The Pastoral Epistles of First and Second Timothy including Titus (Part Sixteen)

Part Sixteen of the New Testament Survey Series

Khen Lim




Image source: frederictoncrc.com

The term Pastoral Epistles refer to a collection of three letters written by Paul namely, the First and Second Letters to Timothy and one Letter to Titus. The term was first made popular by D.N. Berdot in 1703 and later by Paul Anton in 1726¹ as a reference to the manner in which these three letters address individuals with pastoral oversight of churches (such as those responsible for pastoring and appointing pastors) as well as talk about themes around Christian living, doctrine and leadership.

By the time the three letters were written, Paul was already an old man nearing the end of his ministry and as such, he also made used of these correspondences to express concern over his pastoral succession, which in turn provides us with a framework of how pastoral leadership is managed.

For that, Paul outlined his letters as follows:

	1 Tim	2 Tim	Titus
A knowledge and understanding of how churches are structured and organised	3:1-13		1:1-16
How people are to be treated	5:1-20
Appointments to the church office	3:1-10 12-13
How to deal with rebelliousness and faux teachings	4:1-5 6:3-10	3:1-17
Management and dispensation of discipline	6:11-16
The role of women in ministry	2:12, 3:11
Maintenance of doctrinal truths	3:14-16	1:1-2 13-14

In the manner that Paul has laid out the details, many of us feel that these three letters – covering about thirteen of the 260 chapters found in the 27 books of the New Testament – can easily be used as How-To manuals for pastors everywhere.

Paul writing to Timothy (Image source: jesuswalks.com)

Here’s a quick rundown of the letters:

1 Timothy

In Paul’s first letter to Timothy, he deals with responsibilities in the running of the church. While his references are for the functioning of the church in Ephesus, the details are widely regarded as far-reaching and broadly applicable to all churches around the provinces of Asia (1:3).

Of the three in the Pastoral Epistles, 1 Timothy contains six chapters that make it the lengthiest. These chapters provide eye-opening instructions concerning Paul’s testimony (c.1), prayers for governing leaders (c.2), prerequisites for church leaders (c.3), warnings for apostates (c.4), instructions as to how different people are to be treated (and handled) within the church including widows (c.5) as well as how to confront and resolve faux teachings and deal with hedonism (c.6).

2 Timothy

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul finds himself in a very lonely place, feeling the abandonment as death looms large. At this time, he is imprisoned in Rome (for the second and last time) and this letter is but his last. In fact, the reader can sense his finality in his writing.

Even so, Paul finds courage in being concerned about the churches and also for Timothy’s welfare and therefore, he uses his very last opportunity to be encouraging to his friend as well as all other believers at large.

His concern is that they must continue to preach God’s truth (c.4), to appeal to them to persevere in faith (3:14) and to continue proclaiming the Gospel (4:2) rather than to be ashamed of Christ (c.1). At the same time Paul warns of creeping godlessness and stressed the importance of Scripture (c.3).

Titus

In his letter to his friend, Titus, Paul emphasises the importance of recognising the qualifications of church elders (c.1), women’s involvement in ministry and the roles they play (1:5-9), the teaching of sound doctrine (c.2), the significance of serving others as a way of living out our faith in Christ (c.3) while he also offers guidance as to how the older generation can help to train the younger ones (including slaves) as future replacements (2:3-10).

He also takes the opportunity to put Titus on notice concerning possible rebelliousness in Crete (1:10-16) as a way of preparing him but he also encourages all Christians to submit to authority (3:1-2) and to avoid looking and behaving foolishly (3:9-11). Paul mentions Crete because on one of his missionary journeys, he had placed Titus to lead the church there (1:5).

Contrary to how some modern scholars and faith commentators regard Paul as a sexist (or a male chauvinist),² he did the opposite by encouraging and describing the ministry roles that women can play in church. Readers can find this in both his first letter to Timothy and the one to Titus.

Paul ordains Timothy as Bishop of Ephesus (Image source: idlespeculations-terryprest.blogspot.com)

In both, he also outlined men in their roles as elders (1 Tim 3:1, Tit 1:5-9). While Paul specifically earmarks men for deacons roles (1 Tim 3), he also argues for the presence of female deacons based on how the Greek word for women (or wives of deacons) is interpreted. In fact this is how we can read the verse in Rom 16:1 as support for Phoebe in such a role.

And then in 1 Tim 2:11-15, Paul outlines the roles of authority in church that involves not just men but also women. In none of these details can anyone level any accusation of male chauvinism in Paul.

Again authorship comes up for discussion. Although the three letters make it clear that Paul penned them (1 Tim 1:1, 2 Tim 1:1, Tit 1:1), modern biblical scholars point to the use of pseudonymous scribes as a potential alternative, arguing that during those days, there are those are prone to not use their own names but to instead borrow the strength of someone else’s name.

In this case, modern scholars argued on behalf of some unknown (and unauthorised) scribe that Paul would have wanted to say the same thing and that using his apostolic authority and name would have meant others would sit up and take notice.

Therefore modern scholars bring up five points against Pauline authorship to which there are logical answers to count their claims:

Problem	Modern scholars’ claims	Counterpoints
Unfamiliar language used	Modern scholars insist that the language syntax used is too dissimilar to what we ‘expect’ from Paul’s other letters. They quoted as many as 306 new words not found elsewhere.	Modern scholars persists in mistakenly shoehorning Paul into certain patterns of writing styles and narrative expectations. They expect Paul to be predictable in how he writes and if he falls out of that circle, they conclude that he is not the writer. This belittles the abilities of someone of Paul’s intelligence whom we believe is capable of articulating his vocabulary to fit his intended agenda. Paul’s Hellenistic education would equip him with the skill to appropriately express a word like ‘salvation.’ There is no reason to think that he wouldn’t have been able to respond uniquely and individually as the situation demanded.
The letters’ rhetoric is very un-Paul like	The rhetorical style found in the letters is unlike that in most of Paul’s other letters.
Exegetical problems	Apparently some scholars have doubts about Paul’s use of certain Greek words for ‘salvation’ that resulted in confusion.
Conflicting historical settings with Acts	Modern scholars claim that the historical setting for Paul’s life as portrayed by the Pastoral Epistles does not agree with what we know from the Book of Acts.
Misplaced occurrence of Gnosticism	Modern scholars are quick to note Paul’s misplaced mention of Gnosticism because such faux teachings were only a problem after his death and not during his time. Irenaeus in particular studied at least twenty of the most prolific Gnostic writers and defined and criticised their beliefs. However, being born in 130AD, he would have been well after Paul’s time.	Faux teachings had existed back then although it was not labelled ‘Gnosticism,’ which comes from the Greek word ‘gnosis’ to mean ‘secret knowledge.’ Paul was referring to the early formative years of faux teaching well before Gnosticism was properly identified. In other words, Paul’s time marked the embryonic days when Gnosticism gained real foothold.

Positioning these three letters in terms of the date and place of writing can be a little tricky but one thing can be made certain – they were not written from the same place. At any rate, we must consider some form of Pauline chronology in order to arrive at a matching place and time for each of these letters. In other words, only by ascertaining where Paul was that we can do this.

Paul's letter is read to the congregation (Image source: wol.jw.org)

It appears that there is a stretch of five consecutive years in which we believe Paul had written all these three letters in some succession. Borrowing from Charles Swindoll’s ‘Living Insights Study Bible,’ we may consider the following chronology:

Period	Letter	Where
63AD-65AD	1 Tim	1 Tim 1:3 reveals that Paul was in Macedonia right after his first imprisonment in Rome.
	Titus	Paul was on his way to Nicopolis (Tit 3:12), again, after his first stint in a Roman prison. Pinpointing Nicopolis is difficult because there are actually two different places with the same name (one in Epirus and the other said to be in Macedonia) and Paul’s letter to Titus does not clarify this.
66AD-67AD	2 Tim	Based on what Paul revealed in 2 Tim 1:16-17 (and 4:6), his second letter to Timothy could likely be written while imprisoned for the second and final time in Rome. In other words, this was be the last letter he would write very shortly before he was executed.
67AD		We do not know how long the period was that separated the completion of his second letter to Timothy and the time of his execution. Some say it was weeks to months apart. Apparently the standard practice in the Roman Empire was beheading.

                                            

Two people are the recipients of the Pastoral Epistles. By their namesakes, we know them as Timothy and Titus. Paul’s relationship with Timothy goes back some way although how long we don’t know because the Bible doesn’t tell us. What we do know is that the apostle was his mentor as far back as when he was a young Greek pastor and an able assistant.

Over time spent between the two, Timothy, who was born of a Grecian father and a Jewish mother, had gained sufficient experience to begin leading on his own. 1 Tim 1:3 tells us that Paul’s first letter acted as a guide for him to fulfil his role as a superintendent of a group of churches in Asia and owing to their long standing together, it is unsurprising that the advice given is like from a father to a son (1 Tim 1:2, Phil 2:22, 1 Thes 3:2).

As a guide, Paul’s first letter to Timothy is filled with the necessary wisdom to equip the young pastor in the following ways:

-         Vigilance in the midst of faux teachings and counterfeit doctrines

-         Essentials in proper pastoral conduct and worshipping (c.2)

-         Development of a mature church leadership (3:1-13, 5:17-19)

-         Managing the church and identification of roles and responsibilities (2:11-13, 3:8-12, 3:2)

-         Maintaining church accountability to the unmarried and elderly (5:1-2), widows (5:3-16), the wealthy (6:17-19) and the slaves (6:1-2)

-         Attainment of a grounded Gospel-centred lifestyle (1:10b-11, 2:5-7)

-         Avoidance of needless conflicts and controversies (1:4, 4:3, 7, 6:4-5)

-         Elimination of cultures that are obsessed with money (6:5)

His second letter (to Timothy) is somewhat different. It was as much a personal experience for him as it would have been for Timothy. For Paul, the realisation that this would be the final letter he would ever write would have been deeply emotional.

With his execution around the corner, he would have plumbed the depths of his emotion not only to write but to complete the letter. Not surprisingly, Paul touches on the subject of martyrdom (4:6-8), the uncompromising nature of the Gospel and how crucial it is to remain untainted (2:2, 3:16-17).

Paul also writes about the great cost of suffering that reflects the discipleship in Christ (1:8, 12, 2:9, 12, 3:11-12) and describes how salvation, though offered free, is not without us complying with God’s demands and expectations. In the end, no reader can escape the sense of fate that Paul’s writing gives of and given the intensity of the emotions, pseudonymity is out of the question.

Finally in his letter to Titus, Paul focuses on the transforming impact of the Gospel experience. Considering that the young Greek church leader was in the midst of a potentially explosive situation in Crete (1:12, 2:3-4, 10, 3:1-2), this letter came at a time of great uphill evangelical challenges in which Titus would face of intense opposition from the Gentile and exiled Jewish community (1:12-14).

Paul suggests then that he must, first, learn to draw his strength from teaching the Gospel (1:10-16, 3:9-11). Secondly, from God’s offering of salvation to the Cretans (2:11), the apostle urges Titus to finally understand and embrace His grace and welcome the coming of Christ (2:13).

1. Donald Guthrie, 1957, The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., p.17

2. Web links are available to support such accusations. One of them is an article by Femi Aribisala dated Jan 19 2014 at the Vanguard website. The typically godless BBC published an article by Trevor Timpson (Nov 18 2014) entitled, ‘What did St Paul say about women?’ that taunts and provokes the reader.

Part Seventeen (Letter to Philemon) will be available on March 30 2016