Lumen Fidei - page 64

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What is the secret of this unity? Faith is
“one”, in the first place, because of the oneness
of the God who is known and confessed. All the
articles of faith speak of God; they are ways to
know him and his works. Consequently, their unity
is far superior to any possible construct of human
reason. They possess a unity which enriches us be-
cause it is given to us and makes us one.
Faith is also one because it is directed to the
one Lord, to the life of Jesus, to the concrete
history which he shares with us. Saint Irenaeus
of Lyons made this clear in his struggle against
Gnosticism. The Gnostics held that there are
two kinds of faith: a crude, imperfect faith suit-
ed to the masses, which remained at the level of
Jesus’ flesh and the contemplation of his myster-
ies; and a deeper, perfect faith reserved to a small
circle of initiates who were intellectually capable
of rising above the flesh of Jesus towards the
mysteries of the unknown divinity. In opposition
to this claim, which even today exerts a certain
attraction and has its followers, Saint Irenaeus in-
sisted that there is but one faith, for it is grounded
in the concrete event of the incarnation and can
never transcend the flesh and history of Christ,
inasmuch as God willed to reveal himself fully
in that flesh. For this reason, he says, there is no
difference in the faith of “those able to discourse
of it at length” and “those who speak but little”,
between the greater and the less: the first cannot
increase the faith, nor the second diminish it. 41
41 Cf. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, I, 10, 2: SC 264, 160.