Today we begin our journey into Irenaeus’s Against Heresies with his extended preface and first chapter, where he explains why false teaching is so dangerous—and why he felt compelled to write. Error, he warns, never comes naked. It wears the cloak of truth, drawing in the simple with clever imitations of Christian language. The Gnostic system he begins to detail in Book 1, Chapter 1 is elaborate, strange, and often dizzying—but Irenaeus’s goal is not curiosity. It’s clarity. Heresy must be named to be defeated.

From Augustine’s Confessions, we listen as he reflects on the beauty of creation and how it testifies to the invisible God. But beauty alone does not teach. Only when the soul compares the voice of creation with the truth within does it begin to hear the Creator. In a haunting line, Augustine confesses: “The truth declares unto me, ‘Neither heaven, nor earth, nor any body is thy God.’”

And from Aquinas, we begin Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 74, Article 1, asking whether the six days of creation were sufficiently ordered. With his usual methodical clarity, Aquinas shows that the order of days is not random or primitive but reflects a structure of forming and filling, harmony and finality. God, the master craftsman, is no improviser.

Together, these readings help us see the theological, philosophical, and pastoral unity of the Church across the centuries—from Irenaeus’s fight for orthodoxy, to Augustine’s hunger for truth, to Aquinas’s logic of creation.

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