Philetus

amiable, with Hymenaeus, at Ephesus, said that the "resurrection was past already" ( 2 Timothy 2:17 2 Timothy 2:18 ). This was a Gnostic heresy held by the Nicolaitanes. (See ALEXANDER [4].)

amiable; beloved

(beloved ) was possibly a disciple of Hymenaeus, with whom he is associated in ( 2 Timothy 2:17 ) and who is named without him in an earlier epistle. ( 1 Timothy 1:20 ) (A.D. 68-64) Thep appear to have been persons who believed the Scripture of the Old Testament, but misinterpreted them, allegorizing away the doctrine of the resurrection and resolving it all into figure and metaphor. The delivering over unto Satan. seems to have been a form of excommunication declaring the person reduced to the state of a heathen; and in the apostolic age it was accompanied with supernatural or miraculous effects upon the bodies of the persons so delivered.

PHILETUS

fi-le'-tus (Philetos (2 Timothy 2:17)):

1. The Nature of His Error:

This person is mentioned by Paul, who warns Timothy against him as well as against his associate in error, Hymeneus. The apostle speaks of Hymeneus and Philetus as instances of men who were doing most serious injury to the church by their teaching, and by what that teaching resulted in, both in faith and morals. The specific error of these men was that they denied that there would be any bodily resurrection. They treated all Scriptural references to such a state, as figurative or metaphorical. They spiritualized it absolutely, and held that the resurrection was a thing of the past. No resurrection was possible, so they taught, except from ignorance to knowledge, from sin to righteousness. There would be no day when the dead would hear the voice of Christ and come forth out of the grave. The Christian, knowing that Christ was raised from the dead, looked forward to the day when his body should be raised in the likeness of Christ's resurrection. But this faith was utterly denied by the teaching of Hymeneus and Philetus.

2. How It Overthrew Faith:

This teaching of theirs, Paul tells us, had overthrown the faith of some. It would also overthrow Christian faith altogether, for if the dead are not raised, neither is Christ risen from the dead, and "ye are yet in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17).

The denial of the resurrection of the body, whether of mankind generally or of Christ, is the overthrow of the faith. It leaves nothing to cling to, no living Christ, who saves and leads and comforts His people. The apostle proceeds to say that teaching of this kind "eats as doth a gangrene," and that it increases unto more ungodliness. As a canker or gangrene eats away the flesh, so does such teaching eat away Christian faith. Paul is careful to say, more than once, that the teaching which denies that there will be a resurrection of the dead leads inevitably to "ungodliness" and to "iniquity."

See HYMENAEUS.

John Rutherfurd