Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/800

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TIMOTHY

aim of the writer of the Epistle appears to be to pre- vent widows from becoming a burden on the Church, and to point out the duty of their relatives to support them. Thirty years before the death of St. Paul the Seven were appointed to look after the poor widows of Jerusalem; and it is absurd to suppose that during all that time no regulations were made as to who should receive support, and who not. Some few of those who were "widows indeed" probably held offices like deaconesses, of whom we read in Rom., xvi, 1, and who were doubtless under the direction of the Apostles and other ecclesiastical authorities. The supposition that nothing was "done in order", but that every- thing was allowed to go at random, has no support in St. Paul's earlier Epistles.

(2) "The curious antipathy of the writer to sec- ond marriages on the part of the presbyters, episcopi, diaconi, and widows (xW^O is quite un-Pauline, but corresponds to the more general feeling prevalent in the second century throughout the churches." — That state of feeling throughout the churches in the second century should make an objector pause. Its Apostolic origin is its best e.xplanation, and there is nothing whatsoever to show that it was un-Pauline. It was St. Paul who wrote as follows at a much earher date (I Cor., vii) : "I would that all men were even as myself: . . . But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I . . . But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is without a wife, is soheitous for the things of the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided. . . He that giveth his virgin in marriage, doth well; and he that giveth her not, doth better." It would be rash to suppose that St. Paul, who wrote thus to the Corinthians, in general, could not shortly before his death require that those who were to take the place of the Apostles and hold the highest offices in the Church should not have been married more than once.

(3) "The distinctive element, however, i. e. the prominence assigned to Timothy and Titus, is intelli- gible only on the supposition that the author had specially in view the vilterior end of vindicating the legitimate evangelic succession of contemporary epis- copi and other office-bearers in provinces where this was liable for various reasons to be challenged" (in the beginning of the second century). — Thousands have read these Epistles, from their very first ap- pearance until now, without such a conclusion sug- gesting itself to them. If this objection means any- thing it means that the Apostles could not assign prominent positions to any of their disciples or dele- gates; which runs counter to what we road of Tim- othy and Titus in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul.

(4) "The prominence given to 'teaching' qualities shows that one danger of the contemporarj' churches lay largely in the vagaries of unauthorized teachers (Did., xvi). The author's cure is simple: Better let the episcopus himself teach! Better let those in au- thority be responsible for the instruction of the or- dinary members! Evidently teaching was not orig- inally or usually (I Tim., v, 17) a function of pres- byters, but abuses had led by this time, as the Didache proves, to a need of combining teaching with or- ganised church authority." — ^\■hat a lot of meaning is read into half a dozen words of these Epistles! In the very first Epistle that St. Paul wrote we read: "And we beseech you, brethren, to know them who labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you : That you est eem them more abundantly in charity, for their work's sake" (I Thess., v, 12-13). The capacity for teaching was a gift, probably a natu- ral one working through God's grace for the good of the Church (see Hierarchy of the Early Church), and there was no reason why the Apostle, who at-

tached so much importance to teaching when speak- ing of his own work, should not require that those who were selected to rule the Churches and carry on his work should be endowed with the aptitude for teaching. In Eph., iv, 11, we find that the same per- sons were "pastors and doctors". The writer who makes this objection does not admit that real bishops and priests existed in Apostohc times; so this is what his assertion imphes: When the Apostles died there were no bishops and priests. After some time they originated somewhere and somehow, and spread all over the Church. During a considerable time they did not teach. Then they began to monopohze teaching, and the practice spread everywhere, and finally the Pastorals were written to confirm this state of affairs, which had no sanction from the Apostles, though these bishops thought otherwise. And all this happened before St. Ignatius WTote, in a short period of thirty or forty years, a length of time sparmed say from 1870 or 1880 till 1912 — a rapid state of development indeed, which has no docu- mentary evidence to support it, and which must ha\-e taken place, for the most part, under the very eyes of the Apostles St. John and St. Phihp, and of Timothy, Titus, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and other disci- ples of the Apostles. The early Christians had more respect for Apostohc traditions than that.

(5) "Baptism is almost a sacrament of salvation (Tit., iii, 5)." — It is quite a sacrament of salvation, not only here, but in the teaching of Christ, in the Acts, and in St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, I Co- rintiiians, Galatians, and Colossians, and in I Pet., iii, 21.

(6) "Faith is tending to become more than ever fides qiuT credilur.' ' — But it appears as fides qua credi- tur in I Tim., i, 2, 4, 5, 14; ii, 7, 15; iii, 9, 13; iv, 6, 12; vi, 11; II Tim., i, 5, 13; ii, 18, 22; iii, 10, 15; Tit., ii, 2, etc., while it is used in the eaxher Epistles not only subjectively but also objectively. See irl(rm in Preuschen. "Handwortcrbuch zum griech. N. Testa- ment." Faith is fides quce credilur only nine times out of thirty-three passages where irtoxis occurs in the Pastorals.

(7) "The church to this unmystical author is no longer the bride or ihc body of Christ but God's build- ing or rather familia dei, quite in the neo-Catholic style." There are several genuine Epistles of St. Paul in which the Church is neither called the body nor the bride of Christ, and in calling it a building he was only following his Master who said: "On this rock I will build my Church. " The idea, of a spiritual building is quite Pauline. "For we know, if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven" (II Cor., v, 1); "And I have so preached this gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation" (Rom., XV, 20); "For if I build up again the things which I have destroyed, I make myself a prevari- cator" (Gal., ii, 18); "Let us work good to all men. but especially to those who are of the household of the faith" (Gal., vi, 10); "You are fellow citizens with the saints, atid the domestics of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner .stone: in whom' all the building, being framed together, growcth up into a holy temple in the Lord. In whom you also iire built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit" (Eph., ii, 19-22); "You are God's building. Ac- cording to the grace of God that is given to me as a wise architect, I have laid the foundation. . . . Know you not, that you are the temple of God. and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (I Cor, iii, 9-17; compare I Pet., ii, 5; "Be you also as living stones built up, a spiritual house"; and I Pet., iv. 17: "For the time is, that judgment sho\ild begin at the house of God. And if first at us, what shall