Gardening
For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. Titus 3:3 NASB
Lusts and pleasures – What’s the difference between lusts and pleasures? Paul seems to think we need to know both words. Why? The Greek roots are epithymía and hēdonḗ. Epithymía is desire, especially for food and sex. “This desire is morally neutral at first, but philosophy, holding aloof from the sensory world, regards it as reprehensible, and in Stoicism epithymía is one of the four chief passions.”[1] We might think of this word as the modus operandi of the yetzer ha’ra. Desire is the fundamental motivation of life, actually, for life itself. That’s why the rabbis can claim that a man without desire would do nothing at all. The biblical concern is not to get rid of desire but rather to harness it for God’s use. The reason epithymía is translated “lusts” is that most of the time in the Bible “desire” has a negative outcome. Unfortunately, humanity has a rather dismal record on submitting to God’s will. Human desire often supplants God’s purposes. The yetzer ha’ra knows quite a bit about the Garden.
Desire alone isn’t all that Paul has in mind. He adds hēdonḗ. “In the NT hēdonḗ is one of the many forces of unsanctified carnality that work against God and drag us back into evil.”[2]
Derived from the root hēdýs (“sweet,” “pleasant,” “delightful”), hēdonḗ first means what is pleasant to the taste, then to the senses in general, then what gives pleasure. b. The word then comes to mean the “desire for pleasure” (cf. Jms. 4:1 and perhaps Tit. 3:3). c. A final development is for that which kindles desire or pleasure (e.g., good news), or for pleasure with an enumeration of the pleasures at issue, with a tendency in the NT period to take on the sense of “sensual lust.”[3]
Paul is writing to a Hellenistic audience. For them hēdonḗ was not necessarily a negative term. True hēdonḗ was the appreciation and pursuit of reason and virtue. We use the term in the same way when we recognize the pleasurable experience of an ethically exemplary life. But Paul’s use of the term follows the rabbinic tradition. “In the rabbis there is no exact equivalent for hēdonḗ, but teaching on the evil impulse offers interesting similarities to the extent that both cover the element of desire and the pleasures of the evil impulse are sweet.”[4] Paul’s connection between epithymía and hēdonḗ makes it clear. In this warning, both are expressions of the evil impulse. Both oppose God’s ways.
Paul might have been clear to his audience, but our contemporary world makes a muddle out of these distinctions. What is “pleasure” for us? Is it serving God or is it satisfying the impulses of the yetzer ha’ra? Or do we apply the idea to both? How do we handle our desires? Do we think of them as good or bad? Necessary or sinful? Where are the lines today? We’re not Hellenists in the first century. We’re Hellenists two thousand years later, with all the cultural accumulation acquired. Has that changed our views? Does it affect the way we translate Paul’s words? What do you think? Oh, better yet: What do you do when epithymía and hēdonḗ show up? Reap what you sow, right?
Topical Index: epithymía, hēdonḗ, lust, desire, Titus 3:3
[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 339). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 303). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[3] Ibid., pp. 303–304.
[4] Ibid., p. 304.
