ABSTRACT
The clash between the various types of truth in the Roman Empire ended with the victory of Christianity. The fateful result of this victory was the de-divinization of the temporal sphere of power. To anticipate, the advent of modernity would bring about a re-divinization of man and society. It is important at this point to define our terms, especially since both the concept of modernity and the periodization of history depend upon the meaning of re-divinization. Western Christian society thus was articulated into the spiritual and temporal orders, with pope and emperor as the supreme representatives in both the existential and the transcendental sense. Gnostic heresy was the great opponent of Christianity in the early centuries; and Irenaeus surveyed and criticized its manifold variants in his Adversus Haereses—a standard treatise on the subject that still will be consulted with profit by the student who wants to understand modern political ideas and movements.
