- The only argument of any weight is the alleged post-Pauline rise of the Gnostic heresy,
which is undoubtedly opposed in Colossians (not in Ephesians, at least not directly). But why should
this heresy not have arisen in the apostolic age as well as the Judaizing heresy which sprung up
before a.d. 50, and followed Paul everywhere? The tares spring up almost simultaneously with the
wheat. Error is the shadow of truth. Simon Magus, the contemporary of Peter, and the Gnostic
Cerinthus, the contemporary, of John, are certainly historic persons. Paul speaks (1 Cor. 8:1) of a
"gnosis which puffeth up," and warned the Ephesian elders, as early as 58, of the rising of disturbing
errorists from their own midst; and the Apocalypse, which the Tübingen critics assign to the year
68, certainly opposes the antinomian type of Gnosticism, the error of the Nicolaitans (Rev. 2:6, 15,
20), which the early Fathers derived from one of the first seven deacons of Jerusalem. All the
elements of Gnosticism—Ebionism, Platonism, Philoism, syncretism, asceticism,
antinomianism—were extant before Christ, and it needed only a spark of Christian truth to set the
inflammable material on fire. The universal sentiment of the Fathers, as far as we can trace it up
to Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Polycarp found the origin of Gnosticism in the apostolic age, and
called Simon Magus its father or grandfather.
Against their testimony, the isolated passage of Hegesippus, so often quoted by the negative
critics,^1173 has not the weight of a feather. This credulous, inaccurate, and narrow-minded Jewish
Christian writer said, according to Eusebius, that the church enjoyed profound peace, and was "a
pure and uncorrupted virgin," governed by brothers and relations of Jesus, until the age of Trajan,
when, after the death of the apostles, "the knowledge falsely so called" (ψευδώνυμος γνῶσις,comp.
1 Tim. 6:20), openly raised its head.^1174 But he speaks of the church in Palestine, not in Asia Minor;
and he was certainly mistaken in this dream of an age of absolute purity and peace. The Tübingen
school itself maintains the very opposite view. Every Epistle, as well as the Acts, bears testimony
to the profound agitations, parties, and evils of the church, including Jerusalem, where the first
great theological controversy was fought out by the apostles themselves. But Hegesippus corrects
himself, and makes a distinction between the secret working and the open and shameless
manifestation of heresy. The former began, he intimates, in the apostolic age; the latter showed
itself afterward.^1175 Gnosticism, like modern Rationalism,^1176 had a growth of a hundred years before
it came to full maturity. A post-apostolic writer would have dealt very differently with the fully
developed systems of Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion. And yet the two short Epistles to the
Colossians and Ephesians strike at the roots of this error, and teach the positive truth with an
originality, vigor, and depth that makes them more valuable, even as a refutation, than the five
(^1173) Baur, Schwegler, and Hilgenfeld (Einleit., 652 sq.).
(^1174) Eus., H. E., III. 32: "The same author [Hegesippus], relating the events of the times, also says that ’the church continued
until then as a pure and uncorrupt virgin (παρθένος καθαρὰ καὶ ἀδιάφθορος ἔμενεν ἡ ἐκκλησία); whilst if there were any at all
that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving gospel, they were yet skulking in darkness (ἐν ἀδήλῳ που σκότει);
but when the sacred choir of the apostles became extinct, and the generation of those that had been privileged to hear their
inspired wisdom had passed away, then also arose the combination of godless error through the fraud of false teachers. These
also, as there was none of the apostles left, henceforth attempted, without shame (γυμνῇ λοιπὸν ἤδη τῇ κεφαλῇ), to preach their
falsely so-called gnosis against the gospel of truth.’ Such is the statement of Hegesippus." Comp. the notes on the passage by
Heinichen in his ed. of Euseb., Tome III., pp. 100-103.
(^1175) The same Hegesippus, in Eus., IV. 22, places the rise of the heresies in the Palestinian church immediately after the death
of James, and traces some of them back to Simon Magus. He was evidently familiar with the Pastoral Epistles, and borrowed
from them the terms ψευδώνυμος γνῶσις , ἑτεροδιδάσκαλοι., ὑγιὴς κανών.
(^1176) The critical school of Rationalism began in Germany with Semler of Halle (1725-1791), in the middle of the eighteenth
century, and culminated in the Tübingen School of our own age.
A.D. 1-100.