f
it in the Pastoral Epistles; and when we reach the epoch of the
Apocalypse, which our author himself places somewhere in the year 68 or
69, the evil is almost full blown [119:3]. This interpretation becomes
more evident when we consider the expression in the light of the
accompanying clause, where the same persons are described as saying that
there was 'no resurrection nor judgment.' This can hardly mean anything
else than that they denied the doctrine of a future retribution, and so
broke loose from the moral restraints imposed by fear of consequences.
Here again, they had their forerunners in those licentious speculators
belonging to the Christian community at Corinth who maintained that
'there is no resurrection of the dead,' [120:1] and whose Epicurean
lives were a logical consequence of their Epicurean doctrine. And here,
too, the Pastoral Epistles supply a pertinent illustration. If we are at
a loss to conceive how they could have extracted such a doctrine out of
'the oracles of the Lord,' the difficulty is explained by the parallel
case of Hymenaeus and Philetus, who taught that 'the resurrection had
already taken place,' [120:2] or in other words, that all such terms
must be understood in a metaphorical sense as applying to the spiritual
change, the new birth or resuscitation of the believer in the present
world'. Thus everything hangs together. But such teaching is altogether
foreign to Marcion. He did indeed deny the resurrection of the flesh,
and the future body of the redeemed [120:4]. This was a necessary tenet
of all Gnostics, who held the inherent malignity of matter. In this
sense only he denied a resurrection; and he did not deny a judgment at
all. Holding, like the Catholic Christian, that men would be rewarded or
punished hereafter according to their deeds in this life, he was obliged
to recognize a judgment in some form or other. His Supreme God indeed,
whom he represented as pure beneficence, could not be a judge or an
avenger, but he got over the difficulty by assigning the work of judging
and punishing to the Demiurge [120:5]. To revert to my illustration,
this is as though our Nonconformist writer threw out a charge of
Erastianism against the anonymous body of Christians whom he was
attacking, and whom nevertheless it was sought to identify with the
Church of Rome.

6. The next argument is of a wholly different kind:--

The writer evidently assumes a position in the Church to which