Kidd, Reggie M. 1999. “Titus as Apologia: Grace for Liars, Beasts, and Bellies.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 21 (2): 185–209.From antiquity, asserts the first century B.C.E. Roman historian Diodorus Siculus, Greeks have thought about the gods in two ways. Certain gods are eternal in genesis and imperishable in duration. Others are “earthly gods (epigeioi theoi) who have attained undying honor and fame because of benefactions bestowed upon humankind” (Diodorus 6.2). Frances Young’s shibboleth, “theology is always earthed in a context,” takes particular piquancy when a community’s approach to the divine is “earth-based” to begin with. In common perception, the epicenter for the latter way of imagining divinity was the island of Crete -- for in Cretan accounts of the origins of the gods, even the father of the gods, Zeus himself, had been born as a human, raised, and indeed, killed and buried as well. I propose that it is in the interest of countering assumptions about the earthly origins of the "deity” long associated with Crete that the theology of the letter to Titus, written to a Pauline delegate ministering on Crete in the latter half of the first century, is formulated. Moreover, I suggest that the lifestyle this letter commends as being congruent with this God’s nature is itself intended to be a bold apologetic for Christianity as a better, indeed the only, way to attain an ideal of humanity long resident in Greek ethical thinking.