Titus 1:15

πάντα καθαρὰ κ. τ. λ.: This is best understood as a maxim of the Judaic Gnostics, based on a perversion of the Saying πάντα καθαρὰ ὑμῖν ἐστιν (Luke 11:41. Cf. Romans 14:20; Mark 7:18.). St. Paul accepts it as a truth, but not in the intention of the speaker; and answers, τοῖς δὲ μεμιαμμένοις κ. τ. λ. The passage is thus, as regards its form, parallel to 1 Corinthians 6:12 sqq., where St. Paul cites, and shows the irrelevancy of, two pleas for licence: “All things are lawful for me,” and “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats”. τοῖς καθαροῖς is of course the dat. commodi, for the use of the pure, in their case, as in the parallels, Luke 11:41; 1 Timothy 4:3; not in the judgment of the pure, as in Romans 14:14.

τοῖς δὲ μεμιαμμένοις, κ. τ. λ.: The order of the words is to be noted: their moral obliquity is more characteristic of them than their intellectual perversion. The satisfaction of natural bodily desires (for it is these that are in question) is, when lawful, a pure thing, not merely innocent, in the case of the pure; it is an impure thing, even when lawful, in the case of “them that are defiled”. And for this reason: their intellectual apprehension (νοῦς) of these things is perverted by defiling associations; “the light that is in them is darkness;” and their conscience has, from a similar cause, lost its sense of discrimination between what is innocent and criminal. That any action with which they themselves are familiar could be pure is inconceivable to them. “When the soul is unclean, it thinks all things unclean” (Chrys.). The statement that the conscience can be defiled is significant. While conscientious scruples are to be respected, yet, if the conscience be defiled, its dictates and instincts are unreliable, false as are the song-efforts of one who has no ear for music.