The life and work of St. Paul

GENUINENESS OF THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. 751
possible to utilise this institution, and that the widows should themselves desire to be
serviceable to the brethren to whom they owed their livelihood. Hence " the widows "
became a recognised order, and acquired a semi-religious position. Into this order St.
Paul wisely forbids the admission of widows who are still of an age to marry again. Of
the female character in general and in the abstract he does not ordinarily speak in very
exalted terms, and in this respect he only resembles most ancient writers, although, in
spite of surrounding conditions of society, he sees the moral elevation of tho entire sex
in Christ. He regarded it as almost inevitable that the religious duties of the "order of
widows," although they involved a sort of consecration to celibacy for the remainder of
their lives, would never serve as a sufficient barrier to their wish to marry again ; and he
thought that moral degeneracy and outward scandal would follow from the Intrusion of
such motives into the fulfilment of sacred functions. There is here no contradiction,
and not the shadow of a proof that in the language of the Epistle there must be any
1
identification of widows with an order of female celibates or youthful nuns.
(0) We now come to the last objection, which is by far the strongest and most persistent,
as it is also the earliest. The spuriousness of the Pastoral Epistles is mainly
asserted on the ground that they indicate the existence of a Gnosticism which was not
fully developed till after the death of St. Paul. A more extensive theory was never
built on a more unstable foundation. 3 The one word antitheses in 1 Tim. vi. 20, seemi
to Baur a clear proof that the First Epistle to Timothy is a covert polemic against Marcion
in the middle of the second century. To an hypothesis so extravagant it is a more than
sufficient answer that the heretical tendencies of the false teachers were distinctly
Judaic, whereas there was not a single Gnostic system which did not regard Judaism aa
either imperfect or pernicious. Objections of this kind can only be regarded as fantastic
until some proof be offered (1) that the germs of Gnosticism did not exist in the apostolio
age ; and (2) that the phrases of Gnosticism were not borrowed from the New Testament,
nor those of the New Testament from the Gnostic systems. Knowing as we do that
"
jEon" was thus borrowed by Valentinus, 3 and that " Gnosis" was beginning to acquire
& technical meaning even when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians, 4 we see
that on the one hand Gnostic terms are no proof of allusion to Gnostic tenets, and on the
other, that Gnostio tendencies existed undeveloped from the earliest epoch of the
Christian Church. It would be far truer to say that the absence of anything like definite
allusion to the really distinctive elements of Marcionite or Valentinian teaching is a
decisive proof that these Epistles belong to a far earlier epoch, than to say that they are
an attempt to use the great name of Paul to discountenance those subtle heresies. In
the Epistle to the Colossians St. Paul had dealt formally with the pretended philosophy
and vaunted insight, the incipient dualism, the baseless angelology, and the exaggerated
asceticism of local heretics whose theosophio fancies were already prevalent. 5 In these
Epistles he merely touches on them, because in private letters to beloved fellow-workers
there was no need to enter into any direct controversy with their erroneous teachings.
But he alludes to these elements with the distinct statement that they were of Judaio
rigin. Valentinus rejected the Mosaic law ; Marcion was Antinomian ; but these
Ephesian and Cretan teachers, although their dualism is revealed by their ascetic
discouragement of marriage, their denial of the resurrection, and their interminable
"genealogies" and myths, 6 are not only Jews, but founded their subtleties and specula-
i
! 1 Cor. xlv. 34 ; 1 Tim. li. 1214 ; 2 Tim. iii. 6
j
&c.
1
Apparently the use of the word *nyofc6MJUu> in 1 Tim. 1. 3 as compared with cTtpoji&urKoJUi
In Hegesippus first led Schleiennacher to doubt the genuineness of the First Epistle.
*
Hippolytus (R. II. vL 20) tells us that Valeutinus gave the name of ^Eons to the emanation!
which Simon Magus had called Boots.
1 Cor. viii. 1. The adjective " Gnostic " is ascribed to the Ophites, or to Carpocratfls. (Ira.
Eaer. i. 25 Euseb. H. E. ; iv. 7, 9.)
* See Col. i. 16, 17 ; ii. 8, 18 ; and Hansel, The Gnostic Heresies, p. 54
* 1 Tim. i. 4; ir. 4 ; 3 Tim. ii. 18.