In homage to Tony Payne's absence from the office, we are offering some Saturday moments of nostalgia. Here's a great one in which Tony shares what he's learned from Irenaeus.

The early church father, Irenaeus, was certainly not afraid to critique error. I was browsing through his Against Heresies the other day (as one does, in the Greek, without a dictionary, shortly before dictating my latest article for The Ivory Tower Review), and I came across the following passage that I felt bound to share. Irenaeus was arguing against the heresy of the Gnostics, who had an incredibly elaborate, and elaborately incredible, account of how the world came to exist. One of Irenaeus' chief polemical methods was simply to describe in detail what the Gnostics were actually teaching, with only a few minor comments being required to point out how absurd it all is.

One of the Gnostic teachings was that the substance of the world came forth from the agony and distress of a certain Achamoth (who was an enthymesis of the Aeon, but never mind about that). From her tears, for example, came forth “the seas and fountains and rivers, and every liquid substance”. Irenaeus, however, points out that since tears are saline, it is unreasonable to expect that fresh water would have come from Achamoth's tears. He goes on:

It is probable that she, in her intense agony and perplexity, was covered in perspiration. And hence, according to their idea, we may conceive that fountains and rivers, and all the fresh water in the world, are due to this source ... And since there are also in the world certain waters which are hot and acrid in nature, thou must be left to guess their origin, how and whence. Such are some of the results of their hypothesis.

That's how you sock it to a heretic.

(Tony Payne, ‘How to deal with heretics’, The Briefing #288, Sept 2002.)

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