Some of the Bible's books are so famous that knowledge of them is almost universal. Others, not so much.
People who have never opened a Bible and never intend to are nonetheless aware that its first book is Genesis. They are also aware that its second book, Exodus, describes the Hebrews' escape from Egypt and 40-year journey to the Promised Land. They are so aware of these books that most of them have properly used their titles as nouns in casual conversation, referring to something's beginning as its genesis and to some long journey or transformation as an exodus.
Then there are books like Habakkuk and Philemon. If those two don't ring a bell, don't feel ashamed. They're in the Bible but many believers probably wouldn't recognize their titles if you mentioned them in passing.
Which brings me to Titus. Over the years I have seen it sitting there in the table of contents, and several times I've seen its actual text fleet across my field of vision while rifling through the New Testament looking for something else. Titus is easy to miss, partly because it doesn't get quoted on tee-shirts and coffee mugs but mostly because it is extraordinarily short:
I read Titus for the first time last Saturday for the simple reason that I thought: Why not? I wonder what it says. And I can tell you that it scores high on the bang-for-buck-o-meter.
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As with every book in the Bible, it is important to understand Titus's historical context.
Verse Ten of Chapter One opens with a warning that can be applied to every social or work setting -- "For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers" -- and then it careens into six words that will sound exceedingly strange if you are unfamiliar with history: "especially those of the circumcision party."
Because Jewish males have been circumcised as infants going back to time immemorial, circumcised genitalia was a visual indicator that a man was a Jew in ancient times. Because Christianity involves a fulfillment of the Judaic faith by bringing Gentiles to God in order to fulfill God's plan for humanity, the early days of the Christian church featured some debate about whether Gentile men should get circumcised when they commit their lives to God.
The biblical book called Titus is one of Paul's epistles (letters) that he addressed to specific leaders of new churches in various parts of the Greco-Roman world. Composed about 30 years after Jesus's crucifixion, it was sent to a man named Titus who was charged with evangelizing the inhabitants of Crete. Titus needed to be aware of false teachings that opponents of the faith might try to spread, and thus "the circumcision party" refers not to some weird event at which converts were subjected to a torturous initiation rite, but rather to people who claimed that converts should be required to get circumcised.
Those people's insistence on convert circumcision was not the big problem, however. That was merely a symptom. The big problem was their overarching demand that Gentiles under the new covenant be subjected to the same pharisaical laws that were applied (and often abused) to ethnic Jews under the old one. Paul considered those people's demand to be heretical, having previously referred to it in Galatians as "a different gospel" that is "contrary to the one you received" and whose teachers should "be accursed." Knowing this makes it clear why he advises in Titus 1:13-14 to "rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth."
(Twenty-first century disclaimer: Paul himself was Jewish and was not being an ethnocentric bigot when he said "Jewish myths." He was referring not to Judaic people but to certain aspects of the Judaic religion, and his contemporary audience knew that. So if you are currently a college student or member of America's politically correct white intelligentsia, you may now arise from your fainting couch and resume reading.)
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A reader with an emotional, pre-existing devotion to certain denominational beliefs might easily veer off course if he were to read Titus without paying close attention.
Stressing the importance of good church leadership, Paul instructs Titus to "appoint elders in every town" and then qualifies that by saying "if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife..." Sadly, some people are always itching for a Protestant-Catholic cat fight and might take the phrase "husband of one wife" and use it to start claiming that today's Roman Catholic Church engages in heresy when it requires its priests to be celibate. Such people should be asked to raise the topic of priestly celibacy another time, since Paul here was referring not to parish-specific priests but to town-specific "elders" and made no mention whatsoever of sex.
Many of those same people will react to Chapter Three like an alley cat who just ingested a few mouthfuls of catnip. One of the great misunderstandings between overzealous Protestants and overzealous Catholics is the former's (false) claim that Catholics teach "works-based" salvation and the latter's (false) claim that Protestants "ignore the importance of works." People from the latter camp might be prone to believe they've found confirmation of support for their claim when they read in Titus 3:1 that we are "to be ready for every good work," and also in 3:8 when they read that "those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works."
In between, however, people from the former camp might be prone to believe they've found confirmation of support for their claim when they read in 3:5 that God "saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy..." And of course, overzealous Calvinist Protestants are likely to find a way to construe 3:5 as confirmation of support for their belief that God predestines everybody to salvation or damnation before they are even born.
All of which goes to show why it's so important when studying an ancient text to remove your filters and pay attention to every word... while remembering the context in which it was written... and also remembering to whom, and by whom, it was written.
Which is very, very, very hard to do. We are all predisposed to certain conclusions, and we are all tempted to leapfrog straight to them when we perceive a fitting opportunity to do so.
But leapfrogging springs you up in the air for a bit, and while you're up there you might not see a beautiful flower on the ground that you were supposed to stop and smell.
I think the dichotomy between faith and works is a false one, not a real one, but many people strongly disagree with me about that. Those whose theological ears are highly tuned to the "real dichotomy pitch" might overlook the importance of some other lessons interwoven into Chapter Three, such as when Paul counsels in 3:2 to "speak evil of no one" and "show perfect courtesy to all people" (emphasis added); and when he stresses in 3:3 that "we ourselves were once foolish...slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy"; and especially when he admonishes in 3:9 to "avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless."
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There is a lot going on in Titus.
The college kids and white intelligentsia I chided earlier will might instinctively and wrongly reach for smelling salts when they encounter the word "submissive" in Chapter Two.
As somebody who enjoyed reading Bartlett's even as a kid, I have a fondness for great quotes and therefore was thrilled to come across this pearl from 1:15: "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure..."
On a lighter note, I found it amusing that Titus bluntly says a man must not be "a drunkard" (1:7) yet takes a more nuanced approach when it comes to women by saying they must not be "slaves to much wine" (2:3, emphasis added).
There are a couple other things in The Epistle of Paul to Titus that I would like to elaborate on... but I am not skilled at keeping things brief, and this blog post already contains more paragraphs than the epistle itself, so for now I think I'll just call it a day!
