Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

66 First Timothy III. 1.
render this formula suitable as applied to it. Neander (I., p. 539)
characterizes the sudden transition here as unpauline. The passage
makes no other impression upon me in this respect than 1 Cor. vi,
1, 12, vii. 1, etc. The abruptness of the transition is just a proof
that the apostle enters upon a new subject with the perfect consciousness
of its being so. On the morbg 6 Aoyo^, De Wette observes
that it here introduces not, as elsewhere, a maxim of faith,
but a maxim of experience. But I would hesitate to call what follows
a maxim of experience, for if the apostle had further confirmed
the saying, he would assuredly have done so by a reference to
doctrine ; it rests, therefore, on a basis of doctrine, and on this very
account the formula morbg 6 Xoyoq need not surprise. The reading
dvOpoJmvoc instead of niarog deserves no consideration. The saying
which the formula introduces runs thus :
if one desire the office of
a bishop he desires a good loork. On tmoKoiri], comp. Acts i. 20 =
the office of an overseer. That Trpeofivrepog and imaKorro^ originally
denoted the same offices of the church has already been shewn on
Tit. i. 5, and in the General Introduction. The expression dptyea-
6ai, properly " to stretch one's self out," besides at vi. 10, occurs
again only at Heb. xi. 16, and the corresponding dpe^ig is used by
the apostle only again at Rom. i. 27. It is by no means necessary
to understand fcaX,bv tpyov—as Schleiermacher does out of prejudice
—to denote res bona ; it signifies, as usual, " a good work." For we
may well suppose that the tpyov here expresses some duty to be performed,
as it refers to iitoKOTTTJj which denotes the official duties belonging
to an imoKOTTog. He who aims at such official duties
desires a good work ; the phrase is, therefore, substantially the
same as in Phil. i. 6 ; 1 Thess. v. 13, and in other passages of the
Pastoral Epistles. That such a thing was known at tliat time as
striving for the office of a bishop is generally doubted by the critics.
But if from the very first, the bishops were chosen, and did not
assume the office of themselves, one cannot see how, after a ten
years' exiistcnce of Christianity in Ephesus, the desire may not have
been entertained by many to take part in the administration of the
church as bishops. Comp. Jam. iii. 1 (Baumgartcn). There is
nothing cither in the expression dp^yefrOai in itself, or in KaXov tpyov,
as Matthies has already observed, to render necessary tlie supposition
of any ambitious rivalry and competition for the office. If the
apostle had had in view such as were not called, and whom he would
keej) l)ack from the office, he would certainly have used a different
epithet, such as fivaKoXov, or some other pointing to the responsibility
connected with it, ver. 2, seq. Here follow the personal qualifications
f«>r this office, vers. 2-7, which almost entirely coincide with
those mentioned in Tit, i. 6, seq.; we refer therefore to that passage
for the exposition, and notice here only what is peculiar to our pro