ACC ~ Titus 1 v10 - 16

OVERVIEW:

The unwillingness of these heretics to submit to authority and their love of money make them unworthy of office. Their deeds are in keeping with traditional Cretan misbehavior and play into Jewish fables and superstitions (CHRYSOSTOM). Paul says these things to Titus to remind him that the heresies he will be fighting are forms of Jewish subversion of the gospel and Gentile perversion of it (THEODORE). What is at stake here is the distortion of their own law by Jewish teachers in a way that appeals to the inconstancy and waywardness of the Cretans, disguising from them the fact that the time of the observance of the literal law is past (THEODORET). It is clear that Paul is equipping Titus for the struggle with outright Judaizing of the gospel, in which the interpretation of the law is turned into a matter of outward observances and nothing else (AMBROSIASTER). These false teachers create an atmosphere of deceit in which Hebrew and Gentile elements are mixed into a duplicitous stew, which is then served up to the gullible and deceitful Cretans (JEROME).

1:11 | They Must Be Silenced

FALSE BRETHREN. AMBROSIASTER: Reborn in Christ, they are still not pure Christians; they wish for the law to be partly venerated, for Christ to be partly venerated, all of this as if to profit from the Jews. COMMENTARY ON THE LETTER TO TITUS.

THE BISHOP MUST SPEAK OUT. AUGUSTINE: But I, pierced with such grief as I am, what can I do except speak? Or do they do such things and then say to me: “Be silent”? May the Lord preserve me from such cowardice that I should hold my peace through fear of their wrath, when he commands me through his apostle, saying that “they ought to be reproved” by the bishop for “teaching the things which they ought not.” … For when God commands that we speak and preach the word and that we refute and condemn “in season and out of season” those who “teach the things which they ought not”—as I can prove by the words of the Lord and the apostles—let no man think that I can be enjoined to silence in these matters. LETTERS 34.4, 35.3.

1:12 | A Prophet of Their Own

THE PAGANS CRITICIZE THE ABSURDITY OF THEIR OWN GODS. ATHENAGORAS: What wonder, too, that others, such as Heracles and Perseus, should be called gods on the ground of their strength? And yet others, as Asclepius, on the ground of their skill? Either their subjects accorded them this honor or else the rulers themselves seized it. Some got the title from fear, others from reverence. … And those who lived later accepted these deifications uncritically.

The Cretans always lie; for they, O King,

Have built your tomb, and you are not yet dead.

While you, Callimachus, believe in the birth of Zeus, you disbelieve in his tomb. While you imagine you are hiding the truth, you actually proclaim, even to those who do not realize it, that Zeus is dead. A PLEA REGARDING CHRISTIANS 30.

WHO IS BEING QUOTED, AND WHY? CHRYSOSTOM: It was Epimenides who said this, himself a Cretan, and the reason he was moved to say it is necessary to mention. It is this. The Cretans have a tomb of Jupiter, with this inscription. “Here lieth Zan, whom they call Jove.” On account of this inscription, then, the poet ridiculing the Cretans as liars, as he proceeds, introduces, to increase the ridicule, this passage.

For even a tomb, O King, of thee

They made, who never diedst, but aye shalt be.

If then this testimony is true, observe what a difficulty! For if the poet is true who said that they spoke falsely, in asserting that Jupiter could die, as the apostle says, it is a fearful thing! Attend, beloved, with much exactness. The poet said that the Cretans were liars for saying that Jupiter was dead. The apostle confirmed his testimony: so, according to the apostle, Jupiter is immortal: For he says, “this witness is true”! What shall we say then? Or rather how shall we solve this? The apostle has not said this but simply and plainly applied this testimony to their habit of falsehood. … And as to the question, why does he cite the testimonies of the Greeks? It is because we put them most to confusion when we bring our testimonies and accusations from their own writers, when we make those their accusers, who are admired among themselves. … And from what writers should he address them? From the Prophets? They would not have believed them. Since with the Jews too he does not argue from the Gospels, but from the Prophets. HOMILIES ON TITUS 3.

THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA: Having criticized the dangers that arise from Christians of Jewish background, Paul now does the same with Gentile believers. “Of their own” does not refer to the Jews but to a poet or prophet of Gentile background, even one of the Cretans. He wished to criticize the Cretans because they believed they could show the tomb of Jove, even though Jove existed not as a man (as the poet thought) but as a god. COMMENTARY ON TITUS.

THEODORET OF CYR: The quote is from Callimachus, who is not a Jewish prophet but a pagan poet. He calls the Cretans liars on account of a tomb of Jove. Paul is not here offering fables but insisting on the inconsistency of the Cretans, for it is true that the one they call Jove is in another place dead and they have built him a tomb. INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO TITUS.

JEROME: “One of their own prophets” refers to the “men of the circumcision” in the preceding verse. But since the saying is not found in Hebrew Scripture, it must be that the saying is spoken in a duplicitous way, that is, it is a Cretan prophet who speaks, but disguised as a Hebrew in order to be more believable. This is all part of the deceitful atmosphere created by these teachers. COMMENTARY ON TITUS.

JEROME: You ask me at the close of your letter why it is that sometimes in my writings I quote examples from secular literature and thus defile the purity of the church with the foulness of heathenism. … For who is there who does not know that both in Moses and the prophets there are passages cited from Gentile books and that Solomon proposed questions to the philosophers of Tyre and answered others put to him by them. … The apostle Paul also, in writing to Titus, has used a line of the poet Epimenides: “The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.” Half of this line was afterward adopted by Callimachus. LETTERS 70. 2.

THE HOLY USE OF THE UNHOLY. ATHANASIUS: But the heretic, though he use scriptural terms, yet, as being equally dangerous and depraved, shall be asked in the words of the Spirit, “Why do you preach my laws and take my covenant in your mouth?” Thus, the devil, though speaking from the Scriptures, is silenced by the Savior. The blessed Paul, though he speaks from profane writers, “The Cretans are always liars,” and ‘We are his offspring,” and “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” yet has a religious meaning, as being holy—is “doctor of the nations, in faith and verity,” as having “the mind of Christ.” COUNCILS OF ARIMINUM AND SELEUCIA 3.39.

THE FALSE USE OF WHAT IS TRUE. AUGUSTINE: If you were to hear, even from one who was profane, the prayer of the priest couched in words suitable to the mysteries of the gospel, can you possibly say to him, “Your prayer is not true,” though he himself may be not only a false priest but not a priest at all? The apostle Paul said that certain testimony of a Cretan prophet (he knew not which) was true, though he was not reckoned among the prophets of God. … If, therefore, the apostle himself bore witness to the testimony of some obscure prophet of a foreign race because he found it to be true, why do not we, when we find in any one what belongs to Christ and is true even though the man with whom it may be found is deceitful and perverse? Why do we not in such a case make a distinction between the fault which is found in the man and the truth which he has not of his own but of God? THE LETTERS OF PETILIAN THE DONATIST 2.30.69.

1:14 | Jewish Fables

SPIRITUAL VERSUS LITERAL INTERPRETATION. ORIGEN: Let us see, however, what sort of rule of interpretation the apostle Paul taught us about these matters. Writing to the Corinthians he says in a certain passage, “For we know that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all were baptized in Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. And they drank of the spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.” Do you see how much Paul’s teaching differs from the literal meaning? What the Jews supposed to be a crossing of the sea, Paul calls a baptism. What they supposed to be a cloud, Paul asserts is the Holy Spirit. … What then are we to do who received such instructions about interpretation from Paul, a teacher of the church? Does it not seem right that we apply this kind of rule which was delivered to us in a similar way in other passages? Or as some wish, forsaking these things which such a great apostle taught, should we turn again to “Jewish fables”? HOMILIES ON EXODUS 5.1.

ORIGEN: But the apostles, who were about to say, “If you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing,” and who were also about to say, “Let no one judge you in food, or in drink, or in participation of a feast day, or in new moons, or sabbaths, which are shadows of what will be,” they are prohibited from having two tunics so that they might inwardly and completely repudiate observances of this kind according to the letter of the law and not concern the disciples “with Jewish myths” and “place a yoke on them which neither they nor their fathers would have been able to bear.” But one is sufficient for them, and this one “inward.” For they do not want this tunic of the law that is external but that which comes from above. For Jesus permits them to have one, and that one is “interior.” HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS 6.3.

CONFUSING PAST AND PRESENT, FALSE AND TRUE. CHRYSOSTOM: The Jewish tenets were fables in two ways, because they were imitations and because the thing was past its season, for such things become fables at last. For when a thing ought not to be done, and being done, is injurious, it is a fable even as it is useless. HOMILIES ON TITUS 3.

THEODORET OF CYR: Paul uses the term “Jewish fables” not to describe the law but the interpretation of the law put forward by the Jews. The Lord accuses them of this very thing when he says, “Why do you transgress the law for the sake of your own traditions?” INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO TITUS.

1:15 | To the Pure, to the Corrupt

DISPOSITION IS THE KEY. CHRYSOSTOM: Things then are not clean or unclean from their own nature but from the disposition of him who partakes of them. HOMILIES ON TITUS 3.

SEVERIAN OF GABALA: God has made all things pure. If anything is unclean, the use to which it is put makes it so. PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH.

AMBROSIASTER: Everything created by God is good; for those who do not know this, they become impure. COMMENTARY ON THE LETTER TO TITUS.

AUGUSTINE: Therefore, if a man offers sacrifice to God, and a good man receive it at his hands, the sacrifice is to each man of such character as he himself has shown himself to be, since we find it also written that “unto the pure all things are pure.” THE LETTERS OF PETILIAN THE DONATIST 2.52.120.

AUGUSTINE: With all this, no one is pressed to endure hardships for which he is unfit. Nothing is imposed on anyone against his will, nor is he condemned by the rest because he confesses himself too feeble to imitate them. They bear in mind how strongly Scripture enjoins charity on all. … Accordingly, all their endeavors are concerned not about the rejection of kinds of food as polluted but about the subjugation of inordinate desire and the maintenance of brotherly love. THE MORALS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 1.33.71.

JEROME: This is entirely directed against the Jewish distinction of clean and unclean, which was maintained on a mistaken view of abolished laws. COMMENTARY ON TITUS.

GREGORY THE GREAT: For, as in the Old Testament outward acts were attended to, so in the New Testament it is not so much what is done outwardly as what is thought inwardly that is regarded with close attention, that it may be punished with searching judgment. LETTERS 64.

FOOD LAWS AND THE FUTURE. AUGUSTINE: The Jews, you see, had accepted that there were certain animals which they could not eat, and others from which they must abstain. The apostle Paul makes it clear that they received this law as a symbolic sign of future realities. SERMONS 149.3.

A PROPER ASCETICISM. AUGUSTINE: But now, when you abstain for the sake of chastising the body from various kinds of food that are in themselves quite permissible, remember that “to the pure all things are pure”; don’t regard anything as impure except what unbelief has defiled; “for to the impure and unbelievers,” the apostle says, nothing is pure. But naturally, when the faithful are reducing their bodies to slavery, whatever is deducted from bodily pleasure is credited to spiritual health. SERMONS 208.1.

HUMILITY. POEMEN: “If a man has attained to that which the apostle speaks of ‘to the pure, everything is pure,’ he sees himself less than all creatures.” The brother said, “How can I deem myself less than a murderer?” The old man said, “When a man has really comprehended this saying, if he sees a man committing a murder he says, ‘He has only committed this one sin, but I commit sin every day.’ ” SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS 97.

NOTHING NATURAL UNCLEAN. ATHANASIUS: All things made by God are beautiful and pure, for the Word of God has made nothing useless or impure. … But since the devil’s darts are varied and subtle, he contrives to trouble those who are of simpler mind, and tries to hinder the ordinary exercises of the brethren, scattering secretly among them thoughts of uncleanness and defilement. Come, let us briefly dispel the error of the evil one by the grace of the Savior and confirm the mind of the simple. … For tell me, beloved and most pious friend, what sin or uncleanness there is in any natural secretion—as though a man were minded to make a culpable matter of the cleanings of the nose or the sputa from the mouth? And we may add also the secretions of the belly, such as are of a physical necessity of animal life. Moreover if we believe man to be, as the divine Scriptures say, a work of God’s hands, how could any defiled work proceed from a pure Power? … But when any bodily excretion takes place independently of will, then we experience this, like other things, by a necessity of nature. LETTERS TO AMUN 48.

THE TRUE HUMANITY OF JESUS. AUGUSTINE: Those likewise are to be detested who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had Mary as his mother on earth. That dispensation did honor to both sexes male and female and showed that both had a part in God’s care; not only that which he as-sumed but that also through which he assumed it, being a man born of a woman. … Nor should our faith be lessened by any reference to “a woman’s internal organs,” as if it might appear that we must reject any such generation of our Lord because sordid people think that sordid. “The foolishness of God is wiser than men”; and “to the pure all things are pure.” FAITH AND THE CREED 4.9-10.

1:16 | They Deny Him by Their Deeds

THE EVIL WILL. CHRYSOSTOM: But he that has a weak soul makes everything unclean, and if there be set abroad a scrupulous inquiry into what is clean or unclean, he will touch nothing. … Yet Paul says not so; he turns the whole matter upon themselves. For nothing is unclean, he says, but themselves, their mind and their conscience; and nothing is more unclean than these; but an evil will is unclean. HOMILIES ON TITUS 3.

JEROME: Some think that this verse applies only to those who deny the faith during a persecution, but the apostle contends that all perverse behavior denies God. COMMENTARY ON TITUS.

WHAT IS DENIED BY DEEDS CAN BE SAID BY DEEDS. AUGUSTINE: All the heresies … they all say, “Jesus is Lord.” And he’s not, of course, going to eliminate from the kingdom of heaven those whom he finds to be in the Holy Spirit; and yet he did say, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven.” But: “Nobody can say: Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit”; nobody at all, evidently; but in the sense in which it was meant, that is in deeds. … The same apostle, you see, also says of some people, “They claim to know the Lord but deny it by their deeds.” As it can be denied by deeds, so it can be said by deeds. SERMONS 269.4.

QUALITY IS REVEALED. LEO THE GREAT: Our peace also has its dangers, dearly beloved. In vain do people feel secure as a result of freedom for their faith if they do not resist the desires of vice. By the quality of works is the human heart made known, and outward actions disclose the beauty of souls. There are some, as the apostle says, who “profess to know God but deny him through their deeds.” Truly the guilt of denial is incurred when the ears have heard what is good but the conscience does not hold on to it. The frailty of the human condition easily slides into sin. SERMONS 37.4.