WHERE THE CHURCH IS,
THERE IS THE SPIRIT OF GOD
From the writing of St Irenaeus6
◊◊◊
It is within reach of all who want to see the truth to discern the tradition
of the apostles which has been manifested in the whole world. All we have to do
is to list those who are appointed bishops in the churches by the apostles and
their successors up to our own time who neither taught nor recognized anything
like that which the heretics rave about. For even if the apostles would have
known “secret mysteries” which they used to teach the “perfect” separately and
secretly apart from the others, they would especially have passed these things
down to those to whom they also were entrusting the churches themselves. For
they wanted those whom they left as successors to be quite perfect and beyond
reproach in all things, handing over to them their own place as teachers. To
those who do what is right this would have great usefulness, but to those who
fall away it would be great disaster…
The preaching of the church is consistent everywhere and persists equally
and has behind it the testimony of the prophets and the apostles and all the
disciples through the beginning, middle, and end and through the whole saving
plan of God and that solid system which is in our faith which lends itself to
human salvation. We keep what we have received from the church and what is
always from the Spirit of God like some precious deposit growing in a good vase
which also makes the vase it is in to grow. For this gift of God has been entrusted
to the church, like the breath of creation, so that all the members receiving it
may be made alive. And in it has been deposited the means of communicating
with Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, the…confirmation of our faith and ladder of
ascent to God. “For in the Church,” [Scripture] says, “God has appointed
apostles, prophets, teachers”, and all the other working of the Spirit. All who do
not gather with the church but defraud themselves of life through evil thought
and worse deed do not participate in the Spirit. For where the church is, there
is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the church and every
gift; and the Spirit is truth. Accordingly, those who do not participate in the
Spirit are not nourished unto life by the mother’s breasts nor do they receive
that brilliant fountain which flows from the Body of Christ. Rather, they dig for
themselves broken cisterns in dirty ditches and they drink putrid water from
the dirt, fleeing the faith of the church, lest they be convicted, rejecting the Spirit
that they may not be instructed.
6 UNDERSTANDING OF THE CHURCH, Edited by Glenn Hinson (Fortress Press, Phila. PA,
1986) pp. 40-42.12