The treatise of Irenæus of Lugdunum against the heresies; a translation of the principal passages, w

Irenaeus' magnum opus, his "Against Heresies" is one of the first theological classics.  Many of his concerns are with us today, and many theologians of today have learned quite a bit from him.

But the actual five books against heresies are a bit rambling, and long winded, at least to us.  And so there have been a few treatments of this work that try to abbreviate it for today's reader.

One of those editions was by F.R. Montgomery Hitchcock, published in the United Kingdom almost a hundred years ago.  On the one hand, he creates a quite readable version.  On the other hand, when this was created, we had yet to find the actual gnostic writings which Irenaeus wrote against - something that is not true now, and so in some ways the notes are quite dated.  On the other hand, the notes bring Irenaeus' voice into the modern world - reacting against Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Mary Baker Eddy, etc.

When I saw that it was St. Irenaeus day last week, I went back to revisit this PB project that had been sitting in a quite partial state for months.  It is volume 1 of 2, but I make no promises about when or if I will get around to the 2nd volume.

Source is http://archive.org/details/treatiseofiren01iren . In the original, the footnotes were numbered by page.  I started trying to reproduce this, but ended up just restarting with each book.

SDG

Ken McGuire