SCRIPTURE
3I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine, 4and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith.
5But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. 6Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, 7desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. (1 Timothy 1:3-7, NRSV)
WHAT
I recently got interested in researching my family’s genealogy, on both my mother’s and father’s sides. All my grandparents, all my aunts and uncles, both my parents, and several cousins are now gone. Previously, they were the storehouse of genealogical knowledge I relied upon when I was younger. I was shocked to discover how easy genealogical research has become with modern computer-based tools and the internet. I was able to discover that on my mother’s side, I descend from Viking royalty and from European nobility. I am even a descendant of the brother of Charlemagne the Great and I had a relative on the battlefield with William the Conqueror! Most shocking, I was able to trace descent all the way back to an ancestor named Paolsa who lived around the time of the writing of the Gospel of John!
In becoming fascinated with my genealogy, am I somehow running afoul of Paul’s words to Timothy?
…instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine, and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith. (1 Timothy 1:3-4, NRSV)
No. This is a great example of where knowing the historical context of a Bible passage is so important … and helpful.
As we saw in our Background Commentaries, Paul had left Timothy behind in Ephesus while he traveled to the churches in Macedonia. He left Timothy to deal with a particularly disturbing situation in the now roughly 12 year-old church in Ephesus. Certain leaders of the church, probably elders, had begun teaching doctrines contrary to what Paul taught. In fact, what they taught eroded the very heart of the gospel as Paul saw it. Most concerning, these rogue leaders were attracting the attention of some of the house churches of which the church in Ephesus consisted. If a body’s leadership goes off the rails, it doesn’t portend a solid future for that body! So Timothy had a critically important task at hand: get these leaders back on the rails, or at the very least, minimize the damage they are doing to the church.
From what Paul says throughout the Pastorals, a solid case can be made that these rogue leaders of the Ephesian church were teaching an early form of what became known as Gnosticism. We looked earlier at a brief summary of what Gnosticism believed and taught. But William Barclay helps us understand it better.
Professor Barclay notes that Gnosticism began with the problem of the origin of sin and suffering, something many of us struggle with. “If God is altogether good, then he could not have created sin and suffering, right? Since we cannot deny they do exist in the world, how then did they get there?” The Gnostic answer was that creation did not take place ex nihilo, or creation out of nothing, which is the traditional Christian doctrine. Instead, before time began they said, matter existed. The Gnostics believed that this matter was essentially imperfect and evil; and out of this essentially evil matter the world was created. Thus sin and suffering were baked in at the creation.
If that is true, that raises another problem. “If matter is essentially evil and God is essentially good, matter could not have been touched by God, right?” Thus began another set of speculations.
The Gnostic answer to this dilemma was that God put out what they called “an emanation,” which was a divine power. This emanation put out another emanation, and the second emanation put out a third emanation, and so on and so on. Finally, there came into being an emanation so distant, so far removed from God, that it could touch evil matter. Thus it was not God but this emanation who created the world.
The Gnostics went even further with their myths and speculations. They held that each successive emanation knew less about God, so that there came a stage in the series of emanations when the emanations were completely ignorant of God. Even more, there was a final stage when the emanations were not only ignorant of God but actively hostile to him. “So they arrived at the thought,” says Professor Barclay, “that the god who created the world was quite ignorant of and hostile to the true God. Later on, they went even further and identified the God of the Old Testament with this creating god, and the God of the New Testament with the true God.”
So we can see that Gnosticism was full of myths and speculations, because unlike Judaism and Christianity, there was no “holy book” per se. Only these speculative teachings trying to work out theological problems, but without any guardrails. Without these guardrails, they concluded that the God of the Old Testament is not the God and Father of Jesus. Dangerous stuff now.
Even worse, this Gnostic speculation about the nature of matter being evil led to two opposite consequences. “If matter is evil, and the body is matter, we ought to subjugate it as much as possible, right?” So there developed an extremely vigorous ascetism, particularly regarding sex and eating. Some Gnostics taught complete abstinence and rigorous dieting. We’ll see Paul reacting against these ideas later in this letter. The other reaction was exactly the opposite. “If matter is evil, and the body is matter, then it doesn’t matter what we do with it. We can’t make it any worse, right? Besides, we’ll soon be leaving our evil bodies behind, and the sooner the better.” Paul will also react against this later.
But what about the genealogies that Paul mentions? The Gnostics provided each one of the countless emanations with a complete biography. “And so,” says Professor Barclay:
“…they built up an elaborate mythology of gods and emanations, each with a story, a biography and a genealogy. There is no doubt that the ancient world was riddled with that kind of thinking, and that it even entered the Church itself. It made Jesus merely the greatest of the emanations, the divine power closest to God. It placed him as the highest link in the endless chain between God and human beings.”
So what Paul wrote to Timothy had nothing whatsoever to say to me about not researching my family history. But it has everything to say to me – and you – about endless speculation and Christian theology without guardrails … and action!
Paul goes on to say:
But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. (1 Timothy 1:5, NRSV)
The aim of all Christian teaching and preaching is to build people up in love. And the word for love here is the Greek word agape. Ancient Greek has four words for love. (Besides agape, there is eros, phileo, and storge.) Agape is the Greek word for the love which is self-giving, self-sacrificing love, not the love that asks, “What’s in this for me?” Agape love is not 50/50 love, it is 100/0 love. While the New Testament occasionally uses phileo, which is brotherly love, to describe love between people in the Church, it always uses agape to describe God’s love, and Jesus’ love, for us.
One can argue that Christian theology also involves speculation. Christianity has lots of obscure doctrines it may seem. But unlike the Gnostics, Christian theology has the guardrails of scripture and tradition (and reason and experience in the Wesleyan tradition). And it aims to produce deeper love – deeper love of God, and richer love of neighbor. If it does not, it is as useless as Gnostic speculations.
I learned early on in my preaching ministry that a good sermon ought to answer three key questions for the listeners:
· What does this passage say?
· Why should I care?
· What should I do with it?
No matter how good the preacher’s exposition of the biblical text, no matter how powerful his or her illustrations and stories, no matter how captivating the presentation, the sermon must tell the listener what application the message has, what they can do with what they have heard to build love for God and neighbor in their faith life. As Professor Barclay warns, “There is always a danger of heresy when we fall in love with words and forget deeds, for deeds are the acid test by which every argument must be tested.” (Emphasis mine)
Notice that Paul says this agape love comes from three things: a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith.
N. T. Wright notes that Paul’s goal is a wholly changed life. He writes:
“Paul is anxious that everyone who professes Christian faith should allow the gospel to transform the whole of their lives, so that the outward signs of the faith express a living reality that comes from the deepest parts of the personality. Second, he is also anxious that each Christian, and especially every teacher of the faith, should know how to build up the community in mutual love and support, rather than, by the wrong sort of teaching or behavior, tearing it apart. We know even today, with two thousand years of history, how easily things can seem to fall apart.” (Emphasis mine)
As Paul’s opening greeting insists, they (and we) do not face these problems alone. “Paul’s apostleship is rooted in God’s command to him,” says Bishop Wright, “and he assures Timothy of God’s grace, mercy and peace.”
Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. (1 Timothy 1:6-7, NRSV)
Some of the errant elders, perhaps themselves converts from Judaism, still insist the law of Moses has a part to play, and they want to be the ones to teach that part. But Paul says they are the blind leading the blind. They do not understand what they are saying about the law and salvation (which Paul himself makes clear throughout his letters, especially Galatians). Paul will expand on the right view of the law in the next section.
APPLY
“There is always a danger of heresy when we fall in love with words and forget deeds, for deeds are the acid test by which every argument must be tested.”
PRAYER
Lord, you know that I love to write and to teach and preach. I love to think theologically and help others do the same. But keep me from letting my theology become mere speculation without action. In Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. By warning Timothy about “endless genealogies,” is Paul urging us not to research our own genealogies or we run the risk of running afoul of the New Testament? Why or why not?
2. Gnostics taught that the Creator God of the Hebrew Bible was not the true God of the universe. In fact, he was an evil and lesser god. How did they reach this conclusion? How would such a belief affect a church if that teaching infiltrated that church?
3. In what way was Gnosticism full of “myths and genealogies”?
4. According to Paul in this passage what is the goal of all Christian teaching and preaching? William Barclay warns, “There is always a danger of heresy when we fall in love with words and forget deeds, for deeds are the acid test by which every argument must be tested.” What did he mean?
How can you apply these insights in your life?