NOTES for Ti2 2:19

Paul urges Timothy to avoid unnecessary and useless arguments, which give no one anything and only destroy the inner peace of those taking part in them. It should be noted that both the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds were worlds of many words, many arguments, and many opinions. This is not simply about what today is called pluralism; it is about a cult of argument, debate, and discussion. Conversation, often on fairly abstract subjects, argument, and philosophical debate were considered the most respectable occupation for a free person who had leisure for such pursuits; that was how it had been in the Greco-Roman world since antiquity.

In the Jewish world, discussions and debates, but on religious subjects, on matters connected with the Torah, were common; and often not only learned rabbis and teachers of the Torah took part in them, but ordinary people as well. After all, every believing Jew read and studied the Torah, and there were no others then, so there were people to talk and argue, and things to talk and argue about. Of course, in a certain respect such an atmosphere was very productive: new ideas, views, concepts, and theories appeared in it almost daily.

Intellectual life flourished, but spiritual life did not always. This is understandable: such a setting encourages argument, debate, and discussion to become ends in themselves, so that taking part in them is already considered important work and a serious pursuit, while often no time remains for spiritual work, and it is not considered especially important anyway. After all, correct views and opinions appeared to be the main thing, not correct life.

Such an atmosphere also made its way into church communities, and there it had to be resisted. Even if Christianity were simply a new religion, sooner or later it would have been necessary to stop and think not about words but about life. But since Christianity never was a religion and always was precisely a new life, life in that Kingdom which the Savior brought into the world, the excess of words, arguments, and discussions threatened Christians with serious spiritual losses.

Of course, serious questions that arose in the Christian environment had to be answered, because they really could affect a person's spiritual life. If, for example, someone, like the "teachers" mentioned by the apostle, seriously thought that "the resurrection had already happened," that everything was already over and Christianity had essentially remained in the past, he would hardly be able, with such views, to live a full Christian life.

But to devote one's life to arguments and discussions in order to win them and become the most famous and unbeatable debater, and still more to see such victory as the meaning of one's church ministry, is a spiritual dead end. Arguments will never end, and in the end they will simply swallow a person, leaving him no time for life, even ordinary life, to say nothing of Christian life. This is the danger Paul warns his disciple against.

"Remind them of this, charging them before the Lord not to quarrel about words, which does no good but only ruins the hearers." This is, perhaps, the most important rule of church health, the health of people inclined toward active life within the church, or simply people active in relation to their spirituality. Let us turn to the spiritual diaries of one of the major theologians of the twentieth century, Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann. "...what confusion, even darkness, there is in these young heads; how deadened the immediate moral reaction is; what chaos has been created in the world, in the soul, in culture by every kind of 'intelligentsia.' The endless pride of all this. Pride and vulgarity. Artificial agitation over pseudo-problems, pride in pseudo-consciousness, the importance of emptiness. And now this unfortunate 'academicism,' 'problematics,' the possibility for everyone to imagine himself to be something. And faith in 'discussions,' 'clarifications,' 'communications.' Not one person in the world has been enriched by discussions. Only by encounter with reality, with truth, goodness, beauty. <...> Therefore, as one approaches 'reality,' fewer and fewer words are needed. In eternity there is only: 'Holy, holy, holy...' Only words of praise and thanksgiving, prayer, the whiteness of fullness and joy. Therefore only those words are genuine and needed that are not about reality ('discussion'), but are themselves reality: its symbol, presence, manifestation, mystery. The Word of God. Prayer. Art" ("Journals," Moscow, 2005, pp. 21, 22). In the same book, much later, he recalls a conversation between two women that he overheard in passing. They were arguing about how long the dead remain with us: forty days or not forty. "After all, the Church teaches..." "Why is this necessary?" Father Alexander simply asks. And this is the most terrible thing, when we spend time on "disputes about faith." All this is only a pitiful parody of warfare about the Spirit. So why give ourselves over to it? Let us seek among people those who are close to us not by convictions, but in the way shown to us by the Lord in the parable of the merciful Samaritan.