First and Second Timothy and Titus: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching

By Thomas C. Oden

Thomas Oden provides a modern commentary on the pastoral letters grounded in the classical, consensual tradition of interpretation. Oden uses the best and most accurate research concerning the historical, literary, and philological aspects of the pastoral letters. He addresses tough issues: the role of women in worship, problems of the rich and poor, the relation between servants and masters, policies concerning support of elderly widows, and how to handle church disruptions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Sep 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781611642537

Thomas C. Oden

Thomas C. Oden (1931–2016) was a pioneering theologian and served as the architect and general editor for the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. He was also the general editor of the Ancient Christian Doctrine series and the Ancient Christian Devotional series, as well as a consulting editor for the Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity. A prolific writer and seasoned teacher, Oden also served as the director of the Center for Early African Christianity at Eastern University in Pennsylvania and was active in the Confessing Movement in America, particularly within the United Methodist Church.

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INTRODUCTION

Pastoral letters do not mean to be ignored by laity. They address questions crucial to the health of the laity—the life of prayer, the meaning of public worship, care for the needy and poor, and sound teaching as the basis for holy living. They offer a candid glimpse of Christian worship in its formative period—the community is singing hymns, baptizing, and teaching by concise creedal summaries. They struggle with emerging distortions of Christian teaching that remain problems even today.

First and Second Timothy and Titus are called Pastoral letters to distinguish them from other letters of the New Testament written to churches rather than individual pastors. They are pastoral in the sense that they counsel any reader—lay or clergy—on how to care for the church. They offer a perennially powerful vision of church and ministry. Addressed to particular pastors charged with the care of specific churches, they intend to guide pastoral activity generally. The duties of church leaders are of more concern in the Pastorals than in any other New Testament documents, although the metaphor of pastor or shepherd does not specifically appear in them (as in John 21:16; Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:11; I Peter 5:2).

The Pastorals are third generation correspondence. The second generation was represented by Timothy’s mother, Eunice, and the first by his grandmother Lois. Young Timothy and Titus were among the best representatives of that third generation. Many in the churches they served were born of Christian parents. The problems of transmitting faith from generation to generation were for the first time beginning to be understood. These three letters constitute a distinct group of Pauline writings of later date, addressed to individual envoys, written, I want to argue, after Paul’s first Roman imprisonment. They display a unity of language, style, and content.

Current Interest in the Pastorals

The Pastorals deal with several issues of special interest to contemporary Christians, notably:

1. The role of women in the church, women in the worshiping community, and especially the ministry of widows. The crucial passage in I Timothy 2:8–15, often employed as an argument against women speaking in the church, in my view regards the excellence of quietness (hēsuchia) as a peculiar gift of women in worship, far from flatly imposing silence, upon women. Paul was concerned with the adornment of women with active good deeds (I 2:9–11) and with God’s own childbearing in the incarnation (I 2:15).

2. Those interested in the ministry of the church to the poorest of the poor—the dispossessed in society, the elderly poor, slaves and bond servants (I 5:3–8; 6:1–2)—find in the Pastorals a constant concern with servant ministries. The most crucial organized serving activity of the church at this stage was almsgiving and care of the poor. Paul was searching for a realistic and valid distinction between those who were truly destitute and those who could care for themselves (I 5:3–8), even as we search today. He firmly warned the rich of the dangers of wealth (I 6:17–19), and urged them to use their wealth to become rich in good deeds.

3. Those interested in the earliest liturgies, prayers, confessions, qualifications for ministry, and in the support of ministry will find much in the Pastorals of historical, theological, and practical importance. They also provide otherwise unavailable information on the events and thoughts of the Apostle Paul at the close of his life.

Is a Fresh Approach to the Pastorals Possible?

This commentary is unusual in two ways: It makes constant reference to the classic Christian interpreters of the Pastorals and it organizes the material topically, instead of according to the standard ordering of the received texts (see Contents).

My intention is to provide a modern commentary on the Pastorals grounded in the classical, consensual tradition of interpretation of these texts. The classical writers upon whom I have most depended are Athanasius, John Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome, Luther, Calvin, Henry, and Wesley. The underlying conviction is that the better interpreters of the Pastorals are classical Christian exegetes, including those of the earlier Christian centuries and classic Protestant interpreters. They are not better simply because they were earlier but better because they were more attentive to a received tradition of consensual exegesis and less distracted by speculative theories. Modern commentaries, to their discredit, have ignored them. Using the best, most accurate research concerning the historical, literary, philological aspects of the Pastorals, this commentary seeks to do in our time what its classical models did in theirs—to treat the text as Word of God.

This commentary organizes the thinking of First and Second Timothy and Titus in a systematic sequence. The paragraphs of the letters are not discussed in the order in which they stand in the letters. Instead they are arranged in groups according to subject and content. The entire text of all three letters is discussed in the commentary. Each paragraph into which the letters are divided is dealt with as part of a group concerned with a common subject. The sequence is logical-thematic rather than literary or historical. This arrangement concentrates on the kind of questions this commentary series is designed to emphasize. It reduces repetition in the comment and brings to light the thematic unity of these three teaching letters. The arrangement also makes the letters more accessible and useful for preaching and teaching.

Two listings are provided to indicate where a particular portion or paragraph of text is discussed. The Contents shows the topical order in which the paragraphs are arranged. It locates each paragraph at the place in the plan of the whole where the paragraph is discussed. The List of Text Paragraphs, which follows the contents page, lists the paragraphs in the order in which they come in each letter and gives the numbers of the pages where they are discussed in the commentary.

Background, Chronology, Occasion, Purpose

These letters were written under conditions in which the survival of the Christian community seemed highly doubtful to any realistic observer. Many hostile forces were challenging the continued existence of the fragile community. Paul sought to ensure that other generations would have the opportunity to hear the good news of God’s own coming. (On Paul’s authorship, see below, Authorship and Authenticity of the Pastoral Letters.) The churches were small groups of believers meeting in homes, not established institutions with sound financing and prestige. In fact Paul was correct to suspect, as we now know, that things were about to get much worse. It is amazing that the church ever survived this early period of persecution.

The Relationship of Timothy and Titus to Paul

The relationship between Paul and Timothy had been formed on Paul’s earliest missionary journey to Lystra, a Roman colony between Antioch and Derbe in the district of Lycaonia (Acts 13:1—14:28 [ca. A.D. 45–48]). Of mixed lineage, Timothy’s father was a Greek gentile, his mother a pious Jewish-Christian woman (Eunice, converted and known by Paul). His Jewish-Christian grandmother Lois also was converted by Paul (II 1:5; Acts 16:1–2). From his youth Timothy was well instructed in Hebrew Scriptures (II 3:15), though he remained uncircumcised.

When Paul and Barnabas visited Lystra, the populace first treated them as gods; later they tried to stone Paul, leaving him for dead (Acts 14:6–20). If the young Timothy did not actually see this event, he surely must have heard of it. By the time of the second missionary journey, when Paul returned to Lystra (Acts 15:36—18:22 [ca. A.D. 49–50]), Timothy had matured sufficiently to receive the commendation of other Christian leaders of Lystra and Iconium (Acts 16:1–3). It may have been a gift of prophetic utterance that commended Timothy for his emergent task. Paul chose Timothy as a companion for his missionary journeys, a role he was to play to the end of Paul’s life. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews that were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek (Acts 16:3). Timothy was ordained by the elders in a service in which Paul himself participated (14:14; II 1:6).

Timothy was involved in the epic transition of Christianity from one continent to another, Asia to Europe. Timothy and Paul were the first two Christians to step on European soil (Acts 16:9). Together they began missions in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. Timothy was left to care for them and later rejoined Paul in Athens (Acts 17:14–15; 18:5).

References to Timothy are abundant throughout the reports of Paul’s journeys and labors (Acts 17:14–15; 18:5; 20:4; Rom. 16:21; I Cor. 4:17; 16:10; I Thess. 1:1; 3:2, 6). Paul considered Timothy as especially qualified for the work of ministry (1 1:18; 4:14). When an urgent crisis arose, Timothy was ready to assist. He was sent to Thessalonica on Paul’s second missionary journey (I Thess. 3:2). Paul brought him from Ephesus through Macedonia to Corinth on the third journey, which ended in Jerusalem (I 1:3 [ca. A.D. 56–58]; Acts 19:22; 20:4; I Cor. 4:17; 16:10). He was sent to Philippi, circa A.D. 60–62 (Phil. 2:19–24). He frequently served as Paul’s personal envoy, and at times may have assisted him in writing or delivering various letters. He is mentioned in six different letter salutations as Paul’s associate (II Cor. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:1; I Thess. 1:1; II Thess. 1:1; Philemon 1). It is a silent tribute to Timothy that Paul assigned to him so many important and difficult tasks.

Paul came to regard Timothy as his own beloved and faithful child in the Lord (I Cor. 4:17), his own son in the faith (I 1:2, KJV). I have no one like him, Paul remarked. Timothy’s worth you know, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me (Phil. 2:20, 22–23). Commended for his loyalty (I Cor. 16:10), he became the Apostle’s long-term partner, following his teaching (14:6) and his way of life through persecution and suffering (II 3:10–11), sharing his mission profoundly (Phil. 2:20), helping out wherever needed (I Thess. 3:2–3). Paul and Timothy worked together for more than two years in Ephesus alone, the church to which Paul would later assign him as chief pastor. He was sent on a mission to the unruly church at Corinth (I Cor. 4:16–17; 16:10–11), and was found working with Paul when Paul wrote the epistle to the Romans (16:21). He accompanied Paul on his last journey to Jerusalem, where Paul was arrested. Timothy was again at Paul’s side in Rome during the two years of his first imprisonment (probably two of the years between A.D. 60 and 64 [Phil. 1:1; 2:19; Col. 1:1; Philemon 1]). No one was a more constant companion of Paul than was Timothy, in a close and long relationship that lasted about two decades (ca. A.D. 46–67).

Titus was a gentile, probably converted by Paul, who spoke of him also as my true child in a common faith (Titus 1:4). Titus was dispatched on two urgent missions to Corinth, first with the delivery of a very confrontative letter (II Cor. 7:6–16) and then with the task of properly gathering the Corinthian gift for the poor in Jerusalem (II Cor. 8:16–24). As for Titus, he is my partner and fellow worker in your service (II Cor. 8:23a). After Paul’s first Roman imprisonment (Acts 28), Titus was entrusted by Paul with the work of the church in Crete (Titus 1:5), where Paul left him to continue and complete the needed formation of the churches (Titus 1:5; 2:15). Summoned from Rome to meet Paul at Nicopolis (Titus 3:12), he was later sent to Dalmatia (II 4:10).

Titus’ mission was connected profoundly with the ministry to the poor, dispossessed, and marginalized. His name appeared nine times in Second Corinthians in connection with his efforts to develop a support system for the poor, a delicate task made even more difficult by the fact of a divided church. At this time of writing he was found ministering to the Cretans, among the most despised, oppressed, and stereotyped people of the Mediterranean world. The Cretans were viewed with disgust as barbarians. James Cone has suggested that black is a prototype for oppressed persons. If one thinks of Titus’ ministry as a ministry to marginalized blacks or the unfairly stereotyped poor, the picture will come into sharp contemporary focus.

The Purpose of the Letters

The purpose of First Timothy was stated clearly: I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God (I 3:14–15). Paul must have realized that his time was short, and if he wished to offer any guidance to those in positions of responsibility, it could not be delayed. Although questions of church organization, polity, and leadership had arisen in previous letters, he had not dealt with them in the detail that appears in the Pastoral letters.

Paul’s major concern was that Timothy and Titus choose wisely in entrusting to worthy leaders the traditions already received (II 2:2). Timothy was instructed to charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine (I 1:3). In Galatia the church had been troubled by outsiders (false brethren secretly brought in, Gal. 2:4). In Ephesus the problem was instead with insiders—the church was being led astray by its own ordained elders (I 3:2; 5:17; Fee, p. xxi). Paul had previously confronted these very elders at Ephesus with the appeal that the Holy Spirit has made you overseers (Acts 20:28). He had warned them directly: I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them (Acts 20:29–30). This prophecy was now becoming a frightful reality. The errorists were officially designated teachers who preyed especially upon the vulnerabilities of young women, especially widows (I 2:9–15; 5:3–16; II 3:6–9). Their destructiveness was the occasion and urgency of First Timothy.

There is some indication that Paul was anxious about the difficult tasks being laid upon young Timothy’s shoulders. He wished to renew counsels previously given and commit specific instructions to writing. There is some reason to believe that Timothy was temperamentally timid and retiring by nature (II 1:7), with a weak stomach and a shy disposition, hence needing authoritative written instructions so that when later challenged he could appeal to the Apostle’s letter (I 3:14–15; cf. 14:12; 5:23; I Cor. 16:10). Repeated exhortations have suggested to interpreters that either Paul had some concern about Timothy’s ability to manage these difficulties or that they reflect Paul’s own internal frustration at his inability to affect directly the difficult situation in Ephesus (II 1:6, 8, 13–14; 2:1, 22; 3:14; 4:1–2). He exhorted Timothy to act worthily of his high calling.

Second Timothy is best read in one sitting, the reader imagining Timothy’s having just received it by personal courier from Rome, having often wondered whether Paul was still alive. From this letter Timothy learned at long last that Paul was still in prison (II 1:8). But how distressed he must have been to read, toward the end of the letter, that I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith (II 4:6–7). His heart surely must have sunk at those words. But just at that point, Paul came to the main point of his writing: Come to Rome. I want to see you. Come before winter. The winter metaphor is telling: Paul could envision his last winter inexorably coming. He longed to see his own son. The dungeon was cold. He urged Timothy to come before winter (II 4:21), to bring the warm coat that he had left at Troas, as well as certain books and parchments (II 4:13).

Life looks different when one is immediately facing death. This letter has a special clarity, serenity, and finality. Paul well knew that in all likelihood he was communicating his last words to an old friend, a traveling companion in mission for two decades. The circumstances of radical human limitation (helplessness, imprisonment, death) intensify natural human affections. This letter, so far as we know, was Paul’s last communication to a beloved friend and co-worker.

Movements of the Apostle During This Period of Writing

It is likely that Paul was arrested either immediately before or shortly after the intended winter in Nicopolis. At some point in this sequence (the particular time is unclear) he went to Miletus, where he left Trophimus (II 4:20), and to Troas with Carpus (II 4:13) and to Corinth (II 4:20). Somewhere in this area he was arrested and taken to Rome, where Titus was with him temporarily. By the time of the writing of Second Timothy, Paul was still in prison at Rome, where he appears to have been incarcerated for some time (II 1:17). Titus had gone on to Dalmatia (II 4:10), and Timothy presumably was still at Ephesus.

In Rome, Paul had a preliminary hearing before a Roman tribunal (II 4:16–18) and was required to remain in prison for subsequent trial. During his imprisonment Onesiphorus of Ephesus came to Rome, sought him out (perhaps under difficult circumstances), and brought him up to date on the (probably deteriorating) events at Ephesus (II 1:15–18). Paul was already feeling abandoned by some he had trusted (Demas, II 4:9). Crescens had gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Paul decided under these difficult circumstances to recall Timothy to Rome and send Tychicus to Ephesus (II 4:12). It is likely to surmise that Tychicus delivered the second letter to Timothy, asking him to come immediately to Rome (II 4:21). Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you (II 4:11). These complex movements cannot be fitted into the chronology of Acts. This implies that the Pastoral letters are either later pseudepigraphy or (I think more likely) that Paul had a second imprisonment unreported by Luke in Acts, a fact widely attested in ancient Christian literature.

Concurrent testimony of various traditions holds that Paul was beheaded under Nero (Tertullian, Prescript. Against Heresies, 36, ANF III, 260). Paul’s martyrdom in Rome was attested by Clement (I Clement 5), whose office as bishop of Rome adds weight to this testimony. Paul’s death was thought by Eusebius to have been in the thirteenth year of Nero (A.D. 67, History of the Church, 2.22, p. 124), while Jerome set the date a year later, before Nero’s death by suicide (summer of 68).

The Perennial Nature of the False Teachings Opposed by Paul in Ephesus and Crete

Six characteristic tendencies appear to recur among the opponents of Paul’s teaching, to which the Pastorals were a response. They remain generic forms of problems for ministry today:

1. Gnostic elitism: The false teachers at Ephesus and Crete appear to have been Jewish-Christian gnostics (I 6:20) of some kind, but not so developed as would later appear in the Gnosticism of the second century. Rather they represented a kind of Judaizing Gnosticism (with speculation and observance of the Law) as is to be found elsewhere (Colossians and Ignatius) (Dibelius and Conzelmann, p. 3). Salvation and spiritual knowledge were, in their view, available only to an elite few. This is why the word all was so important in the Pastorals (I 2:4; 4:10; Titus 2:11).

2. Rejection of the bodily resurrection: Two of the false teachers (Hymenaeus and Philetus) opposed the resurrection, holding that the resurrection was exclusively a past event (II 2:18). On the premise that the body is evil, no bodily resurrection could have been expected. These dangers were so serious that Paul had excluded from the community two of those who had made shipwreck of their faith—Hymenaeus and Alexander (I 1:19–20).

3. Asceticism: There were competing tendencies between asceticism and antinomian license. These false teachers may have taught that matter was evil (I 4:3–4). Sex was denigrated, and sex within marriage at times repudiated (I 4:3; II 3:1–7). Some tried to convince those who were married to abandon their marriages. Foods were artificially restricted, in neglect of the premise that God made all things good (I 4:3–5; Titus 1:15: cf. Col. 2:16–18).

4. Antinomian license: On the other side from extreme asceticism were advocates of spiritual license. They were dangerous to marriages. They would make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses (II 3:6). They desired cheap grace, professing to know God but denying God by their licentious actions (Titus 1:16). They were blatantly willing to make money out of false teachings (I 6:5). They deceived for monetary gain (Titus 1:11). Timothy was firmly warned: keep yourself pure, for unsound doctrine was best combated with holy living (I 5:22; cf. II 2:22).

5. Fascination with myths and genealogies: They exhibited exceeding interest in genealogies (I 1:4; 4:7; cf. Titus 3:9) and myths (I 1:4; II 4:4; Titus 1:14), perhaps rooted in Jewish sources. Some of these teachers were Judaizers (I 1:6–7; Titus 1:14–16), with pretenses of being bearers of Jewish tradition or teachers of the law (I 1:7), even though their grasp of the law was grossly deficient. Some continued to insist that all Christians must be circumcised long after the

Reviews for First and Second Timothy and Titus

[trevor_f_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a refreshingly clear and useful commentary. I do not own many in the Interpretation series. This is a gem.