Wisdom would counsel I not return to Paul, Titus, and the whole “Cretan fiasco”. [An aside: if Paul were a twenty-first century politician this affair would probably be dubbed “Cretangate” by the media.] But then I got a photocopied excerpt from an N.T. Wright commentary on Titus handed to me by my pastor and I definitely think it is worth a look.
Before we get started let’s be clear about the evidential standard demanded of the classic inerrantist. I call it the moral inerrancy standard:
Moral inerrancy standard (MIS): While the human authors of scripture were fallen, morally errant beings, the process of inspiration protected the authors from writing down any morally errant sentences which would be included in the final canon of scripture.
Note what this criterion does allow. First of all, it allows that the human authors of scripture wrote (or said) morally errant things at other times. The only point where they were protected is in the writing of scripture. Second, note that this allows for there to be morally errant statements in scripture. The book of Job may include many morally errant statements about suffering, for example. In the same way that Dostoyevsky can write down morally errant things in his novel said by Ivan the atheist, so human authors in scripture can write down morally errant things said by others.
Regardless, the MIS is a high standard and one that is enormously falsifiable: find one morally errant statement in scripture uttered by an author of scripture and the MIS lies in ruins. That’s what this little exercise in Titus 1:12-13 has been about. And that’s why it is very important.
When I first wrote about Titus I noted the presence of the liar paradox (“A cretan says all cretans are liars”; simper form of the paradox: “This sentence is false”) but I said: “That is an interesting topic, but not germane to the present discussion.”
But N.T. Wright thinks it is germane to the discussion. On his view, the very fact that Paul quotes Epimenides and then adds “This is true” signals a wry, joking attitude toward the whole matter that can hardly be considered morally problematic. We (or I) just need to lighten up a bit. Here’s how he puts it:
Another version of the same puzzle is found in this passage, and has become known as the ‘Cretan liar paradox’. Paul certainly regarded it as funny. (This should alert us to the fact that he is probably writing ‘tongue in cheek’ for at least some of the time in this passage. This is part of the difficulty of reading ancient texts, and even some modern ones; something which the author intended to be taken with a twinkle in the eye can come across on the page as though it’s heavy-handed and dismissive.) He wites someone from Crete saying, ‘Everybody in Crete always tells lies’ — and then he says that this testimony is true! We turn the postcard over and find … that Paul is laughing, not unkindly, but finding ways of warning Titus that he’s going to have to be robust and be prepared to work with the people of Crete. (147-148)
So let’s bring together Wright’s defense of Paul. To begin with Wright avers that Paul quotes Epimenides because he “regarded it as funny.” We can marginalize the relevance of that observation pretty quickly. The world is thick with morally aberrant ethnic jokes.
The crux of Wright’s case is pegged on the following claim:
(a) “he is probably writing ‘tongue in cheek’ for at least some of the time in this passage.”
If we can argue this then the following two statements can be taken as the “therefore”:
(b) “something which the author intended to be taken with a twinkle in the eye can come across on the page as though it’s heavy-handed and dismissive.”
(c) “Paul is laughing, not unkindly….”
And so if (a) is true then (b) and (c) follow in which case Paul is not saying something morally errant. This means that the entire case depends on (a).
With that in mind, note first how qualified (a) actually is:
(a) “he is probably writing ‘tongue in cheek’ for at least some of the time in this passage.”
MIS requires that Paul be morally inerrant in all his utterances in scripture. Therefore, if there are no other viable morally inerrant ways to read the passage then a tongue in cheek ironic reading cannot be taken as merely probable: it is required. This should alert us to the fact that those committed to MIS are simply precluded from considering certain readings, even if those readings are the most plausible.
The entire weight of the defense depends on the phrase “at least some of the time”. This is terribly vague precisely where we need precision. Obviously Paul is nodding in recognition toward the irony of appropriating the paradox. No problem there. But is he ironizing common stereotypes of Cretans? Far from it! The passage is embedded within the context of Titus having problems with Cretans and Paul feeds the stereotype even as he nods toward the paradoxicality of his statement.
So what is it that prevents some readers of the text from recognizing that Paul’s statement was simply wrong, off-color, inappropriate? Clearly it is a dogmatic commitment to MIS. Rather than court vague and implausible defenses of statements that, in any other context, we’d flag as inappropriate, why don’t we turn our attention to MIS? Why think that every single authorial sentence in scripture must be inerrant to begin with? If the human authors of scripture could appropriate the morally errant statements of others in their texts, why think that God couldn’t appropriate the morally errant statements of the human authors of scripture in his text?
