The Same Old Tricks
While discussing the process of interpretation of scriptures employed by the gnostics, R. C. Trench, in his note on "The Parables of Our Lord," (page 193) says, "Iranaeus likens their dealings with scriptures to their fraud who should break up some work of exquisite mosaic, bearing the likeness of a king, and so recompose the pieces as to express the image of a dog or fox, hoping that, since they could point to the stones as the same, they should be able to persuade the simple that this was the king's likeness still."
Some seventeen hundred years have passed since the days of Iranaeus, but the ancient "art" of the gnostics survives to this day. Perhaps we should say it has been dug up and revitalized. At any rate, we have some of "superior knowledge" among us who are up to the same old tricks! Not being content with the exquisite arrangement of the divine "mosaic" of the church at work, these craftsmen break up and rearrange the pieces to depict things which bear little or no resemblance to the original masterpiece. The purpose is ever the same — they hope by pointing to the "component parts" as the same, to persuade the simple that the "total situation" is also the same.