Making exegetical paths straight

Christopher Ash explains how biblical scholarship can help ministers of the word handle challenging texts

Perhaps you’re writing a talk for a youth group. You diligently print out the passage, highlight the tricky parts, and reach for a commentary. An hour, and four commentaries later, you find you’ve tied yourself up in knots.

All the commentaries seem to say different things, and you’ve barely scratched the surface of some of the trickier issues. So how do we use scholarship well? How can we let it shape how we read the Bible, without getting overwhelmed?

Here is one example, from 2 Timothy 2:13, of how scholarship has given me a helping hand when preparing to teach:

‘...if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself’

2 Timothy 1:1-2:13, the first main section of Paul’s letter, is a sustained and personal appeal to be faithful and suffer for the apostolic gospel. Paul concludes each section with one of the ‘trustworthy sayings’ that appear from time to time in the pastoral letters. This ‘trustworthy saying’ has four parts. The first three are relatively straightforward:

‘If we have died with [Christ], we will also live with him’. This is clearly positive, both in its condition (if we died with Christ, a good thing to do) and in its outcome (we will live with Him).

‘… if we endure, we will also reign with him’. This also is positive. We endure (a good and necessary thing) and so we reign with Christ.

‘… if we deny him, he also will deny us’. This is negative, both in its condition (we deny him, a bad thing) and in its outcome (he will deny us).

But what of the final part?

‘… if we are faithless, he remains faithful’. The condition is negative: we are faithless, clearly a bad thing. But what about ‘he remains faithful’? Is this a positive thing for us or a negative thing?

Commentators disagree. Some believe the pattern indicates that this final part is entirely negative. Paul has given two positives (both in condition and in outcome), then a negative, which suggests the fourth is also negative (both in condition and outcome). On this reading, the final section means: ‘If we are faithless to Christ, then Christ will remain faithful to His warnings, for He cannot deny Himself by contradicting the warning He has given.’

As I considered this, one observation and one question sprang to mind. The observation is that this final section is phrased unusually, with the extra words ‘for he cannot deny himself’. This might indicate a breaking of the pattern (we don’t know for sure). The question is this: can we learn anything from the way Paul uses the word ‘faithful’ when speaking about God or Christ elsewhere? Does he use it positively (of God’s faithfulness in rescue) or negatively (of God’s faithfulness in judgment) or both?

I ran a search with some Bible software (any digital version of the Bible with Greek and English translations – such as STEPBible. org – can do this) and found that Paul uses the word pistos (faithful) six times about God or Christ. The other five are all positive; they all speak of God’s or Christ’s faithfulness in rescuing His people.

This does not prove that Paul uses the word positively in 2 Timothy 2:13, but it suggests this. Breaking the positive-positive-negative-negative pattern, Paul ends on a note of surprising grace.

There is perhaps a difference between the final denial of Jesus (verse 12b), following what Judas Iscariot did, and the temporary faithlessness (verse 13), in the sad but not finally catastrophic tradition of Simon Peter. Timothy may have, or may in the future, fail to be faithful; but Jesus will keep him to the end.

When reading challenging verses, it is good to have people we can turn to for assistance. Bible scholars can help us get a better grip on the debates surrounding a passage and they can help us get a closer look at the raw materials the commentary writers are working with. We’re unlikely to find easy solutions where generations before us have failed, but scholarship can provide tools to enable us to understand passages better. It’s surprisingly satisfying to wrestle with a challenging passage, and even more satisfying to do it in the company of friends.

Christopher Ash is writer-in-residence at Tyndale House. All verses from the ESV.