Survey
of the Letters of Paul: 1 Timothy 6:4
He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words,
whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
1 Timothy 6:3-5
3 If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even
the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is
according to godliness;
4 He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes
of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings,
5 Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the
truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.
Let us first look at the Barclay commentary on
verses three through five:
FALSE TEACHERS AND FALSE TEACHING
1 Timothy 6:3–5
If any man offers a different kind of teaching, and
does not apply himself to sound words (it
is the words of our Lord Jesus Christ I mean)
and to godly teaching, he has become inflated with
pride. He is a man of no understanding; rather he
has a diseased addiction to subtle speculations and
battles of words, which can be only a source of
envy, strife, the exchange of insults, evil
suspicions, continual altercations of men whose
minds are corrupt and who are destitute of the
truth, men whose belief is that religion is a means
of making gain.
THE circumstances of life in the ancient world
presented the false teachers with an opportunity
which they were not slow to take. On the Christian
side, the Church was full of wandering prophets
whose very way of life gave them a certain prestige.
The Christian service was much more informal than it
is now. Anyone who felt called to deliver a message
was free to give it, and the door was wide open to
those who were out to propagate a false and
misleading message. On the non-Christian side, there
were men called sophists, wise men, who made it
their business to sell philosophy. They had two
lines. They claimed – for a fee – to be able to
teach people to argue cleverly; they were the men
who with their smooth tongues and their adroit [skilful,
quick in thought] minds were skilled in
what John Milton refers to in Paradise Lost as
‘making the worse appear the better reason’. They
had turned philosophy into a way of becoming rich.
Their other line was to give demonstrations of
public speaking. The Greeks had always been
fascinated by the spoken word; they loved an orator;
and these wandering sophists went from town to town,
giving their demonstrations in the art of oratory.
They went in for advertising on an intensive scale
and even went as far as delivering by hand personal
invitations to their displays. The most famous of
them drew people literally by the thousand to their
lectures; they were in their day the equivalent of
the modern pop star. Philostratus, the Greek
philosopher and teacher, tells us that Adrian, one
of the most famous of them, had such a popular power
that, when his messenger appeared with the news that
he was to speak, even the senate and the circus
emptied, and the whole population flocked to the
Athenaeum to hear him. These sophists had three
great faults.
Their speeches were quite unreal. They would offer
to speak on any subject, however remote and obscure
and unlikely, that any member of the audience might
propose. This is the kind of question they would
argue; it is an actual example. A man goes into the
citadel of a town to kill a tyrant who has been
grinding down the people; not finding the tyrant, he
kills the tyrant’s son; the tyrant comes in and sees
his dead son with the sword in his body, and in his
grief kills himself; the man then claims the reward
for killing the tyrant and liberating the people;
should he receive it?
Their thirst was for applause. Competition between
them was a bitter and cut-throat affair. Plutarch
tells of a travelling sophist called Niger, who came
to a town in Galatia where a prominent orator lived.
A competition was immediately arranged. Niger had to
compete or lose his reputation. He was suffering
from a fishbone in his throat and had difficulty in
speaking, but for the sake of his reputation he had
to go on. Inflammation set in soon after, and in the
end he died. Dio Chrysostom paints a picture of a
public place in Corinth with all the different kinds
of competitors in full blast: ‘You might hear many
poor wretches of sophists shouting and abusing each
other, and their disciples, as they call them,
squabbling, and many writers of books reading their
stupid compositions, and many poets singing their
poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels,
and many soothsayers giving the meaning of
prodigies, and 1,000 rhetoricians [ret-uh-rish-uhns]
twisting lawsuits, and no small number of traders
driving their several trades.’ There you have just
that interchange of insults, that envy and strife,
that constant wordy quarrelling of people with
decadent minds that the writer of the Pastorals
deplores. ‘A sophist’, wrote Philostratus, ‘is put
out in an extempore speech by a serious-looking
audience and tardy praise and no clapping.’ ‘They
are all agape’, said Dio Chrysostom, ‘for the murmur
of the crowd . . . Like men walking in the dark they
move always in the direction of the clapping and the
shouting.’ Lucian writes: ‘If your friends see you
breaking down, let them pay the price of the suppers
you give them by stretching out their arms and
giving you a chance of thinking of something to say
in the intervals between the rounds of applause.’
The ancient world was only too familiar with just
the kind of false teacher who was invading the
Church.
Their thirst was for praise, and their success was
measured by numbers. The Greek Stoic philosopher
Epictetus [ep-ik-tee-tuhs]
has some vivid pictures of the sophist talking to
his disciples after his performance. ‘“Well, what
did you think of me today?” “Upon my life, sir, I
thought you were admirable.” “What did you think of
my best passage?” “Which was that?” “Where I
described Pan and the Nymphs.” “Oh, it was
excessively well done.” “A much larger audience
today, I think”, says the sophist. “Yes, much
larger”, responds the disciple. “Five hundred, I
should guess.” “O, nonsense! It could not have been
less than 1,000.” “Why, that is more than Dio ever
had. I wonder why it was? They appreciated what I
said, too.” “Beauty, sir, can move a stone.”’ These
performing sophists were ‘the pets of society’. They
became senators, governors and ambassadors. When
they died, monuments were erected to them, with
inscriptions such as ‘The Queen of Cities to the
King of Eloquence’.
The Greeks were intoxicated with the spoken word.
Among them, if a man could speak, his fortune was
made. It was against a background like that that the
Church was growing up, and it is little wonder that
this type of teacher invaded it. The Church gave
such people a new area in which to show off their
superficial gifts and to gain a cheap and showy fame
and a not unprofitable following.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FALSE TEACHERS
HERE in this passage are set out the characteristics
of the false teachers.
(1) Their first characteristic is conceit. Their
desire is not to display Christ but to display
themselves. There are still preachers and teachers
who are more concerned to gain a following for
themselves than for Jesus Christ, more concerned to
press their own views than to bring to men and women
the word of God. Great teachers do not offer people
their own small spark of illumination; they offer
them the light and the truth of God.
(2) Their concern is with remote and obscure
speculations. There is a kind of Christianity which
is more concerned with argument than with life. To
be a member of a discussion circle or a Bible study
group and to spend enjoyable hours in talk about
doctrines does not necessarily make a Christian. J.
S. Whale in his book Christian Doctrine has certain
scathing things to say about this pleasant
intellectualism: ‘We have, as Valentine said of
Thurio, “an exchequer of words, but no other
treasure”. Instead of putting off our shoes from our
feet because the place whereon we stand is holy
ground, we are taking nice photographs of the
Burning Bush from suitable angles: we are chatting
about theories of the Atonement with our feet on the
mantelpiece, instead of kneeling down before the
wounds of Christ.’ . If you want a man to change a
piece of silver, he informs you wherein the Son
differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a
loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Son is
inferior to the Father; and if you inquire whether
the bath is ready, the answer is that the Son is
made out of nothing.’ Subtle argumentation and glib
theological statements do not make a Christian. That
kind of thing may well be nothing other than a mode
of escape from the challenge of Christian living.
(3) The false teachers disturb the peace. They are
instinctively competitive; they are suspicious of
all who disagree with them; when they cannot win in
an argument, they hurl insults at their opponents’
theological positions, and even at their character;
in any argument, the tone of their voices is
bitterness and not love. They have never learned to
speak the truth in love. The source of their
bitterness is the exaltation of self, for their
tendency is to regard any difference from or any
criticism of their views as a personal insult.
(4) The false teachers commercialize religion. They
are out for profit. They look on their teaching and
preaching not as a vocation but as a career. One
thing is certain – there is no place for those who
seek advancement in the ministry of any church. The
Pastorals are quite clear that the labourer deserves
to be paid; but the motive for work must be public
service and not private gain. The passion of the one
who labours for Christ is not to get, but to spend
and be spent in the service of Christ and of others. ~Barclay commentaries
Now to the commentaries.
This is a rather complex verse with several parts.
Roughly, they are:
1] He is proud.
2] Knowing nothing.
3] But doting
4] About questions and strifes of words.
5] Whereof cometh envy.
6] Strife.
7] Railings.
8] Evil surmisings.
Let us take them one at a time.
1] He is proud.
He is proud - The idea
is that he is blinded with pride, so that he really
knows nothing. ~People's
New Testament
He is proud - That is,
he is lifted up with his fancied superior
acquaintance with the nature of religion. The Greek
verb means, properly, “to smoke, to fume;” and then
to be inflated, to “be conceited, etc.” The idea is,
that he has no proper knowledge of the nature of the
gospel, and yet he values himself on a fancied
superior acquaintance with its principles.
~Barnes Notes
He is proud - Or
swelled and puffed up with a vain conceit of himself
and his own notions, and treats with an haughty air
the faithful ministers of the word. The doctrines of
grace are of an humbling nature, especially when
they are spiritually and experimentally understood
and received; but notional knowledge, knowledge of
natural things, and the doctrines of men, such as
are of their own invention, fill the mind with pride
and vanity. ~John Gill
He is proud —
literally, “wrapt in smoke”; filled with the fumes
of self-conceit (1
Timothy 3:6) while “knowing nothing,” namely, of
the doctrine which is according to godliness (1
Timothy 6:3), though arrogating pre-eminent
knowledge (1
Timothy 1:7). ~Jamieson, Fausset, Brown
2] Knowing nothing.
Knowing nothing -
Margin, “a fool.” That is, that he does not
understand the nature of religion as he supposes he
does. His views in regard to the relation of masters
and servants, and to the bearing of religion on that
relation, show that he does not understand the
genius of Christianity. The apostle expresses this
in strong language; by saying that he knows nothing.
See 1 Corinthians 8:2
~Barnes Notes
Quoted verse:
1 Corinthians 8:2
And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he
knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.
Knowing nothing - as he
ought to know; not anything that is solid and
substantial; nothing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ:
he may have knowledge of natural and civil things,
but not of spiritual ones; he may have collected a
medley of knowledge together, but what will be of no
real use either to himself or others.
~John Gill
3] But doting.
Doting - Morbidly
dwelling upon foolish questions. He no doubt refers
to foolish disputes which had been sprung upon the
church by heretical teachers.
~People's New Testament
But doting - Margin,
“sick.” The Greek word - νοσέω noseō - means
properly to be sick; then to languish, to pine
after. The meaning here is, that such persons had a
sickly or morbid desire for debates of this kind.
They had not a sound and healthy state of mind on
the subject of religion. They were like a sickly
man, who has no desire for solid and healthful food,
but for that which will gratify a diseased appetite.
They desired not sound doctrine, but controversies
about unimportant and unsubstantial matters - things
that bore the same relation to important doctrines
which the things that a sick man pines after do to
substantial food. ~Barnes
Notes
Doting about questions
- He is sick, distempered, about these questions
relative to the Mosaic law and the traditions of the
elders; for it is most evident that the apostle has
the Judaizing teachers in view, who were ever, in
questions of theology, straining out a gnat, and
swallowing a camel. ~Adam
Clarke
4] About questions and strifes of
words.
Questions and strifes of words
- The Jews abounded much in disputes of this sort,
and it would seem probable that the persons here
referred to were Jewish teachers. Compare 1 Timothy
1:6-7. . ~Barnes Notes
Quoted verses:
1 Timothy 1:6-7
6 From which some having swerved have turned aside
unto vain jangling;
7 Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding
neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.
Strifes of words -
Λογομαχιας· Logomachies; verbal contentions;
splitting hairs; producing Hillel against Shammai,
and Shammai against Hillel, relative to the
particular mode in which the punctilios of some
rites should be performed. In this sort of sublime
nonsense the works of the Jewish rabbins abound. ~Adam Clarke
But doting about questions and
strifes of words - or he is "sick or
diseased"; his mind is distempered; he is like one
in a fever, that is delirious; his head is light and
wild; his fancy is roving, and he talks of things he
knows not what; his head runs upon "questions";
foolish and unlearned ones, about the law and works,
and the necessity of them to justification and
salvation; concerning genealogies, and other
fruitless and unprofitable subjects.
~John Gill
5] Whereof cometh envy.
Whereof cometh envy -
The only fruit of which is to produce envy. That is,
the appearance of superior knowledge; the boast of
being profoundly acquainted with religion, and the
show of an ability for subtle argumentation, would
produce in a certain class envy. Envy is uneasiness,
pain, mortification, or discontent, excited by
another’s prosperity, or by his superior knowledge
or possessions. ~ Barnes
Notes
Whereof cometh envy -
at the superior gifts and talents of others; at
their success, and any little degree of honour and
respect they have from others; which shows that such
men, in whom this vice is a governing one, are
carnal men, for this is a work of the flesh; and
that they are destitute of charity, or the grace of
love, which envieth not: also from hence comes [rest
of verse]: ~John
Gill
6] Strife.
Strife - Or contentions
with those who will not readily yield to their
opinions. ~Barnes Notes
Whereof cometh envy, strife,
etc. - How little good have religious
disputes ever done to mankind, or to the cause of
truth! Most controversialists have succeeded in
getting their own tempers soured, and in irritating
their opponents. Indeed, truth seems rarely to be
the object of their pursuit; they labor to accredit
their own party by abusing and defaming others; from
generals they often descend to particulars; and then
personal abuse is the order of the day. Is it not
strange that Christians either cannot or will not
see this? Cannot any man support his own opinions,
and give his own views of the religion of Christ,
without abusing and calumniating his neighbor? I
know not whether such controversialists should not
be deemed disturbers of the public peace, and come
under the notice of the civil magistrate. Should not
all Christians know that the wrath of man worketh
not the righteousness of the Lord?
~Adam Clarke
Strife - contention,
quarrelling; the peace and comfort of particular
persons, and even of whole communities, are broken
and destroyed hereby; for foolish and unlearned
questions gender strifes, 2 Timothy 2:24 which are
very unbecoming the servants of the Lord, and very
uncomfortable to the churches of Christ: yea, these
also produce [rest of verse]:
~John Gill
7] Railings.
Railings - Harsh and
abusive language toward those who will not concede a
point - a common effect of disputes, and more
commonly of disputes about small and unimportant
matters, than of these which are of magnitude. Such
railings often attend disputes that arise out of
nice and subtle distinctions.
~ Barnes Notes
Railings - at one
another, and especially at the faithful ministers of
the Gospel; for when the false teachers cannot
overcome them by Scripture and argument, they fall
to railing and reviling of them: or entertain [evil
surmisings].
~John Gill
8] Evil surmisings.
Evil surmisings — as to
those who are of a different party from themselves.
~Jamieson, Fausset, Brown
Evil surmisings -
Suspicions that they are led to hold their views,
not by the love of the truth, but from sordid or
worldly motives. Such suspicions are very apt to
attend an angry debate of any kind. It might be
expected especially to exist on such a question as
the apostle refers to here - the relation of a
master and a slave. It is always very hard to do
justice to the motives of one who seems to us to be
living in sin, or to believe it to be possible that
he acts from right motives.
~Barnes Notes
Evil surmises -
groundless suspicions or from hence follow, as the
words may be rendered, "wicked opinions": concerning
the being, perfections, purposes, and providence of
God; concerning the person and offices of Christ;
concerning the law and Gospel, grace and good works;
and so the Syriac version renders it, "an evil
opinion of the mind". ~John
Gill