Early Church · 180

Against Heresies: Book Three

Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130-202)

Against Heresies Book 3 is Irenaeus's scriptural and apostolic proof that there is one God and one Christ, written against the Gnostic and Valentinian teachers of the second century. Where Book 2 dismantled Gnostic systems on their own terms, Book 3 builds the positive case: the apostles, the four Gospels, and the unbroken succession of bishops all proclaim the same Creator God revealed in the Old Testament and the same incarnate Word who truly suffered and rose. The book culminates in Irenaeus's doctrine of recapitulation, the teaching that Christ the second Adam sums up and restores in himself everything lost in the first Adam, born of the Virgin Mary as the first Adam was formed from virgin earth.

2 hrs total · 26 chapters