Just When I Thought I Could Forget about Irenaeus

I was in the Barnes & Noble in Union Square, one of the biggest bookstores in the city, looking around the religion sections when I was surprised to discover  “Gnosis” was printed out under about three shelves of material. Most of it was about varying forms of Christian or Jewish gnosis (the Greek word for knowledge).  Its meaning is pretty broad, but basically begins in Plato’s ideas about knowledge in religious or philosophical contexts.  We’ve lost some original knowledge and can’t act or live correct until gaining the ‘right’ knowledge again.

I part of me thinks that this is the natural progression from our desire to rationalize God, to propose things not from our own testimonies but from if-then statements. We can’t simultaneously treat the Bible like a modern text book and an ancient holy book – those are two vastly different things. What grounds us as Christians is the belief in the power of a story, a common narrative, not homogeneity of knowledge.  Faith is the basic to the response of the Gospel, not gnosis, made available to the few.   

(Irenaeus was second century Church Father who wrote Against Heresies)