Irenaeus (c 130-203) was the first Father of the Church to
confront the threat presented to Christianity by the Gnostics.
Gnosticism flourished before the birth of Christ, and in some
aspects persists today. The phenomenon, however, has always been
so diffuse that it is difficult to define. The essential
proposition is that this world is too fundamentally flawed to be
the creation of a perfect God. Rather, the Gnostics decided, it
was the work of the Demiurge, a partially corrupted emanation of
the supreme deity. The ultimate divinity remains hidden from
mankind. Even so, buried deep within us, there are inklings of
its existence, which may be discerned by those inherently gifted
in spiritual affairs, or possessed of the correct cabbalistic
formulae. For the Gnostics, then, religious knowledge was the
province of the superior intellect. Far from there being any
absolute truths or moralities, there were merely intuitions
available to the few. As for Christ, he might be a valued
teacher; he could never, though,