Irenaeus’ Corpus
The Works of Irenaeus of Lyons
Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons
The whole Irenaeus, arrayed against the gnostics. Little wonder they lost.
- Catch rate
- Not found in the wild
- Base research
- 182
- Stat total
- 312
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Not a torn quire, and not five books alone, but the whole surviving Irenaeus — a deep well of argument to draw on.
By the time of his death, the church reckoned Irenaeus had done more than anyone to expose the gnostics and refute them. That proven result is why the Corpus hits as hard as almost anything you can carry.
Gathered from Latin, Greek, Armenian, and Syriac witnesses that agree — well secured, if one step from the original Greek.
A vast body of dense theology — authoritative, but never recalled in a single breath. Middling Popularity.
Cited for this book
“By the time of his death, Irenaeus had done more than anyone else to expose those who had departed from the Church for what they were and to refute their teachings.” — John Behr, cited in The History of Apologetics, p. 64.
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | Economy | Exegesis | Argument | 55 | 100% | 15 |
| 25 | Diagonalization | Biblical Theology | Argument | 85 | 100% | 5 |
Read it: Do You Know Me?
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Greek, surviving chiefly in an ancient Latin translation.
“But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried on earth a very long time.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4 (trans. Roberts & Rambaut, ANF 1, public domain).
“And Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, ‘Do you know me?’ ‘I do know you, the first-born of Satan.’”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4 (trans. Roberts & Rambaut, ANF 1, public domain).
“Such was the horror which the apostles and their disciples had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.3.4 (trans. Roberts & Rambaut, ANF 1, public domain).
“The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5, preface (trans. Roberts & Rambaut, ANF 1, public domain).
“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 more true than the truth itself.”
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1, preface 2 (trans. Roberts & Rambaut, ANF 1, public domain).
Count the links in that first passage, because Irenaeus is counting them for you. John taught Polycarp. Polycarp met Marcion and refused him. Polycarp taught Irenaeus, who saw him as a boy. Irenaeus wrote it down. Four names, and you are standing at the end of the chain reading it.
That is what the Rule of Faith means in practice. Not a secret handed to initiates, but a line of named people you could have gone and asked — and Irenaeus is telling you he did.
"The first-born of Satan" is the same phrase Polycarp uses in his letter to the Philippians, and here he is using it to a man’s face on a road. Some of Batch 1 and Batch 3 turn out to be the same afternoon, remembered by two different books.
The preface to Book 5 is the whole of recapitulation in one sentence: he became what we are, so that we might become what he is. Not a rescue from the flesh — a gathering up of it.
And the sentence that opens the whole work is still the sharpest thing in it. Error never arrives looking like error. It arrives dressed better than the truth.