a view of putting an end to the pride which they feel on account of knowledge of this kind, he says knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. Now, notice there's a key psychological thing of imagining that one's self is perfect because we are able to make something else imperfect.

[06:23]

Now, the absolute of that, the end expression of that is to somehow render the creator imperfect, or render the whole of reality imperfect, in order that we may be found in some way superior to it. It's the end product of the proud or presumptuous kind of critical thinking, or analytical thinking, whatever you prefer. So, we in some way dissolve reality, or criticize reality out of existence, in order to put ourselves in a superior position. Now, this has two sides to it. One is simply the vanity of doing that intellectually. It's the same as when we're able to criticize someone else. The same sort of boost to our ego that we're given when we're able to find someone else imperfect, we put ourselves in the position of perfection, somehow implicitly and not quite consciously, but very really. That's what we do by criticism. So, you kind of absolutize that, if you do it to the whole of creation, if you do it to the whole of reality, including the God who made it all. That's a kind of absolute movement in that direction.

[07:27]

But the other thing is that if we do that, we then release ourselves from the exigencies of reality the way it is, in the sense of our life. Then, if we can make reality the way we please, we can also live the way we please. And that can be pretty important, too. Not that all of these Gnostics fell into that trap. Some of them do. Isn't this the reason why the way we behave with God is able to set us free? Would you say that again? Isn't this the reason why the way we behave with God is able to set us free? He can give it all in some intellectual way, in some form of vision. And he raises him up, doesn't he, on a high mountain, and he shows him everything in one synthetic view. And he says, I'll give you all this. I'll give you the chair of cosmology.

[08:28]

Now, there can be no greater conceit than this, that anyone should imagine he is better and more perfect than he who made and fashioned him, and imparted to him the breath of life and commanded this very thing into existence. Now, this may sound like vain rhetoric, unless we read it carefully, unless we read it sensitively. And then we see what he's driving at. It's very real. It's not only in the Gnostics. We have the same thing as well. Imagine he is better and more perfect than he who made and fashioned him. It is therefore better, as I have said, that one should have no knowledge whatever of any one reason why a single thing in creation has been made. Because knowledge, for him, Gnosis refers a lot to the whys, you know, why things are the way they are. Now, for him, Gnosis and theology is saying why things are the way they are, instead of changing them, instead of saying that they are otherwise, which is what he is saying in the Pseudo-Gnostics in Europe. But should believe in God and continue in his love than that puffed up through knowledge of this kind he should fall away from that love which is the life of man. That's marvelous, isn't it?

[09:35]

Because by doing this we cut ourselves off from our very life, which is somehow in this knowledge of God. You see how important the Gnosis is, the true Gnosis is. And true Gnosis for him is identical with faith, actually. And that's what he is saying. It's better just to have simple faith and not to know anything other than that, than to claim for yourself this kind of knowledge and thereby build a wall between yourself and God. It's surprising how some of the Desert Brothers, they didn't mind being called sinners or adulterers or all kinds of things, or thieves, but if you call them a heretic, then they get angry. Remember that story? I've always wondered why. It's got something to do with this. There's one of them who says, all those other things are sins, yes, that God can forgive. But he says, heresy is cutting yourself off from God. And they must have meant something like this. They must have meant something which was inherently proud, which inherently rejected the real God. Whereas the other sins somehow evoke because you can still be in touch with them. In other words, not to believe in God, which is really what they were saying,

[10:36]

not to believe in God is the thing that, in an ultimate sense, except putting something false in its place, would be worse than those other things. That he should search after no other knowledge except the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was crucified for us. Remember St. Paul in 1 Corinthians? And he's leaning directly on Paul in that place where he was talking about some kind of pseudo-wiseman apparent in the beginning of the letter to Corinthians, the first one. Remember when he says, I knew nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified for you. It's not certain here whether he's saying, as Ignatius said, that Jesus Christ is the knowledge of God or whether he's saying the knowledge of Jesus Christ. You can't tell because all you have is the Latin. And the Latin is a kind of circumlocution. He uses a couple of extra words, so you can't tell. The anti-Nicene writer's translation is, no other knowledge except the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified for us. And that's close to St. Paul, so it's likely that the original is that.

[11:38]

It might have been an exact quote of St. Paul. And that by subtle questions and hair-splitting expressions, you should fall into impiety. And then he goes off on these funny things about making fun of this kind of Gnosticism by suggesting exegesis of when the Lord said, even the hairs of your head are about a hundred, computing how many hairs and so on, are not two sparrows sold for five, compute the number of sparrows that fall in a day and so on. He begins to spoof them. Since men are always eager in such matters to be thought to have discovered something more extraordinary than their masters. It's a kind of inflation. Okay. Oh, wait a minute. We've got number 28 here. Chapter 28, that's the one that I wanted to look at. A little more length. Now, 27 keeps on in the same course. A general criticism of Gnosticism. And in terms of the parables, they often find the spiritual meaning of the parables, which enables them

[12:40]

to set aside the literal meaning. So they find a spiritual meaning of a parable, a spiritual level of interpretation, which gives them an opening for proposing another god beside the god who made, as it were, the literal, the historical, the evident meaning and the world that it dwells in. So, in fighting that, of course, he could be also suffocating, stifling the possibility of a spiritual interpretation of the parables, which is obviously indicated even by Jesus, because parables are meant to be interpreted in a deep level. So he's not doing that. And his own exegesis is often a very profound, so you know that he doesn't condemn a spiritual interpretation. But he does condemn the setting aside of the obvious of the literal. He insists that you interpret the parables in conformity with the other words of Scripture. And somehow they kind of align, kind of linearity. Instead of finding a meaning in them that's incompatible

[13:41]

with the rest of the Scripture. Okay, now number 28, which is very rich, and so I think it's good to treat it a little more closely. This is on page 399. Having, therefore, the truth itself as our rule, we ought not, by running after numerous and diverse answers to questions, to cast away the firm and true knowledge of God. Now, we have no Greek again for this. All we have is the early Latin translation. And there the knowledge is scientia, but in the Greek it's gnosis, of course. But it's much more suitable that we, directing our inquiries after this fashion, should exercise ourselves in an investigation of the mystery and administration of the living God. In other words, how he really did it. Who he really is and how he really did it. Not how we would prefer that he had made it and done it. And should increase in the love of him who has done and still does so great things for us. The other path is in gratitude and grateful. Because putting that fiction in the place of what God has really done would make it impossible to be grateful to God. But never should fall

[14:47]

from the belief by which it is most clearly proclaimed that this being alone is truly God and Father who both formed this world Now, we have to pay close attention to this because it's rather intricate this next paragraph. Who both formed this world, fashioned man and bestowed the faculty of increase on his own creation. You get a sense of evolution or a sense of imminent development possibly there. Bestowed the faculty of increase on his own creation. He said increase in love of other man. Not me, but I think it means something more than that. And calls him upwards from lesser things to those greater ones which are in his own presence. It's the same God who made the world made man and endowed him with whatever powers he has for growth. And finally calls him into this other world as if he trains him on the smaller things. He makes him in one place. He makes him in, as it were what do you call it a school creates the world as a school for him puts him in there trains him on these lesser things in order that he may finally live in the greater things which Irenaeus says are in his own presence.

[15:48]

And then he uses a couple of marvelous images. He brings an infant just as he brings an infant which has been conceived in the womb into the light of the sun. Now get the image he's comparing the world to the womb okay so we're in a kind of semi-darkness and a kind of twilight in this world in the lesser things and yet we're learning we're training we're growing and finally we are born into the light of the sun and to be born into the light of the sun is to be born into the vision of God for Irenaeus it's to be born into his presence in the full world the womb and the sun the womb and the open air and freedom of the devil marvelous. The second one is the wheat okay lays up wheat in the barn after he has given it full strength on the stalk in other words first it grows and it grows according to its own laws laws of growth and then it's laid up in the barn there's an odd reversal of the image because it's gathered into a place instead of being put out in the sun it's gathered

[16:51]

into God's treasure into the barn in other words it's kingdom Jesus' kingdom but it is one and the same creator who both fashioned the womb and created the sun marvelous in other words you live in the womb of this world in the womb of this life in which you learn in which you grow remember Jesus says the wheat grows up in the stalk in the barn in the open it grows intensively it grows in order to be brought into the light of the sun in the presence of God remember that image of the Logos that is the sun that we had before the Logos is the sun in the sky and this table behind us here and one and the same Lord who both reared the stalk of corn increased and multiplied the wheat and prepared the barn now notice what he's fighting here is the one who rejects that training of God in other words he rejects the womb and claims that he's already in the sun he rejects the teaching of God and substitutes his own theories if however

[17:53]

we cannot discover explanations of all these things in scripture which are made the subject of investigation let us not seek after any other God besides him if we can't find the answer to a question let us not follow that universal human inclination to use what we know to find an answer there's a law there you know whatever your science be if you if you study insects you know there's gonna be a temptation to come along to explain the whole world by something you found among the insects any field of knowledge tempts the person who operates in it to use it to explain the whole of existence and so you people you find people you remember the story the industry the industry of the elephant the people who touch the trunk and touch the leg and so on whatever you touch you tend to create the whole being according to that and the whole beast according to that and so it's funny because you see people who only know a little bit about something even in biblical studies and in theology people know a little bit about something and then they recreate the whole everything

[18:54]

in terms of that for people who have a very rational reductive type of science in theology and scripture and then they recast the whole of theology the whole of truth in that world and make a union universe if you get too intensely taught in one school it can really be dangerous if god still has to go through that course so we have to leave some things to god that's what he's saying we should leave things of that nature to god who created us see there's a tendency they can't bear to do that can't bear to leave anything being most properly assured that the scriptures are indeed perfect since they were spoken by the word of god in his spirit but we in as much as we are inferior

[19:59]

to and later in existence than the word of god in his spirit are on that very account destitute of the knowledge of his mystic marvels the priority the primacy of god of his word and spirit and then we come along and we come along later on so it's not up to us to advise the whole thing and then he makes comparisons uh with natural things the rising of the nile that was a good subject of speculation in the desert if we can't understand those things then how can we claim to understand the dwelling place of the bird it sounds like the book of joe and god says well if you don't know where the last fish lays they'll be arguing about this but god alone who made them can declare the truth regarding them number three if therefore even with respect to creation there are some things the knowledge of which belongs only to god what ground is there for complaint if in the scriptures we while we can explain some things we have to leave others in the hands of god and that and this is very rich

[21:03]

what's coming up that not only in the present world but also in that which is to come so that god should forever teach and man should forever learn the things taught him there's more than one thing in there the idea that that we never still first of all the idea that god is our teacher and god is our teacher directly religious by the hand and he's in touch with us it's an intimate relationship we learn through intermediaries yes but the intermediaries are only kind of alongside of god's immediate presence stories they're not in between us and god we have to listen to god just as he has word and spirit so he works with the intermediary and works directly at the same time he's always our immediate teacher but that it lasts forever it never stops in other words for iranias our life is to learn from god somehow our life is nelson's we don't have yet to that word our life is to learn from god now if you consider that we are in the word of god which is his son that begins to have more sense

[22:04]

we have to be spoken we have to always be learning the word and in the word doesn't work with the part here myself so that god should forever teach and man should forever learn the things taught him by god you get the you get the picture of a father and a child and it's as if that relationship is so tender and so beautiful that god never wants to let go of it he doesn't graduate you to something better something more sophisticated as the apostle has said on this point when other things have been done away with then these three faith hope and charity shall endure now his exegesis of saint paul everybody wouldn't agree with a lot of most theologians in recent centuries would have would have denied this that faith hope and love all endure in heaven saint paul isn't certainly saying that that's disputed but iranias takes that option that all three of them last forever if you read saint paul quickly that's what he's introducing faith hope and love endure in the greatest of these lives he says they all endure does

[23:08]

it just mean that they endure to the end of this life and that they haven't endured in fruit or does he really mean that they endure in heaven i don't think you can say absolutely for faith which has respect to our master i don't know what the original is from master whether it's a teacher endures unchangeably assuring us that there is one true god and that we should truly love him forever seeing that he alone is our father while we hope ever to be receiving more and more from god in other words hope endures in heaven because there's always more of god to know always more of god to receive and to learn from him because he is good and possesses boundless riches the kingdom of that end an instruction that can never be exhausted so that's what it is for her so far from abjuring gnosis far from abjuring this kind of knowledge approach to god he's precisely defending it as being the life of the human person but because he does hold to it he has to be so much that that more careful to distinguish the false gnosis the false knowledge of god from the truth and that's exactly what he's doing he's putting a knife in between the two

[24:09]

and the knife is the word of god if therefore we leave some questions in the hands of god we shall both preserve our faith uninjured and continue that danger and all scripture which has been given to us by god shall be found by us perfectly consistent see some of the gnostics marionette says how to reject part of the scripture some would throw out the old testament some would reject parts of the new someone apparently only take a single gospel we'll get to that later and the parable shall harmonize with those passages which are perfectly plain because you don't seek an esoteric inner knowledge which is contrary which is going to give you a bypass and through the many diversified utterances of scripture there shall be heard one harmonious melody in us praising and hymns that god who created you get the image of the holy universe creation ringing as it were with one note ringing in one in unison harmony because it's diversified because of many different features of the world that's i think the translator put it in for clarity but i think it is there okay i think

[25:22]

it's in the meaning we could find if need be we could find it i could do that i imagine it's not in the original but it's intended by iranais to be in the sense because he's talking about scripture yeah he's talking let me give some examples some questions number four for consider all you who invent such opinions since the father himself is alone called god who has a real existence with whom you style the demiurge that is the creator remember that kind of defective second rate god who made the universe and it's defective secondary right when you styled his very being the fruit of defect and the offspring of ignorance remember that erring a on sophia that spinning out of the program itself and describe him of being ignorant of those things which are above him consider the terrible blasphemy you are less guilty of against him truly as god you reserve nothing for god this is up the top of the next column but you wish to proclaim the

[26:25]

nativity of production both of god himself of his inaudible thought of his logos and life and christ and you form the idea of these from no other than a mere human existence mere human experience what he's talking about is spinning a theology out of analogy without allowing for what you call it without allowing for a mystery world in other words thinking that we can form simply form a picture of god by analogy or by extrapolation or extension of the realities that we know in this world now of course we do that we have to do it in a sense because for instance if the human person is an image of god we have a right to do that to a certain extent and that's what you call a positive or cataphatic theology but if we don't negative theology and if we don't you know criticize it and know clearly what we're doing and that it is only an analogy we fall into this into this of making that my god there's a reason it doesn't exist and then he gives examples see what this was was a kind of projection of psychology

[27:29]

you take the human mind and the way it has a word inherent in it for the greeks logos was not only word spoken but also an interior word and this goes right down to our own western scholastic reality of the present thomas mccormick himself it's valid but if you simply extrapolate that into god you fall into the error he's talking about so saint augustine has this psychological trinity that the image of god he says in fact this is one of his many proposals for the image of god in the human person his memory intellect and will now if you take that literally and project it into god you end up with a pretty puny kind of mechanical god one of us there's a truth in there's one of the most difficult questions there is to say what precisely is the image of god what precisely is it in the human person which is nobody's ever said in the question actually every suggestion seems only a kind of approximation

[28:29]

and partial so he gives that example of making a kind of complex psychology of the human person and then projecting that into god and ending up with a compound god the beginning of number five that god being all mind and all logos both speaks exactly what he thinks and thinks exactly what he speaks for his thought is logos and logos his mind and mind comprehending all things as the father himself so that's a true metaphysics of god and the true uh what you call uniqueness of god but he is above all those distinctions there are no distinction no separation no sequence he therefore who speaks of the mind of god and ascribes to it a special origin of its own so they make this genealogy because remember this is uh this is the mind of god and this is the mind of man and there's four levels still all within that paramount now we could go into the question of why the

[29:34]

doctrine of the trinity differs from this it differs basically in that and the oneness is much more firm of the three persons and there's no playing upon these differences as there is in the synesthesis but you pretend to set forth his generation from the father and you transfer the production of the word of men which takes place by means of a tongue to the word of god and thus are righteously exposed by yourselves as knowing neither things human nor divine so he's white to not complete they have simply transferred what all understand to the word of god see that's what you do when you make a philosophical vision of god and what's the alternative to listen to the word of god to listen to the word of god and what he says about himself how he expresses himself how he communicates himself rather than creating a picture from what we know the philosophical god and there's been plenty of them even in christianity it's very easy to falsify the picture of god by just using reason common sense instead of this one

[30:42]

and what it does it usually ends up a god which is separated from separated from us in that way and a god which fails to have the what do you call it the personal fullness the personal reality kind of one or two-dimensional god who's incapable of feeling the god the philosophical god who is immutable and eternal has all those negative qualities of that that's the other way it doesn't even be able to have anything to do with us but the scriptures speak to us of a god who communicates himself to us in his word spirit any questions or comments about that text before the next one is in book three and it begins on page 414 you have this one i'm pretty sure first there's that little preface let

[31:44]

me in the preface he's giving an outline of what he's written up to now against the pseudonostics and here he refers to something which i hadn't realized before that he took it so so rigorously he says i have undertaken showing that they spring from simon the father of all heretics remember simon magus in acts chapter 8 the man who won yeah but according to um according to heranaeus his repentance was somewhat imperfect because he went off spinning out this gnostic scheme deceiving people he wanted to buy the holy spirit they said that before there's a bad reputation like bala i've never understood why bale and that's such a bad reputation you know how often he was lambasted he always seemed like kind of a nice guy they spring from simon the father of all heretics and in the end of his first book he is told about

[32:51]

simon's doctrine now according to him simon claimed to be no less in one place he would claim to be the father another place he would claim to be the son another place which was somewhat inflated and there's a kind of a simple pattern that heranaeus attributes to him he also had a consort helen said he created everything from simon and helen were created the angels and the whole they go that far yeah according to according to uh heranaeus simon went even further because he claimed to be the father

[33:53]

it's incredible it's true yes there might have been more about simon too than we have so he makes him the father of all these people which ties it into the scripture you see because heranaeus and the fathers are very interested in grounding everything in scripture even these aberrations even the pharisees and so on that ties it into the scripture and then he draws a kind of genealogical tree of all the others right down to valentinus and his disciple ptolemy and that's the one who's picked out because he considers it kind of a classical one to attack directly okay now in the beginning of book three he is going to recur to the chief criterion of truth

[35:02]

and of true gnosis the true knowledge of god which for him is in the church and it's in the apostolic succession so we won't spend a lot of time on this but it's worthwhile reading uh also because of the beautiful look he gives you at the early centuries of the church and that's very brief history at the bottom of this left-hand column on 414 of the preface faithfully and strenuously shall you resist them and defensively only true and life-giving faith notice true and life-giving faith he's distinguishing a faith which somehow has a fatal defect in it and therefore can't give life or simply a substitute for the faith and in chemistry the poison the things that kill you are very often things that substitute themselves for an essential element in the body he's not going that far as to say that okay and he he probably wouldn't say it he'd probably say

[36:04]

these men have no faith or something like that but they have substituted uh lies for faith he probably wouldn't say that he says it's the one true faith and then doesn't tell you anything else he's talking about the objective level okay the objective level of the true tradition i think okay what has been handed down the truth about god and about christ and about the church that for him would be faith at least in this place okay and so he says if you're not hooked into that objective truth you don't have life you don't receive the life of god and he's very objective i mean he's not a psychological type of writer we can get into this a little later on that's why something else has to be brought in at a certain point to to compensate to bring in the experiential and also the individual because he talks in a very corrective way and he's compared uh contrasted origin for instance or i think common also

[37:05]

with the alexandrians who tend to talk of the individual much more but hernandez is very good in that way to give you the first kernel so many others draw out the kind of personal application the only true and life-giving faith which the church has received from the apostles and imparted to her sons for the lord of all gave to his apostles the power of the gospel not just the truth of the gospel but the power of it presumably that's the power of life through whom also we have known the truth that is the doctrine of the son of god he's got this love of returning to the essential simplicities you know and it's not just repetition when he does there's a kind of joyful return to the core to the center again and again and again as if he's finding his treasure again and again and again and each time he finds it it's somehow new and bright the way he descends on that phrase through whom we also have known the truth that is the doctrine of the son of god he descends on that okay chapter one we have learned from none others the plan of our salvation from then from those

[38:10]

through whom the gospel has come down to us that is the apostles which they did one at one time proclaim in public and later handed down in the scriptures so proclaimed in public put down in the scriptures for everybody to see there's no esoteric oral tradition because that's what agnostics fit to be the ground and pillar of our faith so evidently the plan of our salvation if you follow the grammar of that sentence the plan of our salvation is the ground and pillar of our faith so we have to know the plan of our salvation we have to understand the the scheme in some way you don't have to absolutely have to to be saved but it's sure a help when you come up against some creation like this or any alternative you need understanding another in order not just that you have to have to answer in terms of authority or something like that i believe in what the church tells me sometimes that's not enough for it's unlawful to assert that they preached before they possessed perfect knowledge as some venture to say see the gnostics would have said well the apostles didn't know everything you know they just they preached but they hadn't yet gotten into the core of the scriptures now

[39:15]

we're going to tell you what the core is we're going to tell you what the spiritual meaning is they didn't know it they're kind of inefficient well that's what that's what he said too that's what jesus says in the gospel of john the spirit of religion went to all truth he doesn't say that the spirit of religion went to all truth right away the pentecost he says no he's saying the pentecost for the apostles is a definitive event that they have the fullness of the truth somehow even though they may not have long ago this is actually if you get into that can be a difficult question because there are obviously some things they didn't know but he's saying they know the essence and if you have that you have virtually everything you don't need anything you can't add anything to it you can only understand better what's already in it what is that for when the holy spirit came down upon them after the lord had risen they had perfect knowledge and they went forth proclaiming the peace of heaven to men who indeed do all equally and

[40:19]

individually possess the gospel of god and then he goes and talks about the four gospels and that leads to the next passage we're going to take which is i don't know if you looked at that one book 3 chapter 11 where he talks he makes a kind of quadriform figure of the four gospels and then he starts talking about the four varieties of heresy as well very interesting we'll get into that in a while here he's just setting out the gospels which are like the four cornerstones of the church four cornerstones of truth and they're irreplaceable and notice he ties a certain of the evangelists here to certainly the apostles mark the disciple and interpreter of peter luke the companion of paul that turns out to be important in chapter 2 well the end of the the end of chapter 1 there at the top of that 4 15 if anyone doesn't agree to these truths he despises the companions of the lord name or he despises christ himself yeah he despises the father also and stands self-condemned

[41:20]

see this kind of error is not just a kind of error on one point or something like that it's a rejection of the totality of revelation so i'm substituting something else for it and there is a kind of attitude of obstinacy there which is a fundamental rejection of god's word it's a point see the fundamental option there's not just a kind of marginal choice you accept god's word if you reject it it's that kind of thing here now is the time to make that clear because a lot of people could be confused and drink some of the nonsense you see thinking that it was compatible with the plate it's easy to see why these schemes were recent people because they're attractive okay uh in chapter two he says first they criticize the same scriptures as if the scriptures uh were not final but there was a secret oral tradition handed down viva orchid they allege that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents but viva orchid as paul declared we speak wisdom among those who are perfect but not the wisdom of this work so you have to give a glance for something and this wisdom each one of them alleges to be the fiction of his own invention

[42:25]

one time expressed by one no time number two but when we refer to to that tradition which originates from the apostles they object to tradition saying that they themselves are wiser not merely than the priests the presbyters but even than the apostles because they have discovered the unadulterated truth well they maintain that the apostles intermingled the things of the law with the words of the savior and that not the apostles alone but even the lord himself spoke as at one time from the demiurge but another from the intermediate place and yet again from the program that they themselves intuitively unsulliedly and purely have knowledge of the hidden mystery there's a kind of there's a similar scare that comes from modern biblical criticism have you ever cut in a similar feeling that this this analysis of the scripture which can totally atomize the word of god at a certain point okay it has to be done like a tradition criticism and form the shape and all that has to be done it's an essential work but what can happen is that finally somebody comes in and very arbitrarily says what the word of god is says what the scripture is really saying because he's able in some way to to remove everything else

[43:29]

you know to undercut or pare away every statement except which agreed that which agrees with his own principle his own principle a lot of things so it's very very tricky work doesn't have to be very detached and very objective to do that work properly without uh fragmenting or undermining the word of god and it takes a great faith and the unity and the power the reality of the word of god really to do that work faithfully yes that's right so all of that work of analysis is preliminary to the the approach of faith that must come after it yeah well what it is it's like uh it's like preparing a correct edition of the scriptures not that i don't want you back you can see fruits of it on both sides it has to be done so they rejected tradition as well as the scriptures

[44:30]

these men do not consent neither description nor interpretation then chapter three he gets down to being more specific about that apostolic tradition and he says the apostles didn't impart anything secretly to certain of their followers certain of their successors but they told him everything and everything was put down in the scriptures there are the sacramental mysteries talk about this if the apostles had known hidden mysteries which they were in the habit of imparting to the perfect apart from the rest they would have delivered them especially to those when they were also permitting the churches themselves those to whom they were handing over the churches and then he narrows it down and he picks out one church as having a particular authority or as being a particular criteria for this apostolic succession that's the church of and then he goes on and he traces the succession then from peter through linus and then down to the present the present bishop of rome

[45:37]

was eleutherius now in the 12th place from the apostles that was the inheritance of the bishop and he gives the evidence of palikar and palikar versus certain gnostics or heretics that he had met and then in chapter four he confirms and solidifies this statement about the church being the only place in which the life's getting to at this time for she is the entrance to life all others are thieves and robbers on this account are we bound to avoid them but to make choice of the things pertaining to the church with the utmost diligence to let diligence to lay hold of the tradition of the truth so what you hear from iran is here is very much like what we heard from ignatius

[46:43]

okay i shouldn't keep you much longer but i want to point to this next text before we play and that is book 3 chapter 11 number 7 8 and 9 where that's one of the ones that i gave you last time on those extra two pages it wasn't in the first set of text and it's about the four gospels i hadn't realized up for a little while ago that this was in here and where i found it was in von balthasar in that book of his about the church this so-called apostolic cross remember a lot of it you're kind of tired of that song now but here it is popping up in my hands who sets out the four gospels and then speaks of a variety of error a variety of heresy which attaches itself to each of the gospels as if he could draw a kind of figure of the truth and then is this represented actually four dimensions or four directions

[48:12]

of the knowledge of the back of any consistent god i want to make the figure this way and i don't have to prove it i don't have to justify itself later on because you can draw it various ways the references to this by the way actually gets to talking about the four living creatures and so on in the book of revelation chapter 4 there's a note in the bottom of the text and then in ezekiel the first chapter but i'd like to do it this way and mark now in the earlier place in book three in that first chapter he connected mark with peter and he connected luke with paul and john of course writes for himself

[49:20]

as a brother to save him and of course matthew also is one of the disciples but with one of the apostles and then he talks about four varieties of error the epionites which is matthew's gospel and if you look them up you find out that they were a sector of jewish christians it was a kind of judaizing tendency monasticism which kept the law and so on but computed by the first thing but marsha according to luke so martian seems to have attached himself to

[50:25]

okay now martian put me to be rejected the old testament he was in a way the opposite of that judah he rejected the old testament and although that's a typical agnostic position he's not usually called one of the masters and then you've got a valentinist he says take down and he doesn't give us a name the fourth variety of error all he says is that those again who separate jesus from christ alleging that christianly impossible but that it was jesus who suffers referring to gospel by mark but he doesn't become a name perhaps it might be serentis there are several possibilities there are a number of

[51:37]

dimensions of the faith which tend to pull apart at any age in the history of the church at any time and at some other time you can go into the ways in which they have quote or how they would identify themselves today but it's amazing here in this finds that figure finds that geometry in the faith already in the second century and then he's so positive about it notice what he says we not we may not agree with the the grounds that he gives for this he says it is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are there can't be more than four and there can't be less than four well why on earth should he say that for since there are four zones of the world in which we live and four principal winds that doesn't seem to is it his conviction is not justified by the reason he gives for it doesn't seem does it that's a very strong conviction and he usually doesn't fool around and he doesn't say things that are groundless so we have that left to us as a kind of mystery it's why he's so convinced of that

[52:57]

because what he's accusing the gnostics of of course pseudo-gnostics is of making groundless creating groundless geometries isn't it now how does how can how is he able to say this i don't know i don't know because we don't have many writers at that time have you seen it turn up in the world we have very few earlier than that oh yeah in fact even the gnostics remember that gnostic pattern we had there's there's a an archetype of poor there because you have four levels of gnostics and then there's a the highest divinity you've got the father or that mythos and then you've got the noose you've got man and you've got logos those four and then it spins itself into other numbers and then he goes on to the four living creatures

[54:03]

in first in the book of revelation which he's referring to directly it's in revelation chapter four interesting to look it up and then in ezekiel chapter one where the great vision of ezekiel by the way the key bar number there's a difference in the living creatures in revelation and in ezekiel of course in ezekiel each living creature has four faces the face of a man in the front the face of an eagle in the back and the face of a lion on the right and the face of a calf on the left whereas in the book of revelation john describes them as each having a different face one living creature has the face of an eagle another that of a man now these things have a long history in christian art when they would draw a figure of the four gospels with christ in the center they represent the four evangelists by those four living creatures those four animals i'm sure all of you have seen some icons or medieval pictures medieval western paintings with those four creatures we even have one in our choir

[55:05]

yeah and sometimes they're very fanciful now is this just uh just kind of shallow kind of uh versifying or poetic creation there's something to get to that it's very difficult to get to the bottom okay that's enough for for today and we'll go on a little bit with that next time

[55:37]

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