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PASTORAL EPISTLES

1-2 Timothy and Titus, three letters which constitute a distinct group within the Pauline corpus. These once highly esteemed texts fell under a shadow with the rise of higher criticism. Thereafter conservatives labored to rehabilitate them, while more liberal scholars found their views of church, society, and theology increasingly objectionable. The strategy of those defending Pauline composition required assigning the Pastoral Epistles to the latest possible date while seeking to conform their contents to the undisputed epistles. This strategy has not been especially successful. If written by Paul, the Pastoral Epistles represent a dim conclusion to a brilliant career. If post-Pauline, they are interesting witnesses to later conflicts over Paul’s heritage. Recognition that alleged authorship has more to do with authority than with composition and that secondary writings are not necessarily inferior (cf. Isa. 40–66) has eased tensions. The world of the Pastoral Epistles is more readily explicable in the light of 1 Clement, the Acts of Paul, and the Letter of Polycarp than from Paul’s career. A probable date is ca. 100-125.

The addressees of the Pastoral Epistles are not communities but co-workers of Paul. Timothy and Titus appear here as relatively youthful (Titus 2:7, 15; 1 Tim. 4:12) successors of Paul. These letters, which are parenetic (advisory) in form, have a twofold aim: to show Paul’s work and thought and to provide models for the organization of Christian communities in a hostile world. The former polytheist Titus (Titus 3:4-5) is developing a new mission area, Crete, while Timothy, the scion of devout forebears (2 Tim. 1:3-14; 3:15), supervises the established church of Ephesus.

These leaders face challenges from false teachers both within (1 Timothy) and without (Titus) the community. Because some of the charges, such as the motivation of greed, are polemical stereotypes while others are terse, it is difficult to establish whether one or more “heresies” are in view. Reference to myths, genealogies, speculative thought, and asceticism (e.g., 1 Tim. 1:3-7; Titus 3:9-11) evokes incipient Gnosticism. “Jewish” (Titus 1:14) may be no more than a hostile epithet. The Pastoral Epistles advocate that false teachers be shunned rather than refuted (2 Tim. 3:5). Particularly objectionable is the disruption of conventional social life through nonconformist behavior, especially by women (1 Tim. 2:8-15; 4:7; 5:13). The gradient is clear: Paul favors celibacy, but states that it is better to marry than to burn (1 Cor. 7). In the Acts of Paul his dutiful convert Thecla quite literally prefers burning to marriage. 1 Tim. 2 requires women to be married. The Pastoral Epistles seek to preserve Paul’s thought by smoothing out its potentially speculative edges and underlining the normality of its morality.

The Church is not the enemy of ancient “family values”; it is the “household of God” (1 Tim. 3:15). Officials (bishops/overseers, presbyters, elders and deacons/servant ministers) possess the qualities of both household heads and organizational leaders (e.g., 1 Tim. 3:1-13). Their task is formation. What we call “ethics” was for ancients largely the performance of tasks and duties appropriate to one’s role and station in life. Grace is not simply liberating; it is educative (Titus 2:12). The Pastoral Epistles accept the possibility of persecution (1 Tim. 6:13), but wish to condemn conduct that would injure the Church’s reputation. Today it is easy to see how much of this advice is culture-specific and to lament apparent concessions to worldly standards. What is more important than its cultural coloration is the witness of the Pastoral Epistles to the beginnings of a structure that would, over centuries, gradually make the Church a moral force in the Greco-Roman and, later, the “barbarian” world.

Bibliography. J. C. Beker, Heirs of Paul (1991, repr. Grand Rapids, 1996); M. Dibelius and H. Conzelmann, The Pastoral Epistles. Herm. (Philadelphia, 1972); G. W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles. NIGTC (Grand Rapids, 1992); D. R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle (Philadelphia, 1983); F. M. Young, The Theology of the Pastoral Letters (Cambridge, 1994).

Richard I. Pervo

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PASTORAL EPISTLES

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)