Irenaeus declares that the Antichrist's future three-and-a-half-year reign, when he sits in the temple at Jerusalem, will be terminated by the second advent, with the resurrection of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the millennial reign of the righteous.

* Irenaeus declares Gnostic doctrines to be heretical.

Because he interprets the primitive state of man as one of mere potentiality or capacity and believes that Adam and Eve were created as children, Irenaeus often seems inclined to extenuate their disobedience as being `` due, no doubt, to carelessness, but still wicked ''.

Of those groups that Irenaeus identifies as " intellectual " ( gnostikos ), only one, the followers of Marcellina use the term gnostikos of themselves.

Thus Irenaeus provides the earliest witness to the assertion of the four canonical Gospels, possibly in reaction to Marcion's edited version of the Gospel of Luke, which Marcion asserted was the one and only true gospel.

Although it is sometimes claimed that Irenaeus believed Christ did not die until he was older than is conventionally portrayed, the bishop of Lyons simply pointed out that because Jesus turned the permissible age for becoming a rabbi ( 30 years old and above ), he recapitulated and sanctified the period between 30 and 50 years old, as per the Jewish custom of periodization of human life, and so touches the beginning of old age when one becomes 50 years old.

In the passage of Adversus Haereses under consideration, Irenaeus is clear that after receiving baptism at the age of thirty, citing Luke 3: 23, Gnostics then falsely assert that " He preached only one year reckoning from His baptism ," and also, " On completing His thirtieth year He suffered, being in fact still a young man, and who had by no means attained to advanced age.

Irenaeus is also known as one of the first theologians to use the principle of apostolic succession to refute his opponents.

The recently discovered Gospel of Judas dates close to the period when Irenaeus lived ( late 2nd century ), and scholars typically regard this work as one of many Gnostic texts, showing one of many varieties of Gnostic beliefs of the period.

Irenaeus says nothing of the seventy weeks ; we do not know whether he placed the “ one week ” at the end of the seventy or whether he had a gap

In Rome there were many who claimed to be the rightful bishop though again Irenaeus stressed the validity of one line of bishops from the time of St. Peter up to his contemporary Pope Victor I and listed them.

" Similarly, Irenaeus wrote that the Christian " will not be commanded to leave idle one day of rest, who is constantly keeping sabbath ", and Tertullian argued " that we still more ought to observe a sabbath from all servile work always, and not only every seventh-day, but through all time ".

Irenaeus held him as being one of the founders of Gnosticism and the sect of the Simonians.

However, uniformity in this matter had not yet been fully achieved when the Montanist movement began ; Polycarp, for example, was a quartodeciman, and St. Irenaeus convinced the Pope to refrain from making the issue of the date of Easter a divisive one.

According to Irenaeus, the Judaistic Ebionites charged less than one hundred years after the Apostles that the Christians overruled the authority of Scripture by failing to keep the Mosaic Law ( see also Biblical law in Christianity ).

For example, Irenaeus dedicates an entire chapter in Against Heresies to the defense of Isaiah 7: 14, one of the chief prophecies used to validate Jesus as the Messiah.

This man, said in one document to be the author of two of the Epistles of John, was supposed to have been the teacher of the martyr bishop Papias, who had in turn taught Eusebius ' own teacher Irenaeus.

Irenaeus was also one of the early theologians to use the analogy of " second Adam and second Eve ".

In the Post-apostolic Age, he claims that Hermas, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Polycrates and Ignatius, who lived between 90 and 140 A. D., and Irenaeus, who died about 200 A. D, were either Oneness, modalist, or at most a follower of an " economic Trinity ", that is, a temporary Trinity and not an eternal one.

Irenaeus, the count of the East, was commissioned to arrest him but Severus departed before his approach, setting sail one night in September 518 for Alexandria ( Liberat.

William Sanday describes him as " one of the precursors of that group of writers who, from Irenaeus to Cyprian, not only break the obscurity which rests on the earliest history of the Church, but alike in the East and in the West carry it to the front in literary eminence, and distance all their heathen contemporaries ".

Several passages in the works of Irenaeus show an undoubted relationship to passages in one small section of the Apologia, but Harnack thinks it probable that the quotations, limited to two chapters, are not taken from the Apologia, but from Theophilus's work against Marcion In the West there are a few references to the Autolycus.

Irenaeus only gives the name of their chief, but that one is enough to establish a more than accidental coincidence, since it is a name we should not have expected to find as the name of a demon, namely, Michael.

Prior to Irenaeus, various Christian communities commonly used one gospel over the others.

Church Father Irenaeus was one of Polycarp's students.

Irenaeus, who followed the Sunday custom, admitted that bishop Polycarp ( a disciple of John the Apostle ) of Smyrna ( c. 69-c. 155 ) in Asia Minor, one of the Seven churches of Asia, was Quartodeciman, celebrating on Nisan 14.

Various fragments of other works by Irenaeus have been found, and many lost works by him are attested by other ancient writers.

Irenaeus ' works were first translated into English by John Keble and published in 1872 as part of the Library of the Fathers series.

Irenaeus pointed to Scripture as a proof of orthodox Christianity against heresies, classifying as Scripture not only the Old Testament but most of the books now known as the New Testament, while excluding many works, a large number by Gnostics, that flourished in the 2nd century and claimed scriptural authority.

The works of Hippolytus of Rome and Irenaeus greatly influenced Jerome's interpretation of prophecy.

Eusebius implies that other works were in circulation ; from St Irenaeus he knows of the apology " Against Marcion ," and from Justin's " Apology " of a " Refutation of all Heresies ".

After Rufinus, Justin was known mainly from St Irenaeus and Eusebius or from spurious works.

It is noteworthy that in the " Dialogue " he no longer speaks of a " seed of the Word " in every man, and in his non-apologetic works the emphasis is laid upon the redeeming acts of the life of Christ rather than upon the demonstration of the reasonableness and moral value of Christianity, though the fragmentary character of the latter works makes it difficult to determine exactly to what extent this is true and how far the teaching of Irenaeus on redemption is derived from him.

Joseph is referenced in apocryphal and non-canonical accounts such as the Acts of Pilate, a text often appended to the medieval Gospel of Nicodemus and The Narrative of Joseph, and mentioned in the works of early church historians such as Irenaeus ( 125 – 189 ), Hippolytus ( 170 – 236 ), Tertullian ( 155 – 222 ) and Eusebius ( 260 – 340 ), who added details not found in the canonical accounts.

Among the very mixed bag of works classified as gnostic was a series of writings which could be associated with Valentinus, particularly the Coptic text called the Gospel of Truth which bears the same title reported by Irenaeus as belonging to a text by Valentinus.

Within the Pauline tradition, but after the time of the Apostolic Fathers proper, some authors addressed their works to people beyond the Christian community and defended the Christian religion against paganism, including Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian.

For this reason, and since also the first quotations from the Gospel of John appear in the anti-heresy works of Irenaeus, many scholars like K. G.

See, for example: the Epistle to Diognetus, The Shepherd of Hermas, and works by Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria Hippolytus of Rome, Origen, Irenaeus, and Arnobius.

For who does not know the works of Irenaeus and of Melito and of others which teach that Christ is God and man?

In the 2nd century, with his theory of " recapitulation ", Saint Irenaeus connected " Christ the Creator " with " Christ the Savior ", relying on (" when the times reach their fulfillment – to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ ") to gather together and wrap up the cycle of the Nativity and Resurrection of Christ.

Gnosticism ( from gnostikos, " learned ", from gnōsis, knowledge ) is a modern scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices found among some early Christian and non-Christian groups called " gnostic " (" knowing ") by Irenaeus and other early Christian leaders.

The English term " Gnosticism " derives from the use of the Greek adjective gnostikos (" learned ", " intellectual ", Greek γνωστικός ) by St. Irenaeus ( c. 185 AD ) to describe the school of Valentinus as he legomene gnostike haeresis " the heresy called Learned ( gnostic )".

Some scholars, for example A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau, translators of the French edition ( 1974 ), consider that Irenaeus sometimes uses gnostikos to simply mean " intellectual ", as in 1. 25. 6, 1. 11. 3, 1. 11. 5, whereas his mention of " the intellectual sect " ( Adv.

Irenaeus ' comparative adjective gnostikeron " more learned ", evidently cannot mean " more Gnostic " as a name.

Irenaeus wrote a number of books, but the most important that survives is the " Against Heresies ", normally referred to by its Latin title Adversus Haereses which is an important source regarding the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

The central point of Irenaeus ' theology is the unity and the goodness of God, in opposition to the Gnostics ' division of God into a number of divine " Aeons ", and their distinction between the utterly transcendent " High God " and the inferior " Demiurge " who created the world.

According to Irenaeus the Aeon Autogenes emits the true and perfect Anthrôpos, also called Adamas ; he has a helpmate, " Perfect Knowledge ", and receives an irresistible force, so that all things rest in him.

* Similisexualism or similsexualism ( used by Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson as Xavier Mayne in " The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life ", 1908 )

Papias of Hierapolis ( c 60-130 AD ) was an Early Christian Bishop of Hierapolis in Anatolia, whose book, " Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord ", in which he stated that " Matthew compiled the logia ( τὰ λόγια ) in the Hebrew language, and each person interpreted them as he was able ", survives only in quotations made by Irenaeus and Eusebius.

She is obscurely described by Irenaeus as " a never-aging aeon in a virginal spirit ", to whom, according to certain " Gnostici ", the Innominable Father wished to manifest Himself, and who, when four successive beings, whose names express thought and life, had come forth from Him, was quickened with joy at the sight, and herself gave birth to three ( or four ) other like beings.

In a third passage ( 91 f .), enumerating the Archons said to have their seat in each heaven, Epiphanius mentions as the inhabitants of the eighth or highest heaven " her who is called Barbēlō ", and the self-gendered Father and Lord of all things, and the virgin-born ( αὐτολόχευτον ) Christ ( evidently as her son, for according to Irenaeus her first progeny, " the Light ", was called Christ ); and similarly he tells how the ascent of souls through the different heavens terminated in the upper region, " where Barbēro or Barbēlō is, the Mother of the Living " ().