More True than the Truth?

There are too many who put their faith in their own understanding of things, or who seek with intellectual pride to propose that they have found something more true than the simplest of truths. Some ancient Christian wisdom from early writer St. Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd century):

Some people abandon the teachings of the Church and fail to understand how a simple and devout person can have more worth than a philosopher who blasphemes without restraint. Heretics are like that.

Heretics are always wanting to find something more true than the truth. They are always choosing new and unreliable ways. Yet like the blind led by the blind, they will fall into the abyss of ignorance by their own fault.

The Church is like paradise on earth. ‘You may eat freely of the fruit of every tree in the garden,’ says the Spirit of God. In our case he means: Feed on the whole of Scripture, but do not do it with intellectual pride, and do not swallow the opinions of the heretics. They pretend to possess the knowledge of good and evil, but they are impiously elevating their own intelligence above their Creator.

Beware! By devouring the ideas of the heretics we banish ourselves from the paradise of life.

Excerpted from Against Heresies, Book V, Ch. 20