Post author Christopher R. Hutson is Professor of Bible, Missions, and
Ministry at Abilene Christian University and serves on the Board of Equity
for Women in the Church.
Paul’s letter to Titus contains instructions on the proper behavior of elder men, elder women, younger women, younger men, and enslaved persons (Titus 2:1–10), followed by a Christological warrant framed as a manifestation of the “grace of God” (Titus 2:11-15). Many modern interpreters have understood this letter to be embracing Roman social values as normative for Christianity, but that common reading does not take sufficient account of the Christological orientation of the letter.
Below is an excerpt from Christopher R. Hutson, First and Second Timothy and Titus (Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), pp. 237–238. Used by permission. Baker Academic is a division of Baker Publishing Group, http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com.
Ethics and Eschatology.
It is important to distinguish Pastoral Paul’s social agenda and his theological orientation, discerning which is the cart and which the horse. The social agenda laid out in 2:1-10 includes a well-ordered, patriarchal household with women, youths and enslaved in proper subordination to free, male householders. The purpose of maintaining this social structure is defensive, “so that the word of God might not be slandered” (2:5). The theological warrant is that “the saving grace of God was manifested to all people, educating us...” (2:11). The epiphany of God’s grace has universal implications (cf. 1 Tim 2:4-6). But it was not the purpose of that epiphany to educate all peoples that they should forever conform to Greco-Roman social expectations regarding an ideal household (see “The Subordination of Women” in the general introduction). The educational aim of God’s epiphany was “so that, renouncing impiety and worldly desires, we should live temperately and justly and piously in the present age” (2:12). Temperance, justice, and piety took specific forms in Greco-Roman culture, including assumptions about honor and shame, domestic hierarchies, and so forth. But we must not confuse the foundational doctrines with the precepts by which Pastoral Paul applied those doctrines in a particular cultural context (see “Doctrines and Precepts” in the general introduction).
Christology and apocalyptic eschatology, not Greco-Roman culture, are the theological drivers of Titus 2. We live in the “present age” (2:12), cognizant of an epiphany past (2:11), when the earthly Jesus “gave himself for us” (2:14). Jesus’ death had ethical implications, to “redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a special people, zealous for good deeds” (2:14). And at the same time, we live, “expecting the blessed hope and glorious manifestation of the Great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (2:13), an epiphany future, the coming (parousia) of Jesus. Christian ethics, regardless of cultural context, are defined by the manifestations of Jesus, past and future.
Those two epiphanies undermine the presumptions of patriarchal domination that were taken for granted in Greco-Roman society. What would it mean, for example, if a paterfamilias identified himself as a follower of Jesus, when the essential fact about Jesus is that “he gave himself for us”? What are the ethical implications for living in “the present age,” if Jesus died “to redeem us from all lawlessness”? Jesus’ resurrection liberates us from bondage to the tyranny of Sin and Death (Rom 5-7). Indeed, all forms of domination and coercion are instances of that larger problem of the tyranny of Sin. If the “lawlessness” from which Jesus redeems us includes sexual exploitation and domination (1 Tim 1:10), what are the implications for how an older man relates to women, younger men, and slaves? The eschatology of the PE is counter-cultural (Kidd 1990, 159-194; Witherington 2006, 146-151; “Theological Issues” at 1 Tim 2:8-3:1).
