Titus: All Cretans Are Liars

At a Glance

Who wrote it: It says Paul, writing to Titus, a Greek co-worker he had left on the island of Crete. Most critical scholars think it came from the same later follower of Paul who wrote 1 and 2 Timothy.

When: If Paul wrote it, in the early 60s. If not, most likely around 100.

Written for: Titus and the churches on Crete, as the letter tells it. They needed trusted leaders, and an answer to teachers who, the letter says, were upsetting whole households.

What it remembers of me: That I gave himself for us (2:14). One verse may call me our great God and Savior (2:13), though the Greek can be read two ways.

How close it stays to me: Close on mercy and meeting needs. Far on women, slaves and Cretans.

If you only read three chapters: It has three. Read them.

Words to Know

Crete — the large Greek island south of the Aegean Sea. By my time it was a Roman province.

Epimenides — a Cretan holy man and poet of the 500s BC. Later writers said he was the one who called his own people liars.

Sound doctrine — in Greek, healthy teaching. The Pastoral Letters use the medical word again and again.

Those of the circumcision — Jewish members of the churches, or Jewish teachers, who insisted that Gentile believers keep the Law of Moses.

The Book in Brief

Paul greets Titus, whom he calls his true child, and reminds him why he left him on the island of Crete: to set the churches in order and to appoint elders in every city. Chapter 1 lists what an elder must be: blameless, hospitable, and no lover of dishonest gain. It warns of unruly teachers, especially some of the circumcision, who are upsetting whole households. It agrees with a Cretan prophet who called his own people liars, evil beasts and idle gluttons.

Chapter 2 tells Titus what to teach each group in the church: older men and women, younger men and women, and slaves. Titus himself is to be an example of good works. God’s grace has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, and I gave myself to make a people eager for good works.

Chapter 3 tells believers to be subject to rulers, to speak evil of no one and to be gentle toward everyone. God saved them by his mercy, not by their own works. Titus is to avoid foolish arguments and to warn a quarrelsome man twice before avoiding him. The letter closes with a request that Titus join Paul at Nicopolis, and with greetings.

One of them, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and idle gluttons.” This testimony is true (Titus 1:12–13).

It is a short letter, three chapters long, and most of it is advice about choosing church leaders and keeping a household in order. But that line is the one people remember. Philosophers remember it too, for a different reason.

The man it was written to

Titus was one of Paul’s most trusted helpers, and you meet him in the letters everyone agrees Paul wrote. He was a Greek. When Paul went up to Jerusalem to argue that Gentile believers did not have to become Jews, he took Titus with him on purpose, as a living example: not even Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised (Galatians 2:3). Later Paul sent him to Corinth to patch things up, and it was Titus who brought Paul the news of how one of his hardest letters had been received (2 Corinthians 7:6–8).¹

Oddly, the book of Acts never mentions him at all.

Paul on Crete?

The letter says Paul left Titus on Crete that you would set in order the things that were lacking and appoint elders in every city (Titus 1:5).

The only time Acts puts Paul near Crete, he is a prisoner on a ship bound for Rome. The ship works its way along the coast in bad weather, puts in at a harbor called Fair Havens, and then tries to reach a better port to spend the winter (Acts 27:7–13). There is no mission on the island and no churches planted.

Those who defend Paul as the author say he must have been released after the two years in Rome that Acts describes, traveled again, and worked on Crete then. Some early Christian writers believed in such a second journey.² Most critical scholars think the setting is part of the letter’s frame, written later by someone who wanted Paul’s authority behind the way the churches of his own day were being organized.

All Cretans are liars

The line about Cretans was famous long before this letter. Ancient writers credited it to Epimenides, the Cretan prophet. A Greek poet named Callimachus quoted its first words in a hymn to Zeus, written some three hundred years before me.³

Later philosophers noticed the puzzle inside it. If a Cretan says that Cretans always lie, and he is telling the truth, then he is lying. That puzzle is still called the Epimenides paradox.

The writer of this letter did not notice the puzzle. He noticed the insult, and agreed with it. This testimony is true. For this cause, reprove them sharply.

He seems to have had Cretan church members in mind, and especially one group: many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision (Titus 1:10). He tells Titus to steer people away from Jewish fables (Titus 1:14).

I was one of those of the circumcision. So were my mother, my brothers and every one of my twelve. And the book of Acts says that Cretans were in the crowd in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost, hearing the news in their own language (Acts 2:11). Nobody in that crowd was an evil beast.

When you write off a whole people, you will be wrong about most of them. This letter wrote off two.

Go deeperCrete in Paul’s day

Crete was an island with a reputation, and a past.

The Greeks even had a verb for the reputation. To cretize, in Greek krētizein, was to play the Cretan, which meant to lie or to cheat.⁴ So the insult in this letter was not new. Greek readers would have known it.

In Paul’s day Crete was a Roman province. Rome had taken the island in the 60s BC and joined it to Cyrene, on the coast of Africa, as one province with its capital at Gortyn.⁵ Jews lived there too. The Jewish writer Philo, who lived in Alexandria in my day, lists Crete among the places with Jewish communities, and Acts names Cretans among the crowd in Jerusalem at Pentecost (Acts 2:11).⁶ So the churches on the island grew up among both Jews and Gentiles, which fits the letter’s worry about those of the circumcision (Titus 1:10).

The letter says only that Paul left Titus there to set things in order (Titus 1:5). Eusebius, writing about the year 325, reports a tradition that Titus became the first bishop of the Cretan churches.⁷

Good works

Now the better part of the letter.

For a short book, Titus talks about good works more than almost any other. Titus is told to be an example of good works (Titus 2:7). I gave himself for us, it says, to make a people for his own possession, zealous for good works (Titus 2:14). Believers should be careful to maintain good works (Titus 3:8). And near the very end: Let our people also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they may not be unfruitful (Titus 3:14). The phrase means meeting urgent needs. Helping where help is needed.

And yet the same letter also says, in words that sound like Paul at his best, that God saved us not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy (Titus 3:5).

Both are true. You are not saved by your good works. You are saved for them. A tree is not made good by its fruit, but a good tree bears it. I said something like that myself.

The household in order

The middle chapter tells each group in the church how to behave.

Older women should teach the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sober minded, chaste, workers at home, kind, being in subjection to their own husbands, that God’s word may not be blasphemed (Titus 2:4–5).

Slaves should be told to be in subjection to their own masters and to be well-pleasing in all things, not contradicting, not stealing (Titus 2:9–10).

Notice the reason given: that God’s word may not be blasphemed. The church was worried about what outsiders thought. Greek and Roman writers had long taught that a proper household had a husband ruling his wife, a father ruling his children and a master ruling his slaves.⁸ Christians had a reputation for upsetting that order. Women and slaves were joining a new movement on their own. This letter tells them to settle down and look respectable.

I did not worry much about looking respectable. When my own mother and brothers came to take me home, I pointed at the people sitting around me and said, Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, and mother (Mark 3:34–35). That is a different household.

Go deeperWhat outsiders said about Christian households

The letter says the church’s rules are meant so that God’s word may not be blasphemed (Titus 2:5), that is, spoken against. Outsiders really were speaking against it.

About the year 180 a Greek philosopher named Celsus wrote a book against the Christians. We do not have it, but Origen quoted much of it when he answered it, about 248. Celsus complained that the Christian teachers were wool-workers, cobblers and laundry workers, who in private houses got hold of children and foolish women and told the children not to listen to their fathers and teachers.⁹ That is the very charge Titus 2 seems to answer. A wife who is quiet at home and a slave who does not talk back leave outsiders nothing to say.

The same worry is in the letter of 1 Peter, which tells believers to keep up good behavior among the nations, so that those who speak against you as evildoers may see their good works (1 Peter 2:12).

Some scholars read the household rules in Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Peter and the Pastoral Letters mainly as a defense against this suspicion.¹⁰ Others say the churches were simply taking over the rules of the world around them. Both may be true. Either way, rules written to answer critics in the first century were later read as rules for every century.

Our great God and Savior

One verse in the letter speaks of the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13).

In the World English Bible and most modern Bibles, that calls me God outright. The King James Version reads it differently: the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, which can mean two persons, God and me. The Greek allows either reading, and scholars have argued over it for centuries.¹¹ I mention it because you will hear it quoted, and because you deserve to know when a verse is clearer in English than in Greek.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Titus 1:12–13.

You will find: a whole people called liars, beasts and gluttons, and the words This testimony is true.

Then read Acts 2:5–11 and find the Cretans in the crowd.

The Short Version

• Titus says it is from Paul to a Greek co-worker on Crete. Most scholars think the same later writer wrote it as 1 and 2 Timothy.
• Acts never puts Paul on a mission to Crete, only on a prisoner’s ship sailing past it.
• It quotes the old line “Cretans are always liars” and agrees with it.
• It says we are saved not by our works but by mercy, and then tells us to be zealous for good works.
• Its rules for wives and slaves were about looking respectable to outsiders.