What St. Irenaeus would’ve thought about the digital age

When he was a young man, St. Irenaeus endured the tragic loss of his mentor, St. Polycarp. Polycarp was arrested by the Romans and put to death around the year 155. Offered the chance to recant his belief in Jesus and save his life, Polycarp declined. He understood that, in declining, he was accepting physical pain and suffering.

Polycarp must have been tempted to recant. After all, it was just a few simple words that he could later forget about and repent for having said. But Polycarp wouldn’t take the easy way out. He was prepared to witness to the sincerity of his beliefs by the destruction of his body.

Polycarp had been a disciple of the Apostle John, the same John who begins his Gospel with a poetic ode to the Word made Flesh. Throughout his writing, John continues to emphasize the fleshiness of Christianity. He tells stories such as how water physically changed to wine and the wine then became the celebratory libation of a wedding. He speaks about the physical nature of the Eucharist and how the Sacrament isn’t merely a spiritual idea or symbol. The physicality of the Eucharist and the suffering body of Christ was enough to cause many of his followers to abandon him. Later in the Gospel, John doesn’t back away from describing the painful, physical reality of the Crucifixion.

From John, Polycarp came to value the physicality of the Gospel, that it is a belief in the living, breathing God who took on flesh. This belief means that what happens in the physical world matters, because God himself has made it sacred.

This lesson was passed down to Irenaeus as well, and he would even later write about the physicality of his own conversion to the faith. He writes, “I could tell you the place where the blessed Polycarp sat to preach the Word of God.” He could picture the exact place in his mind and whenever he thought of his mentor, that physical place emerged from his memory.

John was clear that the Gospel isn’t a mere idea. The Gospel is a person, Jesus Christ. For Irenaeus, his conversion wasn’t a random idea that popped into his head. It was delivered by a real person in the flesh.

Maybe this is why Irenaeus was always so opposed to the Gnostics. The Gnostics were a group that held to a spiritual corruption of Christianity focused solely on interior knowledge. They believed that the material world was a lesser creation by a secondary, somewhat malevolent god, and salvation meant escaping from imprisonment to the body. They sought pure idea.

Various, distantly related, far less serious versions of gnostic spirituality continue to crop up in the modern world. You can hear echoes of gnostic beliefs in statements such as “I’m spiritual but not religious,” or “God only judges the heart,” or “Religious ritual and moral codes have nothing to do with God’s love.” All of these statements reveal the assumption that what really matters is our thoughts and intentions.

The result is a collapse in the meaning of what it means to be a human person. It’s a flattening out of our experience to interior disposition and spiritualized concepts.

When Irenaeus heard what the Gnostics were teaching and how they were confusing Christians, he wrote a book called Against Heresies. In it he explains that, among other things, Christianity is not looking to escape the world but to redeem it. The physical world is God-shaped. The fullness of our happiness and religious knowledge will include the physical. God saves us body and soul.

Based on all of the above, I wonder how Irenaeus might have reacted to how digitized our lives have become. Social media, texting, and television certainly aren’t “gnostic,” but I wonder if the overuse of digital technology creates a similar, flattening effect. The Gnostics reduced God to an idea, the digital age reduces everything else.

One of my little acts of resistance against the digital age is to get outside and ride my bicycle. We’re in the mountains of North Carolina this week, so this morning I decided to ride up a mountain road to the top of a ski slope. On the way up, heart-rate at the limit and feeling the strain of my bodily limits, I had the usual thought along the lines of "why do I do this to myself?" (No one said that rebelling against the digitalization of existence is easy).

Once I pushed through the self-recrimination, though, the physical struggle placed me bodily into the experience. Birdsong was all around, the sky was reddening through the alpine spruce off the shoulder of the ridge, and finally at the top, the blue ridged mountains hewed into view, dappled with newly awakened sun.

Anyone who has put in the effort to hike to a mountain peak knows the feeling. It’s physically unique and unrepeatable. You have to be there, on your own two legs, on that day. A picture helps convey the scene but it can never replace it. The reality of the experience cannot be removed from the sensible world.

That’s just one example. There are many others: the places we’ve all been, people we’ve spent time with, and unrepeatable experiences that make up a lifetime. There’s the first dance with a highschool sweetheart, your favorite concert and feeling the energy of being surrounded by people singing their favorite songs with the band, being at the stadium and witnessing the winning play with your own two eyes, yelling and high-fiving complete strangers because everyone is so happy.

It takes so much effort to go out and participate in real life that I often shrug it off invitations to events and parties. Later, I wish I’d forced myself to go. Every time I drag myself to a party, I end up having a good time. I get to see people I may not have seen for months, and spending time with them physically is far more rewarding than the occasional text message or liking each other’s pictures on social media. The digital version of friendship is easier and more comfortable, but it isn’t nearly as satisfying.

Now, I know that online, digital connections are real. They’re valuable and can even be lifelines of support when life is difficult. I do use social media and post pictures and thoughts there for this exact purpose. Online connections aren’t made-up and I’m not advocating for disconnecting entirely, only for moderation. In particular, the digital world is good for maintaining long-distance relationships and for putting like-minded communities together to bond over what they love.

But our digital presence can never replace the physical world. So what would St. Irenaeus have said about it? He probably would have pointed out that human experience should encompass all of the above. Our interior lives ought to express themselves in real, physical actions and experiences. Conversely, those real, physical experiences will shape and influence the development of our interior life. We cannot live entirely in the digital realm, otherwise we miss half the experience of being alive.

His advice would probably be simple. Make the extra effort. Go to the party. Take a walk. Put down the phone and play with the kids. God has given us physical bodies and placed us in a material world. Get out there and enjoy it.