““Gnostic Christianity depreciates our bodiliness, demeans creation and materiality; it sees salvation as release from embodiment. Identified and refuted as a heresy by the same theologian, Irenaeus, gnosticism has nonetheless continued to dog Christianity throughout its existence, continually insinuating that being embodied is some kind of cosmic mistake. The cure for that kind of thinking can certainly be found in the biblical accounts of God’s good creation and of Jesus’s birth, healing ministry, crucifixion, and bodily resurrection, and in the church’s embodied practices of worshiping God and serving neighbor.””
![“And when we come to refute them, we shall show in its fitting place that this class of men [i.e., the gnostics] has been instigated by satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God, and thus to a denial of the whole faith [by denying all physical aspects of spirituality, including…” quote by Irenaeus of Lyons](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/52f/irenaeus-of-lyons-18423_aspect_and-when-we-come-to-refute-them-we-shall_392161.jpg)
