Irenaeus and the problem of modern dualism

The growing influence of the LGBT movement is creating one of the most significant theological controversies affecting the modern Church. The topic has sparked a re-evaluation of biblical anthropology, including questions regarding translation and exegesis of scripture. Considering these challenges, what is a framework to interpret this emerging cultural movement within a theological context? In the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons exhaustively confronted the Gnostic heresy and its rejection of scriptural truth by affirming the unity of the Godhead and its life-giving effect upon humanity. He points to physical communion with a good and benevolent God and, by implication, the goodness of creation as an essential tenet of the Christian faith. The LGBT worldview casts doubt on God’s goodness and sovereignty in nature by introducing the non-biblical, existential concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity. Though these do not represent a publicly accepted religion per se, a widespread embrace of these maxims correlates closely with religious faith spiritually and ritually insofar as it demands a life-long commitment to practice. This essay will offer a brief overview of the LGBT worldview and offer a correlation with Gnosticism. Then I will reflect on Irenaeus’ life, writings, and approach to biblical anthropology to suggest a theological framework that addresses gender theory.

Same-sex sexual feelings and gender incongruence controvert one’s physiology with psychological experience. Despite decades of modern scientific inquiry (and centuries of questioning), the behavior continues to elude understanding and resolution. A distinct culture has emerged among those who share its symptoms, creating a socio-political status—the “LGBTQIA+ community.” The LGBT movement emphasizes the psychological self.[1] As a result, LGBTQIA+ identity prioritizes sexual desire above physiological order. This separation between one’s mind and body and its accompanying cultural movement invites comparison to Gnosticism.

Gender incongruence, as experienced among those who identify as transgender, is a dramatic disconnect between one’s physiology and psychological presence. There is a felt mismatch between one’s inner sense of gender and their physical body. Efforts are underway to interpret this experience through biology that is inconclusive. Meanwhile, numbers of individuals who have once identified as transgender have begun detransitioning, that is, realigning with their biological sex. Considering this destabilization of the transgender movement, should churches embrace gender theory and transgender identity? Or should the mismatch between mind (spirit) and body be interpreted through a spiritual lens? If the latter, Irenaeus’ approach could provide a helpful framework that offers hope.

Gender theory, as expressed in transgender ideology, is philosophically undergirded by the belief that one’s intellectual reality is superior to one’s material existence and physicality. Further, it proposes that the physical body is an insufficient and inaccurate representation of the true self. The body is a mistake that can never adequately satisfy. The unique plight of this conflict is provocatively reflected by Andrea Long Chu in this New York Times Op-Ed:

I like to say that being trans is the second-worst thing that ever happened to me. (The worst was being born a boy.) Dysphoria is notoriously difficult to describe to those who haven’t experienced it, like a flavor. Its official definition — the distress some transgender people feel at the incongruence between the gender they express and the gender they’ve been socially assigned — does little justice to the feeling.

But in my experience, at least: Dysphoria feels like being unable to get warm, no matter how many layers you put on. It feels like hunger without appetite. It feels like getting on an airplane to fly home, only to realize mid-flight that this is it: You’re going to spend the rest of your life on an airplane. It feels like grieving. It feels like having nothing to grieve.[2]

Gnosticism is a dualistic philosophy and loosely organized cultic religion that influenced 1st and 2nd-century Jewish and Christian thought.[3] It represented humanity in three hierarchical categories of knowledge. The third and premier group, the Gnostics, who had special intellectual and spiritual knowledge, existed in the material world yet did not consider themselves part of it. “They had received special insights to enable them to turn fully toward the immaterial realm, and they would ultimately manage to totally escape matter and be absorbed into ultimate spirit. This third category included only a small portion of humankind.”[4] Gnostics did not accept any intermingling of the superior spirit with the lesser material and placed great distance between the two. As a result, special knowledge of the truth (built upon a system interpreting numbers and letters) was available only to a few who were worthy. It was a highly exclusive and secretive philosophy.

Gender theory has no direct correlation to this system of belief. However, like Gnosticism, it presents a system by which to understand the conflict of nihilism and hope, pain and joy, etc. in an individual’s life. It recognizes the discord between one’s inner desires and one’s physical reality. Moreover, it suggests that access to truth is only possible ethereally. A few chosen individuals could access the ultimate truth of the Gnostics. Therefore, superiority was found among the extreme minority. Like 2nd-century Gnosticism, gender theory discounts Biblical anthropology and natural law through perceived advances in modern thought.

In the late 2nd century, Irenaeus of Lyons targeted the influence of Gnosticism on the Christian faith, and his efforts led to its suppression in the early Church. His approach confronted dualism by highlighting the transcendent sovereignty and love of God, and His essential and vivifying communion with all of creation.[5]

Little about Irenaeus’ life is known. He was born between 120-140CE in Western Turkey (Asia Minor) to Christian parents and became a disciple of Polycarp (d. ca. 155CE, a disciple of the Apostle John), whom he met in Smyrna. As a young man, he traveled west to Rome and may have sat under the teaching of Justin Martyr. Soon after, he was installed as a presbyter in Lyons (perhaps by Polycarp). In 177CE, he journeyed to Rome as an emissary to confer with bishop Eleutherus, where he defended the Eastern Church’s dates for the observation of Easter. Upon return, he was elected to replace Pothinus as bishop in Lyons, who had been martyred. A few outside sources, particularly Jerome, indicate that Irenaeus may also have been martyred around 202CE in Lyons. There was widespread persecution in southern Gaul around this time by Emperor Septimius Severus.

Two of his published works exist Adversus Haereses (the Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge falsely so-called ca. 180) and a later work called the Demonstration [or Proof] of the Apostolic Preaching. His book Against Heresies is an extensive apologetic addressing several Gnostic cults and is notable for its exegesis of OT and NT scripture, as well as its detailed descriptions of Gnostic beliefs. It is the earliest major defense of the Christian faith that was preserved, and was written within a century of the death of John. His writing points to the establishment of scriptural authority in the tenets of Christian faith and illustrates how the early church drew together OT and NT texts to interpret Jesus. Against Heresies is notable for its extensive use of the Septuagint and “is the earliest surviving witness to a fourfold gospel witness” revealing how these texts were read in the 2nd century.[6]

Irenaeus believed truth was found only in God and was willing to hold in tension humanity's limited capacity to understand God in His greatness. He, therefore, trusted scripture, faith, and the teachings and traditions of the emerging Church for guidance. Irenaeus leads his readers to conclude that knowledge of God (knowledge of the truth—versus the special knowledge of the Gnostics) can be discerned only by seeing God—explicitly by seeing Jesus. “The glory of God is the living human, and the life of the human is the vision of God.”[7]

For as those who see the light are within the light, and partake of its brilliancy; even so, those who see God are in God, and receive of His splendour. But [His] splendour vivifies them; those, therefore, who see God, do receive life. And for this reason, He, [although] beyond comprehension, and boundless and invisible, rendered Himself visible, and comprehensible, and within the capacity of those who believe, that He might vivify those who receive and behold Him through faith. For as His greatness is past finding out, so also His goodness is beyond expression; by which having been seen, He bestows life upon those who see Him. It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness.[8]

Irenaeus criticized individualism and elitism that made access to knowledge exclusive. He desired all to receive the truth and enter faith, and he points to the creation narrative in Genesis to undergird his argument. “Human beings are made by God’s own hands, a combination of the best of the earth and God’s own divine power. Moreover, the sovereignty structure between humanity and the angels is clearly established; humanity… is destined to rule over this ‘great created world.’”[9]

Irenaeus addresses human physicality at length and connects it to God. Made in the image and likeness of God, humanity’s ultimate destiny through Christ is immortality. Through the incarnation of Christ, Irenaeus points his audience to the goodness of creation and humanity’s adoption by God through the suffering of Christ. “The fact that Christ suffered and died on the cross is central to his Christology because it shows how divinity fully interacts with humanity.”[10] By emphasizing the dignity of free will as a sign of God’s goodness, Irenaeus confronts the hopelessness and victimization possible among many who have embraced gender theory.[11] “He argues that all aspects of humans are involved in salvation (i.e. spirit, soul, and body), but especially that of the body.”[12] His anthropology presents a holistic vision of human identity that is vital for our modern moment. And of course, Irenaeus points to the bodily resurrection as a sign of the goodness of God in physical creation.

The heart’s cry among people who identify as transgender is to be reborn into a new creation. Efforts ensue to bring oneself justice through surgeries and a newly popularized worldview instead of acknowledging human fallenness and sin. Though the language of gender theory tethers this population to the LGBT movement, the Gospel offers a redemptive way forward that relies on the ultimate truth of God’s goodness, not personal will. The Gospel rejects modern nihilism in favor of hope-filled rebirth of our whole human identity as body, soul, and spirit, created to bear the image and likeness of God.

Irenaeus’ approach required intimate knowledge of Gnosticism. He surely engaged individuals for understanding. His model of inquiry and engagement invites Christians to better understand gender theory and the transgender experience to dismantle the ideologies undergirding it. Though his critique is at times harsh and sometimes sarcastic, he was not shy to directly engage and dismantle Gnostic tenets using the Bible. Often, Christian debate over gender theory isolates verses, seeks to analyze translations, and distorts context. Irenaeus’ arguments are expansive and use all of scripture to point to the greatness of God and our adoption. It is an overarching presentation of the vision and heart of God for creation. His presentation of biblical anthropology, and his sincerity in protecting the faith are a model the modern Church should engage as it considers the conversion of the LGBTQIA+ community.

[1] Carl R. Trueman and Rod Dreher, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020).

[2] Andrea Long Chu, “Opinion | My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy,” The New York Times, November 24, 2018, sec. Opinion, accessed December 14, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/opinion/sunday/vaginoplasty-transgender-medicine.html.

[3]  “According to the Gnostics, this world, the material cosmos, is the result of a primordial error on the part of a supra-cosmic, supremely divine being, usually called Sophia (Wisdom) or simply the Logos. This being is described as the final emanation of a divine hierarchy, called the Plêrôma or “Fullness,” at the head of which resides the supreme God, the One beyond Being. The error of Sophia, which is usually identified as a reckless desire to know the transcendent God, leads to the hypostatization of her desire in the form of a semi-divine and essentially ignorant creature known as the Demiurge (Greek: dêmiourgos, “craftsman”), or Ialdabaoth, who is responsible for the formation of the material cosmos. This act of craftsmanship is actually an imitation of the realm of the Pleroma, but the Demiurge is ignorant of this, and hubristically declares himself the only existing God. At this point, the Gnostic revisionary critique of the Hebrew Scriptures begins, as well as the general rejection of this world as a product of error and ignorance, and the positing of a higher world, to which the human soul will eventually return. However, when all is said and done, one finds that the error of Sophia and the begetting of the inferior cosmos are occurrences that follow a certain law of necessity, and that the so-called “dualism” of the divine and the earthly is really a reflection and expression of the defining tension that constitutes the being of humanity—the human being.” See “Gnosticism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” n.d. Accessed December 14, 2022. https://iep.utm.edu/gnostic/.

[4] James R. Payton, Jr. and James R. Payton, Irenaeus on the Christian Faith : A Condensation of “Against Heresies” (Havertown: James Clarke Company, Limited, 2012), accessed November 27, 2022, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/houstonbaptist-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3328473. 6

[5] Mary Ann Donovan, “Alive to the Glory of God: A Key Insight in St Irenaeus,” Theological Studies 49, no. 2 (June 1988): 283–297, accessed November 27, 2022, 283.

[6] Sara Parvis, Irenaeus : Life, Scripture, Legacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012). 32.

[7] Irenaeus, Against Heresies: With a Biographical Introduction, ed. David Sloan, trans. Philip Schaff, Alexander Roberts, and William Rambaut, n.d. Book 4, Ch 20, Sect 5.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Gerald Hiestand, “The Bishop, Beelzebub, and the Blessings of Materiality: How Irenaeus’ Account of the Devil Reshapes the Christian Narrative in a Pro-Terrestrial Direction,” Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology 4, no. 1 (2017): 83–99, accessed November 27, 2022, https://libproxy.hbu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rfh&AN=ATLAiGEV171007000469&site=eds-live&scope=site. 95.

[10] Ben Blackwell, “Paul and Irenaeus,” in Paul in the Second Century, ed. Michael F. Bird and Paul and the Second Century Dodson (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2011). 200.

[11] Irenaeus, Against Heresies. 4, 37, 5.

[12] Blackwell, “Paul and Irenaeus.” 203.