It is akin to a bully on the playground punching a child, having that child fall down and cry, then for the bully to simply punch the victim again simply because he is crying. The bully then uses the fact that the victim is crying as an excuse to the teacher who caught him as justification for his actions. When churches hurt us in the LGBT community they then use our ways to deal with the hurt as further justifications to deny us our rights, and in some cases try to re-criminalize our existence. its a habitual circle of abuses that needs to end.

In regards to your question about how one gets fom “progress to pioneer”, to me, it’s about taking the breathe of Paul’s message to Timothy in the cultural conext of which is was said, that carries the most weight in understanding individual words. In most every cases, Paul/Timothy/any of the disciples/followers were unique pioneers in their everyday life and cultural contexts. The overwhelming majority of the Greco-Roman culture was pagan, therefore the countercultural ways in which Christ-ones lived and believed were indeed in a pioneer fashion. Bucking the mainstream is a core principle of what a pioneer is (at least that’s what I think), and therefore my understanding is that Paul was encouraging Timothy to live in such a fashion. It’s too easy to do what’s always been done, and especially at the early stages of the advancement of the faith, the times and messages needed such pioneers to boldly move in new directions such that others would take notice.

Why would I post my credentials? I’m really not anybody with authority, just a guy with a question. If you want to know, I am a first year seminary student at Gordon Conwell, learning how to do these things for myself. I’ve been admiring your work from afar for a while now. I just wanted to know how you got from progress to pioneer. It is still unclear to me how Dr. Weirsbe got there, but if I had to guess, it’s from taking verse 12 and 13 into consideration.

Paul exhorts Timothy to “devote himself to the public reading and teaching of scripture” (v13), and later says “so that all may see your progress”. Functionally and inductively, progress means “public reading and teaching of scripture” and also from v12 “set[ting] an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity”, from which I can see the generalization “pioneer” coming about. There’s my contextual definition based on the discourse, out there for you to critique. To use Dr. Weirsbe’s definition is to me still a little vague, but gives it a metaphorical flavor by conjuring up an image.

You have more than proved to me that you know how to do exegesis (not that I thought that you didn’t), and I apologize for my less than eloquent (perhaps arrogant) tone in asking. Really this is all nit picky semantics, and the core truth of your message still holds true.

Thanks again!
-John

IVP New Bible Commentary: The Christian minister cannot avoid being in the public eye, and whatever progress or otherwise that he makes will be witnessed. Paul is expecting Timothy to walk in such a way that others will definitively know what progress looks like.

IVP New Testament Bible Background Commentary: Progress was the standard philosophical way to describe a disciple’s advancement in moral philosophy and was naturally applied to advancement in life and truth as well; including such ways as to how his teaching and his life would affect the salvation of those around him.

And finally, conservative theologian and former pastor of the flagship evangelical Moody Church, Dr. Warren Weirsbe, says that “progress” in 1 Timothy 4:15 is contextually defined as: A pioneer advancing into new territory for others to recognize and revere the One compelling such action.

My initial question back to John before my explaination tomorrow is:

Why did you not link to yourself, your education, your blog/facebook/website/etc so everyone can scrutinize your definitive interpretation as well? It’s real easy to backseat drive and tell me what should have been said after the fact. Thanks for bringing this topic to light though, and I look forward to quoting my own Greek interpretations tomorrow.

Andrew-Looking forward to your explanation. I like the new territory metaphor and think it’s probably a pretty good starting point, even if you can’t necessarily use this verse to make a direct connection. But after all metaphors are rarely easily constructed/used to help build bridges between two groups of people (especially when they often want at each others throats)

thanks for that…your blog is a constant encouragement and challenge!

Around 4:28 in your video, you said something I find unfortunate. You talk about the Greek word for progress as used in 1 Tim 4:15 (ή προκοπή as it appears in NA27) as meaning “A pioneer advancing into new territory”. Where did you get this definition? BDAG cites the word’s meaning as “A movement forward to an advanced state”. I don’t think Paul actually said what you attributed to him that he said. Was he calling Timothy to be a pioneer to new lands? Possibly, but I don’t believe that it is so easily read from the Greek.

I still think your argument hold true for other reasons, but not because of your use of Greek as it’s foundation. You just have to look at the life of Jesus and the core of his ministry. He did not come to heal the sick, although he did, but rather to preach the good news of God in places which have not heard it (Mark 1:38) Even the whole “Incarnational living model” which I believe in and that you do is based off Christ’s life (Willingly coming from a place of higher privilege into a place of need i.e. God being born into the world as a man) and being “a light in a dark place” would have been better foundations than the use of the word ή προκοπή.

As always, it is very dangerous to use Greek in preaching and teaching because a lot of people will take on faith what you say about the language is true when it really isn’t.

Much respect,
John