Talk:1 Tim 1:1-5

Edifying (v. 4)

I see that following the first link for "oikodomia" suggests that the word is frequently confounded with "oikonomia", but which experts suggest the confounding has occurred here and what might that mean? Also, what kind of evidence suggests the confounding. I see something of a suggestion of what the difference might imply, but it doesn't seem to clarify anything for me. (I'm not sure what the suggestion is suggesting.)

Are we perhaps suggesting that "oikonomia" (something like "management") is meant to kind of reflect back against "minister" contrasting God's way of teaching/learning against the ways that "minister questions" which then contrasts faith or the way of faith with the fables and genealogies? (Kind of a little counterpoint chiasm of sorts.)

I'm also wondering how we determine what "most scholars" agree on. Perhaps it is really a firmly established idea, but then again, perhaps it would be better to say "some scholars have suggested that ...".

In any case, the suggestion is interesting, but it leaves me wondering what it could mean.

--Seanmcox 04:02, 4 Dec 2006 (UTC)

I think okonomia is in the manuscripts that are nowdays considered the earliest and most reliable, whereas okodomia is in some manuscripts, but these manuscripts are nowdays considered less reliable. Here the NET gives a brief summary (and chooses "redemptive plan" as a translation, with an interesting explanation). I don't think the difference is all that significant though I think okonomia has a stronger connotation of "getting things done" (management, though this same emphasis could be argued for in the building connotation of okodomia...). My take is that there is Paul is emphasizing the practical nature of the pastoral call, which is more directly related to love and service (v. 5) than doctrinal points that are not directly concerned with love and service. So the contrast is between abstract theology which engenders endless questions vs. teachings that engender love, a pure heart, and faith (the obedience/obeying aspect of faith). --RobertC 16:25, 4 Dec 2006 (UTC)

The Nestle-Aland 26th (most recent) edition of the Greek text simply puts oikonomia without even a footnote suggesting the alternate reading of oikodomia. In other words, there are very few manuscripts that support the latter reading, and most scholars don't even pay attention to that possibility at all. I think the images are substantially different: one suggests building a house of faith, the other managing one. Timothy is not being instructed to edify (build) anything, but to manage affairs well. This should especially be read in light of the historical circumstances: all of Asia is "turning away" from the gospel at the time, and Timothy is just barely hanging on. What seems to be taking place of such management is the introduction of mythoi and genealogiai aperantoi, myths (in the classic sense) and genealogies without end. I think there is something a general consensus that these two things are references to gnostic teachings. The myths are the Platonic retellings of the creation, etc., and the genealogies are the lists of angels in a series of cosmogonies that are supposedly to be known for entrance into heaven (derived, most likely, from Egyptian sources, though one can see a connection with the temple: certain knowledge must be had to pass through the series of veils into the presence of God). Paul's point seems to be that Timothy's task is to get about the work of maintaining the faith, without getting into the temple stuff--and especially the temple stuff as it is reinterpreted through Egyptian mystery religions. In other words, there is something here like a command to keep away from Nibley in pastoral work. It would be a stretch, I imagine, to try to read into this a commandment to stay away from Nibley (President Hinckley even approved his collected works in General Conference!), but rather to make sure that this is not a pastoral approach. --Joe Spencer 17:05, 5 Dec 2006 (UTC)

QUICK NOTE: Nestle Aland's most recent edition is 27 and it does have the variant reading of oikodomian in the apparatus.

Paul's comments here, however, are not directed at Timothy, but rather, he is instructed to relay them to others ("that thou mightest charge some that ...", v. 3) so I think the idea that Paul is telling Timothy to pay more attention to his pastoral work and less attention to the fables is not really supported by the text, but rather he is telling Timothy to warn the members to avoid these things for clearly some of them, particularly some of the teachers (which may not really narrow things down at all) were getting caught up in these things. Paul seems to be suggesting that the purpose of the teachers' teaching is charity, or more likely, that since the ends of the law and doctrine is faith, hope, and charity, (v. 5) then the law is to be properly interpreted with a focus on this virtue. However, just like today when many teachers find it tedious to drone on endlessly about faith, hope, and charity, (or some other repetative theme) some of Timothy's members turned to "vain janglings" (v. 6); Pretty sounding, or attractive ideas that had no practical point or purpose except to catch people's interest and perhaps to "minister questions," doubts, and confusion (v. 4). (ie. speculative nonsense) In any case, the context and grammar of the passage doesn't apply these suggestions to Timothy, who I suspect was probably intelligent enough to avoid such things on his own. --Seanmcox 18:32, 5 Dec 2006 (UTC)

Sean, you are right on two accounts. I hadn't looked at verse 3 at all really, and you're right that Timothy was not the person Paul was trying to put on the right path. But you are also right to point to the "teachers" implied in verse 3, which, as I think you suggest, amounts to the same point.

As for moving on to verse 5, I think you are right to do so. I think that verse 5 is actually what calls the growing "general consensus" about verse 4 into question, and returns it to the earlier interpretations. Traditionally, the endless genealogies were understood as Judaistic genealogies meant to prove that one had a part in the covenant (under the Law), which called the Pauline universalization of the covenant into question. The "minister questions" business was therefore understood as a reference to something like the Rabbi's approach to the OT. I think there is quite a bit of merit in such a reading, perhaps more than the gnostically focused reading. As classic a commentary as Adam Clarke's, in fact, suggests both possibilities, rejects the gnostic reading, and then suggests that the "minister questions" business is really a question of argument about whether or not there is any reason to trust someone's reconstructed Israelite genealogy. This seems a decent reading when Paul's argument is precisely that lineage no longer matters (as is extensively argued in Romans, for example).

If we move on to verse 5 to take up verse 4 through it, we need indeed to look at charity, but a lot of work remains to be done on what Paul means by charity or agape (it is certainly not one's actions of pity or generosity, as a simple glance at a concordance shows). This is especially important because of what Paul is saying about the Law, meaning, most likely, the Law of Moses. The whole of this must probably be interpreted from within a broadly Pauline framework, where there are something like two options: the Law or grace, and if one chooses the former, then every word one speaks is vain jangling, or what Paul calls elsewhere--even if it is tongues or prophecy--sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. But grace (charis) opens onto the gifts of the Spirit (charismata), which Spirit searches all the deep things of God. Paul's argument, in the end, probably has less to do here with two different subject matters as it does with two spirits in which to approach any subject. Perhaps this little passage (verses 3-7) in the end suggests precisely that "speculation" is a question of the Spirit and not of subject matter at all, that is, is a question of whether one is worshipping God (iconism?) or reducing God (idolatry?). I imagine that such a way of thinking about this question becomes rather difficult to work out systematically in terms of policy for a wiki. --Joe Spencer 21:12, 5 Dec 2006 (UTC)

I think clearly you are right about charity. I don't know that the scriptures ever use the more narrow modern definition of charity, so I think it goes without saying that what Paul is referring to is the charity we discuss when we discuss faith, hope, and charity. I also think that you are right that Paul's admonition was meant to suggest that the teachings and study primarily needed to be guided by the proper spirit and that such study done in the proper spirit would of necessity not be done in "vain". However, I think Paul clearly also meant to have the members avoid obsessing over certain subject matter and that he means to say that their tendency to do so is caused by their having lost the spirit. (Having eschewed "faith" and "charity" for philosophical delights.) Now when I mentioned the "teachers", I was actually looking ahead to verse 7. (I should have put that point into context as I did in other places with other points.) I don't think Paul was necessarily talking about people with any specific or general administrative calling. Since we are all teachers in the church, I meant to suggest that the admonition from Paul to be given through Timothy was applicable for all the members in Timothy's stewardship. Perhaps, as verse three might suggest, there were "some" particular members who needed this admonition more than others. --Seanmcox 21:57, 5 Dec 2006 (UTC)

I think we are agreeing, then, on all but one point: whether the difference between studying in the Spirit is a question of subject matter or not. Let me explain, in terms of the present passage, why I don't think this is so much a question of what as it is of how. In verse 5, Paul underscores the position of those opposed to him as pertaining to "the law," apparently (as it is everywhere else in Paul) the Law of Moses. What Paul sees as so wrong with the Law is that it cannot deliver because it imposes an impossible barrier between the individual and Christ (a barrier Paul almost universally calls "works"). If one must traverse the details of the Law in an attempt to get to the Messiah (who represents the possibility of a perfect order in full justice, etc.), one will inevitably fail because, as Paul argues over and over, the Law is impossible to live fully. Or rather, it is impossible to live the Law as law, as a legalistic system. In place of approaching the Law as a legalistic system (a series of obediences that must be rendered in order to "earn" salvation), Paul suggests that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ open the possibility of understanding the Law in another way: Paul does not offer an alternative to the Law, but an alternative way of understanding the Law. Paul understands the Law to be fulfilled by faith, hope, and charity: if one responds to Christ as a personal manifestation of God (that is, if one recognizes in the incarnation that God is, after all, a person), thus responding to God personally, in the personal relations of faith, hope, and charity (yes, charity for God), then one has fulfilled the whole of the Law. In other words, the "end of the Law is charity," the point of having the Law in the first place was to develop in the Israelites a true justice: they were, through the Law, to come to have faith, hope, and charity. But they looked beyond the mark, which means precisely that they understood the Law to be so many commandments rather than so many types, so many embodiments, so many incarnations. What Paul ultimately suggests, then, is that there is another how, another approach to the Law than the one the Jews have traditionally maintained (or at least, that they have under Pharisaic influence: there seem to have been others who understood it rightly, and they became Christians).

Now, if Paul is ultimately trying to point out another how, does the what not matter, then? Isn't the what still going to be the Old Testament? Yes, certainly, but its interpretive possibilities are suddenly multiplied infinitely. That's why Paul can constantly offer terrible interpretations of the Old Testament. It's also why Joseph Smith could, why Nephi could, etc. The prophets constantly undo the simplest, most literaly, or most honest way of reading a verse. But the point is precisely that it is to be read in the Spirit, and the "spiritual" reading is far more important than the "literal" reading (the "spirit" gives life while the "letter," the "literal," kills). But lest this be understood to mean that one is supposed to know already and so simply to destroy the meaning of the scriptures for one's own purpose: what it means to read the scriptures in the Spirit is to read the scriptures as an incarnation or embodiment of God, to regard them as the "face" of God, as it were. One reads them as an act of worship. If study is not a sort of prayer, it cannot be done in the Spirit (the "Trinity" is instructive here: as a son before the Father, one is filled with the Spirit). This Spirit searches all the deep things of God, goes "deeper and deeper into the mysteries of God," as Joseph put it. It will "reveal things which have never been revealed since the foundation of the world" as it says in Alma. "Well might man put forth his puny arm," etc. The point is simple: in the Spirit, the foreign appears, the other, the radically new, wherever one studies.

Now, back to the present passage. What were the wayward teachers doing? Apparently, they were spending their time in the scriptures trying to prove that the Law has some prescriptive interference to accomplish. Their "ministering questions" seems to have been something like: "Maybe you have not been delivered from your sins, because this verse says you must be circumcised, etc." In other words, they were calling into question the fact that we are saved by grace and not by works. We are, after all, saved by grace, and then the works begin. If we fall from grace, we have to go about repentance to return to a state of grace, and then again we get to the works. Scripture is--this is really the thrust of my position on these matters--something that can only be understood at all by those who have been "saved" or "delivered" or however one wants to put it (so that one feels comfortable with the distance between what is here being discussed and what is preached in the South): the scriptures are gibberish or nonsense to those without the Spirit, and to those within the Spirit, a verse will mean whatever the Spirit dictates for the moment. There is no "absolute" interpretation of any given scripture, only the Spirit can direct what it means for now. That last point is stated somewhat radically, but I hope it is understood in the context of the rest of these comments: the point is quite simple, that the Spirit wandereth wheresoever it listeth, and we have no idea where it is headed or where it has come from. We can only feel it and let it blow us about as well.

Thanks for this discussion, Sean. It has helped me to think through a number of questions. I hope you enjoy such discussions as much as I do. I hope, too, that you sense the spirit of my words: we stand, as I see things, side by side, trying to describe what we see in the heavens as they are opened a little bit at a time, rather than face to face, trying to talk about what we are not focused on. What a wonder, this gospel. A marvelous work and a wonder. --Joe Spencer 15:21, 6 Dec 2006 (UTC)

I think I can say I agree with that. With the spirit, our understanding and interpretation of potentially problematic passages and even material will be guided safely. (A guide through troublesome waters.) I certainly think that you are right in suggesting that this is something Paul was talking about.--Seanmcox 20:02, 7 Dec 2006 (UTC)

I just made an update, which I think, based on our discussion, reflects something of a consensus view once the context is taken into consideration. I hope it is to everyone's liking.--Seanmcox 20:10, 7 Dec 2006 (UTC)

What's the false teaching in 1 Tim?

I got the Anchor Bible volume from the library today and read this quote on the topic:

If we put together the pieces presented only by 1 Timothy and then peel away the characterizations that probably derive from conventional slander, we can posit an opposition that represents an intellectual elite that demands performance measured by law and asceticism rather than by grace and conscience. (p. 146)

I'm still wondering what is essentially wrong with the false teachings being addressed in this letter, whether it is a misunderstanding of grace and works (as Joe seems more inclined to read it) or a misunderstanding of love as the fulfillment of the law (as I'm inclined to read it; I'm not sure these readings will turn out to be that different, but this is what I want to explore more here.... --RobertC 23:36, 19 Dec 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I sense the distance you seem to sense at all, Robert. Charity and charis (grace), law and works: what's the problem? I'm inclined to go into a lengthy explanation of things here, but I think I ought to wait to hear what exactly you are thinking here. --Joe Spencer 14:25, 20 Dec 2006 (UTC)

Joe, the difference I was (and still am, but less so and in a slightly different way now) wondering about was as follows: Is the false teaching false because (a) it does not focus on benevolent works toward others or (b) it does not focus on the inner desires of those following the law? Now I think that a problem with (a) is that it is reading too much service into the word charity of v. 5. The the point I was trying to make in proposing (a) is that although charity comes from inner desires that are pure ("out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned" in v. 5), it is not just self-focused but must be focused on others. With this in mind, the problem with the list of vices given a little later is that they harm rather than benefit others. So, (a) emphasizes how the false teaching is false because it takes a view of law that does not focus on the benefit that following the law affords to others. This is a slightly different emphasis than saying that the purpose of the law is to help us to purify our own desires so that we love others (cf. Kiergegaard's "Egocentric Service of the Good", chapter 6 in Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing).

Although I now think that (b) is the more natural reading, I still think (a) underscores an interesting dynamic at play here: purifying your heart cannot be an egocentric task, it must be focused on others. I also think this raises an interesting point about the parallelism between faith and charity in this passage: both involve a purifying of inner desires and both are other-focused (faith focusing on one's relationship with God, charity focusing on one's relationship with one's neighbors).

I think I'll have more to say on this later. --RobertC 15:36, 27 Dec 2006 (UTC)