nor to turn their minds to fables and interminable genealogies, which bring questionings rather than [further] God's dispensation, which [is] in faith.
Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus with one job: to stop certain men teaching things that were not the truth. This verse names what those men were chasing. Translators have read its closing phrase in two ways, and each reading gives a different answer to what Paul puts in its place.
Two Streams of Error
The two things Paul names here came from opposite worlds.
These strange teachings were of two kinds: "fables" (or "myths") and "genealogies." By the first word Paul meant ideas brought in from the pagan world, even though they were the polished theories of the Greek schools. By the second he meant ideas brought in from the Jewish world, where family descent had played such a large part.
The same error keeps coming back under new names.
This warning targets the Gnostic emanations — the invented "aeons" and the lists of how one came from another... The myths of our own day are no more in keeping with sound doctrine and the truth of God: evolution, which derives one thing from another in an endless chain, and the myths of destructive criticism, spiritism, theosophy, Christian Science, and other strange notions.
Why "Endless" Genealogies Flatter Us
The appeal is not accidental. A chain of descent leaves no room for God to act.
"Endless genealogies" please the natural mind and religious human nature alike, for they shut God out and make much of man. They assume that all blessing is a process of development handed down from one generation to the next. That is why the religious Jew made so much of his family line.
This is not a ban on the family lists that Scripture itself records.
The subject itself does build us up, as the whole Word of God does. But it is useless to take it up with only your own intelligence, as the rationalists have so often done. And these are not the genealogies the apostle tells us not to give heed to (1 Tim. 1:4; Titus 3:9). He was warning against a philosophical system that tried to set up endless levels in a hierarchy of spirits.
Questions, Not Certainty
Where does such teaching come from? Not from faith.
When men set up as teachers of strange doctrine, they always wander into the region of fable and give heed to myths and endless genealogies. The love of the marvellous went to work among Christians early on. Imagination is never faith. Faith delights in knowing God and His will, and so trusts nothing but His word, however thankful it is for those who bring it. Imagination is the natural resource of people who do not know the truth.
An impressive family line is exciting, but excitement is not the test.
Truth is solid and real. It is not fanciful, and it does not play to our love of sensation. It is precious, vital, practical. The things that only impress the mind or the imagination are not the things that feed the soul. Tracing your family line back to some famous ancestor may be exciting, but only to the flesh.
"Godly Edifying" or "God's Stewardship"?
Older English Bibles end the verse with "godly edifying." The ESV reads "the stewardship from God that is by faith." One Greek letter separates the two words, and the writers quoted here judge the second to be the true reading.
Clearly "edification" is not the point here. The point is the right order of the house of God, and this in faith.
And that order is what love works to further.
The older English version reads "edifying," but the correct reading is "dispensation," or "house-law" — one changed letter in the Greek word makes the difference. Love furthers everything God has ordered as the rule of His house.
Faith, and the Test of Ministry
The verse ends on faith. God runs His house by it, and it works in both directions.
The apostle does not finish his sentence. Timothy would understand without question; so ought we. But he lets us know what he thinks of speculation: it produces barren questions for the mind. God's dispensation, by contrast, is in faith. It is faith that He uses both to dispense and to receive.
This is not a private matter of taste in study.
So we see that some were warned about their ministry. It had to be sound in the truth and profitable, not taken up with questions that do not build up. If they kept on with such troublesome ministry, they would show self-will, and they would surely have to be disciplined and silenced.
Summary
- Two sources. The "myths" came from the pagan schools, the "genealogies" from Jewish pride of ancestry. Both were imports. Neither grew out of what God had revealed.
- One appeal. Endless chains of descent make much of man and shut God out. They explain everything by what came before, not by the God who acts.
- One yield. Speculation can only produce questions. Imagination is never faith. What impresses the mind does not feed the soul.
- One alternative. The truer reading is not "edifying" but God's stewardship. That means the right ordering of His house, run on faith.
- One test for ministry. Teaching that raises questions without building anyone up is not a harmless hobby. In God's house it is self-will, and it has to be dealt with.