When the Christian church was first forming in the time of the apostles, a heresy that still threatens the church today called Gnosticism started to form. This heresy was battled by the writings of Iren¾us to correct theological thinking about God, Jesus, and the Bible at large. This early church father was instrumental in fighting false teaching in the early centuries when there were a lot of questions about the legitimacy of Christianity in the face of the persecutions of the Roman Empire.