Who is Irenaeus and what was bugging him?
Irenaeus was a Bishop of Lyon in what today would be France in the later second century…. [He] was particularly noted for his writings in which he tried to combat various kinds of so-called heretics of the second century. Most of these were people who would consider themselves Christians. In fact some of these heretics such as Marcion and Valentinus clearly thought that they were better Christians and higher kinds of Christians than ordinary run of the mill Christians in the catholic churches. Irenaeus took it upon himself to expose these different kinds of so-called heresies, people that had chosen wrong ways of thinking about Christianity, from his point of view. In an enormous book called “Against Heresies” in which he outlined all the difficulties, particularly, he said, many of these heretics decried the created order. They thought the material world was bad. They didn’t honor the God of the Old Testament who was represented as a creator. They didn’t honor the law that God gave
