1 Timothy and Law

1 Timothy focuses on a different part of the Jewish Law than Romans and Galatians do.  The focus of the Law Romans and Galatians is on “works of Law,” the things that most distinguished Jew from Gentile ethnically (e.g., Gal. 2:16).  In Paul’s central writings, the Law pertains to the former age—it is something to which believers die when they die with Christ (e.g., Gal. 2:19).  Believers are thus no longer “under Law” (1 Cor. 9:20), even though they now fulfill the “righteous requirements of the law” (Rom. 8:4).

By contrast, the focus of “law” in 1 Timothy is not on its “past-ness,” as in Paul’s central writings.  The law in 1 Timothy is the common moral standard for all people—basically the Ten Commandments.  It is still in force, but because Christians keep this standard, it is not something Christians need to think much about.  “[T]he law is not made for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels” (1 Tim. 1:9).  The list that follows roughly corresponds to the Ten Commandments.

It is for the “ungodly and sinful,” those who have other gods before God.  It is for the “unholy and irreligious,” those who would take God’s name in vain.  It is for “those who kill their fathers and mothers,” who do not honor their father and mother.  It is for murderers.  It is for the sexually immoral and men who practice homosexuality (1:10, ESV), sexual prohibitions related to the heading of adultery.  Finally, slave traders, liars, and perjurers relate to the commands not to bear false witness or to covet.

Unlike Paul’s central writings, 1 Timothy thus focuses on the law as basic and universal moral standard, something Christians do not need worry about because they already keep these requirements.  Those who need worry about the law are thus criminals and lawbreakers.  This is quite a strikingly different way of talking about the law than we find in Romans and Galatians, where the Law retains a strongly Jewish flavor and is relegated to the age before Christ.

Women in 1 Timothy, Closing Remarks (W)

If you ever go to modern Israel, you will find some interesting practices in relation to the Old Testament Law.  One fascinating one is the fact that you cannot get both meat and dairy products with the same meal or in the same store in Israel.  I once saw a young man ushered right out of a restaurant that primarily served lamb meat because he had brought in pizza from across the alley.  Pizza has cheese and was not allowed in the same shop.  Why, you ask?  It is because of a verse in Exodus that forbids boiling a goat’s kid in its mother’s milk (23:19; 34:26).

Now whatever this verse was originally about—probably against some Canaanite practice—it was not about eating pizza and lamb meat in the same meal.  It highlights the fact again that the books of the Bible just were not written to us originally.  When passages seem to make the least sense to us, we are often looking at words that spoke directly to the time they were written but not so clearly to our time and context.

I am convinced that the teaching of 1 Timothy on women falls into this category of things locked up in the past, despite the fact that many segments of the church are comfortable with its instructions.  For example, most Christians today would be hard pressed to think of why it would be preferable for a widow not to remarry or why she would need to get remarried because of an inability to refrain from her sexual desires.  We assume these instructions made perfect sense in their first century context, but it is not at all clear they do now.

And most Protestant churches have not seen any virtue in a man needing to be married only once to be an effective leader, especially if his first wife died.  True, the Orthodox Church still holds to this requirement, and many Protestants still have problems with a minister who is divorced.  But it is not clear what intrinsic reason we could come up with today that would make much sense.  Why would a widowed minister who remarries be less wise or less effective than one who remained single?

The position of many segments of the church today on women, both women ministers and women in the home, also strikes of the Jewish rule against eating pizza and meat in the same meal.  I like to think of it this way.  Let us say we are on a plane whose pilot is incapacitated, and we have a choice between having a woman take over who actually knows how to fly a plane or having a man take over who has no knowledge of flying whatsoever.  Of course we would have the woman fly the plane, because she is the most competent to do so.

In our current context, insisting that a man be the senior pastor or the head of the home simply because of his genitals makes about as much sense.  Let us speak plainly.  This is plain irrationality.  It makes a mockery of the idea that God is all-wise and omniscient.  It makes a mockery of God and Christ before the world.

And what is worse, this headship for its own sake, this genital-based leadership—not a theory you will find in any book on leadership, mind you—is headed in the opposite direction of the kingdom.  It is, in the words of Colossians, to submit to the “elemental spirits of the world” (Col. 2:20) rather than see the trajectory of the kingdom, where wives are not given to men in marriage (Mark 12:25) and there is not “male and female” any longer (Gal. 3:28).  It is to approach blasphemy, as if Christ only died for some sins but not all, not the sins of Eve.  Indeed, we can tell we are in the age of the Spirit precisely because our sons and daughters prophesy (Acts 2:17).

We have shown in these two volumes that no Scripture, rightly interpreted, prohibits women from any level of leadership and ministry in the church, indeed, that we find such women in the New Testament.  Let us be clear on this score.  Paul did not see husband-headship in conflict with the prophetic ministry of a woman, which 1 Corinthians 11 proves. And, therefore, the silence of women in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, if these verses are even original, cannot be about spiritual speech but only about disruptive speech. 

Now we see that 1 Timothy 2:12 is also about the husband-wife relationship and thus does not have any bearing on a woman’s prophetic ministry.  And in any case, surely Paul’s central writings and Acts have a better claim to stand at the center of our understanding, rather than some interpretation of a writing that is in so many ways the exception in the Pauline corpus rather than the rule.  All we have left to debate is whether husband-headship is timeless or, like eating pizza with meat, is a feature of Paul’s ancient context.  Since it is irrational to base leadership on genitals—physical organs not particularly known for their wisdom—I have little doubt personally where God is leading his church today.

Ministers as Parents (W)

Excerpt from chapter 9 of second Paul book:
____________
1 Timothy and Titus’ comments on the children of ministers may be a cause of particular concern to some.  Pastors’ children are notorious in church lore for misbehavior.  What then are we to make of the comment that an overseer can scarcely be trusted with the church if he cannot control his own children or if his children lose faith?  No doubt such sentiments have brought violence from some ministers in the past, thinking that they must beat their children into submission to keep their children under control.  And parenting studies will no doubt confirm that this approach leads in exactly the opposite direction today, to where their children will then be even more likely to be disorderly and to lose faith.

In short, what counted as good management of a family in the ancient world will not count the same today.  Our children are not sequestered in the home.  Through television, through the internet, through the public schools, it is scarcely possible to control all the influences on our children.  This fact has led some to forbid television.  It has led some to isolate themselves socially from the rest of the world.  Such people can perhaps protect their children for a time, but they also have removed themselves from the mission.  Few will come to faith in Christ as a result of their witness.

In the end, our children have free will too.  What is timeless about the instructions of 1 Timothy is that the pastor should be an exemplary model of righteousness for his or her children.  Their children should see that their mother or father is consistent at home and at church.  They should see that their father or mother practices what he or she preaches.  They should see that their parent truly is serving and selfless at home and at church.  They must be present at home and in the lives of their kids, not married more to the church than to their spouses and families.  None of these things is a guarantee of a child’s salvation, but they should be a guarantee of a clear conscience.

Short Catechism 3: "God wants everyone to be saved"

This was originally my second, now revised to be third in a series of short chats I am having with my children to convey my sense of Christianity to them beyond what they might absorb from some other Christian activity.  The first one was based on James 2:13: "Mercy trumps justice."

The second one is based on 1 Timothy 2:4--"God wants everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth."  Several truths lurk in this verse:

1. First, that people need rescued.  We Christians can quibble over things like how depraved the world and we are.  But it is painfully obvious that an aweful lot of people are in trouble.  They are enslaved to drugs, enslaved to poverty, enslaved to selfishness and greed, enslaved to pleasure and power.  The human animal seems self-destructive by nature.  The world is thoroughly in need of rescue, both spiritually and materially.

2. Secondly, God does not force anyone to be rescued.  He does not predetermine who will be saved and who will not.  If he did, everyone would be saved because he wants everyone to be saved.  However it works in the mystery of his power and will, he does not force it.  He gives everyone a chance.

3. Finally, we want everyone to be saved.  We do not give up easily on the hard cases but, like God, work diligently to see them saved in every sense, spiritually and materially.  We know the leopard can't change his spots, but God can.  With mortals this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.  We interact with the world in hope of salvation, not with the presumption of failure.

Placing the Pastorals (9.1)

In the most popular evangelical scenario, Paul wrote his Pastoral Epistles last--1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.  At least since F. F. Bruce, [1] it is very popular to think that Paul appeared before Nero at the end of Acts and then was released.  Paul then would have spent a couple additional years travelling around the Mediterranean, a time when he wrote these three letters, before being arrested again and finally martyred by Nero.

This is an ingenious reconstruction, even if it is only about fifty years old.  It stitches together scattered comments in Paul's writings and makes them into a "fourth" missionary journey beyond the so called three missionary journeys of Acts.  In Romans 15 Paul says he plans to go to Spain.  So perhaps after release from Rome, he conducts a missionary journey in Spain.  In Philemon he tells this slave owner to prepare a guest room for him.  Perhaps he wrote this letter from Rome and later visited Colossae.  In Philippians he says he expects to visit them.  Perhaps he wrote this letter from Rome and later visited there.

This reconstruction can also accommodate scattered comments in the pastoral letters themselves.  For example, when did Paul leave Titus behind at Crete?  There is no really obvious place in Acts where Paul would have been to Crete.  Indeed, Acts does not even mention Titus anywhere. And when exactly did Paul leave Timothy behind in Ephesus?  Paul did leave Ephesus in Acts 20:1, but did he leave Timothy behind in a pastoral role?  After all, Timothy seems to be with Paul in Macedonia just thereafter (e.g., 2 Cor. 1:1).

2 Timothy clearly seems to picture Paul in his final round with Caesar in Rome.  So when did Paul leave Trophimus sick at Miletus, on the cost of Asia Minor (2 Tim. 4:20)?  When did he leave his cloak and parchments in Troas (2 Tim. 4:13)?  A fourth missionary journey provides a convenient way to account for all these intentions and details.

But this scenario also faces serious, if not fatal difficulties.  For various reasons, it seems quite likely that Paul was actually put to death at the end of Acts after appearing before Nero.  This is in fact the traditional understanding we find up until the late twentieth century.  Certainly we cannot just assume such a tradition is correct, but it is also the strong implication of Acts itself.

The argument for Paul's death at the end of Acts is two-fold.  First, the latter chapters of Acts consistently foreshadow Paul's impending death.  Secondly, Acts was very likely written after Paul's death.  The author of Acts thus knew the outcome of Paul's trial before Nero, and he foreshadows it having a negative result.  These dynamics seem fatal to this popular reconstruction, coupled with other problems with details.  See the endnotes for further details. [2]

[1] E.g., Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free ***

[2] You'll have to buy the book when it comes out ;-)

4.2 Ordination and Training

In the last section, we looked at some of the forms leadership took in the earliest churches. We suggested that most assemblies probably had a group of elders or overseers, although it would be impossible to say all churches structured themselves the same way. It seems quite possible that certain individuals took more dominant roles in some congregations. And some assemblies were likely more charismatic like the Corinthians.

Traveling apostles like Paul or Peter did not have anything like absolute authority. Paul felt free to question those who "seemed to be something" in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:6): Peter, James, and John. The fact that they were known as "pillars" (Gal. 2:9) probably indicates a core of four central leaders even in Jerusalem, with the martyred James, son of Zebedee, possibly being the fourth pillar. And certainly individuals in Paul's own churches felt free to question him, let alone any key leaders in their own communities. Hebrews admonishes its audience to obey its leaders and indicates that such individuals would eventually give an account of their leadership (13:17). The implication is of course that some did not submit.

Clement, writing perhaps in the 90s of the first century, reminds the Corinthians of the way he thought leadership had come to existence among the churches (1 Clement 44). The apostles had appointed overseers in each assembly. Then when these individuals passed, other approved individuals would receive their ministry (44.2). Clement's purpose is to tell the Corinthians that they cannot simply remove an overseer because they do not like him. This person is in an approved "succession" going back to the apostles themselves. [1]

Clement's letter to the Corinthians is where those who believe in "apostolic succession" ultimately base their understanding. Apostolic succession is the idea that all legitimate ministers today should be ordained by someone who was ordained by someone whose ordination ultimately traces back to the apostles. Of course Clement does not quite embody this idea. Clement is simply saying that the Corinthians do not have the authority to remove a person who was appointed to replace someone appointed by Paul without any legitimate reason.

Nevertheless, apostolic succession remains an important concept in relation to ordination in many churches today. We understand that it is difficult for such groups to recognize the ministers in many other denominations as completely legitimate because they do not stand in such a succession. The Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican and Episcopal Churches all value apostolic succession. Indeed, when the Anglican Church began to ordain women in the 1990s, special "flying bishops" were established to maintain a purely male apostolic succession for those in the church for whom it was important.

An interesting story in the history of Methodism is the fact that John Wesley ordained a number of individuals at the so called "Christmas Conference" of 1784. Wesley was an ordained minister but not a bishop in the Anglican Church and did not have the authority to ordain others so that they could serve communion, administer baptism, and so forth. But because he viewed it as an emergency, he ordained a handful of Methodist bishops so that communion and baptism could be administered in America. In that sense, Methodists do not strictly stand in official apostolic succession.

In many American churches, however, individuals are ordained by a local congregation. In Baptist, Congregational, and restorationist groups like the Disciples of Christ, an individual church will recognize the gifts and calling for ministry in an individual and will themselves give the person ordination. Certainly groups such as these completely reject the notion of an unbroken line of ordination going back to Christ and the original apostles.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Ordination is the idea that God calls certain individuals to play a special role of ministry, that He sets these individuals apart and "ordains" them to play a special role in the administration and propagation of His kingdom on earth. Many ordination services instruct candidates to take authority to preach the word and administer the sacraments. In some churches, like the Roman Catholic Church, the role of the ordained is so set apart that such individuals are called "priests," after the manner of the Old Testament. In other churches, ordination more signifies a "prophetic" role as special conduit for God's word to His people.

These are major differences between Christian groups on these sorts of issues, especially between Protestant and Catholic. One of the battle cries of the Reformation was the "priesthood of all believers," based in 1 Peter 2:5 and 9. The idea was that the Catholic Church was wrong to set priests in such a completely different category from "laypeople," because Christ himself was the only mediator between God and humanity (e.g., 1 Tim. 2:5). Hebrews 10:11-14 indicates that Christ offered the final sacrifice as the final priest.

So there is no question that the system of separation of priests from lay that evolved in the church went well beyond anything the New Testament pictured. The role of "ministers" in the early church had to do with authority, proclamation, and reconciliation. We know that Apollos baptized others, but was he "ordained" in any formal sense? We simply do not know. And communion at this time was a meal of remembrance, as in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. We will talk more about sacraments in a later chapter.

But even if the evidence for a special "clergy" who were authorized to baptize and "preside" at communion is scanty, we do have precedents for such leadership roles, with particular individuals set aside, in the early church. For example, the book of Acts regularly pictures a sort of event in which members of a church lay hands on other individuals who are commissioned to a particular task or role. The church at Antioch does this for Paul and Barnabas as they began their first missionary journey (Acts 13:2-3). Acts likely sees this action as in some way a catalyst for the conveyance of the Holy Spirit and thus empowerment for a special task.

We seem to find the same practice in 1 and 2 Timothy. In 2 Timothy, we hear of Paul laying hands on Timothy as a catalyst for the "gift of God" (2 Tim. 1:6). While it is theoretically possible that this event was the reception of the Holy Spirit in general, most take this exchange to be a kind of "ordination" of Timothy by Paul.

1 Timothy seems to picture a similar act of ordination, although here it is a group of elders rather than Paul alone laying hands on Timothy (1 Tim. 4:14). For our purposes, we do not need to worry about resolving the tension between the two accounts but take them both as an indication of early Christian practice as it was developing in the second half of the first century. [1] 1 Timothy presents a situation where a prophet in the community prophesied that Timothy should be set aside for ministry. Then the elders/overseers of the church agreed and laid hands on Timothy, leading to a special empowerment by the Holy Spirit. The result is that Timothy taught and proclaimed God's word to God's people.

1 Timothy and Titus also include qualifications for overseers and deacons, making a clear distinction between the two roles. An overseer must only have had one wife in his entire life (1 Tim. 3:1-7). [2] He must be a person of virtue who is not an alcoholic or violent. He should have a good reputation and manage his household well. Similar qualifications apply to deacons as well (3:8-14). Interestingly, 1 Timothy refers to Timothy as a "deacon" of Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 4:6).

So we do find some special roles to which particular individuals are called in the New Testament. We find a process of recognition of special "anointing," of special giftedness or special intent by the Holy Spirit. We find an event of recognition by church leaders whether local or on a larger scale. And we find particular individuals thus called to teach Scripture and proclaim.

We should not absolutize these instances we find in the Pastoral Epistles or in Acts. The Pastoral Epistles, regardless of how one dates them, are looking to pass on the torch of ministry to the next generation. They look at where the church is headed in the absence of apostles more than where it has been. Acts similarly almost certainly dates to the period after AD70 and is meant as much to say what the church should be like as to express the complexities of its earliest days. What we find here is thus an important and legitimate model for "ordination" but not an absolute or necessarily timeless one.

Ephesians also speaks of the foundation of the "apostles and prophets" in the past tense (Eph. 2:20), where prophets almost certainly refers to Christian prophets. [3] 4:11 then unfolds various roles of leadership in the early church, again, not necessarily giving an absolute or timeless list but giving us a sense of various roles that existed in the first century. Apostles of course refers to those who both witnessed the risen Christ and were commissioned by him to take the good news as ambassadors of reconciliation to God (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:18-20). Prophets were individuals like Agabus in Acts or those through whom people like Paul, Barnabas, and Timothy were commissioned.

Evangelists, teachers, pastors--we should not think of these as roles completely distinct from each other. For example, the roles of overseer and deacon are nowhere mentioned here and yet such individuals would certainly be some of the primary individuals who exercised the kinds of functions mentioned here. These roles rather indicate key tasks in the early church. Philip "the evangelist" no doubt did go around spreading the good news, just as Paul himself did (cf. Acts 21:8). 1 Timothy charges Timothy with maintaining the "deposit" of sound teaching that he had learned from Paul (2 Tim. 1:14).

We will look in more depth at the trajectory of priesthood in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions in the next section. For now, we merely want to observe that the idea that God can set aside--even in the New Testament--certain individuals to minister in certain ways that other members of the body of Christ do not has a firm basis in the New Testament. It is true that the New Testament does not seem to have a well developed system for how the "ordination" of such individuals takes place. In the examples we have, the basis for such ordination seems somewhat charismatic. A prophet, apostle, or group of elders senses an individual being called to minister and they lay hands on them as a catalyst for the Holy Spirit's empowerment.

The New Testament seems to allow for the kind of ordination that takes place in free churches, where individuals are "ordained" in a local church. The New Testament gives less room for those who, in effect, ordain themselves without any recognition of calling by Christian leaders or a local body of believers. At the same time, it does not absolutely rule out the possibility. It also does not rule out the possibility that the process of recognition might involve more than just a local body. 1 Clement "remembers" certain leadership roles in Paul's churches being for life.

We come back to what we have said in previous chapters. We have hints of descriptions of how leadership functioned in the early church. But such descriptions are not the same as prescriptions for such leadership and they are in the end descriptions of leadership two thousand years ago. We would not expect effective leadership to look the same in every time, place, and culture. And the New Testament world is significantly different from the modern Western world.

It seems safe to say that the trajectory of the New Testament is toward the standardization of such roles. It would be no surprise if, during the church's earliest phase, leadership tended to be more charismatic and Spirit-led. But it is also no surprise that we find more distinct roles and safeguards for the perpetuation of orthodoxy developing as the apostles begin to pass from the scene. We thus find a legitimate basis for a spectrum of "God-ordained" leadership possibilities in the New Testament.

We also find in the Pastorals a clear basis for instruction in the early church. Paul leaves to Timothy a "deposit" of sound teaching to guard (2 Tim. 1:14). In such a context, it is no surprise that 2 Timothy 3:16 emphasizes the importance of the Scriptures in teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. But it is crucial to note that 2 Timothy means the Scriptures as Paul interpreted them. This understanding of the Scriptures is the deposit, for there were many other false teachers who were arising with their own, differing understandings.

When Ephesians speaks of the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20), indeed of Jesus as the cornerstone of the household of faith, it is referring to a particular understanding of things that others did not have. Paul's letter to the Galatians is filled with arguments from Scripture, arguments that are meant to counter the interpretations of his opponents who were arguing from the very same Scripture. It is thus not enough to say that all individuals need is a Bible to arrive at sound teaching, and it is not appropriate to invoke the notion of a priesthood of all believers in relation to teaching. The New Testament appropriately legitimizes a role for instruction in the church.

So we can allow for the possibility that God might anoint prophets out of the blue, without a church around, but this is not our default expectation. And we might allow for the possibility that some individuals might understand Scripture on their own, as Jeremiah 31:34 and Hebrews 8:11 somewhat hyperbolically anticipate. But most will need instruction and training, to make sure that they do not end up teaching false things, to make sure they adequately understand the deposit of sound teaching. Even Apollos needed a Priscilla and Aquila to take him aside and teach him more accurately. Such teaching can take place in the local church or in a home or it can take place in Christian colleges and seminaries.

[1] Scholars debate whether we are hearing Paul directly or indirectly in the Pastoral Epistles, with most concluding 1 and 2 Timothy were written to express Paul's voice to his churches after his death. Most evangelical scholars, on the other hand, believe that stylistic differences and such can be explained on the basis of alternate secretaries and the idea that the pastorals are a different kind of letter from Paul's earlier ones.

[2] By the time of 1 Timothy, the default expectation in Paul's churches seems to be that such overseers and deacons will be men. However, the earliest pictures we get from Paul's writings seem to suppose the involvement of women as well in the work of ministry, as we will see in the final section of this chapter. And of course we seem to find evidence of exceptional women in such roles even well beyond the first century in various places.

[3] We find the same divide among scholars in relation to Ephesians that we do the Pastorals, although perhaps more scholars seeing Ephesians as a letter Paul wrote within his lifetime than come to the same conclusion in relation to the Pastorals. In either case, Ephesians remains an important witness to leadership roles in the early church.

Explanatory Notes: 1 Timothy 1:8-11

1:8-11 Now we know that the [Jewish] Law is good, if someone uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the Law is not intended for the righteous, but for the lawless and un-submissive, for the ungodly and sinners, the unholy and profane, for those who murder their fathers and mothers, for murders, the sexually immoral, practitioners of homosexual sex, human traffickers, liars, those who swear falsely, and if there is something else in opposition to sound teaching in accordance with the good news of the glory of the blessed God, with which I was entrusted.

This is a fascinating list of vices and at the same time a quite different approach to the Law than is found in the Pauline writings elsewhere. First, it agrees with Paul's sentiment in Romans 7:12 that the Jewish Law is holy and the commandment holy, righteous, and good. In Romans 7:14 Paul indicates that the Law is spiritual. Another point of agreement is that Paul uses the tenth commandment not to covet as his example of a commandment in Romans 7:7. Here in 1 Timothy, the examples of law-breaking seem to relate fairly directly to the Ten Commandments.

For example, the first six vices or so relate fairly well to matters relating to the proper worship of God, as do the initial commandments. The mention of murderers of fathers and mothers relate to the commandment to honor one's parents. The mention of murderers proper, various forms of sexual immorality, and slave trading relate to the commands not to kill, commit adultery, or steal. Finally, the comment on liars and perjurers relates directly to bearing false witness.

The sentiment of these verses seems to be that the Law is intended to restrain the practice of sin. Those who do not sin or violate these laws are thus not people for whom the Law need be a concern. The false teachers, on the other hand, emphasized stories relating to the stories of the Pentateuch and something relating to genealogies somehow connected to the Pentateuch. These spin offs on the Law were of no concern, Paul/1 Timothy says. If you are living righteously, the Law is not something you should be troubled by.

The contrast between this approach to the Jewish Law and Paul's approach in letters like Galatians and Romans is striking. Some who affirm a close relationship between 1 Timothy and Paul have even suggested one of Paul's coworkers might have had a greater hand in the writing than Paul gave to his coworkers in other instances. The key differences are 1) that Paul elsewhere seems to affirm that all are sinners, 2) that the Law functions to point this fact out to both Jew and Gentile, and 3) that the Law pertains to the epoch prior to Christ so that Christ's coming now signals the end of the Law's function.

By contrast, on the one hand, 1 Timothy has the more typical Jewish division between the righteous and sinners as those who do good and those who break the Law. On the other hand, the way in which 1 Timothy defines the Law is very de-ethnicized. In other words, a Jew would typically have defined righteousness with at least some mention of what we now think of as the ethnic particulars of the Law, things like circumcision, Sabbath observance, and the food laws. Paul's discussions of the Law elsewhere reflect this fact in a negative sense--he defines righteousness as not being based on these things and thus not based on Law. The Jewish definition thus underlies Paul's new sense of the Law's significance.

The list of vices in 1 Timothy is thus at the same time more and less Jewish than Paul elsewhere. It is like Paul elsewhere in that the Law is largely considered irrelevant for believers. But it is considered irrelevant for different reasons. In Paul's other writings it is irrelevant because it applies to a past epoch. In 1 Timothy it is irrelevant because believers do not break it. None of these shifts in language contradict the substance of Paul's writings elsewhere. It is only the differences in the conceptual framework, imagery, and language that is strikingly different.

The mention of "sound teaching" signals another of the major shifts between the other writings of the Pauline corpus and the pastoral epistles. Paul does use the word teaching elsewhere, but nowhere with the significance it has in the pastorals. We should think of the pastoral epistles as a deposit of Paul's teaching which he is bequeathing to his heirs.

Explanatory Notes: 1 Timothy 1:5-6

1:5-7 For the goal of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a genuine faith, with regard to which some have turned aside and wandered into foolish talk, wanting to be teachers of the Law, but neither knowing what they are saying nor about what they have strongly maintained.

The vocabulary in these three verses is very unique for Paul's writings. Three of the words appear only in the pastoral epistles, and two appear nowhere in Paul's writings outside these verses.

The mention of a commandment begins to clarify for us the nature of the fables and genealogies, although not much. The false teachers at Ephesus want to teach the Jewish Law to the believers there, but they do not understand the proper goal of the commandments of the Law. The purpose of the Law is for people to love one another, to love one another sincerely. They are to love in a way that they are not conscious of doing wrong.

The sentiment here echoes things elsewhere in Paul, even if his writings never put it quite this way elsewhere. Romans 13:10 and Galatians 5:14 indicate that love is the fulfillment of the Law. In Romans 14:23, Paul describes sin as anything that is not done on the basis of faith.

The false teachers that Paul/1 Timothy has in view have ideas that they connect to the Jewish Law, and they maintain those views strongly. But the perspectives they hold so vehemently are nothing but foolish talk. They have deviated and wandered off course without realizing it.

Explanatory Notes: 1 Timothy 1:3-4

1:3-4 Just as I admonished you when I departed for Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you might command certain ones not to teach falsely, nor to hold to fables and endless geneaologies, which cause pointless speculations rather than the plan of God, which is by faith.

The precise grammar of 1:3 is not entirely clear, but Paul/1 Timothy seems to depict a situation where he was departing from Ephesus and leaving Timothy behind in the city. In terms of Acts, this scenario would best fit Acts 20:1-6, although Acts specifically includes Timothy among those who left for Macedonia with Paul. However, we do know of at least one other place where Paul himself depicts a sightly different scenario of who stays and who goes than Acts (Silas in Acts 7:14 and 1 Thess. 3:1).

Most of those who go with the literal Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy thus would locate the writing of 1 Timothy during a hypothetical fourth missionary journey after the end of Acts, after a suggested acquittal by Nero. Paul and Timothy would thus have found themselves at Ephesus yet one more time (in contradiction to Acts 20:25, 38). This suggestion is not without its problems as well, since the book of Acts has a foreboding sense in its final chapters that most straightforwardly would point to Paul's death after his appearance in Rome.

Those who would argue that 1 Timothy addresses a later generation of believers might thus see Acts 20:1-6 as the fictive setting of the letter. Such a setting would be poignant if Timothy ended up ministering in Ephesus for some length of time after Paul's death, indeed, if Ephesus were in fact the intended audience of the pseudonymous letter. In that case, it would even be possible that the letter was written for the churches at Ephesus, presumably with the recipients all well aware that the letter was not literally from Paul.

That false teaching later was considered a problem at Ephesus is confirmed by Paul's final words to the leaders of Ephesus in Acts 20:29-30. Since it is very likely that Acts was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and thus some time after Paul's death, its author would hardly have included these words if it were not what actually happened, from his (or less likely her) perspective. These verses speak of fierce wolves and distortions of the truth by individuals seeking to build a following.

The mention of "fables" and "endless genealogies" that are "vain speculation" is cryptic from our perspective, although presumably the meaning would have been clear enough to Timothy or the original audience of the letter. The mention of teachers of the Law in 1:7 implies that the fables and genealogies in mind relate to Judaism and the Jewish Law in some way. No attempt to identify the nature of the false teaching in question can be definitive. The fables (mythoi) in mind are not pagan myths. Some who favor a pseudonymous context have suggested Gnostic beliefs.

An interesting statement by Ignatius to the Philadelphians at the beginning of the second century says that "it is better to hear Christianity from a person having circumcision than to hear Judaism from the uncircumcision" (6:1). The implication seems to be that there were Gentiles in Asia at the time who criticized forms of Christianity for not being Jewish enough. Ignatius also acknowledges that the Ephesians have had trouble in the past with itinerant teachers who were teaching false things (Eph. 9:1).

In general, we do not have to restrict speculation about the Jewish Law to the Pentateuch. 1 Enoch and the book of Jubilees are likely proto-Essene and or Essene documents with exactly the kinds of speculations we could imagine Paul/1 Timothy referring to. These writings would have been in existence well before the time of Paul.

More important is the basic point, which is that God's plan, God's economy (oikonomia) is the way of faith. Is this an allusion to Paul's well known belief that justification is by faith rather than by works of the Jewish Law? It seems at least arguable that the sense here is that God's plan was to justify the nations and the Jews by faith. The false teachings, on the other hand, emphasize various traditions connected in some way to the stories of the Pentateuch.

Explanatory Notes: 1 Timothy 1:1-2

I will be presenting in a couple weeks on 1 Timothy 2 to a women in minstry class, so I thought I might take the chance to do some explanatory notes on 1 Timothy. I also hope maybe to do several Viola chapters later in the day, since the next few are short ones.
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1:1 Paul, apostle of Christ Jesus according to the command of God, our Savior, and Christ Jesus, our hope, to Timothy, our genuine child in faith. Grace, mercy, peace [be to you] from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

We find differences in scholarly opinion on whether 1 Timothy is as it appears to us, a letter from Paul to Timothy, or whether this letter is "pseudonymous." In that case, 1 Timothy would date to a few decades after Paul's death and would mean to extend Paul's voice to the Christian situation around the end of the first century. The divide among scholars largely falls along presuppositional lines. Those who allow for the possibility of pseudonymous writings in Scripture fairly consistently decide in favor of 1 Timothy's pseudonymity, while obviously those who do not believe pseudonymity to be compatible with Scripture consistently conclude against it.

In our explanatory notes we will explore what the text might mean in both scenarios.

Paul identifies himself as an apostle in most of his writings after the Thessalonian letters. He understands an apostle to be someone to whom the risen Jesus has appeared (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:1) and then commissioned to take the good news to others (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:18). The fairly consistent use of "Christ Jesus" ("Messiah Jesus") in 1 Timothy is interesting, as Paul elsewhere tends to alternate more freely between Jesus Christ and Christ Jesus.

The reference to God as Savior is not found in the rest of the Pauline writings with the exception of Titus. The two uses of the word outside the pastoral epistles are in Philippians 3:20 and Ephesians 5:23, where it is used of Christ. It is also used strikingly of Christ as God in Titus 2:13. The word was sometimes used in the Roman context of the emperor. The addition of "mercy" to the prescript or greeting of the letter is unique here among Paul's writings also, outside of 2 Timothy.

The letter identifies Timothy as Paul's "true child" and for contemporary readers of the New Testament will evoke images of the relationship between Paul and Timothy depicted and implied elsewhere. Acts 16 tells of Paul joining Timothy to his mission in the city of Lystra in Lacaonia in Asia Minor and of having him circumcised because his mother was Jewish.

Timothy appears as cowriter of several of the Pauline writings, including 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, and the Thessalonian letters. Paul indicates that Timothy went to various locations like Corinth and Philippi on Paul's behalf, and very well may have delivered some of Paul's letters. We wonder if he may have helped at least as Paul's secretary at times, if not in the actual composition of the content.