What is Paul actually saying here? What is Paul’s purpose
for writing?
As I urged you when I
was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain
persons not to teach any different
doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths
and endless genealogies [“succession lists”?], which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God
that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart
and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from
these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the
law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about
which they make confident assertions ( 1 Tim 1:3-7).
Paul’s whole goal in his instruction to Timothy is to
clarify the distinction between those teachers who teach what is true, and
those teachers who teach what is false.
What’s false?
·
That which is different from what Paul teaches
is false
·
That which is based on myths is false
·
That which is based on “endless genealogies” is
false
·
That which promotes speculations is false.
What’s true? “[T]he
stewardship from God that is by faith”. The goal of this instruction is to
produce love that:
· Issues from a pure heart
· Issues from a good conscience
· Issues from a sincere faith
All of this is the background for what Paul is talking about
when he talks about “how one ought to behave in the household of God”.
The phrase that the ESV translates as “the stewardship from
God”, Towner translates as “God’s work”. This is the Greek phrase οἰκονομίαν
θεοῦ (oikonomia theou). Philip Towner
relies on the work of both I Howard Marshall (with whom he co-authored the
standard ICC commentary on the Pastoral Epistles), and L.T. Johnson, whom we’ve
discussed in the last post. Towner
continues:
Johnson and Marshall have suggested
that the key to interpreting oikonomia
here is in the household terminology, which Paul employed elsewhere and which
is thematic in 1 Timothy. To begin with, oikonomia
refers to the organization and ordering of a household or the responsibility of
management that maintains the order. This is how Paul describes his mission to
the Gentiles in 1 Cor 9:17; that is, he understands himself to have been
entrusted with the management of a household (presumably God’s ; see 1 Cor
4:1). The description of his ministry in Col 1:25 follows the same line: “I
have become a minister according to the responsibility to manage God’s house [oikonomia tou theou] that was given to
me.” Within 1 Timothy household language links several things together into a
complete pattern. Leaving 1:4 aside for the moment, in 3:15 the church is
depicted as “God’s house” (oikos theou;
cf. 2 Tim 20-21), and by derivation overseers are to understand their task in
terms of stewardship (see 3:4-5; in Titus 1:7 the term oikonomos theou [“God’s steward”] is used).
This brings us back to the phrase oikonomia theou in 1:4. Surely it is
correct to define the concept within the sphere of household management and
duties from which the language emerged (Towner 112-113).
Towner here discusses slight differences in approach between
Marshall and Johnson and continues, “it seems best in this case to increase the
emphasis on the pattern and order that is to be implemented”
That is, the first thought is not
of administration as ministry and responsibility, but of the shape of things
and the ordering of life to be achieved to be achieved through the various
activities of ministry and service.
The attached comment about faith [stewardship
that is τὴν ἐν πίστει, “by faith”] adds a crucial condition to the understanding
of the divine pattern. … it says something more about “the way God has
organized life.” To be “in faith” is to be in the sphere of authentic faith …,
and its attachment to the preceding phrase here will encompass the apprehension
of God’s ways and patterns as well as actions taken to implement them. The
point Paul makes, however, is polemical. It is genuine faith, namely that faith
associated with his gospel, which has access to correct understanding of the
will of God. The fundamental condition for understanding the way God has
organized life (his oikonomia), and
for carrying out the activities in the community and world that bring them into
alignment, is adherence to genuine faith. As he is about to say, it is Timothy’s
task of teaching what is true and correcting that is false that will give
insight into the oikonomia of God.
Myths, “endless
genealogies”, and speculations
“To teach what is false” is a very bad thing, according to
Paul. Paul’s main concern at this point is “less with the teaching style of methods
of the opponents (i.e., “some sort of speculation” and perhaps “argumentation”
are not horribly bad). Here Paul is “mainly” concerned with “the substandard
content that is being taught” (108-109). Paul deprecates the message of the
opponents as “a counterfeit”.
The term “myth” has a long history
of use prior to the NT, through which it comes to mean a fable or far-fetched
story, often about the gods; most importantly, it can stand as a category
meaning essentially falsehood. Here the term is in the plural, as throughout
the NT, which contains a negative evaluative assessment in itself (namely,
spurious, contradictory, human) in contrast to the divinely imbued singularity
and unity of the gospel. Paul employs the plural term to label the teaching
emphatically as falsehood. But the history of the term’s use goes another step:
Plato, for one, used the term to denounce certain stories not simply as false
but as deceptive, in that they are told so as to lend credence to immoral behavior
or practices by linking them to ancient stories about the gods. The apparent
link between certain extreme ascetic aspects of behavior and the false doctrines
in Ephesus (1 Tim 4:1-3; …) suggests that Paul drew on this nuance of the term’s
polemical use. Thus rather than identifying the content of the teaching, the
term “myths” evaluates it as false and pernicious.
So false teachings are not just neutral, as in the category
of “fables or far-fetched” stories, but they are also “pernicious” – false teachings
do actual harm.
“Genealogies,” however, with the
help of other contextual clues, takes us in the direction of actual content. This
term also has a long history of use, describing lists of family names (family
trees), and the process of constructing them, that served various purposes. Within
Judaism, genealogies played the key role of establishing a person’s bloodline
and link to a particular family and tribe: rights by birth determined in this
way allowed, for example, entrance into the priesthood. As its use in Philo
demonstrates, the term could refer to the accounts of people in the early parts
of Genesis. This usage especially opens up the possibility that Paul is
identifying the practice among the false teachers of speculating on stories
about the early biblical characters as well as actual genealogical lists such
as occur there or in other more speculative noncanonical Jewish writings (e.g., Jubilees). Speculation fitting roughly into this category was known
to have been practiced in Jewish communities, and the reference in 1:7 to the
opponents aspirations to be “teachers of the law” helps to locate the sources
of this practice within the repository of Jewish literature (cf. Titus 1:14 and
the reference to “Jewish myths”).
The adjective “endless” attached to
“genealogies” might have been a literal reference to long-drawn-out
speculations, or may be meant in the sense of “pointless,” “contradictory,” or “inconclusive.”
Its force is clearly polemical, meant to discredit the protracted arguments
that go nowhere.
While we can’t know the actual content of these false
teachings,
… it is clear Paul regarded this
teaching as deceptive and dangerous. Quite possibly the extreme practices
alluded to in 4:1-3 [through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are
seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods…] were grounded
in this speculative interpretation of Israel’s early history, all of which was
being served up in the guise of authoritative doctrine (1:7).
In the next phrase, Paul supplies
an important reason why Timothy is to prohibit this false teaching. It consists
of a contrast between the wheel-spinning futility of the deceptive speculation
and the direction of God’s mission. The first half of this reason is clear: the
obsession with myths and genealogies “promotes controversial speculations.” The
verb is neutral and also governs the positive side of the contrast to come. But
the term that follows, “controversial [or useless] speculations,” is one of
several that belongs to Paul’s polemical repertoire in these three letters to
coworkers drawn on to discredit the opposing doctrines and behavior as being
everything from foolish nonsense to disputatious and pernicious. It is clearly
these latter characteristics and their danger to the church that most concern
Paul as he writes (6:3-4, Towner pgs 111-112).
From Paul’s point of view, the difference between teaching
that fosters οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ [God’s work, the stewardship from God] and false teaching which is
pernicious and damaging couldn’t be more clear. And this difference that Paul sees
does not have anything to do with “who” is doing the teaching. It is the content
of the teaching itself that makes it true or false, right or wrong. Timothy can and should recognize it.
The goals of this stewardship are to produce love that issues from a pure heart and a
good conscience and a sincere faith. That is, the stewards are supposed to
foster these characteristics in believers. I’ll get into this next time.
