Without Irenaeus there would be no Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church values the tradition of the Gospels and Scripture received from the Apostles and safe guarded by Irenaeus.

I remember in my Christian studies it was sometimes hard at first to understand why we studied early Christian leaders like Irenaeus. Did he really matter? What many Christians today accept as truths was not certain in the first two centuries of the new religion.

In the first two centuries after Christ, Christian orthodoxy meaning it’s permanent truths were quite disputed among believers. There were Gnostics who believed God and the creator were separate entities. That the actual creation of earth might have been a evil act or accident. Knowledge about Christianity was passed on through oral teachings that became contaminated or changed into perversions of the message Christ shared with the Apostles. Some claimed that there was secret knowledge to salvation for a privileged few.

Although many Bishops were promoting theology and message similar to today other’s were not. Irenaeus was a 2nd century Greek speaker who was Bishop of what is now Lyon, France. He proclaimed that Christianity should follow the four Gospels and the writings of Paul as canonical as well as accept Apostolic succession. He may have been the last living connection to person’s who had first hand knowledge of the Apostles although that is not certain.

Irenaeus called out and wrote against the growing heresies which if followed would have evolved into a Christianity we would not recognize today. Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and many Protestant denominations all recognize him as a Doctor of the Church.