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Can you handle the truth?

Perspectives on 2 Timothy

Unnerving

CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH?
Perspectives on 2 Timothy
By R.T. Kendall & Andrew Sampson
CWR. 140 pages. £8.99
ISBN 1-83545-377-3

Two speakers at ‘Easter People’ worked on 2 Timothy: Andrew Sampson, a relatively unknown school teacher, and the very well-known R.T. Kendall. This book combines their two series in eight paired chapters.

The surprise is how much better a Bible expositor Sampson is than Kendall. Leave aside Kendall’s continuing support for the Toronto blessing, and his frequent but ill-defined talk of ‘anointing’, his general practice is to hover around 2 Timothy, but all too frequently takes off into unrelated passages or unmoored comments. Time after time I wrote in the margin, ‘He’s gone off again’. In a book this slender, that is irritating.

Sampson is clearer, better structured, and explicitly closer to the text. Mind you, I don’t think Sampson has really seen the main road through the letter, nor connected all the parts together, but at least he has a go. When Kendall looks at those who ‘have the form of godliness but deny its power’, he uses it to plea for the form of evangelicalism married to the power of the Kansas City Prophets, which is both insulting to all parties and misses the point (pp.83-84).

Critically, both consider that Timothy is ‘fearful... you could say he had low self-esteem or an inferiority complex’ (Kendall, p.17), or ‘alone, young… apprehensive… and weak’ (Sampson, p.25), and I think that is an obstacle to reading the letter clearly — Timothy was normal, which is why the letter is so valuable for normal pastors today.

This is a very thin book, albeit ‘perspectives’ rather than a commentary. Preachers should use one of the recent and substantial commentaries by Towner, Marshall, Mounce or best of all Knight. Fee, Towner’s older commentary, or Stott would be well worth consulting for those who need something less taxing. This one really shouldn’t be necessary.

Chris Green,
Oak Hill College, London