apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

388 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
of external authority and of intrinsic probability.
Venema {^H.
E. Saec.
ii. § 12, quoted by Jacobson on the passage) with a true appreciation
felt that the sense required the negative to be omitted, even when there
was no known authority for the omission. I pointed out as early as
1868 (see below, 11. p. 127) that this was the true reading, as being the
best supported, and it has been since adopted by
both the recent
editors of Ignatius, Zahn (1876) and Funk (1878).
But so corrected, the passage wears a very different aspect. No
longer a polemic against Valentinus, it employs language closely resembling
the terminology of Valentinianism and other Gnostic systems of
the second century. Thus it
points to a pre-Valentinian epoch for no
;
writer, careful for his orthodoxy as our author plainly is, would allow
himself the use of such suspicious language, which seemed to favour the
false systems then rife. Nor does this expression stand alone. Elsewhere
the language of the writer is coloured with a Gnostic and more
especially a Valentinian tinge. Thus the pleroma was a very favourite
Gnostic term ;
and in the Valentinian system more it especially had a
prominent place. Yet our author addresses the Ephesian Church as
'blessed through the pleroma of God the Father' (see 11. p. 23),
and in
similar language he salutes the Trallian Christians ' in the pleroma '
(see II. p. 152). So too, when he tells the Trallians (§
i ; comp. Ephes.
i) that they possess a right mind 'not by habit but by nature', he
makes a distinction constantly heard on the lips of Valentinians and
other Gnostics, who thus distinguished themselves as superior to other
professed Christians (11. p. 153). Again, when he uses the word
'straining' or 'filtering' of the advanced Christian {Rom. inscr.,
Philad. 3), he adopts a significant and favourite term of the Valentinian
vocabulary (see 11. p. 193). And lastly, when he speaks of 'matter'
{Ro7n. 6 ; comp. ib. 7 (juXovXov) as the source of temptation and so ot
evil, he is
trenching upon Gnostic ground. All these expressions point
in the same direction. He could use this language and indulge these
thoughts, because they had not yet, at least in any marked way, been
abused to heretical ends. And we may perhaps even go a step further.
Will not the suspicion cross our minds that Ignatius may have moved
more or less in the same circles, out of which Valentinianism afterwards
sprung This suspicion is somewhat strengthened by another
incidental fact. Among his companions was a much younger man,
Agathopus by name, apparently a deacon of his own Church of Antioch.
Now we find Valentinus writing to one Agathopus. Was he the same
man, as many have supposed For more on this subject, see the note,
II. p. 280.