Doctor of the Church III

 

 

DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH III

SAINT IRENAEUS AS ‘DOCTOR OF UNITY’

St. Irenaeus was already recognized as one of the early fathers of the church. Born during the 2nd century in what is now Turkey, he served as bishop of Lyons in what is now France; moving from one side of the Roman Empire to the other.

He wrote forcefully against a philosophical and religious movement called Gnosticism. Gnosticism is from the Greek word “gnosis”, or “knowledge”, which he saw as a heresy threatening to separate Christians from beliefs handed down by the apostles of Jesus Christ. Gnostic Christians taught that the physical world was created not by God, but by a lesser spiritual being, either in error or out of malice. They rejected the traditional Christian beliefs that material reality and the human body were fundamentally good and held that the body was a worthless obstacle to achieving spiritual perfection.

Irenaeus argued against the Gnostics, insisting God created both material and spiritual reality and that both were rooted in the goodness of God. His critique of the gnostic view of Christian teaching reaffirmed the importance of the teaching of the apostles, based on the writings of the Old Testament prophets and the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So the teaching of Irenaeus was valued by later theologians working to strengthen the definition of orthodox beliefs by the Church.

In 2021, members of the St. Irenaeus Joint Catholic-Orthodox Working Group, an unofficial group of theologians seeking to enrich mutual understanding, met in Rome. During that meeting, Pope Francis stated his intention to officially declare the saint a doctor of the church. As the pope later noted, Irenaeus’ life and teaching serve as a bridge between Eastern and Western Christianity. In his own life, he served churches in both traditions, and, despite their individual differences, strove to keep them united against divisive teachings.

Because of the influence of his theology and the example of his ministry, St. Irenaeus will be one of those doctors of the church, like St. Albert the Great, to be given a distinctive honorific title: “doctor of unity.”

At a time when disease, environmental disasters and wars threaten to divide Christianity and the world, many believe that a saintly “doctor of unity” may well inspire a more hope-filled future.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE DOCTORS

The title “Doctor of the Church,” is an official designation that is bestowed by the Pope in recognition of the outstanding contribution a person has made to the understanding and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures and the development of Christian doctrine.

As of 2022, the official list includes 37 men and women who hail from all ages of the history of the Church. 

And 24 are quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Those who are not quoted are Saints Ephraem, Isidore, “the Venerable” Bede, Albert the Great, Anthony of Padua, Peter Canisius, Robert Bellarmine, John of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, Gregory of Narek and Lawrence of Brindisi and two others.

© Rev Fr Utazi Prince Marie Benignus Zereuwa

August 5 2023