Better Acquaintance With The Ancients

Odds & Ends With St. Irenaeus

Dear Friends,

Step in from the March chill and into my study. Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!

March in Montana is always the most disappointing month, truth be told. We get tantalizing glimpses of the possibility of a real Spring—the other day we awoke to sunshine, warmth, and what appeared to be an overnight invasion of all of the birds. A cacophony. Our house cat Bellatrix (or “Trixie,” for short) was going crazy at the window, whining to be let outside. She wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a bird even if she got lucky enough to catch one. And then this morning there is another three inches of snow on the ground. It’ll be like this for the whole month. Off and then on.

So let’s retreat to the study not only for the fireplace, but to get away from it all. I mean, we could sit and doom scroll on our phones, watching the stock market plummet because Donald Trump imposed 25% tariffs on our friends and allies this morning (the Dow is down -687 at this moment), or we could read the thousandth Tweet about Russia and Ukraine. Let’s leave those troubles behind, if we can.

I have been meaning to write a Pipe & Dram for a long time now to share with you some insights and gems I’ve run across as I continue (glacially) to plow my way through St. Irenaeus’s Against Heresies. The trouble has been that there are so many of them I don’t even know where to start. I am very nearly finished with Book Four of Irenaeus’s five books, and I am definitely antsy to finish. I have been in Volume One of the Ante-Nicene Fathers for way too long (embarrassingly so), and I’m eager to move on to Volume Two and to get deeply acquainted with Tertullian. (That is my purpose in reading through the Church Fathers: I am already “acquainted” with most of them; I want to get deeply acquainted.)

I’ll just start here, for fun. In Book IV, Ch.33.3 Irenaeus quotes Homer’s Iliad and it is quite an arresting line. I couldn’t help but relate it to our current political turmoil. I could only think of all the “statesmen” and politicians and cabinet members who routinely spout nonsense when I know they know better. I went and looked up Richmond Lattimore’s translation:

For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.

Now, there is an all-purpose line worth memorizing for any occasion when one needs to call out rank hypocrisy! Maybe I should do the Boris Johnson (former UK Prime Minister) thing and memorize it in Attic Greek for maximal effect.