The Scandal of the Incarnation Quotes

“He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man ... might become the son of God.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies

“So-called gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church. By contrast, persecution, even the bloodiest, posed far less of a threat to the Church’s continuing purity and further development. Gnosticism had its roots in late antiquity, drew on oriental and Jewish sources, and multiplied into innumerable esoteric doctrines and sects. Then, like a vampire, the parasite took hold of the youthful bloom and vigour of Christianity. What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church. Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’ (‘the spiritual’, ‘the pneumatic’); the common folk (‘the psychic’) were left to get on with their crude practices. It is not hard to see how this kind of compartmentalizing of the Church’s members, indeed of mankind as a whole, inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“And so, for the person willing to follow it in patience, it can lead to the divine destination, to the vision of God the Creator and Redeemer. By contrast, the Gnostic’s self-devised ascent is bound to end, like the flight of Icarus, in a crash both tragic and grotesque. The surge beyond faith into the abyss of God ends in a blinded fall into inhumanity. The Godhead that seemed to hold the promise of plenitude (pleroma), reveals itself to be anonymity, a silent void, the empty abyss of man himself, the projection of his own deficiency onto the wall of the absolute.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“Myth and Christianity are opposed on every point. Myth seeks the ascent of man to spirit; the Word of God seeks descent into flesh and blood. Myth wants power; revelation reveals the true power of God in the most extreme powerlessness. Myth wants knowledge; the Word of God asks for constant faith and, only within that faith, a growing, reverent understanding. Myth is the lightning that flashes when contradictory things collide—absolute knowledge, eternal quest; the revelation of God’s Word is gentle patience amidst the intractable tensions of life. Myth tears God and world apart by trying to force them into a magical unity; the revelation of God’s Word unites God and world by sealing the distance between them in the very intimacy of their communion.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“Gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei.

For the glory of God is the living man, and the life of man is the vision of God.”
― Saint Irenaeus, Five Books of S. Irenaeus: Bishop of Lyons, Against Heresies

“Irenaeus taught the unity of the testaments in Christ: they were different, because they were different stages in the one divine education of the human race. In contrast to Gnosticism’s cold presumption, he proclaimed God’s patience, visible in Christ and His Passion, given to us as redemptive grace in the form of faith, hope and love, by means of which we preserve a patient and humble distance from the eternal God whom we can never exhaustively comprehend. This attitude is the fundamental condition of all redemption; indeed, it is redemption itself.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“Myth is unmasked by the Word of God. It is the outcome of man’s desperate arrogance, his refusal to submit to God, his determination to make his own way to Heaven.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“Given the fantastic forms of the mythology of the time, it all seems exotically remote. In fact, when we look more closely, we can see that we are dealing with a confrontation which has never ended and is constantly assuming new forms. The confusion mentioned above between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God characterizes all of mankind’s more ambitious religious and philosophical speculations and mysticisms. It constantly devalues the sensible world, visible organization, the flesh, matter: these are mere ‘appearances’, either a deception or something to be seen through and overcome. Concealed behind them lies the only truth, the spirit, which must be set free and brought out into the open. This is the central axiom of all the religions of the East—from their ancient beginnings to their present-day posterity in this allegedly ‘post-Christian age’. We shall see how hard it was for the Fathers after Irenaeus to ward off Gnostic infiltration. In the Middle Ages, from the remote Calabrian monastery of Fiore, the doctrine of Abbot Joachim was to exert an incalculable influence on later generations which has lasted to the present day. He thought that the age of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity (together with the organized structure of His Church) would eventually ‘dissolve’ into an age of Pure (Holy!) Spirit.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies

“Gnosticism* The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the etymology of the word (gnosis "knowledge", gnostikos, "good at knowing"), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were "people who knew", and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies

“2. Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced (ridiculous as the expression may seem) more true than the truth itself. One far superior to me has well said, in reference to this point, "A clever imitation in glass casts contempt, as it were, on that precious jewel the emerald (which is most highly esteemed by some), unless it come under the eye of one able to test and expose the counterfeit. Or, again, what inexperienced person can with ease detect the presence of brass when it has been mixed up with silver?”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies

“To Gnosticism’s separation of soul and body, spirit and flesh, pneumatic and animal existence, Christianity opposed the Incarnation of God. The fact that God has become man, indeed flesh, proves that the redemption and resurrection of the entire earthly world is not just a possibility but a reality.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“Gnosticism was rampant in Irenaeus’ day, and is constantly reviving in all the non-Christian religions and philosophies. As we have seen, he exposed it as an essentially anti-Christian religious experiment which destroys the psychosomatic unity of man. He refuted this system not by his own speculation, but by simply contemplating Christian revelation in its unity, by seeing its form. He is theology’s founding father and a paradigmatic figure in its history.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“St. Paul and St. John had begun the struggle against Gnosticism, which in their time was in its early stages. Even so, it was already showing its pernicious tendencies: promoting its seductive secret knowledge in the Christian communities, confusing simple believers, and spreading the first dangerous ‘pluralism’ within the unity of the faith. A real showdown only became possible when all the various systems of Gnosticism had been constructed. This took place towards the end of the second century.”
― Irenaeus of Lyons, The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies

“As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it. She also believes these points [of doctrine] just as if she had but one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them, and teaches them, and hands them down, with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth.”
― Irenæus, Irenaeus Against Heresies