(PD) Robert Imbelli–Against Excarnation 

It has been suggestively proposed that the book’s “presiding genius is Pascal.” Indeed, Pascal is cited or referenced fourteen times in the extant letters. One may note, in passing, that Clermont-Ferrand, the editor’s residence, is the birthplace of Pascal.

Perhaps, however, the archbishop’s vision owes even more to the second century Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons. The dual manuscript tradition, the English and Spanish versions of the letters, present, according to Hermès, “no variant readings,” save in one important particular. The heading of the English recension echoes Athanasius and reads forthrightly: “Letters on the Incarnation.” The Spanish compilation, instead, adapts Irenaeus, with an added flourish: “Letters on the Detection and Overthrow of Reality Falsely So Called.” Assuredly, the archbishop is bent on calling out the simulacra of reality that grow ever more pervasive and controlling. 

Still, both renditions capture something essential about the spirit and scope of these letters. For they offer a penetrating and passionate refutation of a prevalent Gnosticism that abhors this body, this community, this Church, where true life is won, paradoxically, only at the price of this death. Thus, the letters constitute an uncompromising polemic against what the archbishop calls the “disincarnation” practiced by the “indefatigable Gnostics.”  

Read it all.

Against Excarnation https://t.co/BbePQPWchc

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) May 13, 2026