What did Irenaeus believe in?

Answer 1

Irenaeus was bishop of Lyons and one of the early Church Fathers, so much of what he believed would be familiar to Christians today. He believed he practised true Christianity because he received it from Polycarp, who in turn received it from John, "the disciple of the Lord". Around 180 CE, Irenaeus stated that this John was the author of the Gospel. He declared that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, exclusively constitute the whole gospel.

Irenaeus venerated the Virgin Mary and designated her as the great intercessor. There is a suggestion that she was a second Eve and the divine mother of humankind, who had an active role in the work of redemption through the birth of Jesus, finding a basis for this idea in the Old Testament. He also held tenaciously to the second coming of Jesus as being imminent, even then.

He was strongly opposed to Gnostic beliefs and introduced the term 'Catholic' to describe the mainstream Church as 'universal' and to affirm the Church's belief in one God and one God only.

It would seem that Irenaeus did not believe in honesty, at least when this got in the way of his ambitions for himself or the Church. He claimed that his teacher, Polycarp, had seen the disciple John running from a building when a well known heretic entered it, even though John would have been around ninety years old even if Polycarp was only a child of 15 when he saw this. He also claimed that he heard a voice like a Trumpet call, the very afternoon Polycarp was executed. His most spectacular claim was, "We even raise the dead, many of whom are still alive among us and completely healthy".