ESV, but many translations say the same thing. Remember I'm talking about Titus 1:6, there are other verses that say trustworthy and faithful in 1 Timothy.
The word translated 'believers' in Titus is also translated the same elsewhere.
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Authority, submission, and chain of command
- Thread starter andrew
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The word translated 'believers' in Titus is also translated the same elsewhere.
I have no problems with the alterations, really. I suppose where it says "let another take his office" and "he who desires the office of a bishop" it would be better and more accurately translated "let another take his oversight" and "he who desires the oversight" or some such.
My main concern with viewing rulership as a spiritual gift, is that it is treated as no other spiritual gift. The oversight, such as it is, is an optional occupation that one must qualify for. A man may serve in this capacity if he meets the requirements and desires to. I am not aware of any other gift that is treated like that.
If I was an inhospitable jerk and a drunkard, there is no reason to believe I may not speak in tongues. If my son was unruly, no one would prohibit me from a healing if I could do it.
Whereas the conduct and circumstances of the prospective elder may prohibit him from being allowed to utilize his supernatural ability to lead. An evangelist doing time for killing a guy is a shame, but not a contradiction, but an overseer?
Since elder and deacon are both positions of 'public trust' (in a very narrow, faith-oriented way); that one may be rejected from assuming: I don't have much problem with those positions being referred to as offices. An elder is a person, but it is not as if he will continue to be an elder the day after he sleeps with another man's wife. Or... you know... he shouldn't be at any rate...
However after he disqualifies himself, the Oversight now has a vacant slot, in some respect. As it was with Judas' 'bishopric', a hole is left that a good qualified man must now fill? Which good, qualified man should it be? No need to dispute, just cast a lot.
I am far from viewing the "office" of elder as inorganic. But if the eldership comes with an expectation of income and an immunity to frivolous accusations, it isn't your run of the mill gift either.
Absolutely. As @Slumberfreeze said (and despite my earlier comment on an elder resembling the oldest patriarch within a nuclear family), I do think elders would primarily function as a group so as not to allow personal disagreements with an individual get in the way of sound leadership. Of course, there are other options that would likely be taken prior to booting someone out, which would not be unlike, at least in principle, disciplinary actions within a family.
I agree with this, and, once again, it isn't unlike a family structure. Anyone who lives under my roof is expected to abide by my rules. If they don't like my rules, they can leave.
Taking this a step further, I am not referring to just following the rules. I think every member of a household, with the exception of those who cannot due to age or illness) is expected to be a contributing member in some fashion. Is that not also true of a body of believers?
Of course, and I also believe an elder can release himself from the responsibilities of being an elder, but stay within the body. An example might be someone who recognizes they are becoming frail in their mind, such as one with dementia or Alzheimer's.
This makes me think of Luke 11:23 He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters.
I would think we should follow Matthew 18:15-17 in this case:
My suspicion is that "the church" would be represented by the elders, though I cannot think of a verse that plainly states that.
Okay, well except for TLB, NLT, and TJB it's all overseer, bishop, leadership, etc. TLB and NLT are not translations, so anything goes; I don't know anything about TJB. The Greek manuscripts are all episkope, so no particular reason for that to be rendered 'elder' (as if it were the Greek presbuteros) except to the extent it proves mine and Slumberfreeze's point above that there's a kind of interchangeability here.
Note on 1 Tim 3:1 - The English in the AV that was followed in some other translations is misleading 400 years later. The "office" of an overseer is the work of an overseer. A person's office is what that person does, it's not a title or position any more than it's a room with a desk and a telephone, and to say today that someone desires the "office of a bishop" is archaic. The translations that use "overseership" or "aspires to exercise oversight" or even "leadership" or "the work of an overseer" would be more accurate for today's readers. Paul is looking for men who want to do the work.
As a P.S., this verse specifically approves of those who desire or long to have oversight. steve and I were agreeing at one point on the idea that "if someone is volunteering to be an elder/bishop, they're probably disqualified on that basis". This verse provides some pushback to that idea. I think in the modern era there are men to whom our idea applies (men who want position and a business card and a paycheck and the privilege of bossing other people around), but maybe we ought to temper that with what Paul says here, when dealing with men who are volunteering to do the work
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Footnote: I wasn't bashing the LB or the NLT, and I love reading the NLT for it's sassy tone, and I passed out dozens of them back when we were active in street ministry. Just saying they're not reliable as "translations". (Guilty pleasure: I even appreciate The Message!...
Just not for serious study. In sports metaphor, translations give the play-by-play, and paraphrases give the color commentary!)
I disagree with this. Our obligations are defined by Christ, who said to confront alone, then take witnesses, then take it to the 'whole church', and who has the oversight of the church?...
What we see is a discreet system of trial and appeal, because 'love covers a multitude of sins'. But the end of the process is a judicial determination that no one in the fellowship should associate with the unrepentant sinner, and that judgment (my position based on what we've discussed so far) should be made by those that 'have the oversight', who will protect the integrity of the body as a whole.
Aussies, I see your proposal as a prescription for a church split based on individual judgments. And in the context of this ministry, something that comes up on a distressingly regular basis is how to process family breakups—who will stay in fellowship with BF (assuming they want to), and who we need to invite not to come back.
Anybody over a certain age could properly be referred to as an 'elder'. The question in the NT is which elders in particular local communities are going to be recognized as having the oversight of their fellowships, shepherding the flock as per Peter. And Peter and Paul of course were older men with experience, but they weren't serving the kingdom doing the work of a local overseer, they were serving the kingdom doing the work of 'ambassadors' (that is, what we have been taught to call "apostles"), helping to establish such local fellowships, among other things.
This is getting tiresome. If I spent as much time going on about the rebellious independent spirit of those who refuse biblical authority as gets spent impugning the motives of anyone arguing for biblical authority, nobody would ever make a useful point about anything.
There is no "badge" of elder, and nobody here would want one if there were. Further there is no identifiable "level of authority" that anyone here is seeking, because we haven't been able to get that far in the conversation due to the low signal-to-noise ratio.
Everybody:
No more "pope", "cult leader", or "badge of elder" comments. Whatever rhetorical effect you think those comments are having, they are only validating my hypothesis that this is a difficult conversation to have precisely because our culture is in a moral freefall, and the "daddy issues" (authority issues) of our culture have infected us all.
An internet discussion forum may not be the best venue to have this particular conversation. I'm going to give the matter some thought and see if I can come up with a protocol (set of ground rules) for further conversation. May take a couple of days.
No more "pope", "cult leader", or "badge of elder" comments. Whatever rhetorical effect you think those comments are having, they are only validating my hypothesis that this is a difficult conversation to have precisely because our culture is in a moral freefall, and the "daddy issues" (authority issues) of our culture have infected us all.
An internet discussion forum may not be the best venue to have this particular conversation. I'm going to give the matter some thought and see if I can come up with a protocol (set of ground rules) for further conversation. May take a couple of days.
@ZecAustin: As a kind of aside (I am not going to go back and find the post to quote), somewhere back there I asked you whether you were still glad you started this, 
and you responded appropriately that you just wanted to know when another man could intervene in a man's household management. I think what happened is that it pretty quickly became a discussion about elders because those are the main guys (maybe the only ones) that might have some authority to do that under some conditions. That's ignoring the obvious but irrelevant others like the police that will show up if you're beating somebody at your house, or the boss that will fire you if your messy divorce is interfering with your work responsibilities, etc. But for our purposes, I guess I thought we could stipulate or that we were all agreed that basically your question would be answered along the lines of figuring out what elders do. If we need to revisit that, I'm game. Otherwise, I think that if we ever start to put together a coherent picture of leadership in the body of Christ it will address the issue you wanted to discuss.
and you responded appropriately that you just wanted to know when another man could intervene in a man's household management. I think what happened is that it pretty quickly became a discussion about elders because those are the main guys (maybe the only ones) that might have some authority to do that under some conditions. That's ignoring the obvious but irrelevant others like the police that will show up if you're beating somebody at your house, or the boss that will fire you if your messy divorce is interfering with your work responsibilities, etc. But for our purposes, I guess I thought we could stipulate or that we were all agreed that basically your question would be answered along the lines of figuring out what elders do. If we need to revisit that, I'm game. Otherwise, I think that if we ever start to put together a coherent picture of leadership in the body of Christ it will address the issue you wanted to discuss.
@aineo, I'm having to parse this thread post-by-post, so I hadn't seen this until just now, but it looks like you and I are squarely on the same page.
Thanks! Yeah, I wasn't arguing, just wanted to know which specific translation that was from.
To be clear, "also translated the same elsewhere" would be "in the ESV" and in other translations that use it for Titus 1:6, right?
Agreed 100%, good points all. And one of the things slowing this convo down is the multiple layering of different usages of certain words, and the misunderstandings generated thereby. We're doing a lot of peeling here....
My main point with the gifts thing was just highlighting the function. And I think the resolution here is something like this:
Obviously some people have a knack for leadership (the phrase "gifted leader" is a cliché), but not all will be recognized as overseers. Obviously some men are older, more experienced, and on a good day, wiser, but not all of those will be recognized as overseers, either. I don't feel any conflict saying that best case we would want our leaders to meet Paul's qualifications and have a real gift for leadership. They're not mutually exclusive.
All good thoughts. I wish I had more time to elaborate on my agreement line by line.
I will say this: I would agree with you that in both the individual household and the 'household of faith', we want productive, contributing members. That raises some interesting implications we can unpack as we go.
I am not aware that Paul ever claimed to be whatever it is that requires you to have a wife and children. He may have and since the instruction wasn't given before he became a whatever it is there wouldn't be a contradiction if he did but I'm just not aware of it.
Well I might not be the right kind of guy to have in this conversation. If it's not spelled out in the Bible then I'm not going to endorse it as appropriate for the church and in all of this back and forth no one has show me where God tells us how to set this thing up and if He didn't weigh in on it then it's something He doesn't consider important and if He doesn't consider it important then it's up to the individual or group thereof.
Problem solved, no clear Biblical mandate means do what works best for your congregation.
Problem solved, no clear Biblical mandate means do what works best for your congregation.
The only thing Paul 'claimed' was his apostleship, which he defended over and over, and rightly so. Meanwhile, he was an old guy with authoritative experience with Christ, so definitely 'elder' in that sense. But he wasn't a leading figure in a specific fellowship, so not an 'elder' in that sense, nor was he some anointed office-holder with title and badge and corner suite, so not Elder in that sense. 
Zec, you may be the perfect guy to have in this conversation. That's a huge breakthrough....
This is another thread if we have to unpack this, but you know there were more than 12 apostles, right? I mean, there are the Big 12, so you may have been referring to them. But Timothy, Silas, Barnabas, etc.....
And what we can read about doesn't really settle as much as we'd like it to....