Irenaeus reminds us that there is only one God who created everything freely and entirely, exposing the absurdity of infinite gods and the peril of multiplicity in divine beings. Augustine confesses that he sought God outside himself for too long, only to realize that the One he craved was present all along—calling, shining, touching him until his soul burned with longing. Aquinas, meanwhile, teaches that while our intellect can conceive the idea of “infinite,” it cannot truly grasp infinity, just as we can behold the sea but never contain it within our minds. Each reading, in its own way, calls us to a deeper humility before the one true God: He is singular, present within, and beyond the full comprehension of our finite understanding. (Irenaeus Against Heresies 2.1; Augustine Confessions 10.37–38; Aquinas ST I‑II q.85 a.2)

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Today’s reflections continue our deep dive into how the soul encounters God. Augustine wrestles with why truth often provokes hatred—it demands change. People want truth that confirms their desires, not truth that convicts. Yet he insists: wherever we find truth, we find God, because God is the Truth—and He lives in our memory not as an image or feeling, but as the unchanging reality who can be remembered but never confined. Aquinas then asks whether we can know spiritual beings through material things. His answer is yes, but only dimly: we know the immaterial like we know the wind—by its effects, not its essence. Finally, Irenaeus begins his formal attack on the Gnostic framework, exposing its supposed “Bythus” as a fabricated projection, unworthy of worship or wonder. These three voices together remind us that truth is not an idea—it is a Person, and He can be remembered, reasoned toward, and revealed, but never controlled (John 14:6; Romans 1:20; Psalm 139:23–24).

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In today’s readings, Augustine reflects on the painful irony that although all people claim to love truth, many secretly resent it—because truth doesn’t just illuminate; it exposes. He meditates on how God dwells in memory—not in a physical space, but as the Truth Himself, who cannot be forgotten once known. Aquinas follows with a related insight in Summa Theologica by arguing that our intellect knows individuals not directly, but through the imagination, which supplies the sensory particulars that abstract knowledge alone lacks. Finally, Irenaeus opens Book II of Against Heresies by recounting how Book I dismantled the Gnostic system at its roots, and now he prepares to unravel their structure further, head-on and point-by-point, beginning with the absurdity of their "Bythus." Together, these texts explore the tension between abstraction and experience, memory and matter, error and the embodied truth of God (John 14:6; Galatians 4:16; Romans 1:20).

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Today’s readings bring together a bold vision of knowledge, joy, and resurrection: Aquinas teaches that our soul knows physical things by abstracting their form through the intellect—not by touching matter, but by understanding its nature; Augustine reminds us that true happiness is found only in rejoicing in, for, and because of God, and that all other joys are mere shadows; and Irenaeus lays out the wild and tangled mythology of the Ophites and Sethians, exposing their convoluted cosmology while grounding our hope in the true resurrection of the body, not the illusion of secret knowledge. Each reading pulls us deeper into the mystery of the soul, the beauty of divine joy, and the glory of bodily resurrection—a joy found not in escape, but in redemption.

(Scripture references: Luke 21:18–19; Daniel 12:2–3; Ezekiel 37:1–14; Isaiah 26:19; Psalm 32:1)

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The errors multiply. Irenaeus now shows how heresy breeds heresy—Encratites rejecting marriage and food, Tatian denying Adam’s salvation, and the Gnostics of the Barbelo tradition spinning wild origin myths with endless Aeons. But alongside that distortion of memory and meaning, Augustine (in Confessions 10.21) probes how we remember the happy life. He argues that even though we’ve never seen it, we remember it as we remember joy: not by the senses, but by inward experience. Everyone desires happiness—and that common desire points to a shared memory. Meanwhile, Aquinas in Question 83, Article 4 explains that free will is not a separate power from the will—it is the will, acting through reason when we choose. Free will isn’t a second bow. It’s the will itself, drawn back and aimed by rational deliberation.

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Today we meet the tangled roots of heresy as Irenaeus catalogs Cerinthus, the Ebionites, and Marcion—each denying in different ways either the nature of Christ or the Creator Himself. These early errors become a springboard for reflecting on the human search for happiness. Augustine, in Confessions 10.20, wrestles with how we seek a happy life that we somehow already recognize, even if dimly. He asks: if we didn’t already know it, how could we desire it so deeply? Finally, Aquinas in Question 83, Article 2 explains that free will is not merely a one-time act or decision, but a power—a capacity rooted in our ability to choose rationally. Animals act by instinct; humans act by reflection. That power of rational self-direction is what Aquinas calls free will.

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Today’s portion of Against Heresies shows Irenaeus at full throttle. Carpocrates and his sect don’t just claim freedom from sin—they claim that doing evil might actually be necessary for salvation. They believe that each soul must experience every possible action in every kind of life, either in one incarnation or through reincarnation, to escape the material prison of the body. Nothing, they say, is evil by nature—only by opinion. The result? A theology that encourages lawlessness and pride, all under the guise of hidden “gnosis.” In Confessions, Augustine explores how memory holds even what it seems to have lost. When we forget something and try to recall it, we search our own memory—rejecting false matches until the right one returns and we say, “That’s it!” But we couldn’t even search for it unless some part of us still remembered. The process is mysterious: a dance of presence and absence that shows how deep and strange the human soul really is. Aquinas rounds out today’s trio by asking whether free will is a power. In his second article, he clarifies that free will is not a separate power from intellect and will—but it is a real power of the rational soul. It is our capacity to choose rationally and voluntarily, directed by reason and not by instinct. This power distinguishes humans from animals and defines our moral responsibility.

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In today’s reading from Against Heresies, Irenaeus introduces us to the strange, prideful teachings of Carpocrates and his followers. Their theology takes a dangerous turn as they reduce Jesus to a mere man who escaped the material world by sheer memory and spiritual insight. The Carpocratians go further, claiming superiority over Christ’s apostles—and even Jesus Himself—through a twisted doctrine of reincarnation and self-liberation. Their blending of magic, sensuality, and supposed freedom from the moral law is not just heretical—it’s satanic, in Irenaeus’s eyes. Meanwhile, Augustine wrestles with a paradox of memory: How can we remember something we've forgotten? In Confessions, he dives into the process of searching the memory itself for what it has misplaced. The very act of trying to recall something reveals that we still retain a trace of it—enough to recognize it when it returns.

Memory, for Augustine, is not just a container—it’s active, dynamic, and mysterious. Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, continues his exploration of free will. After affirming that humans possess free will, he now asks whether free will is itself a power. His answer is yes—but not a power separate from intellect and will. Free will is the power that emerges when reason presents alternatives and the will moves toward them. It is, in this way, both rational and appetitive—a defining feature of the human soul.

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