Peter commented recently on one of my old posts about the phrase “husband of one wife” from Titus 1:6. Check out Born to be my baby. Is there any new light to be shed on this old subject?
So far interpretations include:
An elder should have:
1. only one wife.
2. at least one wife.
3. should not be divorced
4. should be married and not celibate
5. should be faithful to his wife
6. an elder(ess) should have only one husband too for that matter!
After considering the evidence, what’s your interpretation?
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If an elder is married, he must be faithful to his wife.
I think you are spot on in implying that this phrase has just one meaning, is teaching just one thing. It is not teaching two separate things (a) an elder must be male and (b) an elder must be married and/or faithful to their spouse. It is perhaps presupposing that the elder is male, and perhaps married, but the real teaching is not about gender but about marriage. So I would I think agree with a rephrasing of Wayne’s interpretation as “If an elder is male and married, he must be faithful to his wife”. Of course it doesn’t mean that female elders, or for that matter single male elders, can be as sexually active as they like (something which is anyway limited by teaching on sexual ethics for all believers); rather, in the particular situation to which Paul was writing, there was a potential problem here which needed to be addressed.
Your posts on this subject, together with Adrian Warnock’s mention of Al Mohler’s “conversion” to complementarianism, have prompted me to write my own series of posts centred on this phrase in Titus 1:6.