apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

SPURIOUS AND INTERPOLATED EPISTLES. 273
to him, it is Arianism of very diluted quality. Perhaps we may
conceive of him as writing with a conciliatory aim, and with this
object propounding in the name of a primitive father of the church, as
an eirenicon, a statement of doctrine in which he conceived that
reasonable men on all sides might find a meeting-point.
On the other hand the rough date of this forgery seems fairly certain.
All the indications, as we have seen, point to the latter half of the fourth
centur)' and
; accordingly in recent years there has been a general
convergence of opinion towards this date. This is the view for instance
of Diisterdeck {de Ignat. Epist. Autfwit. p- 32 sq, 1843), of Hilgenfeld
{Zeiischr. fiir Wiss. Theol. 1874, p. 211 sq), of Newman (Essays
I.
p. 238 sq)\ and especially of Zahn (/.
7: A. p. 173 sq, Ign.
Ep. p. vi sq), whose investigations have had no little influence on
the result. This view was also confidently maintained two centuries
and a half ago by Yedelius (1623) who wrote 'ausim asserere quarto seculo
post Christujn jam ad minimum quatuor [ex sex epistolis supposititiis]
confictas fuisse' {Ignat. Epist. Apol. p. 5). It has been adopted likewise
by the most recent Ignatian editor, Funk {Theolog. Qtiartalschr.
Lxii. p. 355 sq, 1 880), though he has since in his subsequent work
{Patr. Aposf. II. p. xii sq, 1881) found passages in these Ignatian letters
which seem to him to attack the doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia,
and which therefore oblige him to push the date forward to the earlier
decades of the fifth century. The passages in question however do not
bear out this view. The references to the 'one Lord' or 'one Mediator'
{Tars. 4, Philipp. i, 2, 3, Philad. 4, Atit. 4), which he supposes to
have been directed against the doctrine of two Sons of God imputed
to Theodore, are mostly quotations of scriptural texts and seem to have
no immediate polemical bearing. If any such immediate reference
were required,
it
might be found in the fact that ApoUinaris accused the
orthodox of believing in 'two Sons,' and that the orthodox fathers repudiate
and anathematize this doctrine (Athan.
c.
Apoll. i. 12, 21, ii. 19,
Op. I. pp. 743, 749, 762; Greg. Naz. Epist. loi, 102, Op. 11. pp. 85,
94; Greg. Nyss. ad Theoph., Op. iii. p. 262 sq ed. Morel, a treatise
almost wholly taken up ydih this one point ; Epiphan. Haer. Ixxvii. 4,
13, pp. 999, 1007; Theodoret. Dial. 2, Op. iv. p. 113). There is no
occasion therefore to look so late as Theodore for an explanation.
Other passages again, which attack false teachers v,-ho hold Christ to
be
'mere man' (yj/iXov wOpwirov), or who maintain the unreality of the
Incarnation and the Passion, are much more applicable to earlier heresies
than to any tenets fastened upon Theodore by his enemies.
^
'
Probably,' writes Card. Newman, 'about the year 354' (p.
•243).
IGN. I. 18