Posted on 02/01/2015 10:20:56 PM PST by Morgana
Must Bishops Be the Husband of One Wife? Tim Staples May 5, 2013 | 0 comments Share on twitter Share on facebook Share on email Share on print Share on gmail More Sharing Services
As both a guest and, at times, a host on our radio broadcast, Catholic Answers Live, I have spoken on many different topics over the years. Mostly, I do the “Open Forum Q&A” on Tuesdays, but my favorite hours have been our “Open Forum for Non-Catholics,” when we take calls only from non-Catholics or from people who are in the process of coming into full communion with the Church but who are not yet formally Catholic.
After a recent hour of “Open Forum for Non-Catholics,” I stayed late to take a call we couldn’t get to on the air for lack of time. In short order it became an adventure.
It was not just one caller but several who were sharing the phone, and it quickly became obvious they were calling on a lark. The laughing in the background was a dead giveaway. In a nutshell, they posed as Catholics but obviously weren’t, and they asked the question of how to deal with “crazy Fundamentalists” who “take God’s word literally and actually believe what St. Paul wrote in I Tim. 3:2":
Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, no drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money.
“Notice,” they said, “it says a bishop must be the husband of one wife. And in verse 12, St. Paul will say the same about deacons. How does that square with the Catholic Church that says bishops can’t be married at all? I’m not saying I agree with it, but how do you answer these crazy people who actually believe the Bible?”
This conversation reminded me of my second formal debate I had as a Catholic in 1995 with an Evangelical pastor. He brought up this same text and made a similar argument. When it was my turn to respond, I said, “Man, I’ve got to give this guy credit for one thing. He’s tough! He wouldn’t allow either Jesus or St. Paul to be a bishop in his church! But I want you all to know that the Catholic Church welcomes Jesus not just as a bishop but as the bishop, as I Peter 2:25 says:
For you had gone astray like sheep, but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls (NAB).
The word translated guardian here in the NAB is actually not just a bishop; rather, the bishop (Greek, ton episkopon) of your souls. Jesus is the bishop of the Catholic Church. And he was and is celibate.”
Neither my opponent in that debate almost 20 years ago nor our friends who called into the broadcast two weeks ago really ever recovered from the obvious implications of that text. But there are a few more points we should consider when answering this point that I did not get to in either of these cases.
1. Even the Evangelical scripture scholar Dr. Ralph Earle, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, says that St. Paul in 1 Timothy 3 is not requiring bishops to be married. In stating his reasons, he first offers the most ancient position—which we know as Catholics to be apostolic in origin and found in written form in the late second century—that would say this text is placing a limitation on the number of marriages a bishop could have in his lifetime. He could only have been married once. This is the position of the Catholic Church today. If a man has been married more than once, even if licitly, he cannot be admitted to the episcopacy.
2. Earle writes, “[M]ost commentators agree that [the text] means monogamy—only one wife at one time.” This interpretation is unlikely for reasons we’ll mention below, but we should first take note that both Catholic and Protestant scholars generally agree St. Paul is not making marriage a requirement for the bishopric.
3. In that same Bible commentary, this time commenting on Titus 1:6, which makes to both elders and bishops the same prohibition against multiple marriages, another Evangelical scholar, Dr. D. Edmond Hiebert, adds, “If Paul had meant that the elder must be married, the reading would have been ‘a’ not ‘one’ wife.” I would go further and say it would most likely simply say, “The bishop must be married.” The term one indicates that he is limiting the number, not mandating marriage.
For those who would be inclined to argue the position that St. Paul is simply prohibiting polygamy to the clergy, I would add these five points:
1. The lists of disqualifications to the ministry in both Timothy and Titus were not consisting of things that would exclude a person from being a Christian at all, like polygamy would. They were things that would ensure the candidate in question was living an exemplary Christian life. Illicit “marital” situations were condemned at the Council of Jerusalem in AD 49 and declared to be deal-breakers for one to be a Christian at all (see Acts 15:1-3; 24-28). Though polygamy is not mentioned there verbatim, it would certainly be condemned implicitly in the condemnation of illicit conjugal situations.
2. There was not a single place in the Greco-Roman world where polygamy was being practiced in the first century A.D. It is unlikely St. Paul would speak of something directly like this that was simply not a problem at the time.
3. In the case of St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy, he would go on to declare that a widow who was “enrolled,” or consecrated, as a celibate and married again to have sinned gravely. There is nothing wrong with a widow remarrying. That is licit and clearly so elsewhere in Scripture, specifically in St. Paul’s own writings (see Romans 7:2-3; I Cor. 7:27-28, 39-40). But it is wrong for the one who has been consecrated for service in the Church. It is interesting that St. Paul uses the same language of limiting the widow to having been the wife “of one husband.” Obviously this was not meant to say “one husband at a time”:
Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband. . . . But refuse to enroll younger widows; for when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge (I Tim. 5:9-12).
It is more than fitting that those consecrated as bishops, elders, and deacons would make a similar commitment.
4. St. Paul’s repeated recommendations to all to remain celibate, remain single after having lost a spouse (I Cor. 7:1; 7-8; 25-28; 32-35; 38; 39-40), or even to live a celibate life within marriage (I Cor. 7:29), are consistent with his prohibition to remarriage to those called to holy orders. St. Paul seems to speak a great deal about second marriages but never about polygamy.
5. I find it interesting that the Protestant New International Version of the Bible translates I Tim. 3:2, “Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife.” While I do not necessarily agree with translating the text with the “but” in there, there is no doubt where the Protestant translators of the NIV stand on the question. St. Paul is limiting the candidate for the bishopric to "but" one wife.
I have no doubt that those three or so callers who called in to Catholic Answers were sincere. Maybe not in their masquerading as Catholics, but I am sure they sincerely believed the Catholic position of having celibate bishops to be just plain wrong. However, hopefully now they will re-think who it is that really takes St. Paul at his word; that is, his word taken in its proper context.
Or Jesus, and all of the apostles, knew that Paul had been married, had successfully raised a family and had proven himself.
Paul set the rules. I didn’t. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul. Second guess the Holy Spirit all you want.
Take it up with the Holy Spirit. Or failing that just keep inserting words into scripture. I’ll take it as written.
Like I said. Take it up with the Holy Spirit. Then do as you wish.
“No, celibacy is NOT the ideal.”
Even more so, Paul said that forbidding to marry was the doctrine of the devil.
1 Tim 4:
1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.
Paul was given a vision of the future where he sees false churches. He briefly mentions this and says that some will teach a doctrine of not getting married and others will teach against eating meat.
It is, what it is. There are only one church that teaches celibacy over marriage and only one that teaches against meat.
I do think the Lord wants us to celebrate life, not celebate it. There is plenty of evidence of this in the Bible. We know there is a thing called Holy Matrimony-—but I have never heard of Holy Celibacy. Celibacy does need to be a requirement for service in this priesthood.
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