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.
It’s easy. Did you ever hear of Adam and Eve? Did you ever hear of Abraham and Moses? Did you ever hear of God’s plan to be fruitful and multiply? Did you ever read what Jesus said about marriage in the Bible? Celibacy does have its value, for single people, for the unmarried, you should refrain from sin. That was all Paul was basically saying in the passages you cite. My point is REAL simple: Celibacy is NOT a requirement for service in the priesthood in the Bible. The Church came up with this requirement and not for many centuries after it was founded. That is my only basic point.
Well, fortunately not everyone followed his advice, if that’s the case you and I would not be here today having this conversation.
And I think you take Paul out of context. Keep in mind that he was an older man at the time he wrote it who was expecting Jesus to return shortly. In his former life as a Sanhedrin, he was more than likely married.
But I want to keep on point: Which is more important. My reading of 1 Timothy 3:2 tells me quite clearly that Paul has no problem with married men serving in the clergy. And that is my basic point. Not wishing to go off in a million different tangents.
One wife, not two, three four...
We know that Paul was not married at the time he wrote 1 Corinthians, but not of his marital status prior to that. As you say, it is logical to assume he had been married before, but we have no proof. By the same token we have no PROOF that Paul had any children. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. It only becomes a critical point if you are going to insist that Paul meant that ONLY a man who was married and had children could be a leader in the church. That makes no more sense than the Catholics insisting that a priest should not be married because of Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians.
Since we lack the proof of Paul's marital or parental status, a reasonable reading of the scripture, to be in harmony with his writings to the Corinthians, would be that to be a bishop, if one is married, he cannot be married to more than one woman; if he has children, he needs to have raised them well, to be obedient and in submission. To read the scripture to REQUIRE a bishop be married and have children would require us to make assumptions about Paul that you yourself have pointed out cannot be proven either way.
You have a good day too.
Not wishing to declare victory.
Only trying to establish the Bible does not prohibit a married clergy.
That is all.
God bless!
1 Timothy 3:2 It behoves (δεῖ) therefore the overseer...
Greek - δεῖ - what must happen, i.e. what is absolutely necessary [http://biblehub.com/greek/1163.htm]
Now, you can argue and conjecture all you want about Paul's status as to having been married or not. As I mentioned, by all accounts he was Sanhedrin and they were required to be married. That aside. He still put the requirement for "overseers" what he did.
Except it is not clear if the "requirement" is that they must be married, or if the requirement is that if they are married, they must not marry more than one woman. You might think you have settled the matter, but that is hardly the case...
I suppose that would make sense if you believed they could have children without being married.
Paul advocated allowed for celibacy
Most of the men Jesus chose were married.. most of the early Bishops were married
An early local church council(Elvira,) said a man should not have sex before the Sunday service
It was not until the council of Nicaea that it was decided that priests could not marry
BUT Priests and popes continued to marry
366, Pope Damasus said that priests could marry, but not have sex with their wives. Then later Pope Siricius left his wife and family to become pope.. and then as if to "justify that he ordered priests could no longer be married.. But his order was simply ignored by the church
History records married popes until the 1100's
That statement makes absolutely no sense. If there is no requirement for them to be married, but there is a requirement that if they are married that they only marry one woman, then it follows that there is not a requirement that they have children, but if they have children they are required to have them under submission.
The Catholics believe bishops should not be married; you believe they MUST be married. I believe you are both too absolutist on something that the Bible does not declare an absolute position on either way, but does provide specific guidance in the case of a married church leader. I will not persuade you, you will not persuade me, and neither of us will persuade the Catholics. Since this is not an issue on which salvation is conditioned, I guess we will all find out when we get to Heaven who was right...
>>If there is no requirement for them to be married>>>p> What part of "it's a requirement to be the husband of one wife" is so hard to understand?
>>but there is a requirement that if they are married that they only marry one woman,<<
Who says? No where in that passage is the word "only". One could as easily inject "at least" and make it read "at least one wife". I mean if your inclined to add words anyway why not?
How odd that if Paul didn't mean to require a man be married with children he would include this.
1 Timothy 3:5 If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?
>>Since this is not an issue on which salvation is conditioned<<
If Catholics trust an organization that lies about the requirements for church leadership it most certainly pertains to salvation since they lie about other things as well.
Play with the words of scripture if you wish. I don't have to wait until I get to heaven to understand the clear words of scripture.
How does it make sense that both Paul and Jesus say the celibate life is preferred, then turn around and say a Church Leader must be married? It makes no sense. Paul even went as far as to say he who DOES NOT marry the virgin is doing better.
There are other things that the Catholic Church teaches that most certainly impact salvation - just not this teaching.
Look, if your church teaches a man must be married and have children before he can be a leader in the church, great. But if a church has a leader who has never been married, or has been married but never had children, I am not going to judge them based on this scripture, because it is not a matter of their salvation, and the scripture can be interpreted more than one way. There are enough "churches" ignoring scriptures that are much clearer, and have much greater impact on the salvation of souls where we need to stand against false doctrine.
I don't question what the apostles wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As for Paul not being married it is well understood that he was a member of the Sanhedrin who have a requirement that they be married and at least 30 years old. As for their commendation of not being married, they do not say that is for leadership. Paul does specifically spell out requirements for leadership.
As to why he made those requirements I'll simply let him speak.
1 Timothy 3:5 For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?
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