Commentary on 1 Timothy

Commentarius in epistolam I ad Timotheum

3.2.1Theodore rejects the common practice of barring a chaste man who has married twice from the clergy while admitting a licentious man with one wife, or a man married twice before baptism.
3.2.2Theodore holds that "husband of one wife" excludes men who had two wives at once or were unfaithful to their wife, not a chaste man who remarried after his wife's death, since widowhood is a matter of chance, not of will.
3.2.3Theodore concludes that office depends on a man's will and life, not on accidents such as widowhood or the time of baptism, and that baptism benefits according to the faith and intention of those who receive it.

About this work

Author: Theodore of Mopsuestia
Attribution: authentic · Transmitted in Latin under the name of Ambrose; identified as Theodore's by J. B. Pitra and H. B. Swete from the Greek fragments.
Standing: Not honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant traditions. Bishop of Mopsuestia in communion with the church until his death (428); condemned only long after, at Constantinople in 553.
Date: 392–428 (approximate) · Written while Theodore was bishop of Mopsuestia; the exact date is not known.
Written at: Mopsuestia, Cilicia (probable)
Language: Latin
Genre: commentary
Recension: Ancient Latin translation of the lost Greek commentary (transmitted under the name of Ambrose). Swete also prints Greek catena fragments of the original beside the Latin; they are not reproduced here.
Reference system: chapter.verse of the lemma; the long comment on 3:2 is divided into parts (3.2.1, 3.2.2, ...) at Swete's page breaks.
SBL abbreviation: Comm. 1 Tim.Not yet checked
Text from: H. B. Swete, ed., Theodori episcopi Mopsuesteni in epistolas B. Pauli commentarii: The Latin Version with the Greek Fragments, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1882) (Public domain (printed 1882))