I TIMOTHY 3:8 (DOUBLE-TONGUED)

The Nobel Prize-winning British novelist William Golding was certainly not unacquainted with the Bible, as the title of his first, and most famous, book The Lord of the Flies attests. It is the literal translation of “Beelzebub,” found seven times on the lips of Jesus as a derogatory term for Satan. And to complete the circle, his final novel was titled The Double Tongue, a probable allusion to the only place that term appears in the Bible, I Timothy 3:8 – as part of the qualifications of candidates for the church office of a deacon. That verse begins, “Deacons likewise must be serious, not double-tongued...” The question arises as to exactly what that latter phrase means.

1. From the immediate context, it appears that it could be meant to be the opposite of “serious.” But absolutely no commentator I have consulted seems to take those two first attributes as having anything to do with one another.

2. I will admit that my first naive thought on the subject associated “double-tongued” with the line often found in old cowboy-and-Indian movies where the native American says to another party, “White man speakum with forked tongue.” The meaning there seemed to be that he found the other person to be untrustworthy in what he was saying. And behind that saying was probably the image of a snake with a forked tongue. If so, that should conjure up the story of Satan, in the form of a snake, tempting Adam and Eve through innuendoes, half-truths, and outright lies. And we know that Satan is elsewhere characterized as “the father of lies.” But it is highly unlikely that a person would ever be even considered as a candidate for church deacon if he was known as a liar, so that explanation does not seem to hold water.

3. Getting back to Golding's book, the story involves a new woman training to be the pythia of the famous oracle of Delphi. Parenthetically, the Greek word is derived from the same source as “python,” again reminding us of the snake with the forked tongue. This novitiate soon learns that if no mystic oracle should come, then it is best to tell the inquiring clients what you think they want to hear. At this point in the story, the priest initiating the woman into the secrets of the oracle says, “Forgive me speaking so strongly. But I had a sudden feeling that you thought the oracle was rigged. No, no, my dear. I speak with the tongues of men. You should speak with the tongues of the Holy Messengers. But -” and here he smiled his wonderful, sad smile, – “If we cannot have the one, let us at least have the other.”

This pronouncement is a clear allusion by the author to those who “speak with the tongues of men and angels but have not love.” So perhaps Paul is warning against choosing deacons who have the habit of speaking in tongues and pretending to know how to interpret the tongues. However, that would be highly unlikely in light of Paul's teachings in II Corinthians 12-14, a detailed discussion of the place of the spiritual gifts within the church. And although Paul goes to great lengths to discourage the Corinthians from placing too high a stress on speaking and interpreting tongues, he concludes that passage by stating in 14:39 that speaking in tongues should not be forbidden in the churches.

Another negative factor regarding this view is brought out by Towner. Basically if that were what Paul had in mind, he probably would have used the more widely occurring term dilossos rather than dilogos since the former means someone who can speak in more than one language.

4. Or we could go back to the original meaning of the word for a clue. Vine is representative of several scholars in explaining the etymology of double-tongued as follows: “The rare term originally refers to repetition in speech.” With that in mind and assuming that the original meaning still held during Paul's writing, we could see a clear parallel with Christ's warning recorded in Matthew 6:5-7 against those hypocrites who pray in places where they can be seen and those who “heap up empty phrases as the Gentles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.”

Although that sort of tendency for self-glorification and demand for attention from others would certainly be held against any candidates for a deacon position, I have yet to find any scholars who feel that the etymology of the word reflects its later meaning during Paul's time. It is generally agreed that by the time of the writing of I Timothy, dilogos had taken on the meaning of being insincere, saying one thing to one person and another thing to another person. But even this definition itself has been interpreted differently by different scholars.

5. Guthrie states, “The word doubletongued (dilogos) could sustain the meaning 'tale-bearer' suggesting the idea of gossipers, a tendency which would be all too easy yet damaging for the holder of the deacon's office.”

Similarly, Lea and Griffen explain: “The deacon would be a frequent visitor in homes, and he needed to be consistent in what he reported to others. The NIV's metaphorical translation 'sincere' obscures the fact that the Pauline phrase (dilogos)...refers primarily to controlling speech (i.e., 'not indulging in double talk' NEB). The deacon is not to spread rumors to different groups of listeners.”

Knight agrees with that assessment and adds that the word is “not found with the Pauline sense in Greek writers before the Christian era.” He cross-references II Corinthians 1:17-18 with this passage.

6. Litfin says, “They must be sincere...in the sense of being honestly unhypocritical.”

On the other hand, Hendricksen explains dilogos as follows: “He does not say one thing to one person and something different to another. He does not 'talk out of both sides of his mouth.' He does not say one thing and know another...” Chrystostom is reported as similarly defining it as saying one thing and thinking another.

Towner agrees “that the thought is of saying one thing to one person and another thing to another, that is, to be 'duplicitous', which is condemned in Proverbs, Sirach and Philo as a danger to the community and relationships. A leader afflicted by this weakness would be a threat to the trust and stability of the community...” Theodoret also ascribed to that meaning.

Vine echoes these thoughts when he defines dilogos as “saying a thing to one person and giving a different view of it to another...”

“The double tongued say one thing to one person and another thing to another...Paul had in mind inconsistency, the adaption of different attitudes about the same subject, and therefore insincerity. (Cf. Matt. 5:37; 2 Cor. 1:17f). The qualification is important to men who do much pastoral visitation.” (Ward)

7. At this point, a quick review of some modern English translations is in order to get an idea of some of the other nuances to the definition of double-tongued:

        JB: men whose word can be trusted

        NAB: not indulging in double talk

        Living Bible: good steady men

        The Message: not deceitful

        TEV, NIV: sincere

        Phillips: men of serious conviction

8. And since, to some extent, the qualifications for deacon parallel those given for elders/bishops in I Timothy 3:1-7, it is instructive to put those two lists side-by-side for comparison:

Elders                                                     Deacons

above reproach

once married

temperate

sensible                                                 serious

not double-tongued

respectable

hospitable

apt teacher

not a drunkard                                    no indulger in wine

not violent

not quarrelsome

not a lover of money                          not greedy for money

From the above, you can see that the three bolded characteristics in each list appear in exactly the same order. From that comparison, one would expect that if there is a parallel to “not double-tongued” in the elders list, then it would be one of the three sandwiched between “sensible” and “not a drunkard.” Since hospitality and ability to teach do not at all fit that bill, the only remaining possibility is “respectability.” So we might possibly add that attribute to our list of definitions as an antonym for “double-tongued.”

There is one more detailed list of characteristics necessary for candidates for church office, and that is found in Titus 1:5-9. I won't give all of these here, but just those attributes for an elder which might fit in with the deacons' qualifications in I Timothy:

Titus                                                             I Timothy

husband of one wife

not profligate                                             serious

not double-tongued

not insubordinate

blameless

not arrogant

not quick-tempered

not a drunkard                                        no indulger in wine

not violent

not greedy for gain                                 not greedy for money

In this case, there appears to be only one of the attributes in the left-hand column which might be seen as an antonym for double-tongued, and that is blameless. If that is the case, then it is practically the same as “respectable” and again falls into the category of Definition #8.

I realize that the above is probably overkill in trying to pin down the definition of a single Greek word, but that is what one tends to run into when one only has a single instance of a particular word in the Bible.