Titus 1:15Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Why then were the swine and certain similar animals forbidden? Not because they were unclean, but in order to restrain gluttony more strongly.

If God had said this directly, the Jews would not have obeyed. But by the fear of uncleanness He restrained them.

Tell me, what is more unclean than wine, if one examines it? What is more unclean than water, by which they were chiefly purified? They would not touch the dead, yet they purified themselves by dead things in sacrifices.

For what has been slaughtered is dead, and by it they were purified. Truly their teaching was childish.

Look again. Does wine not receive its composition from manure? The vineyard draws moisture both from the earth and from the manure lying upon it.

In general, if we wish to examine things in detail, everything is unclean. But if we decide not to make such examinations, nothing is unclean, and everything is clean.

God created nothing unclean. There is nothing unclean except sin alone, because it touches the soul and defiles it. The rest is human prejudice.

“But to the defiled,” says the Apostle, “and unbelieving, nothing is clean; their mind and conscience are defiled.” Can there be anything unclean among the clean? But whoever has an unhealthy soul defiles everything.

If such a disposition takes possession of him, constantly examining what is clean and what is unclean, then perhaps he will touch nothing at all. According to such people’s notion, nothing will be clean, neither fish nor anything else.

“Their mind and conscience are defiled,” he says, and therefore everything is unclean. Yet the Apostle did not speak in this way. How then did he speak? He attributed everything to the people themselves.

There is nothing unclean, he says, but they themselves are unclean. Their mind and conscience are unclean, and nothing is more unclean than these.

What then is unclean? Sin, malice, covetousness, and wickedness. “Wash yourselves,” says the prophet, “make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds from before My eyes” (Isa 1:16).

“Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Ps 50:12). “Depart, depart, go out from there; touch no unclean thing” (Isa 52:11).

Those Old Testament purifications were figures of true purification. “You shall not touch their carcasses,” says Scripture (Lev 11:8). Sin is likewise a stinking dead thing.

“The priest,” it says, “when he sees living flesh, shall pronounce him unclean; the living flesh is unclean: it is leprosy” (Lev 13:15). Sin is also something mottled and varied.

That this is what is indicated here is clear from what follows. If the leprosy remains constantly and over the whole body, the man is clean. But if it is on one part, he is not.

Do you see that what is varied and changeable becomes unclean?

Again, “one who has a discharge is unclean” in soul (Lev 15:4). By the one who emits seed is meant one who casts out seed. Likewise, the “uncircumcised” is unclean (Gen 17:14).

Do you see that these are not allegories, but figures? Here is meant one who does not cut away evil in his soul. The one who works on the Sabbath is stoned, that is, the one not constantly devoted to God perishes.

Do you see how many kinds of uncleanness there are? “If a woman gives birth,” it is said, “she is unclean” (Lev 12:2). Why, tell me? Did not God Himself create seed and birth?

Why then is such a woman unclean? Was something else not intended here? What was it? Through this God implanted chastity in the soul and drew it far away from adultery.

For if a woman who gives birth is unclean, much more is the adulteress. If to touch one’s own wife is not altogether clean, much more is it unclean to mingle with another man’s wife.

“One who takes part in a burial,” it is said, “is not clean” (Lev 21:1). Much more is one who takes part in murder and war.

One can find many kinds of uncleanness if one lists them all. But this is not what is now required from us. Everything has now been transferred to the soul.

The bodily is nearer to us. Therefore God formerly instructed people by means of it. But now it is no longer so, because one should not always remain with figures and shadows, but receive the truth and hold to it.

Sin is uncleanness. Let us avoid it and abstain from it. “If,” says the Wise Man, “you approach it, it will bite you” (Sir 21:2). There is nothing more unclean than covetousness.

How is this evident? From its very actions. What does it not defile? It defiles the hands, the soul, and the very house in which the stolen goods are kept.

Among the Jews this is counted as nothing. Yet among them Moses carried the bones of Joseph, Samson drank from the jawbone of an ass and ate honey from a lion’s jaws, and Elijah was fed by ravens and a widow.

And tell me, if one had to examine this in detail, are not the very skins of the books of Scripture more unclean than anything? For they too come from dead animals.

Thus not only the fornicator is unclean, but others are even more so. The adulterer too is unclean. Yet both are unclean not from the union itself.

Otherwise, for the same reason, one who touches his own wife would also be unclean. They are unclean because of the violation of right and because of greed, by which one has seized from his brother what is most necessary.

Do you see that vice is unclean? One who had two wives was not unclean. David, who had many wives, was not unclean. But when he took one wife unlawfully, then he became unclean.

Why? Because he committed injustice, because he seized what belonged to another.

The fornicator too is unclean, not because of the union itself, but because of the character of his act. He insults womanhood. So do those who make a woman common, insulting one another and perverting the laws of nature.

For she ought to be the wife of one man. “Male and female,” says Scripture, “He created them” (Gen 1:27), and again, “the two shall be one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

Not many, but two in one flesh. Thus injustice occurs here, and therefore this is a vicious act.

So too anger, when it exceeds measure, makes a man unclean, not because of the stirring itself, but because of its quality. Therefore it is added: “whoever is angry,” not simply, but “without cause” (Mt 5:22).

Thus the movement toward excess is everywhere unclean. Uncleanness is born from greed and insatiability.

Let us then be watchful, I exhort you. Let us be clean with true purity, that we may be found worthy to see God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, with Whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, dominion, and honor, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

In the same way, one with a sick stomach thinks foods unpleasant, though they may be pleasant. To one afflicted with dizziness, the firmly standing earth seems to move. Such suspicion depends on his sickness. This applies to the Manichaeans, the Marcionites, and the newly arisen heretics from them, called Galatians by most. According to another reading, they are called Gavatians.

The Jews learned that some animals may be eaten, while from others one must abstain (cf. Lev 20:25; Acts 10:14). The Apostle Paul clearly shows that they received the Law as a symbol of a future state of things (cf. Rom 14:13-26).

When you abstain from some kind of food, even lawful and permitted food, for the purification of the body, remember that "to the clean all things are clean." Count nothing unclean except what is defiled by unbelief. "But to the defiled and unbelieving," says the Apostle, "nothing is clean" (cf. Mt 15:11; Rom 14:14). Truly, when the faithful bring their bodies into subjection (cf. 1 Cor 9:27), everything taken away from bodily pleasure benefits spiritual salvation.

One must also abhor those who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had Mary as His Mother on earth. This divine economy honored both sexes, male and female. It showed that God's care extends not only to Him Whom He assumed, but also to her through whom He assumed, since a woman carries and gives birth to a man. [...] Let no such reflection on the womb of a woman weaken our faith, so that this origin of our Lord seems to be rejected because the base consider it base. For "the foolishness of God is wiser than men" (1 Cor 1:25). Truly, "to the clean all things are clean," as the Apostle says.

Moreover, if we believe, according to the divine Scriptures, that man is the work of God's hands, could any defiled work have come from a pure power? [...] When some natural emission takes place apart from our will, then, as we have already said, we endure this also by natural necessity, together with our other necessities.

Thus all things are clean for the clean, just as all things are pleasant to those who are strong in body and sound in thought. Everything is reckoned clean or unclean according to the soul's disposition and its choice. Therefore every food is unclean or clean, not in itself, but according to human prejudice. "But to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean." So also to the sick and to those with a corrupted taste nothing is pleasant, because their health is gravely disordered. "But both their mind and their conscience are defiled." The mind is defiled by sin, and the conscience likewise is defiled through participation and communion with it. The Apostle did not say directly that no food is clean for them. He said that no part of their being is clean. He spoke thus because they themselves serve as the source of uncleanness. Among the other parts of their being, he says, their mind and conscience are chiefly defiled. For one inwardly assured that there is no immoderation in his enjoyment boldly touches food. He knows only that every creation of God is clean by nature, as was said above. But one who senses this immoderation in himself becomes exceedingly fastidious and capricious, for sin is possessed by fear. One whose mouth is infected with decay thinks the food he receives is spoiled. So it is with those defiled by sin. Their prejudice has arisen from sinful passion, not from a difference in foods.

By contrast, whoever is unclean in heart is not made clean by any food considered clean. He remains wholly unclean. No nourishment makes the first unclean, and no nourishment makes the second clean. Or, the nourishment of the first is always clean, and the nourishment of the second is always unclean.

Here the Apostle teaches the same thing the Savior taught: it is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the heart (see Mt 15:11-19).

To understand these statements fully, one must have in mind not kinds of food, but nourishment itself or eating. For one man, nourishment is clean because it is received with a pure heart. For another, it is unclean because it is received with an unclean heart.

A pure heart is one that, having detached itself from every form of self-pleasing, directs everything to the glory of God, even if it eats and drinks. Therefore everything is pure for it.

But a heart filled with self-pleasing is unclean. By this self-pleasing it makes every action and movement of its own unclean, because everything in it is done according to self-pleasing. This is so even when something appears outwardly self-denying and directed toward God.

Of such people the Apostle says: “Their mind and conscience are defiled.” The mind is defiled by false notions, which it accepts without discernment through the mere attraction of the heart, by being carried away by customs, or through vainglory and vain wisdom.

The conscience is defiled when a man acts according to those false notions against conscience. It is also defiled when he acts without attending to conscience, or with a doubtful conscience.

Such a state is inevitable in those whose heart is filled with self-pleasing and entirely possessed by certain objects that feed and satisfy it. Here they not only do not listen to the mind and conscience, but even force them to judge and determine things for their own pleasure, either indulgently or crookedly.

In every way they strongly arouse within themselves the thought that they act rightly, or at least tolerably, although inwardly they hear a certain reminder that does not approve them.

Chrysostom says that in the Old Testament certain foods were forbidden, “not because they were unclean, but in order better to curb indulgence of the flesh.

“God created nothing unclean. There is nothing unclean except sin, because it touches the soul and defiles it. Everything else is considered unclean because of human prejudice.

“Therefore the Apostle attributed everything to the people themselves. There is nothing unclean, he says, but they themselves are unclean, their mind and conscience. Nothing is more unclean than these. This is what impurity consists in: they themselves are not clean.

“One must be discerning about what defiles the soul. This is truly impurity, this is defilement, and all the rest is not. Those whose taste is corrupted think that what they receive is unclean, but this comes from their disease.

“Therefore one must know firmly what is pure by nature and what is unclean. What is unclean? Sin, malice, deceit, greed, and wickedness. ‘Wash yourselves,’ says the Prophet, ‘and be clean. Remove wickedness from your souls’ (cf. Is 1:16).

“Those Old Testament purifications were images of true purification. Now this external thing is not required of us, but everything is referred to the soul. The bodily is nearer to us, and therefore God first turned us away from it. But now it is not so.

“One ought not always to remain with images and cling to shadows, but to receive the truth and hold to it. Impurity is sin. Let us flee from it and restrain ourselves from it. ‘If you approach it,’ says the Wise One, ‘it will bite you’ (cf. Sir 21:2).”

The Apostle mentioned this side of the teaching because it stood out especially, and its absurdity was so obvious that it did not require lengthy refutation. He says to them, as it were: see what this point of theirs is like. But as this one is, so are all the others. Now look at what their teachers are like.