How did Irenaeus protect the church from early heresy? David and Jennifer McNutt

We tend to have an ideal picture of the early centuries of the church. The early church was a period of flourishing and growth, but it was also a period of persecution. The early church had hardships both externally and internally. On the one hand, early Christians had to deal with a misrepresentation of the Christian faith in a society hostile to their beliefs. On the other hand, they had to deal with distortions of their teaching by heresies that rose up quietly among them. In this episode, Matthew Barrett talks with David McNutt and Jennifer McNutt, the authors of the book Know the Theologians, and discusses Irenaeus, a church father who had to deal with such hardships in the early church, including Gnosticism. How then did Irenaeus protect the church from such a prominent, appealing heresy?

Join Matthew Barrett, David McNutt, and Jennifer McNutt as they reflect on the relevance of Irenaeus to the challenges the church faces today, both from within and from without.

David McNutt is a senior acquisitions editor at Zondervan Academic, an imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, where he acquires and edits books in theology, philosophy, and related fields and oversees several series, including the New Studies in Dogmatics series, the Los Angeles Theology Conference series, and the Scottish Dogmatics Conference series.

Jennifer Powell McNutt is the Franklin S. Dyrness Associate Professor in Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College, a Fellow in the Royal Historical Society, and a Parish Associate at First Presbyterian Church of Glen Ellyn. David and Jennifer McNutt serve the church and the academy through McNuttshell Ministries, their teaching, preaching, and writing ministry.

Matthew Barrett is the editor-in-chief of Credo Magazine, director of the Center for Classical Theology, and host of the Credo podcast. He is professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the author of several books, including Simply Trinity, which won the Christianity Today Book of the Year Award in Theology/Ethics. His new book is called The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. He is currently writing a Systematic Theology with Baker Academic.

Photo credit: mini_malist, More Sweetly Play the Dance