Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

First Timothy V. 9. 125
tions. In short—the subject must be regarded from still another
point of view (as it has been also by defenders of this interpretation),
that, namely, according to which the receiving of support from the
church is considered as at the same time an honourable distinction.
But these two points of view do not necessarily coincide. Not every
widow who required support would eo ipso also merit ecclesiastical
distinction ; and not every widow, who stood in no need of support
from the church, could on this ground be shut out from ecclesiastical
distinction. There must have been reasons of one kind for receiving
support, and of a different kind for receiving distinction in the
church. What the former were, we learn from vers. 3-8, and what
the latter, from ver. 9, seq. Thus the poor widow, or the widow
who had become poor, might certainly be also promoted to a place
of distinction in the church (a kind of Trpea^vrepa beside the -npea-
(3vrepogJ ; but she would then only receive support when she was
dvrcog XVP'^- That history bears us out in supposing such an order
of ecclesiastical widowhood to have existed, a rdyna x^p^i-ov may be
proved from the passages in Tertull. de vel. Virg. c. 9. Ad quam
sedem (viduarum) praeter annos LX. non tantum univirae, i. e.,
nuptae aliquando, eliguntur, sed et matres et quidem educatrices
fiKorum ; to this also probably belongs : Herm. Past. L. I. vis. 2
(Grapte autem commonebit viduas et orphanos), and in Lucian de
Morte Peregrin. Op. III. 335, Keiz : to)dev p.ev evdvg rjv bpav napd
TO) 6eaiJ,(i)Tr]pi(t) Trepifj,evovTa ypatSia x^P^^ rcvdg Koi natdia opcpava. Then
Chrysos. horn. 31, in div. N. T. loc ; Epiph. haer. 79, 4, etc. These
references are given most in detail by Mosheim, p. 452, seq., who
also gives the literature of his own time on this subject, p. 451.
Comp. also Baur a. a. 0., p. 48, seq. ; Leo, a. a. 0., and De Wette
on the passage. We can certainly point to no other passage in the
New Testament, besides the one before us, which proves the existence
of this institution for widows, or even of its first beginnings in
the apostolic era. So much, however, may be inferred from the
passages adduced and similar passages, chiefly in Tertullian and
Clemens of Alexandria—that such an institution had already been
long in existence at the end of the second century, and that it was
universally traced back to the apostolical arrangement contained in
the passage before us. And De Wette says :
" It is not improbable
that from the very beginning pious widows received a place in the
church ; but it betrays perhaps a somewhat later period, to find
this already represented here as a regular office resting on a formal
election." But surely if such a place of distinction as that referred
to existed at any time, there must have been election to it.
'"'
It is
to this description of widows in the earliest period of the church,"
says the excellent Mosheim, " who in contradistinction to the others
may be called the spiritual, who are also in the phraseology of the