Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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96 First Timothy IV. 1.
under observation, but because in them is most apparent the glanng
contradiction between them and the real inward condition of" those
hypocritical seducers. What the apostle here states as the characteristics
of these seducers—not as the enumeration of their errors
stands in fitting connexion with the appearances of the present, and
is represented as an aggravation of these. We look therefore for the
analogies to these not apart from, but in the phenomena which the
Pastoral Epistles themselves lay before us as already j^resent. KwA-vov-
Tcov yafxelv, drrexsoOac ^pw/iarwj^, he says. (On the connexion of the
drrex. with kcjXvovtcjVj comp. Winer's Gr., § Q6, 2, j). 548. For the
latter infinitive we must take KsXevov-cov out of kwAuovtwv, which is
= KeXevovTcjv jirj'). The error combated in the Pastoral Epistles, is
a morally unfruitful, pretendedly higher wisdom connected with
commandments which were to lead to a supposed higher perfection.
This perverted ascetical tendency meets us most plainly in Tit. i. 14,
15, in which passage the apostle, in like manner as here, places in
opposition to the seducers the maxim to the pure all things are
pure. From the general resemblance between the errors as described
in the Epistle to Titus, and in our epistle (comp. the General
Introduction), we can scarcely doubt, that what is said of those
errors is also applicable to the errors represented in our epistle as
present. Besides vers. 6 and 8 of this chapter refer to an ascetical
tendency existing at the time (comp. Baur a. a. 0., p. 25); and in
passages such as i. 6, seq. (comp. the interpretation), 2 Tim. ii. 18,
the root of such an asceticism is evidently shewn to be a false spirituality.
It can therefore not surprise us, when the apostle, foreseeing
the future in the present, represents the ahstahwKjfrom meats as a
mark of the future apostacy. True—admitting the other statements
of the epistle—this special error had already been clearly developed;
nay, we might rather wonder why the apostle places it in the future,
did we not consider, that substantially nothing depends on whether
the heresy in question did not come fully out till a future period, as
it is only the fruit of this, namely, the falling away, which the
apostle represents as future. We can certainly point to nothing in
the epistles specially analogous to i\\Q forhidd'uirj to marry; but so
much at least mu.st be acknowledged, that such an error lies in the
same direction with a view which transfers inward imi)urity to the
external world. The existing ascetical tendency had not yet reached
this stage in its development according to the traces which we have
of it in these epistles ; but does not the co-existence at a later
period of these two errors which the apostle here names, as we find
them in Marcion, the Encratites, and the Manicheans, prove their
internal connexion, and fully bear out the apostle's prediction ?
This union of the two errors, in the opinions of Marcion and his followers,
is the result indeed of their Gnostico-dualistic view of the