Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

84 First Timothy III. 15.
order to its existence. This arises, as Baumgarten (p. 246) has already
aptly observed, from confounding the truth as it is in itself,
with the truth as it is acknowledged in the world. In the former
respect, "it needs no pillar, but supports itself ;" in the latter, it certainly
needs the church as its pillar, as its bearer and preserver.
The greatness and importance of Timothy's calling are designed to
be held up to him in the representation of the excellence of the
house in which he serves ; and this excellence which belongs to the
church is represented by the apostle in opposition to the threatening
heresy which he has already in his eye as consisting in this—that
the churcb upon earth has the calling to preserve within itself the
sure truth for the world, to secure its continuance on the earth.
The choice of the metaphor is to be explained by the opposition
which it implies to the heresy afterwards spoken of. This vocation
the church has had and exercised from the
beginning, and will continue
to have and to exercise as surely as it is the church of the
living God, and has the promise that even the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it. It has and exercises this, however, not merely
in so far as it rests, but because of, and in virtue of its resting on
the everlasting foundation (1 Cor. iii. 11), which is Jesus Christ. It
is the support of the truth for the world, just because it is itself
borne up by the truth which rests on itself, and is sure ; and Mack
is quite right when he says (p. 286), that words to the following effect
are not to be supplied : namely, " if and in as far as the truth is
present in it," which would divest what the apostle says of all
meaning, and make him, while he seems to say something of the
church, really to say nothing. The apostle knows nothing of a church
which has not the truth, or which has it only in part. But the
Catholic commentator clearly shews the restraints of his confession,
when he all at once transfers what the apostle says of the church of
the living God, to the historical idea of his own church, and so finds
in this passage a New Testament proof (perhaps a prophecy ?) of
its infallibility. It is not historical descent that makes a church to be
a church, but as Mack himself admits (p. 286, Anm., 1), this only—
that it has the truth for its foundation ; and it is not a church in
the true sense precisely in proportion as it is wanting in the ground
of the truth—a test from which no historical appearance calling itself
a church, or even " the church," can withdraw itself 'E(5pa(a)|aa,
" a firm stay, foundation," forms a climax with otvXo^. The word
used only here, similar to OqiDuog, 2 Tim. ii. 19, has no parallel in
the New Testament usage except in the word tdpaToc, used only by
Paul, and by him three times. An objection against the interpretation
of this passage which we have adopted, has been founded on
the alleged inelegance of expression implied in designating the