Tito 1
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Tito 1:2
I confess that I do not know what ages passed before the human race was created, yet I am perfectly sure that no one creature is coeternal with the Creator. Curiously enough, the apostle uses the expression tempora aeterna in reference not to the future but to the past. Thus he says: "in the hope of eternal life which God, who does not lie, promised before the eternal times, he has in due times manifested, his word." He seems to be saying that time stretches backward eternally; yet time is not coeternal with God, since not only did God exist "before eternal times" but he promised eternal life which he manifested in his own time, that is, in due time. Now, what he promised was his Word. For the Word is eternal life. But how did he make this promise, since it was made to those who certainly did not exist before the "eternal times"? The meaning, then, must be that what was to take place in its own time was already predestined and determined in his eternity and in his coeternal Word. — City of God 12.16
Tito 1:6
The first freedom, then, is to be without crimes. And so when the apostle Paul chose either priests or deacons to be ordained, and when anyone is to be ordained to take charge of a church, he does not say, If anyone is without sin. For if he were to say this, every person would be rejected, no one would be ordained. But he says, "if anyone is without crime," such as homicide, adultery and uncleanness of fornication, theft, fraud, sacrilege, and other things of this sort. — TRACTATES ON JOHN 41.10.1
Tito 1:9
If anyone says, however, that if teachers are made learned by the Holy Spirit then they do not need to be taught by educators what they should say or how they should say it, he should also say that we should not pray because the Lord says, "for your Father knows what is needful for you, before you ask him." With such a false premise one might argue that the apostle Paul should not have taught Timothy and Titus what or how they should teach others. One upon whom is imposed the personage of a teacher in the church should have these three apostolic epistles before his eyes. Do we not read in the first epistle to Timothy … and in the second epistle is it not said … again, does he not say to Titus that a bishop should persevere in "that faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convince the gainsayers"? — ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 4.16.33
Tito 1:11
But I, pierced with such grief as I am, what can I do except speak? Or do they do such things and then say to me: "Be silent"? May the Lord preserve me from such cowardice that I should hold my peace through fear of their wrath, when he commands me through his apostle, saying that "they ought to be reproved" by the bishop for "teaching the things which they ought not." … For when God commands that we speak and preach the word and that we refute and condemn "in season and out of season" those who "teach the things which they ought not"—as I can prove by the words of the Lord and the apostles—let no man think that I can be enjoined to silence in these matters. — LETTERS 34.4, 35.3
Tito 1:12
If you were to hear, even from one who was profane, the prayer of the priest couched in words suitable to the mysteries of the gospel, can you possibly say to him, "Your prayer is not true," though he himself may be not only a false priest but not a priest at all? The apostle Paul said that certain testimony of a Cretan prophet (he knew not which) was true, though he was not reckoned among the prophets of God.… If, therefore, the apostle himself bore witness to the testimony of some obscure prophet of a foreign race because he found it to be true, why do not we, when we find in any one what belongs to Christ and is true even though the man with whom it may be found is deceitful and perverse? Why do we not in such a case make a distinction between the fault which is found in the man and the truth which he has not of his own but of God? — The Letters of Petilian the Donatist 2.30.69
Tito 1:15
Those likewise are to be detested who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had Mary as his mother on earth. That dispensation did honor to both sexes male and female and showed that both had a part in God's care; not only that which he assumed but that also through which he assumed it, being a man born of a woman.… Nor should our faith be lessened by any reference to "a woman's internal organs," as if it might appear that we must reject any such generation of our Lord because sordid people think that sordid. "The foolishness of God is wiser than men"; and "to the pure all things are pure." — On Faith and the Creed 4.9-10
Tito 1:15
But now, when you abstain for the sake of chastising the body from various kinds of food that are in themselves quite permissible, remember that "to the pure all things are pure"; don't regard anything as impure except what unbelief has defiled; "for to the impure and unbelievers," the apostle says, nothing is pure. But naturally, when the faithful are reducing their bodies to slavery, whatever is deducted from bodily pleasure is credited to spiritual health. — SERMONS 208.1
Tito 1:15
The Jews, you see, had accepted that there were certain animals which they could not eat, and others from which they must abstain. The apostle Paul makes it clear that they received this law as a symbolic sign of future realities. — SERMONS 149.3
Tito 1:15
With all this, no one is pressed to endure hardships for which he is unfit. Nothing is imposed on anyone against his will, nor is he condemned by the rest because he confesses himself too feeble to imitate them. They bear in mind how strongly Scripture enjoins charity on all.… Accordingly, all their endeavors are concerned not about the rejection of kinds of food as polluted but about the subjugation of inordinate desire and the maintenance of brotherly love. — The Morals of the Catholic Church 1.33.71
Tito 1:16
All the heresies … they all say, "Jesus is Lord." And he's not, of course, going to eliminate from the kingdom of heaven those whom he finds to be in the Holy Spirit; and yet he did say, "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven." But: "Nobody can say: Jesus is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit"; nobody at all, evidently; but in the sense in which it was meant, that is in deeds.… The same apostle, you see, also says of some people, "They claim to know the Lord but deny it by their deeds." As it can be denied by deeds, so it can be said by deeds. — SERMONS 269.4