Q. I was reading Paul’s description in 2 Timothy of what people will be like “in the last days” and I found it very interesting. In my opinion, it is a perfect description of narcissistic personality disorder. That is rather complex, but the basics are that a person with this disorder is incapable of feeling empathy or thinking they have done something wrong and therefore changing. I’ve gone back and forth on whether it’s possible for them to be saved. (I know only God knows this.) The well-known passage in Romans never says we must repent in order to be saved, it says “believe in your heart and confess with your mouth.” But the 2 Timothy passage describes these people as “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” and it calls them “men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.” What does “disqualified regarding the faith” mean?
To answer your specific question about the text, the word Paul uses, which the ESV translates as “disqualified,” is adokimos. That’s the negative of dokimos, a term that means “having been put to the test and proved genuine.” Paul applies it, for example, to a man named Apelles in his greetings at the end of Romans; the ESV calls him “approved,” while the NIV says that his “fidelity to Christ has stood the test.” The term dokimos is used in half a dozen other places in the New Testament and the ESV translates it as “approved,” “genuine,” or “stood/met the test.”
I think the most important thing to recognize is that Paul has just told Timothy, in the passage in 2 Timothy right before the one you were reading, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” The ESV has a footnote there explaining that “approved” (dokimos) means “one approved after being tested.” Paul’s use of adokimos in the next passage is a deliberate contrast. His description is actually of false teachers, who are “always learning” but “never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”
So when Paul calls them adokimos, he means that their teaching has been tested—measured against the truth, which they oppose—and disapproved, so it should be rejected. These men have been “disqualified” in that sense: disqualified as teachers, since what they teach is false. Other translations say that their teaching is “counterfeit,” “worthless,” “to be rejected,” etc. Some older translations call them “reprobate,” but it’s important to realize that this word is being used in its former sense meaning “disapproved,” not in the technical theological sense of “predestined not to be saved.”
So Paul really isn’t saying anything about these men in terms of whether they can or cannot be saved. He’s identifying them as false teachers whose teaching should be rejected. By contrast, he’s encouraging Timothy to strive to be an “approved” teacher who handles the word of truth rightly. (After talking about these “evil people and impostors,” Paul tells Timothy, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” You yourself are reading and reflecting on the “sacred writings” yourself, and if you continue in this practice, you will become more and more dokimos yourself.)
But now let me briefly address the application question you also raised, whether a person with narcissistic personality disorder can be saved. I have no formal training in psychology, so I cannot address that issue from an informed perspective in that regard. But I would say on Scriptural authority that “God is not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” I would therefore believe that the Holy Spirit would continually use any and all means to help a person recognize their need for Jesus to be their Savior. I’d like to think that even if a person had an exaggerated sense of their own achievements and importance, they still wouldn’t be without a conscience, and they might still recognize when they fall short of doing what they should, even if they characteristically have an unrealistically favorable interpretation of their own actions. But in the end, as you say, only God knows. What I do know is that God would do everything possible to help them be saved.
Good Question 