ACC ~ 1 Timothy 1 v4a

LIKE AN ANVIL. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH: You must not be panic-stricken by those who have an air of credibility but who teach heresy. Stand your ground like an anvil under the hammer. A great athlete must suffer blows to conquer. And especially for God’s sake must we put up with everything, so that God will put up with us. Show more enthusiasm than you do. Mark the times. Be on the alert for him who is above time, the Timeless, the Unseen, the One who became visible for our sakes, who was beyond touch and passion, yet who for our sakes became subject to suffering and endured everything for us. LETTER TO POLYCARP 3.

ABOUT THE DEMIURGE. IRENAEUS: Certain men, rejecting the truth, are introducing among us false stories and vain genealogies, which serve rather to elicit controversies, as the apostle said, than to God’s work of building up in the faith. By their craftily constructed rhetoric they lead astray the minds of the inexperienced and take them captive, corrupting the oracles of the Lord. They are evil expounders of what was first well spoken. For they upset many, leading them away by the pretense of knowledge from him who constituted and ordered the universe, as if they had something higher and greater to show them than the God who made the heaven and the earth and all that is in them. By clever language they artfully attract the simple-minded into their kind of inquiry and then crudely destroy them by developing their blasphemous and impious view about the Demiurge. Nor can their simple hearers distinguish the lie from the truth. AGAINST THE HERESIES 1.1.

AGAINST LEGALISTIC SABBATH SPECULATIONS. ORIGEN: Moreover, the commandment, “Do not bear a burden on the sabbath day,” seems to me impossible. For by these words the Jewish teachers have fallen into “endless fables,” as the apostle says, by saying that it is not reckoned a “burden” if someone has shoes without nails, but that it is a “burden” if someone has gallic shoes with nails. And if someone carries something on one shoulder, they judge it a “burden,” but if he carries it on both shoulders, they will deny it is a burden. ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 4.3.2.

THE DIALECTIC ART. TERTULLIAN: The same matter is turned and twisted by the heretics and the philosophers, and the same questions are involved: Whence comes evil? And what is its purpose? And whence human history? And how? And, what Valentinus has lately propounded—whence God? All of this ensues from an excessive exercise of mind and from an abortive birth. Wretched Aristotle! Who has taught them this dialectic art, cunning in building up and pulling down, using many shifts in sentence, making forced guesses at truth, stiff in arguments, busy in raising contentions, contrary even to itself, dealing backwards and forwards with every subject, so as really to deal with none! Hence, those “fables and endless genealogies,” and “unprofitable questions” and “words that spread like a cancer,” from which the apostle restraining us, testifies of philosophy by name, that it ought to be shunned. … When Paul spoke of “endless genealogies,” we can now recognize the hand of Valentinus, according to whom the “aeon” generates its own grace, sense and truth. Whoever this is, it is not of one divine name but of a new name, who supposedly then produces word and life, humanity and church in the first pair of aeons. PRESCRIPTIONS AGAINST HERETICS 7 AND 33.

VAIN QUESTIONING. CHRYSOSTOM: By “fables” he does not mean the law; far from it, but inventions and forgeries and counterfeit doctrines. For, it seems that some Jewish teachers wasted their whole discourse on these unprofitable points. They numbered up their fathers and grandfathers, that they might have the reputation of historical knowledge and research. … Why does he call them “endless”? It is because they had no end, or none of any use, or none easy for us to apprehend. Note how he disapproves of skeptical questioning. For where faith exists there is no need of suspicion. Where there is no room for curiosity, questions are superfluous. HOMILIES ON 1 TIMOTHY 1.

THE COMMON ENEMY. THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA: Paul here discourses about the common theme of all of his letters written to those converted from the Gentiles. He does this to point out that often things said by converts from Judaism may undermine the genuine piety of Gentile converts. In the case of the Galatians, he found that they were observing things required by the law, including especially the rite of circumcision. He pointed out that the use of genealogies was a particularly bad practice, because it made it possible for Jews to argue that Christ was not the promised offspring of Abraham and David and thereby throw into confusion Gentiles who are not well grounded in the Scriptures. He calls these genealogies “endless” because they can be turned in a great variety of bewildering directions. They are called “myths” because they contain only narration and nothing really necessary to the understanding of salvation. COMMENTARY ON 1 TIMOTHY.

JEWISH INTERPRETATION. THEODORET OF CYR: Believers of Jewish background, taking pride in their knowledge of the Old Testament, laid certain questions before Gentile believers. They did this in order to take advantage of their ignorance of these same divine words, and in the attempt to persuade them to embrace the law as a way of life. They rehearsed with them the human genealogy of the Lord as descended from Abraham and David. Therefore, Paul instructs Timothy to block these people and to prevent them from corrupting the teaching. The others he orders not to listen. He calls their ideas “myth” because they involve the Jewish, Mishna-like exposition of the Scripture, which focuses on superfluous and useless questions, rather than the essential divine economy of salvation. INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRST LETTER TO TIMOTHY.

NOVELTY AND INVENTION. ATHANASIUS: In this passage we note the novelty as well as the viciousness of their devices, and how they go beyond all other heresies. They support their madness by seductive arguments calculated to deceive the simple. The Greeks, as the apostle has said, make their attack with excellency and persuasiveness of speech and with fallacies that have the aura of plausibility. The Jews, departing widely from the divine Scriptures, now, as the apostle again has said, contend about “fables and endless genealogies.” Meanwhile the Manichaeans and Valentinians with them, and others, corrupt the divine Scriptures, putting forth fables of their own invention. But the Arians are bolder than them all and have shown that the other heresies are but their younger sisters, whom, as I have said, they surpass in impiety, emulating them all, and especially the Jews, in their circumventions. HISTORY OF THE ARIANS 8.66.

1 Tim