Homilies on Titus

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.3 · 1.4–1.7 · 3.1–4.1 · 4.3–4.4 · 4.5 · 6.1–6.4

1. 1.1Introducing his homilies on Titus, Chrysostom describes Titus as a trusted companion entrusted with Crete, dates the letter before 2 Timothy, and explains the greeting: Paul's apostleship as a trust given by grace for God's elect, eternal life promised before the ages, the herald's duty to preach boldly by command, and Titus as a true child in a common faith.
2. 1.3Chrysostom explains that the bishop needs grace and peace more than anyone, warns that one who ordains an unworthy bishop will answer for all that man's sins and the souls he ruins, and argues that episcopal office is not honour or power but service to countless masters.
3. 1.4Chrysostom explains Paul's charge to Titus to appoint bishops in every Cretan city, reading “the husband of one wife” as both honouring marriage against heretics and barring the twice married from office.
4. 1.5Chrysostom explains the qualities of a bishop in Titus 1:7–11: gentleness without insult, self-mastery, and above all ability to teach and to silence false teachers.
5. 1.6Chrysostom warns against the passion for glory, urging his hearers to look to God's verdict rather than human praise and to welcome dishonour as a protection.
6. 1.7Chrysostom urges his hearers to reject human glory as empty, like a stage mask, and to seek only the praise of God.
7. 3.1On Titus 1:12–15, Chrysostom explains why Paul quotes the Cretan poet Epimenides (and elsewhere Aratus and the Athenian altar) without endorsing Zeus, shows that God condescends to people through their own customs, and teaches that sharp rebuke is needed for the Cretans and that nothing is unclean except sin.
8. 3.3Concluding Homily 3, Chrysostom teaches that foods are not unclean by nature, that the Mosaic food laws curbed luxury and the purity laws were types of the soul's cleanness, and that true uncleanness is sin, especially greed and injustice, which is what makes sexual immorality and adultery unclean.
9. 4.1On Titus 2:2–8, Chrysostom explains the failings of old age and the virtues Paul requires of older men and women, the limits on women's teaching, the love of wives for their husbands as the source of household peace and of the gospel's good name, and the special temptation of young men.
10. 4.3On Titus 2:8–10, Chrysostom condemns those who separate wives from husbands or slaves from masters on the pretext of continence, and argues that well-behaved Christian slaves, a class neglected and despised by their masters, show the power of the gospel to unbelievers.
11. 4.4Chrysostom urges household slaves to serve their masters as serving God, and shows from Joseph, who won the trust of his Egyptian master and of his jailer though he was of another belief, that a virtuous slave is honoured even by harsh and unbelieving masters.
12. 4.5Chrysostom ends Homily 4 with Joseph's kindness to his fellow prisoners and an appeal to slaves and free to win even the wicked by virtue; Homily 5 (Titus 2:11–3:7) explains the grace that trains us to deny worldly desires, argues that greed is worse than sexual sin, affirms that Christ is “our great God,” and describes pagan corruption before Christ, from which God saved us by the washing of regeneration.
13. 6.1On Titus 3:8–15, Chrysostom explains that Paul turns the doctrine of God's love into an exhortation to good works, warns against futile quarrels with incorrigible heretics, comments on the closing instructions, and argues that almsgiving benefits the giver more than the receiver and quenches sin more than virginity or fasting.
14. 6.3Chrysostom praises almsgiving as the mother of love, shown in the first church at Jerusalem, argues that those without inherited wealth are freer and better placed for virtue than the rich, and warns that wealth and greed are burdens that cannot pass through the narrow road.
15. 6.4Concluding the homilies on Titus, Chrysostom draws lessons from the three young men in the furnace, Abraham and Joseph: affliction borne with complete readiness, without setting God a deadline, is soon lifted; he tells of two martyrs, one of whom was tortured at length so that his cowardice might be cured.