NOTES for Tit 1:13-14

Titus was a disciple of Paul, a convert from among the Gentiles. The Apostle writes to him from Rome while awaiting judgment. In these final days, he wants to strengthen his faithful disciple, whom he appointed bishop in Crete. First of all he reminds him of an issue that remains among the most acute even today. As a Gentile convert, Titus, along with the Christians of Crete, must guard against those who, under the guise of knowledge of the Old Testament, try to restrict the rights of new converts. Experience and knowledge, of course, matter greatly. But nothing can replace living communion with God and prayer, nor the constant striving to know the truth to the degree possible for each person, according to what God has given him.

The spiritual situation in the Cretan church was evidently far from simple, so no one stayed on the sidelines of the disputes flaring up in church gatherings, regardless of their place and position in the community. And these disputes, as in many other churches, judging by the apostle's words, revolved around the question of the Torah and Judaism, more precisely, around the need to observe Jewish religious norms and prescriptions. It appears that in the Cretan church, as in all the churches of the first Christian era, there were many Judeo-Christians who considered adherence to these norms and prescriptions mandatory for everyone, insisting on their view and, apparently, putting pressure on those who disagreed (vv. 15-16). Judging by Paul's mention of purity and impurity, the same quite practical question kept arising in the Church again and again: kosher and non-kosher food. It invariably divided church communities into, on the one hand, those who could not imagine spiritual and, therefore, church life without Judaism and its religious prescriptions, and, on the other, those for whom they were irrelevant.

That is why Paul has to remind them again and again that religion has no direct relation to spiritual life; that the Jewish religious norms and prescriptions on which the zealots of religious piety so strongly insisted are the work of human hands and minds, like any religion; and that the only goal of the Christian life can be the Kingdom brought into the world by the Savior. The apostle does not accidentally call religious theories that absolutize Jewish religiosity myths and purely human inventions, which only hinder the faithful on the way to the Kingdom and therefore must be resisted for the sake of preserving spiritual health, including that of those who spread and defend these theories (vv. 13-14; in the Synodal translation the myths are called "fables"). It is possible that their supporters and defenders wanted to maintain peace with the Synagogue by making a kind of compromise that could secure the Church's support from the orthodox Jewish community, above all in the diaspora, but perhaps also in Judea. Paul, however, clearly opposed such a compromise decisively, just as he decisively opposed everything that could turn the faithful from the way leading to the Kingdom.