How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Cerinthus with his followers are meant here. He was the first heresiarch after Simon Magus to deny, in S. Paul's time, the resurrection. See Eusebius (Hist. lib. vii. c. 23, and lib. iii. c. 28) and Epiphanius (Hæres. 28). Cerinthus was a champion of Judaism, and, founding his opinions on Jewish traditions, he referred all the prophecies about the Church and the Gospel law to an earthly kingdom, and to riches, and to bodily pleasures. In the same way he afterwards perverted the meaning of Rev. xx. 4, and became the parent of the Chiliasts, or the Millennarian heretics. Some think from this that he was the author of the Apocalypse, and that it should therefore be rejected.

S. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Churches of Smyrna and Tralles, censures this error and its author. Hymenæus and Philetus (2Ti 2:17) also denied the resurrection.

Continues after advertising
Continues after advertising

Old Testament