IMENEUS (Υμεναιος). — A 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 general way, and stress is laid on the condemnation of the person; in the second, however, the object of the Apostle’s reproof is the doctrine taught. In the first instance, I. is mentioned with Alexander, in the second with Philetus: it is the same individual.
His doctrine concerned particularly the resurrection, which he conceived as already accomplished (2 Tim. 2:18). It is not improbable that this was a tendency akin to Gnosticism, which, considering the body as the work of the principle of evil, gave all importance to the soul, to the point of interpreting 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 I. and Philetus is compared to gangrene that spreads through the body and corrupts II. Some of the faithful have indeed been infected by II. The deviation from the truth mentioned in 2 Tim. 2:18 corresponds in 1 Tim. 1:19 to having made shipwreck of the faith. The image of navigation and shipwreck was much used by philosophers and moralists. As for the penalty inflicted, namely, being delivered over to Satan, this is not a mere analogy with the case of Job; it is the equivalent of excommunication: the heretic is excluded from communion with the faithful for a medicinal purpose, strongly emphasized by the words “that they may learn not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:20).