apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

GENUINENESS OF THE EPISTLE. 593
It has thus appeared,
if I mistake not, that the objections brought
against this epistle are not strong enough even to raise a presumption
against its genuineness, still less to counteract the direct testimony of
Polycarp's own pupil Irenaeus. But having disposed of the objections,
further. We are asked to believe that this letter was
we may go a step
forged on the confines of the age of Irengeus and Clement of Alexandria.
But how wholly unlike it is to the ecclesiastical literature of this later
generation, whether we regard the use of the New Testament or the
notices of ecclesiastical order or the statements of theological doctrine,
a little consideration will show. The Evangelical quotations are still
introduced, as in Clement of Rome, with the formula The Lord '
said '
(§ 2) the
; passages from the Apostolic Epistles are still for the most
part indirect and anonymous; not a single book of the New Testament
is cited by name. Though two or three chapters are devoted to injunctions
respecting the ministry of the Church, there is not an allusion to
episcopacy from beginning to end. Though the writer's ideas of the
Person of Christ may be practically orthodox according to the Catholic
standard of orthodoxy, yet these ideas are still held in solution and
have not yet crystallized into the dogmatic forms which characterize the
later generation. Moreover in this epistle again, as we saw to be the
case in the Ignatian letters (p. 382 sq), there is silence from first to last
upon all the questions which agitated the Church in the second half of
the second century. Of Montanism, of the Paschal controversy, of the
developed Gnostic heresies of this period, it says nothing. The
supposed
reference to Marcion has been discussed and dismissed
already.
But this argument from internal evidence gains
strength
when considered
from another point of view. The only intelligible theory
— indeed,
so far as I
—
know, the only theory of any kind offered to account
for this epistle by those who deny its genuineness or its integrity
connects it closely with the Ignatian letters. If forged, it was forged
^acri\ei...\€KT^ov Sk Kai irpbs ravra, on that there was only one reigning emperor
dpriyofjiev Kara Kaipbv to2s ^aaiXevcn. at the time and where nevertheless the
occurs in those statements which
6eiav, Iv oiJtws eiVw, ap-qi^iv .koX . . ravra plural
iroLovfj.ev TreidofievoL oiTrocrToXiKrj (pwvrj Xe- are general. See also above, p. 530. Such
yovari RapaKaXu ovv vfids irpuirov woie'L- injunctions relating to the duty of prayer,