Against Heresies

The question of the structure of the five books Against Heresies has occasioned much exercise of scholarly imagination, perhaps because Irenaeus did not plan or execute the work with exacting care. The whole of it is, of course, an attack on Christian gnostic teaching and practice: a series of λόγοι which, as the original title suggests, embody not so much a defence as an enacted prosecution. The elements that make up this indictment and refutation, however, are of different sorts and have different aims; and more than that, Irenaeus often pursues aims of different orders simultaneously.

Richard A. Norris Jr., “Irenaeus of Lyon,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 47.