HYMENEUS (Greek Hymenáios). - Propagator of false doctrines, mentioned by St. Paul in 1 Tim. 1:19-20 and in 2 Tim. 2:17-18. In the first of these passages the error is denounced in a rather generic manner and emphasis is placed forcefully on the condemnation of the person; in the second, on the other hand, the object of the Apostle's reprobation is the doctrine taught. In the first case H. is mentioned together with Alexander, in the second with Philetus: it is a question of the same individual.
His doctrine concerned particularly the resurrection, which he conceived as having already taken place (2 Tim. 2:18). It is not improbable that these were gnostic tendencies, which, considering the body as the work of the principle of evil, gave all importance to the soul, to the point of interpreting even the resurrection in a purely spiritual sense, as the passage from sin to grace or from error to truth (cf. Irenaeus, Adv. haer., II, 31, 2; Tertullian, De Resurr. carnis, 19). The erroneous teaching of H. and of Philetus is compared to gangrene that spreads through the body and corrodes it. By this some of the faithful have indeed been affected. To having deviated from the truth of 2 Tim. 2:18 corresponds in 1 Tim. 1:19 having suffered shipwreck concerning the faith. The image of navigation and shipwreck was much used by philosophers and moralists. As for the penalty inflicted, that is, being abandoned into the hands of Satan, it is not a simple analogy with the case of Job; there is the equivalent of an excommunication: the heretic is excluded from the communion of the faithful with a medicinal purpose, strongly emphasized by the words "so that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Tim. 1:20).
Bibliography2 works
Teodorico da Castel San Pietro