Hymenaeus

Hymenaeus was a member of the early Christian community whom Paul publicly named and delivered to Satan along with Alexander for having rejected faith and a good conscience and shipwrecked their faith (1 Timothy 1:20). Paul's use of delivered to Satan parallels his instruction regarding the incestuous man in Corinth (1 Corinthians 5:5) — an act of ecclesiastical discipline that removed the person from the protective sphere of the church community, in the hope of eventual correction. Hymenaeus reappears in 2 Timothy 2:17–18 alongside Philetus, as someone whose teaching is spreading like gangrene — specifically the heresy that the resurrection has already happened, an over-realized eschatology that Paul says was upsetting the faith of some. The two epistles together present Hymenaeus as a teacher who began within the Pauline community and became a significant theological threat to it.