Every pastor has portions of scripture that are central and that they know well and other portions that they are less familiar with and less likely to use in their preaching and teaching. One of my motivations within these reflections has been to expand my familiarity and comfort with portions of scripture I was less familiar with. To utilize a couple verses of 2 Timothy:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3: 16-17

Yet, there is some irony in the way 1& 2 Timothy and Titus are viewed by many modern scholars. Since the nineteenth century many scholars have questioned whether these three books were written by Paul or whether they are written after Paul’s death utilizing Paul’s reputation to give force to these letters. The letters, for many, may still be scripture but they have been relegated to a secondary, or in some cases even lower, status because they may not be viewed as ‘authentically Pauline’ and coming from a later stage in the formation of the church rather than being one of the earlier witnesses to the formation of Christianity. The New Testament professors I had in seminary handed on the consensus that Pastoral letters were not Pauline and therefore received little if any attention. Because of this the very books that claim all scripture is inspired by God and useful are among the most neglected in the New Testament.

My assumption throughout these reflections will be that 1 & 2 Timothy as well as Titus are written by Paul the Apostle. I will go into more of my reasoning below, but whether they are written by Paul or a student of Paul they remain for me, and for Christianity as a whole, a part of our scriptures. To many readers of the Bible the type of discussions that scholars have about texts can be confusing. Most readers of the bible may not spend a lot of time in 1& 2 Timothy and Titus, but they also would be wary of someone questioning the authority of these books they accept as scripture. There are some portions of these letters that modern readers find jarring, especially when talking about women in the church and the existence of slavery. Like all scripture we must wrestle with what it meant in it is specific to the time and audience it is written to and what expectations we bring to our own time. Yet, for me, I find this type of wrestling with scripture, trying to understand it on its own terms and to imagine the world it is trying to create in its original environment a fruitful and life-giving process.

For most of the history of the church the Pastoral Letters were assumed to be Pauline. The only groups that did not include these letters as a part of scripture, like the followers of Marcion[1] and perhaps Valentinius, were considered heretics and their exclusion of these books were not based on any questions of authorship. Polycarp appears to reference 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy in his Letter to the Philippians dated between 110 and 135 CE and the book is heavily utilized by early church leaders like Ireneaus, Clement, and Tertullian. The first person to challenge the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Letters was Fredrich Schleirmacher, an influential German theologian and scholar, in 1806. Schleirmacher felt there was a Pauline style that could be measured and these letters failed to meet the criteria. Many other scholars would follow Schleirmacher developing authentic Pauline themes and vocabulary to test these letters against while others would compare the events of the letters with the narration of Paul’s ministry in Acts,[2] while others simply went along with what seemed to be an emerging scholarly consensus in the nineteenth and twentieth century.[3]

The reasoning behind my engaging 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus as Pauline letters is fairly simple. First, all three letters explicitly claim to be written by Paul (1 Timothy 1:1; 2 Timothy 1:1; Titus 1:1). Although writing a letter or document under the name of an established individual was a common practice in the ancient world as was viewed as honorific rather than dishonest, for me there would have to be some decisive reason to distrust what the letters claim to be. Secondly, each letter has its own character (1 Timothy is less personal and probably intended to be heard by a congregation) but in 2 Timothy 4 and Titus 3 there are some very personal moments and a lot of people, who the original recipients of the letter were likely aware of and who would raise questions for any reader with knowledge of Paul’s time in ministry if they were created to pass off the letters as authentic.

Christian scholars who do not view these letters as authentically Pauline will typically point to a handful of reasons: the letters do not reflect Paul’s theology, the letters utilize different language than the authentic Pauline letters, the conflicts and the type of organization/hierarchy in the church are presumed to come from a later time. I appreciate and have benefited from the works of those, like James D. G. Dunn, who write works like The Theology of Paul the Apostle and take the ‘authentic Pauline letters’ as the source to identify the elements of Paul’s theology. However, Paul is not a systematic theologian and writes letters to deal with concrete issues in communities and relationships that he knew. Paul may think theologically but his letters are also shaped strongly by the context they are written to. Paul’s language changes dramatically between letters as well: Romans may share similar language to Galatians, but 1 Corinthians employs very different terms. Paul does talk of people being led astray by ‘myths and endless genealogies’ (1 Timothy 1:6) which many scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries linked with Gnosticism[4] but we simply do not know the exact issues that these communities are dealing with. The roles of bishop and deacon outlined in these letters does not necessarily indicate a late date nor the highly institutional roles these would later become. Luke Timothy Johnson also highlights that Paul did not establish the community in Ephesus and that the letters presume the existence of these roles and only give advice about the mental and moral qualities of the people who should fill these roles. (Johnson, 2001, p. 75)

There are some difficult texts in 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. We may wish for a Paul who continually lives out the vision of Galatians 3:28 where there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. Yet, there are places, both in the Pastoral letters and in the other Pauline letters, where we look uncomfortably about what he may say about the role of women in communities, the assumptions of slavery and how slaves and masters are to relate to one another, sexuality, and several other issues. Paul is writing to his congregations almost two thousand years ago with very different assumptions, some of which Paul challenges and some of which Paul does not. Thomas Long is helpful when he states:

One could imagine many ways of relating to the emperor—pray for the emperor, not pray for the emperor, pray to the emperor, refuse to pray to the emperor, obey the emperor, resist the emperor, die for the emperor, die at the hands of the emperor—but a world without the emperor? Unimaginable. Therefore, the author of the Pastorals, given his context, will consistently offer advice about how to move the pieces on the chessboard. We sometimes lose patience with him because we expect him to throw out the chessboard and to change the game itself. (Long, 2016, p. 6)

The board we play on will look different than Paul’s, but it is fruitful to study the moves he makes based on his experience of God and the world he inhabits.

Dialogue Partners for these Reflections

Bassler, Jouette M. 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus: Abingdon New Testament Commentaries. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996). Noted as (Bassler, 1996).

The Abingdon New Testament Commentaries are written to be accessible to those with some familiarity with the bible and are short enough that most readers can follow. Jouette Bassler taught at Perkins Theological Seminary at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She comes from the perspective that the author of these letters is not Paul, but one who appreciates the pseudonymous author’s rhetorical skill and ethical and theological perspective.

Dunn, James D. G., “First and Second Letters to Timothy” and “Letter to Titus” in New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes. Volume XI, pp. 789-880. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000). Noted as (NIB XI).

The New Interpreter’s Bible is a good resource for pastors wanting a collection that includes the entire bible (including the apocrypha) and I have been impressed by the collection of scholars they assembled for this project.  James Dunn is a very highly respected New Testament scholar who taught for decades at the University of Durham in England. He has written heavily on Jesus, Paul, and the early church and is associated with the New Perspective on Paul which attempted to locate Paul within the matrix of Jewish thought in the first century. Dunn also views the Pastoral Letters as written by someone after Paul. The Theology of Paul the Apostle was an influential book for me when I was particularly focused on Pauline scholarship in 2005-2010.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The First and Second Letters to Timothy: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentaries: The Achor Yale Bible. (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001). Noted as (Johnson, 2001).

The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries are designed to be textual commentaries with a lot of notes on the translation which I find to be helpful but are a bit clunky for a lot of readers. Luke Timothy Johnson teaches at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is an excellent translator and thinker who is willing to challenge commonly held views. Johnson’s commentary is written from the perspective that Paul wrote 1& 2 Timothy as well as Titus (although his commentary is only on the first two letters). His introduction to all three letters and their reception by Christians throughout history is incredibly helpful.  

Long, Thomas G. 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: Belief A Theological Commentary on the Bible. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016) noted as (Long, 2016)

Thomas Long is a very well-know instructor of preaching who taught at Candler School of Theology, Emory University in Atlanta. The Belief Commentary series intentionally brought in theologians and non-biblical study specialists to write each volume to approach the texts from a different perspective than most traditional commentaries, an approach I’ve found to be a helpful voice. He also assumes that these letters are written by a later voice claiming to be Paul.

---

[1] Marcion believed that the Old Testament God was distinct from the gracious God of the New Testament and constructed a scripture that included ten letters of Paul, not including the Pastorals, and a highly modified version of Luke’s gospel. Marcion’s position was declared heretical by the church and Marcion was excommunicated by the church around 144 CE. Valentinius, a contemporary of Marcion, was a one of the early Gnostic teachers who were also viewed as heretics by the emerging church.  

[2] Ironically many scholars at the same time, and some of the same scholars, who viewed the Pastoral letters as inauthentic, viewed Luke’s narration in the book of Acts as unreliable as well.

[3] For those who want more detail on the historical reception of 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus see his excellent narration in his commentary. (Johnson, 2001, pp. 20-55)

[4] Gnosticism emerged both within and outside of Christianity in the Greco-Roman world and the term is broad covering a wide range of belief systems. Within Christianity we know of teachers like Valentinius in the mid-second century which does have a very elaborate ‘genealogy’.