_THE EPISTLE TO TITUS.--HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER._
"Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ ... to
Titus, my true child after a common faith: Grace and peace from God
the Father, and Christ Jesus our Saviour"--TITUS i. 1, 4.
The title "Pastoral Epistle" is as appropriate to the Epistle to Titus
as to the First Epistle to Timothy. Although there is a good deal in the
letter that is personal rather than pastoral, yet the pastoral element
is the main one. The bulk of the letter is taken up with questions of
Church doctrine and government, the treatment of the faithful members of
the congregation and of the unruly and erring. The letter is addressed
to Titus, not as a private individual, but as the delegate of the
Apostle holding office in Crete. Hence, as in the First Epistle to
Timothy, St. Paul styles himself an Apostle: and the official character
of this letter is still further marked by the long and solemn
superscription. It is evidently intended to be read by other persons
besides the minister to whom it is addressed.
The question of the authenticity of the Epistle to Titus, has already
been in a great measure discussed in the first of these expositions. It
was pointed out there that the external evidence for the genuineness in
all three cases is very strong, beginning almost certainly with Clement
of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp, becoming clear and certain in Irenaeus,
and being abundant in Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian. Of the very
few people who rejected them, Tatian seems to have been almost alone in
making a distinction between them. He accepted the Epistle to Titus,
while rejecting the two to Timothy. We may rejoice that Tatian, Marcion,
and others raised the question. It cannot be said that the Churches
accepted this Epistle without consideration. Those who possessed
evidence now no longer extant were convinced, in spite of the objections
urged, that in this letter and its two companions we have genuine
writings of St. Paul.
With regard to modern objections, it may be freely admitted that there
is no room in St. Paul's life, as given in the Acts, for the journey to
Crete, and the winter at Nicopolis required by the Epistle to Titus. But
there is plenty of room for both of these _outside_ the Acts, viz.,
between the first and second imprisonment of the Apostle. And, as we
have already seen good reason for believing in the case of 1 Timothy,
the condition of the Church indicated in this letter is such as was
already in existence in St. Paul's time; and the language used in
treating of it resembles that of the Apostle in a way which helps us to
believe that we are reading his own words and not those of a skilful
imitator. For this imitator must have been a strange person; very
skilful in some things, very eccentric in others. Why does he give St.
Paul and Titus a work in Crete of which there is no mention in the Acts?
Why does he make the Apostle ask Titus to meet him in Nicopolis, a place
never named in connexion with St. Paul? Why bracket a well-known person,
like Apollos, with an utterly unknown person, such as Zenas? It is not
easy to believe in this imitator.
Yet another point of resemblance should be noted. Here, as in 1 Timothy,
there is no careful arrangement of the material. The subjects are not
put together in a studied order, as in a treatise with a distinct
theological or controversial purpose. They follow one another in a
natural manner, just as they occur to the writer. Persons with their
hearts and heads full of things which they wish to say to a friend, do
not sit down with an analysis before them to secure an orderly
arrangement of what they wish to write. They start with one of the main
topics, and then the treatment of this suggests something else: and they
are not distressed if they repeat themselves, or if they have to return
to a subject which has been touched upon before and then dropped. This
is just the kind of writing which meets us once more in the letter to
Titus. It is thoroughly natural. It is not easy to believe that a forger
in the second century could have thrown himself with such simplicity
into the attitude which the letter pre-supposes.
It is not possible to determine whether this letter was written before
or after the First to Timothy. But it was certainly written before the
Second to Timothy. Therefore, while one has no sufficient reason for
taking it before the one, one has excellent reason for taking it before
the other. The precise year and the precise place in which it was
written, we must be content to leave unsettled. It may be doubted
whether either the one or the other would throw much light on the
contents of the letter. These are determined by what the Apostle
remembers and expects concerning affairs in Crete, and not by his own
surroundings. It is the official position of Titus in Crete which is
chiefly before his mind.
Titus, as we learn from the opening words of the letter, was, like
Timothy, converted to Christianity by St. Paul. The Apostle calls him
"his true child after a common faith." As regards his antecedents he was
a marked contrast to Timothy. Whereas Timothy had been brought up as a
Jew under the care of his Jewish mother Eunice, and had been circumcised
by St. Paul's desire, Titus was wholly a Gentile, and "was not compelled
to be circumcised," as St. Paul states in the passage in which he tells
the Galatians (ii. 1--3) that he took Titus with him to Jerusalem on the
occasion when he and Barnabas went thither seventeen years after St.
Paul's conversion. Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem on that
occasion to protect Gentile converts from the Judaizers, who wanted to
make all such converts submit to circumcision. Titus and others went
with them as representatives of the Gentile converts, and in their
persons a formal protest was made against this imposition. It is quite
possible that Titus was with St. Paul when he wrote to the Galatians;
and if so this mention of him becomes all the more natural. We may fancy
the Apostle saying to Titus, as he wrote the letter, "I shall remind
them of your case, which is very much to the point." Whether Titus was
personally known to the Galatian Church is not certain; but he is spoken
of as one of whom they have at any rate heard.
Titus was almost certainly one of those who carried the First Epistle to
the Corinthian Church, _i.e._, the first of the two that have come down
to us; and St. Paul awaited his report of the reception which the letter
had met with at Corinth with the utmost anxiety. And he was quite
certainly one of those who were entrusted with the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians. St. Paul wrote the first letter at Ephesus about Easter,
probably in the year 57. He left Ephesus about Pentecost, and went to
Troas, where he hoped to meet Titus with news from Corinth. After
waiting in vain he went on to Macedonia in grievous anxiety; and there
Titus met him. He at once began the second letter, which apparently was
written piece-meal during the journey; and when it was completed he sent
Titus back to Corinth with it.
That Titus should twice have been sent as the messenger and
representative of St. Paul to a Church in which difficulties of the
gravest kind had arisen, gives us a clear indication of the Apostle's
estimate of his character. He must have been a person of firmness,
discretion, and tact. There was the monstrous case of incest, the
disputes between the rival factions, contentions in public worship and
even at the Eucharist, litigation before the heathen, and wild ideas
about the resurrection, not to mention other matters which were
difficult enough, although of a less burning character. And in all these
questions it was the vain, fitful, vivacious, and sensitive Corinthians
who had to be managed and induced to take the Apostle's words (which
sometimes were very sharp and severe) patiently. Nor was this all.
Besides the difficulties in the Church of Corinth there was the
collection for the poor Christians in Judaea, about which St. Paul was
deeply interested, and which had not been progressing in Corinth as he
wished. St. Paul was doubly anxious that it should be a success; first,
because it proved to the Jewish converts that his interest in them was
substantial, in spite of his opposition to some of their views;
secondly, because it served to counteract the tendency to part asunder,
which was manifesting itself between the Jewish and Gentile Christians.
And in carrying out St. Paul's instructions about these matters Titus
evidently had to suffer a good deal of opposition; and hence the Apostle
writes a strong commendation of him, coupling him with himself in his
mission and zeal. "Whether any inquire about Titus, he is my partner and
my fellow-worker to you-ward." "Thanks be to God, which putteth the same
earnest care for you into the heart of Titus. For indeed he accepted our
exhortation; but being himself very earnest, he went forth unto you of
his own accord." With great delicacy the Apostle takes care that, in
making it clear to the Corinthians that Titus has his full authority for
what he does, no slight is cast upon Titus's own zeal and interest in
the Corinthians. "He is my representative; but he comes of his own free
will out of love to you. His visit to you is his own doing; but he has
my entire sanction. He is neither a mechanical delegate, nor an
unauthorized volunteer."
A curtain falls on the career of this valued help-mate of the great
Apostle, from the time when he carried the second letter to Corinth to
the time when the letter to himself was written. The interval was
probably some eight or ten years, about which we know only one thing,
that during it, and probably in the second half of it, the Apostle and
Titus had been together in Crete, and Titus had been left behind to
consolidate the Church there. The Acts tell us nothing. Probably Titus
is not mentioned in the book at all. The reading "Titus Justus" in
xviii. 7, is possibly correct, but it is far from certain: and even if
it were certain, we should still remain in doubt whether Titus and Titus
Justus are the same person. And the attempts which have been made to
identify Titus with other persons in the Acts, such as Silvanus or
Timothy, are scarcely worth considering. Nor has the conjecture that
Titus is the author of the Acts (as Krenkel, Jacobsen, and recently
Hooykaas in the _Bible for Young People_ have suggested) very much to
recommend it. The hypothesis has two facts to support it: (1) the
silence of the Acts respecting Titus, and (2) the fact that the writer
must have been a companion of St. Paul. But these two facts are equally
favourable to the tradition that St. Luke was the author, a tradition
for which the evidence is both very early and very abundant. Why should
such a tradition yield to a mere conjecture?
One thing, however, we may accept as certain:--that the time when St.
Paul was being carried a prisoner to Rome in an Alexandrian corn-ship
which touched at Crete, was _not_ the time when the Church in Crete was
founded. What opportunity would a prisoner have of doing any such work
during so short a stay? Cretans were among those who heard the Apostles
at Pentecost preaching in their own tongue the wonderful works of God.
Some of these may have returned home and formed the first beginnings of
a Christian congregation: and among imperfect converts of this kind we
might expect to find the errors of which St. Paul treats in this
Epistle. But we can hardly suppose that there was much of Christian
organization until St. Paul and Titus came to the island after the
Apostle's first Roman imprisonment. And the necessity of having some one
with a calm head and a firm hand on the spot, forced the Apostle to
leave his companion behind him. The man who had been so successful in
aiding him respecting the difficulties at Corinth was just the man to
be entrusted with a somewhat similar but rather more permanent post in
Crete. The Cretans were less civilized, but in their own way scarcely
less immoral, than the Corinthians; and in both cases the national
failings caused serious trouble in the Church. In both cases
ecclesiastical authority has to be firmly upheld against those who
question and oppose it. In both cases social turbulence has to be kept
in check. In both cases there is a tendency to wild theological and
philosophical speculations, and (on the part of some) to a bigoted
maintenance of Jewish ordinances and superstitions. Against all these
Titus will have to contend with decision, and if need be with severity.
The letter, in which directions are given for the carrying out of all
this, is evidence of the great confidence which the Apostle reposed in
him. One of those who had worked also in Corinth, is either already with
him in Crete, or may soon be expected,--Apollos, and with him Zenas. So
that the Corinthian experience is doubly represented. Other helpers are
coming, viz., Artemas and Tychicus; and, when they arrive, Titus will be
free to rejoin the Apostle, and is to lose no time in doing so at
Nicopolis.
One commission Titus has in Crete which very naturally was not given to
him at Corinth. He is to perfect the organization of the Christian
Church in the island by appointing elders in every city. And it is this
charge among others which connects this letter so closely with the first
to Timothy, which very likely was written about the same time.
Whether Titus was set free from his heavy charge in Crete in time to
join St. Paul at Nicopolis, we have no means of knowing. At the time
when the second letter to Timothy was written, Titus had gone to
Dalmatia; but we are left in doubt as to whether he had gone thither by
St. Paul's desire, or (like Demas in going to Thessalonica) against it.
Nor does it appear whether Titus had gone to Dalmatia from Nicopolis,
which is not far distant, or had followed the Apostle from Nicopolis to
Rome, and thence gone to Illyria. With the journey to Dalmatia our
knowledge of him ends. Tradition takes him back to Crete as permanent
bishop; and in the Middle Ages the Cretans seem to have regarded him as
their patron saint.
The impression left upon our mind by the Acts is that St. Luke knew
Timothy and did not know Titus: and hence frequently mentions the one
and says nothing about the other. The impression left upon our mind by
the mention of both in Paul's Epistles, and by the letters addressed to
each, is that Titus, though less tenderly beloved by the Apostle, was
the stronger man of the two. St. Paul seems to be less anxious about the
conduct of Titus and about the way in which others will treat him. The
directions as to his personal behaviour are much slighter than in the
case of Timothy. He seems to credit him with less sensitiveness and more
decision and tact; perhaps also with less liability to be carried away
by fanatical views and practices than the other.
Titus shares with Timothy the glory of having given up everything in
order to throw in his lot with St. Paul, and of being one of his most
trusted and efficient helpers. What that meant the Epistles of St. Paul
tell us:--ceaseless toil and anxiety, much shame and reproach, and not a
little peril to life itself. He also shares with Timothy the glory of
being willing, when the cause required such sacrifice, to separate from
the master to whom he had surrendered himself, and to work on by
himself in isolation and difficulty. The latter was possibly the more
trying sacrifice of the two. To give up all his earthly prospects and
all the sweetness of home life, in order to work for the spread of the
Gospel side by side with St. Paul, was no doubt a sacrifice that must
have cost those who made it a great deal. But it had its attractive
side. Quite independently of the beauty and majesty of the cause itself,
there was the delight of being associated with a leader so able, so
sagacious, so invigorating, and so affectionate as the Apostle who
"became all things to all men that he might by all means save some."
Hard work became light, and difficulties became smooth, under the
inspiriting sympathy of such a colleague. But it was quite another thing
to have given up everything for the sake of such companionship and
support, or at least in the full expectation of enjoying it, and then to
have to undergo the hard work and confront the difficulties without it.
The new dispensation in this respect repeats the old. Elisha leaves his
home and his inheritance to follow Elijah, and then Elijah is taken from
him. Timothy and Titus leave their homes and possessions to follow St.
Paul, and then St. Paul sends them away from him. And to this
arrangement they consented, Timothy (as we know) with tears, Titus (we
may be sure) with much regret. And what it cost the loving Apostle thus
to part with them and to pain them we see from the tone of affectionate
longing which pervades these letters.
The example set by both master and disciples is one which Christians,
and especially Christian ministers, must from time to time need. Christ
sent forth both the Twelve and the Seventy "two and two"; and what is
true of mankind generally is true also of the ministry--"It is not good
for man to be alone." But cases often arise in which not more than one
man can be spared for each post; and then those who have been all in all
to one another, in sympathy and counsel and co-operation, have to part.
And it is one of the greatest sacrifices that can be required of them.
Paul and Timothy and Titus were willing to make this sacrifice; and it
is one which Christ's servants throughout all ages are called upon at
times to make. Many men are willing to face, especially in a good cause,
what is repulsive to them, if they have the company of others in the
trial, especially if they have the presence and support of those whose
presence is in itself a refreshment, and their support a redoubling of
strength. But to enter upon a long and trying task with the full
expectation of such advantages, and then to be called upon to surrender
them,--this is, indeed, a trial which might well make the weak-hearted
turn back. But their devotion to their Lord's work, and their confidence
in His sustaining power, enabled the Apostle and his two chief disciples
to make the venture; and the marvellous success of the Church in the age
which immediately succeeded them, shows how their sacrifice was blessed.
And we may be sure that even in this world they had their reward.
"Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or
brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for
My sake, and for the Gospel's sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold
now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and
children, and lands, _with persecutions_; and in the world to come
_eternal life_."