St. Irenaeus, Regula Fidei, and the Ecclesiological Context of Interpretation

Abstract

In the dispute with the Gnostics in the second half of the 2nd century, referring to the biblical texts was, in and of itself, not sufficient anymore for the articulation of the authentic doctrine of the Church, because both sides in the debate, i.e., the theologians of the Church as well as the Gnostics, often referred to the identical written material. For this reason, that is, having in mind the emergence of the arbitrary gnostic interpretations of biblical texts, St Irenaeus of Lyons considered it necessary to set the problem in a broader hermeneutical perspective, i.e., in the context of the reality he called regula fidei (κανὼν τῆς πίστεως or rule of faith).