ABSTRACT
Carrying on the counteroffensive launched by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, Tertullian reassured Christians that the executives' standing in apostolic succession gave them, not the innovative Gnostics, final interpretive authority. Tertullian, just as Irenaeus before him, identified and tried to explain what he thought to be the genuine article, accusing the Gnostics of having carried the earliest and apostolic doctrines far beyond belief and of having exposed Christianity to ridicule. Tertullian momentarily put texts and heretics together to explain God's strategy. Heresy was useful as a goad, but there was a catch: God not only supplied the heretics but also supplied them with sacred literature. Tertullian was certain that philosophy was behind the lure and lunacy of heretical exposition. Recoiling from the resurrection of Jesus as if it were sorcery, the philosophers among the flock, still calling themselves Christians, cast off the most critical part of Christianity.
