IMENEO (Ἰηφάνεως). — Propagator of false doctrines, mentioned by St Paolo in I Tim. 1, 19 ff. and in II Tim. 2, 17 ff. In the first of these passages the error is denounced in rather general terms, and strong emphasis is placed on the condemnation of the person; in the second, on the other hand, the object of the Apostle’s disapproval is the doctrine taught. In the first case I. is mentioned together with Alessandro, in the second with Fileto: the same individual is meant.
His doctrine concerned above all the resurrection, which he conceived as having already taken place (II Tim. 2, 18). It is not unlikely that these were prognostic tendencies which, regarding the body as the work of the principle of evil, attributed all importance to the soul, to the point of interpreting the resurrection also in a purely spiritual sense, as the passage from sin to grace or from error to truth (cf. Ireneo, Adus. haer., II, 31, 2; Tertulliano, De Resurr. carnis, 19). The erroneous teaching of I. and Fileto is compared to gangrene that spreads through the body and corrodes II. Some of the faithful were actually infected by II. To the having deviated from the truth in II Tim. 2, 18 corresponds, in I Tim. 1, 19, the having suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith. The image of navigation and shipwreck was widely used by philosophers and moralists. As for the punishment inflicted, namely being abandoned into the hands of Satan, this is not merely analogous to the case of Giobbe; it is equivalent to excommunication: the heretic is excluded from the communion of the faithful for a medicinal purpose, strongly underscored by the words “that they may learn not to blaspheme” (I Tim. 1, 20).