In 1 Timothy
4.1-5, Paul mentions two particular teachings that characterise the ‘later
times’. They are forbidding of marriage
and abstinence of certain foods. These
two issues seem relevant to the situation that Timothy was facing in the
Ephesian church, or even more broadly that the Church at that time was
facing. This exegetical note intends to
answer the question, ‘How does this contextual teaching about marriage and
foods in Paul’s day relate to the false teaching in ‘later times’?
The passage in
question reads as follows:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart
from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of
demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose
consciences are seared, 3 who forbid marriage and require
abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by
those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything
created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with
thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and
prayer (1 Timothy 4.1-5, ESV).
Interpretations
of this passage rightly point out that what Paul means by ‘later times’ refers
to the times initiated since the coming of Christ. A contemporary reader will typically read the
‘later times’ in reference to the end of this age just before Christ
returns. Both interpretations are
correct, since the ‘later times’ refers to the time between Christ’s first
coming and His second coming. Like Paul
and Timothy, despite two thousand years of time, we live in the ‘later
times’. However, we might add that,
whatever characterises this whole period will especially characterise what will happen at the very end of this
period. To use Jesus’ image in His
apocalyptic discourse, what happens now is but the beginning of the birth pains
(Matthew 24.8; Mark 13.8). Judaism at
the time thought in terms of two ages: this age, and the age to come. The early Church understood these ages to overlap,
marked by the first and second coming of Christ. Thus, we live with some indication in the
present of the age to come, and we live in the latter days of the present
age. In this way, then, what Paul says that
the Ephesian church is experiencing regarding false teaching is a manifestation
of the increase in false teaching that would occur in the ‘later times’ of the
present age.
The contribution
to the discussion I would like to offer comes in thinking more about the false
teaching about marriage and food. Commentaries
will rightly discuss how the role and status of women and views on marriage are
issues in the Ephesian church. They will
also rightly raise the issue that the early Church engaged with various views
about food, particularly given the food Laws from the Old Testament that posed
problems for the Church, with an increasingly large Gentile component. Furthermore, they will rightly explore the
challenge of asceticism in the culture at the time—this was a larger issue than
just one among Jews, some Christians, or the initial gnostic teaching that the
Church would address over the next century.
There were ascetic practices in other circles, such as among the
Pythagoreans. All that is worth
considering as part of a full exegesis of the passage.
However, what is
missing in this discussion is a relationship between the eschatology of the
‘later times’ and these two teachings.
Paul addresses specific problems in the church, and he understands
himself to be living already in the ‘later times’. Yet we still must ask, ‘What is the
relationship between these two issues and what he expects to be the case in the
later times, especially in the end of
the later times when wickedness will increase?’
The increase of
lawlessness—opposition to God’s Law—will characterise the end of this age
(Matthew 24.12). Similarly, Peter says
that ‘there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies’
(2 Peter 2.1) and ‘scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own
sinful desires’ (3.3). Given the general expectation of wickedness at the
end of this age, signalling the coming of the actual end and God’s final
judgement, how does Paul relate the issues in the Ephesian church to this
end-time false teaching and evil?
Moreover, what has the forbidding of marriage to do
with abstinence from certain foods? The
standard answer that this has to do with asceticism of some sort may identify
the character of the false teaching, but it is not the reason that it is an
end-time false teaching. The answer to
this question is that Paul has in mind a false teaching to do with creation—and
this is the missing point in commentaries (I have not checked them all!).
Note how Paul responds to these false teachings. It seems odd to speak of ascetics as ones
with a seared conscience (v. 2). Do not
ascetics have an overactive conscience?
Note that Paul responds to the asceticism around food with a comment
about God’s creating all things
‘good’—a repeated word in Genesis 1.
Thus, what connects the ‘later times’ to these teachings is not the
specific teaching of asceticism that we find in various religions and in some
quarters of Christian teaching over the years.
The connection is that the later times will see a rejection of what God
has created. It will be a time when
people will oppose nature itself, the way God made the world. Asceticism can be a way in which people
reject creation, but any rejection of the way God made the world—and made it
good—is a rejection of God and a turning to lawlessness and wickedness.
In our day, for example, gender, marriage, and family
have been under a severe attack. We
might draw some parallel with what occurred in the days of Noah or in the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—societies that rejected marriage and
sexuality as God intended them to be and that God wiped out in judgement.
Thus, what Timothy had to address in the Ephesian
church was an iteration of the sort of false teaching that characterises the
‘later times’. In our day, we see
constant opposition to the good of creation, especially in terms of gender,
sexuality, marriage, and family. Western
culture and some Asian cultures in particular have turned away from any belief
in God, let alone His creation of the world.
The West’s postmodern culture has rejected objective truth and insisted
that we create our own identity—the sin of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden
(Genesis 2-3). The first humans in the
creation story wanted to be like God by determining good and evil for themselves
rather than submit to God’s good.
While Timothy may have witnessed an ascetic attack on
the good of God’s creation, and while Paul saw in this an indication that they
were living in the later times, we witness the later times in our day expressed
in the rejection of gender, marriage, and family. Whether this means we are living in the actual end of the ‘later times’, we will
only know when the end actually comes.
That this is an indication of the increase of wickedness and lawlessness
characteristic of the ‘later times’ is a fact.
What we see in our day is an attack on the human identity of unborn
children, the gender surgeries on children, the invention of additional genders
in the minds of people, the redefinitions of marriage, the acceptance of
premarital sex, the proliferation of divorce, and the sexualisation of
children. This is the turning away from
God of the culture, but it is equally a false teaching endorsed by those who
introduce this turn away from the Creator into the Church in our day.[1] With Paul, we can say, ‘in the later times
some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and
teachings of demons…’ (1 Timothy 4.1).
[1] For further discussion of this matter, see Rollin Grams, ‘The
Antinaturalism of Late Postmodernity,’ Bible
and Mission Blog (14 May, 2020); https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-antinaturalism-of-late-postmodernity.html
(accessed 26 October, 2023).
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