Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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30 First Timothy I. 5.
experienced the power of divine love,—that has been kindled at
divine love. The third thing necessary to true love is faith unfeigned
; in which words the apostle names the new life-power that
dwells in such a heart and conscience. The pure heart and good
conscience is, with respect to its quality, to be viewed as springing
from faith, observes Olshausen. It is faith which makes the evil
conscience good, and which purifies the heart (Acts xv. 9) ; but it
does this only when it is itself unfeigned. Where a good conscience
is lost, i\\Qxe faith disappears, i. 19, and in its place comes, not unbelief,
but a mere pretended faith, and talking (ver. 6), such as the
apostle everywhere represents as a characteristic feature of the opponents
who are combated in the Pastoral Epistles. 'AwnoKpirog in
the same sense as it is elsewhere used by the apostle, Eom. xii,
9 ; 2 Cor. vi. 6, Comp. also Jam.*iii. IT ; 1 Pet. i. 22.—Looking
back to what the apostle here says regarding the errors which Timothy
is to check, according to the interpretation we have given, we
find the same characteristics as in the Epistle to Titus. As in that
epistle it is evidently not a dogmatical heresy that is spoken of, but
errors which lead away from the truth that tends to godliness, and
which belong to the sphere of unprofitable questions that cause only
strife and contention, so also is it in this epistle. This is shown by
the right interpretation of erepodidaaKaXeTv^ by the reason given for
the warning against those questions, and by the practical end of all
admonition being placed in opposition to them.
As ver. 5 stands in an adversative relation to ver. 4, so at the
same time it forms the transition to ver. 6 and the following verses,
which give additional characteristics of those errors. The apostle
proceeds to say, that from the want of a pure heart and a good conscience
and faith unfeigned, certain persons have turned aside to
vain talking. Schleiermacher indeed thinks the writer here makes
but an awkward return from the digression in ver. 5, when he represents
this—namely, that those opponents could not attain to that
which is the effect of the true doctrine, as the reason why they had
turned aside to vain talking. The writer here betrays, according to
Schleiermacher, the utmost incapacity to return from a slight digression.
But ver. 5 is, in our opinion, no digression. And is there
any room for finding fault with the sentiment, that those seducers
were wanting in that fundamental state of mind, from which alone
can proceed that which is the aim of all Christian precept, namely,
love, and that therefore they swerved from this aim, and became
foolish talkers ? This is indeed just the way in which the subject
is treated everywhere in these epistles, comp. vi. 5 ; 2 Tim. iii. 8 ;
Tit. i. 15. Schleiermacher seems in what he says to have referred
the from tvhich, ver. 6, not merely to the three things last mentioned,
but also to the love, in regard to which De Wette also was