When he says, An apostle of Jesus Christ, it seems to be as if he had said, commanding officer of the praetorian guard of Augustus Caesar, master of the army for Tiberius Caesar. Just as secular judges are seen as more noble in accordance with the kings whom they serve and are assigned a name from the dignity by which they are elevated, so by establishing his great dignity among Christians as an apostle, he has designated himself with the title of apostle of Christ, that he might strike awe into his readers by the authority of the name. Thereby he indicates that all who believe in Christ are to be in submission to him.

The opening of every one of his letters is distinguished by the divine apostle with this address. At one time it is Paul a servant of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle.^[1] At another Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.^[2] At another Paul a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. And suiting his benediction to his salutation he deduces it from the same source and links the title of the Son with God the Father, saying grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.^[3]

I think Paul’s meaning is this: I was entrusted with God’s elect, not for any achievements of mine. It was not from my toils and labors that I received this dignity. It was wholly the effect of the goodness of the One who entrusted it to me. Yet that this grace may not seem without reason, . . . he adds: and the acknowledging of the truth that is after godliness. For it was for this acknowledgment that I was entrusted. It was of his grace that all this was entrusted to me. God was the author of all this.

Since the periods of time, therefore, come within the scope of our knowledge or speculations, we pass judgment upon them according to the understanding of human reasoning. In this way we believe ourselves justified in saying about anything: It has not been before it is born. The times that have already past always come before the origin of everything. Since in the things of God, that is, in the birth of God, everything is before the eternal time, then we cannot say of him: Before he was born. Nor can we say that he to whom the eternal promise was made before the eternal time has the hope of life everlasting, according to the statement of the apostle, which the God who does not lie has promised to him before the eternal time, nor can we say that at one time he had not been. We cannot assume that he whom we must confess as being before the eternal time has had his beginning after something.

I confess that I do not know what ages passed before the human race was created, yet I am perfectly sure that no one creature is coeternal with the Creator. Curiously enough, the apostle uses the expression tempora aeterna^[1] in reference not to the future but to the past. Thus he says: in the hope of eternal life which God, who does not lie, promised before the eternal times, he has in due times manifested, his word. He seems to be saying that time stretches backward eternally; yet time is not coeternal with God, since not only did God exist before eternal times but he promised eternal life which he manifested in his own time, that is, in due time. Now, what he promised was his Word. For the Word is eternal life. But how did he make this promise, since it was made to those who certainly did not exist before the eternal times? The meaning, then, must be that what was to take place in its own time was already predestined and determined in his eternity and in his coeternal Word.

Having then this hope [in the resurrection], let our souls be bound to him who is faithful in his promises and just in his judgments. He who has commanded us not to lie shall much more himself not lie; for nothing is impossible with God, except to lie.

But God can neither be in doubt, nor can he be deceived. For he only is in doubt who is ignorant of the future. One who has predicted one thing while something else has happened is deceived about the future. Not so with God. What is plainer than the fact that Scripture states the Father to have said one thing of the Son and that the same Scripture proves another thing to have taken place? The Son was beaten, he was mocked, was crucified and died. He suffered much worse things in the flesh than those servants^[1] who had been appointed before. Was the Father deceived? Was he ignorant of it? Was he unable to give help? The One who is the truth cannot make a mistake. It is written that the ever-truthful God cannot lie. How could he who knows all be ignorant? What could he not do, who could do all?

Through the preaching, that is, openly and with all boldness, for this is the meaning of preaching. For as a herald proclaims in the theater in the presence of all, so also we preach, adding nothing but declaring the things which we have heard. For the excellence of a herald consists in proclaiming to all what has really happened, not in adding or taking away anything.

If then it is a commandment, it is not at my disposal. I fulfill what is commanded. For of things to be done, some are in our power; others are not. For what he commands, that is not in our power; what he permits is left to our choice. . . . But commandments are not left to our choice, we must either perform them or be punished for not doing so.

After Paul had called Titus his own son and assumed the dignity of a father, hear how it is that he lessens and lowers that honor. He adds, After the common faith—that means: with respect to the faith I have no advantage over you. It is common to us both. You and I were together born by it. Why then does he call him son? Either wishing to express his affection for him, or his priority in the gospel, or to show that Titus had been enlightened by him. In a similar way he calls the faithful both children and brothers. They are brothers because they were born by the same faith. They are children, because it was by his hands.

For in children by nature, the true and the spurious are determined by the father who begot and the mother who bore them. But it is not so in this case, but it depends on the disposition. For one who was a true son may become spurious, and a spurious son may become a true one. For it is not the force of nature but the power of choice on which it depends, whence it is subject to changes in time.

Natural generation does not operate by the assent of the one who is born, whereas the birth that comes from faith requires such assent. Although the one who preaches may sincerely believe, he who hears, unless he takes to himself what he learns with faith, cannot be called the son of the preacher.

Here he is speaking of episkopoi [bishops]. . . . He did not wish the whole island to be entrusted to one elder, but that each one should have his own charge and care, for thus he would have less labor himself, and those under his rule would receive greater attention. The teacher would not then be required to hold the presidency of many churches but was left to be occupied with one only, and to bring that into order.

Paul emphasizes that correct teaching must accompany these ordinations. He mentions only presbyters, since theirs is the most general office.

Paul is speaking here to bishops who have the power of placing presbyters in the individual towns, so that they would hear clearly by what kind of rule correct church order should be maintained. . . . Originally the churches were governed by a common council of the presbyters. But after one of their number began to think that those whom he had baptized were his and not Christ’s, it was universally decreed that one of the presbyters should be elected to preside over the others, to whom the care of the whole church should pertain, that the seeds of schism might be alleviated.

And lest any should in a spirit of contention argue that there must then have been more bishops than one in a single church, there is the following passage which clearly proves a bishop and a presbyter to be the same. Writing to Titus the apostle says: For this cause I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are wanting, and appoint presbyters in every city, as I had instructed you: if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having believing children not accused of wantonness or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God. . . . When subsequently one was chosen to preside over the rest, this was done to remedy schism and to prevent each individual from rending the church of Christ by drawing it to himself.

The first freedom, then, is to be without crimes. And so when the apostle Paul chose either priests or deacons to be ordained, and when anyone is to be ordained to take charge of a church, he does not say, If anyone is without sin. For if he were to say this, every person would be rejected, no one would be ordained. But he says, if anyone is without crime,^[1] such as homicide, adultery and uncleanness of fornication, theft, fraud, sacrilege, and other things of this sort.

A bishop then must be blameless. The same thing that he says to Titus, if any be blameless. All the virtues are comprehended in this one word; thus he seems to require an im-possible perfection. For if every sin, every idle word, is deserving of blame, who is there in this world that is sinless and blameless? Still he who is chosen to be shepherd of the church must be one compared with whom other men are rightly regarded as but a flock of sheep.

Should we not rather recognize, from among the store of primitive scriptural precedents, those that correspond with the gospel order of things respecting discipline? By this means we convey to the new community the typical requirements of antiquity. In the old law I find the pruning knife applied to the license of repeated marriage. . . . Among us the prescript is more fully and more carefully laid down, that they who are chosen into the sacerdotal order must be men of one marriage. This rule is so rigidly observed that I remember some removed from their office for bigamy.

We have already said that a bishop, a presbyter and a deacon, when they are constituted, must be married but once, whether their wives are alive or whether they are dead. It is not lawful for them, if they are unmarried when they are ordained, to be married afterwards; or if they are married at that time, to marry a second time, but to be content with that wife which they had when they came to ordination.

I have put down the faults which I have been taught to avoid. But it is the apostle who is the teacher of virtues. He teaches a bishop . . . to be the husband of one wife. The bishop is thereby not excluded from marriage altogether . . . but rather encouraged by chastity in marriage to preserve the grace of his baptism. . . . There are many who argue that husband of one wife is said of marriage after baptism, on the ground that the fault which would constitute an impediment has been washed away in baptism. . . . But where there has been a second marriage, it is not dissolved. Sin is washed away in baptism, law is not.

Paul says this to stop the mouths of those heretics who condemned marriage. He shows that it is not an unholy thing in itself, but so far honorable that a married man might ascend the holy throne. And at the same time he wishes to reprove the wanton, not permitting their admission into this high office those who contracted a second marriage.

It is not that every monogamous man is better than every man who has been married twice. Rather, it is that the bishop must teach monogamy and, best of all, continence, by example. Indeed, some monogamous men are less continent than some who have been married twice and widowed.

We should observe what care he bestows upon children. For he who cannot be the instructor of his own children, how could he be the teacher of others? . . . For if he was unable to restrain them, it is a great proof of his weakness. And if he was unconcerned, his want of affection is much to be blamed. He then who neglects his own children, how shall he take care of others’?

Parents should not be faulted if, having taught their children well, these turn out badly later. Indeed, if anyone had taught his sons well, it was Isaac, who must be viewed as setting even Esau on a firm foundation. But Esau turned out to be profligate and worldly, when he sold his birthright for a single meal.^[1] Samuel also, though he invoked God and God heard him, and he obtained rain at the time of the winter harvest,^[2] had sons who declined into greed.

One that rules well his own house. That is, not by increasing riches, not by providing regal banquets, not by having a pile of finely wrought plates, not by slowly steaming pheasants so that the heat may reach the bones without melting the flesh upon them. No, he does this rather by first requiring of his own household the conduct which he has to inculcate in others.

Paul does not measure the virtue of fathers by the depravity of their children, nor did the misbehavior of his sons make Samuel unworthy of the priesthood; Paul wishes only to show the likely intentions of the father from what has been created in the sons.

Paul here shows that at this time elders and bishops were interchangeable and that some were put in charge of towns, some of whole regions. These latter became the bishops of later times.

Here it is clear that he calls presbyters bishops. In the same community it was the custom that there would be more presbyters than bishops.

The teacher is the physician of souls. But the physician does not strike. Rather he heals and restores any who might strike him.

He is not given to useless discord.

He does not raise a hand easily for striking.

That a priest must avoid covetousness even Samuel teaches when he proves before all the people that he has taken nothing from anyone.^[1] And the same lesson is taught by the poverty of the apostles who used to receive sustenance and refreshment from their brothers and to boast that they neither had nor wished to have anything besides food and clothing.^[2] What the epistle to Timothy calls covetousness Titus openly censures as the desire for filthy lucre.

When Paul describes the character of those who are called bishops and portrays what sort of a man a bishop ought to be, he instructs that he should be a teacher. He must be able also to refute the adversaries, that by his wisdom he may restrain those who speak vainly and deceive souls. He prefers for the episcopate a man once married rather than one twice married, and a man unblamable rather than blameable, and a sober man rather than one not of this character, and a prudent man rather than one imprudent, and an orderly man rather than one even slightly disorderly. In the same way he most wishes that the one who is to be selected as bishop should be a teacher and capable of refuting adversaries. ^[1] For the bishop, he says, must hold to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able to convict even the gainsayers. How, then, if he is inexperienced at speaking, as they say, will he be able to convict the objectors and to stop their mouths? If it is permissible to welcome such inexperience in the episcopacy, then why should any church leader bother to read books and study the Scriptures? This is all just a pretense and excuse and a pretext for carelessness and indolence. ^[1]

There is need not of pomp of words but of strong minds, of skill in the Scriptures and of powerful thoughts. Do you not see that Paul put to flight the whole world, that he was more powerful than Plato and all the rest?

To Titus he gives commandment that among a bishop’s other virtues [which he briefly describes] he should be careful to seek a knowledge of the Scriptures. A bishop, he says, must hold fast the faithful word as he has been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. In fact, want of education in a clergyman prevents him from doing good to any one but himself. Even if the virtue of his life may build up Christ’s church, he does it an injury as great by failing to resist those who are trying to pull it down.

If anyone says, however, that if teachers are made learned by the Holy Spirit then they do not need to be taught by educators what they should say or how they should say it, he should also say that we should not pray because the Lord says, for your Father knows what is needful for you, before you ask him.^[1] With such a false premise one might argue that the apostle Paul should not have taught Timothy and Titus what or how they should teach others. One upon whom is imposed the personage of a teacher in the church should have these three apostolic epistles before his eyes. Do we not read in the first epistle to Timothy . . . and in the second epistle is it not said . . . again, does he not say to Titus that a bishop should persevere in that faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convince the gainsayers?

Not fornication only, but even marriages make us unfit for ecclesiastical honors; for neither a bishop, nor a presbyter, nor a deacon, nor a widow is able to be twice married.

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.

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^[1] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?^[1] 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.^[2]

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?

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.^[1] 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?

But the apostles, who were about to say, If you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing,^[1] 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,^[2] 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.^[3] 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.

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.

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?^[1]

Things then are not clean or unclean from their own nature but from the disposition of him who partakes of them.

God has made all things pure. If anything is unclean, the use to which it is put makes it so.

Everything created by God is good; for those who do not know this, they become impure.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.^[1] But naturally, when the faithful are reducing their bodies to slavery, whatever is deducted from bodily pleasure is credited to spiritual health.

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.’

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.

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;^[1] and to the pure all things are pure.

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.

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.

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.^[1] But: Nobody can say: Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit;^[2] 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.

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.