Saint Irenaeus and the "canon of truth."
Saint Irenaeus , denouncing the misuse of the Scriptures were the Gnostics, uses a comparison picturesque. Imagine a talented artist who would have represented, in a mosaic of a thousand jewels of price, the splendid portrait of a king. Another man arrives, undoes all parts of the book and reconstruct the image of a dog and a fox. Then he claims that his work is original work, from the hands of chief petty pretext that the gems are used Authentic. In reality, however, the original figure had indeed perished [11] . Now this is precisely the treatment inflicted on the heretics Scripture. They neglect and defeat "the order and connection" of Holy Scripture, "they dismember the Truth" [12] . words, images and expressions are certainly original, but about the general argument, is arbitrary and misleading [13] .
Saint Irenaeus suggests yet another analogy. Of his time traveling the Homeric centos, composed of texts from Homer to authentic, but taken out of context and rearranged to make them mean whatever you wanted. Taken individually, each verse of Homer really was, but the news story that resulted from their reassembly, was not Homeric. She could still abuse ear in ringing accents familiar Homeric language [14] . It is worth noting that Tertullian also alludes to these strange centos , compounds worm Virgil or Homer [15] . That reference was apparently to have been a common argument of the polemical literature of the period.
About The meaning of Irenaeus is therefore clear. Scripture had its blueprint, its internal structure, its harmony. Heretics took no account of this plan of organization or, rather, substituting their own. other words, they reorganized the scriptural witness to accommodate a statement by itself radically foreign to Scripture. But Irenaeus argued, those who had kept intact the "canon of truth" that they had received their baptism, they then will have no trouble "giving each term in its proper place [16] . Then they would be able to contemplate the true picture. The expression that is used Irenaeus is here singular Prosarmoas you Your aletheia somatioi ("In accommodating the body of truth")-that the old Latin translation made by awkwardly corpusculum veritatis , "the little body of truth." However the thought is clear. The term does not necessarily somatic diminutive meaning: it simply means a "global body." In the phrase of Saint Irenaeus, the word evokes corpus of truth, the exact context, the initial project , the "true image", the original disposition of precious stones as well as verses [17] .
Thus, for Irenaeus, the reading of Scripture must be guided by the "rule" of faith, to which are introduced, and undertake to keep them believing in their baptismal profession of faith: it is the rule and it only allows to assess and identify the basic message, the "truth" of Scripture . The favorite formula of St. Irenaeus was "the rule of truth" gun tês Aletheia, regula veritatis . Now this "rule" was to turn anything other than the witness and teaching of the Apostles their kérugma their praedicatio (or praeconium ), which had been "Deposited" in the Church and entrusted to his care by the Apostles, and since that time, had faithfully guarded and passed, with perfect unanimity in the entire universe, line of pastors of the Church allowed : " Those who, with the episcopal succession have received the charism of truth unfailing [18] " . Whatever may be for accurate and precise phrase rich [19] , there is no doubt that in the spirit of St. Irenaeus , the conservation and conveyance the deposit of faith resulted from conducting the action and the presence of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. The design of the Church is, in Irenaeus, whole both institutional and charismatic. And "Tradition", in his view, is a depositum juvenescens a deposit always rejuvenating a living tradition, entrusted to the Church as a new breath of life, just as the breath was assigned to the first man [20] . The bishops and "presbyters" were in the Church, the guards and ministers accredited This truth made once and for all. "Here, then, that the charisms ( charismata ) of the Lord were deposited ( positi sunt ), it is expedient to learn the truth, I mean, to those who have succession coming Apostles Church ( apud quos is ea quae ab Apostolis is successio ecclesiae), which shows a pipe holy and blameless and speak a language pure and unadulterated falsehood. Because they also preserve this faith of ours in one God creator of all things, increase our love to the Son of God, who, for us, made a wonderful economy and, finally, they explain the Scriptures without danger, without blasphemy against God, or prejudice against the patriarchs, prophets or contempt. " [21]
[11] Lusas tèn hupokeimenen TOV anthropou idéan : "Having destroyed the human figure that originally existed."
[12] Luontes your mell tês aletheia .
[13] Remate, léxeis, parables one side hypothesis other. While this passage in Against Heresies , 1, 8, 1.
[14] Ibid ., 1, 9, 4.
[15] In Praescriptione , 39.
[16] Tei idiai taxei .
[17] See F. Kattenbush, Das Symbol Apostolische , Bd II, Leipzig 1900, p.30 et seq, and its note in the Zeitschrift f. neutest. Theology, 10, 1909, p. 331-332.
[18] Who cum episcopatus successionis charisma veritatis Certum acceperunt . Saint Irenaeus, Ibid., 4, 26, 2.
[19] Some have argued that charisma veritatis words do not mean in fact nothing but the doctrine and the Apostolic vérité de la Révélation divine; varietal de que saint Irénée ne suppose aucun don spécial ministériel propre aux Evêque. Voir Karl Mueller, "Small contributions to ancient church history, 3 The charisma veritatis and the episcopacy in Irenaeus, " magazine f. Neut. Science, Vol 23, 1924, p. 216-222; cf. van den Eynde, op cit , p.. 183-187, YM-J. Congar, OP, La Tradition et les traditions , Etude historique , Paris 1960, p. 97-98; Hans Freiherr von Camphausen, Ecclesiastical Office and spiritual authority in the first three centuries, Tübingen 1953, p. 185 sqq, et aussi avec un- special emphasis on the nature of "succession" - Einar Molland, "Irenaeus of Lugdunum & the Apostolic Succession," Journal of Ecclesiastical History , 1.1, 1950, p. 12-28 and "The development of the idea of apostolic succession," Journal of the History and Philosophy Religious , 34.1, 1954, p. 1-29. See, for the opposite view, the critical comments by Arnold Ehrhardt, The Apostolic Succession in The First Two Centuries of the Church , London 1953, p. 207-231, especially p. 213-214.
[20] Quemadmodum aspiratio plasmationis , Ibid., 3, 24, 1.
[21] Ibid ., 4, 26, 5.
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