Chapter VII

1, 2 TIMOTHY, TITUS

HOME | Contents | The false teaching | Authorship | Personal Allusions | Bibliography | (pages 188-200).

the title 'Pastoral Epistles', which is commonly used to designate this group of writings, does not describe their contents very accurately.
It has some suitability in the case of i Timothy, less in that of Titus, and for 2 Timothy it is hardly suitable, at all.
Zahn (Einleitung in d. N.T., i. 447 n.; Eng. Introd. to the NT., 1909, ii, p. 67 n.] traces it to some lectures by Paul Anton in 1726-7, afterwards edited by Maier as Exegetische Abhandlung der Pastoral-Briefe Pauli an Tim. u. Tit.
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Contents.

In none of these is a definite plan or course of thought to be traced.
The object of the writer was to offer some sound advice to those who were in positions of responsibility in the Church.
The chief trouble through which the Church was passing was the prevalence of false teaching of a Gnostic type allied with Jewish speculations.
To this he constantly recurs, dwelling on the necessity of sound teaching in opposition to it.
He also gives advice, chiefly in i Timothy but also in Titus, on Church organization, and the attitude that its leaders should adopt towards various individuals and classes in the Christian community.
All this, however, is in view of the heretical teaching which is the burden that chiefly weighs on his mind; any advice that is given which is not concerned directly with heresy arises out of the danger or leads up to it.
Apart from this there are personal details in 2 Tim.iv.6-21 and Tit.iii.12-14, which are of great importance in their bearing on the authorship of the epistles.
They will be discussed below.
The following analysis will show how the writer's thoughts oscillate between the condemnation of heresies and practical advice that the Church needed in view of them.

I Timothy,

2 Timothy,

Titus,

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The false teaching.

 It will be seen how central a place the false teaching occupies in the writer's thoughts; he is unable to take his mind away from it for long, and comes back to it again and again.
The harm that it was doing to the Church gives a ground and force to all his other exhortations.
It is possible that it was beginning to affect some who held office in the Church, which would give additional point to his injunctions as to their character and behaviour, and the discrimination needed in ordaining them.

1. He speaks of some who are 'insubordinate, vain talkers, and deceived in mind, especially they of the circumcision' (Tit.i.10), showing that some, but not all, were Jewish Christians.
They claimed to be 'law teachers', though they were incapable of understanding the true meaning and purpose of the law (i Tim.i.7-10).
But their error was quite different from that of the 'slavery' to law of the earlier Judaism, against which St. Paul fought in his second group of epistles.
They seem to have taught that Christians could be above law, that a state of superior gnosis made them indifferent to God's moral commands.
[The writers of the Apocalypse, Jude, a Peter, and i John were all faced with the same dangerous tendency.]
This leads the writer to declare that 'the law is good if one treats it as law', i.e. as a prohibition of grievous sins, and that every passage in the Old Testament (sc. including the law), given by inspiration of God, is intended to be morally and spiritually profitable (2 Tim.iii.16, 17).
An element of antinomianism was already to be felt when St. Paul wrote to the Galatians (v.13) and Romans (vi.15).
But that was due, not to Gnostic esoteric teaching, but to an unintilligent misuse of the 'freedom' from Judaic rules which St. Paul claimed for Christians.
A peculiarly bad feature is attacked in i Tim.vi.5, the corruption and perversion of the minds of men who could use their religiousness as a means of making money.

2. The alliance of Gnosticism with Judaism (such as was seen, for example, in the Naassenes, an early form of the Ophites) probably explains the references to 'myths and endless genealogies' (i Tim.i.4), 'old women's myths' (iv.7), 'Jewish myths' (Tit.i.14).
Gnostics indulged in speculations about aeons and emanations intervening between God and created matter.
But it is not necessary to bring the date of our epistles down to the time when these speculations became fully developed, or to restrict the term 'Gnostic' to the second-century systems.
The writer probably refers to myths and legends in apocryphal Jewish works in which Gnostic and other Oriental elements were mingled.

3. The effect of Oriental thought upon some minds was to lead them to the idea that matter was evil.
The possessor of true gnosis must suppress, and be superior to, the claims of the body.
They taught a rigid asceticism (i Tim.iv.8, E.V. 'bodily exercise') involving renunciation of marriage and of the use of certain foods (v.3).
The writer controverts this mistaken dualism by the plain statement that all foods were created by God, arid that every creature of God is good and to be received with thanksgiving offered to Him as a religious act (vv.3-5).
It was possible to bid Timothy to keep himself pure, and yet to drink a little wine for the sake of his health (v.22, 23).
The teaching that 'the resurrection is past already' (2 Tim.ii.18) is perhaps another aspect of the same depreciation of matter unless it was due to a misunderstanding of 'realized eschatology'; the true Gnostic was thought to be already in the spiritual sphere and independent of the body.
If so, it was a travesty of the language of true Christian mysticism: e.g. Rom. vi.1-11; 2 Cor.v.14 f.; Gal.ii.20; Col.ii.12 f., 20; iii.1; Eph.ii.5f.; see also John v.21, 24; i John iii.14; writings in which true gnosis is taught in opposition to the spurious.

We are justified in using the word Gnosticism of these various types of error, since the false teachers themselves claimed a gnosis, which the writer calls 'pseudonymous', 'falsely named' (i Tim.vi.20).
Their pride ('puffed up', v.4) in their esoteric teaching is probably to be seen in what he describes as antitheses, 'oppositions', which they drew between it and ordinary Christian doctrine, but which he couples with 'profane babblings' (v.20).
And he speaks of their discussions and disputes about words as nothing short of a disease (v.4).
Hort [Judaistic Christianity, 1894, pp. 130-46.] tried to explain the antitheses as purely Rabbinic, 'the endless contrasts of decisions founded on endless distinctions which played so large a part in the casuistry of the scribes as interpreters of the law'.
But this cannot be considered probable in face of die double product of dualism condemned in the epistlesasceticism and antinomianism.
He admits the possibility, in St. Paul's lifetime, of influences at Ephesus and in Crete 'connected with a speculative form of Judaism out of which some forms of "Gnosticism" may later have been developed', but strangely holds 'that there is a total want of evidence for anything pointing to even rudimentary Gnosticism'.
Still less is it necessary to take the antitheses to refer to Marcion's work as though this were an anti-Marcionite and late gloss. That the heresy attacked here and in Colossians is only Judaism with 'a quasi-Hellenic varnish' is a conclusion with which most modern writers do not agree.
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Authorship.

The words 'Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ' form the opening of 1, 2 Timothy, and 'Paul a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ' of Titus.
Irenacus, Tertullian, and Clement Alex. are known to have accepted them as the work of St. Paul.
On the other hand, Tertullian [adv. Marc.v.21) and Jerome (Praef. in Tit.} state that Marcion rejected them all; so also, according to Jerome, 'Basilides and all the heretics'.
He says further that Tatian accepted Titus as St. Paul's, implying that he rejected i, 2 Timothy. From Irenaeus until modern times the Pauline authorship is assumed; and some writers today defend it.
In 2 Timothy and Titus occur passages containing personal allusions, which seem almost certainly to be the work of the apostle.
The question is whether he wrote the whole of the three epistles, or whether a devoted disciple, being in possession of some genuine Pauline fragments, built up the epistles out of them in order to give to the Church a message which he felt sure that the apostle would have given had he been alive, and quite naturally wrote them in the apostle's name.
That would not be the modern method of treating precious fragments, but ancient methods were very often not modern ones. The evidence in favour of the latter theory is cumulative; although each point, taken by itself, might with ingenuity be deprived of decisive weight, taken together they appear irresistible.

1. The great stress laid, as shown above, on the danger of Judaic Gnosticism or Gnostic Judaism suggests that it had become more acute and more developed than in St. Paul's day.
And it is met, not, as in Colossians, by argument, but simply by authoritative contradiction and denunciation.
A lesser mind can contradict and denounce, while it is not equal to the task of refuting.

In the same spirit the writer exhibits a somewhat stereotyped conception of orthodoxy.
St. Paul fought for what he believed to be true with the skill of a fencer, and with a creative genius, which helped him, as a master builder, to erect a firm edifice of Christian doctrine.
But here a later date is suggested by the fact that the whole body of Christian doctrine is assumed to be standing in its entirety. It is 'the Faith' (1 Tim.i.19; iii.9; iv.1, 6; v.8; vi.10, 21; 2 Tim.iii.8; iv.7; Tit.i.13); 'the truth' (1 Tim.iii.15; iv.3; vi.5; 2 Tim.ii.15, 18; iii.8; iv.4; Tit.1. 14); 'knowledge of truth' (1 Tim.ii.4; 2 Tim.ii.25; iii.7; Tit.i.1); 'the teaching' (1 Tim.iv.13, 16; vi.1; cf. iv.6; vi.3; 2 Tim.iii.10; Tit.ii.10); 'the commandment' (1 Tim.vi.14); 'the charge' (1 Tim.i. 5); 'the [my] deposit' (1 Tim.vi.20; 2 Tim.i. 12, 14); 'the healthy teaching' or 'words' (1 Tim.i.10; vi.3; 2 Tim.i.13; iv.3; Tit.i.9; ii.1; cf. i.13; ii.2, 'healthy in faith'), 'safe-' or 'sane-mindedness' and the corresponding verb, adjective, and adverb (1 Tim.ii.9, 15; iii.2; 2 Tim.i.7; Tit.i.8; ii.2, 4, 5, 6, 12).
That is not the language of a pioneer, interpreting the fact of Christ, and putting in their true light the errors that endanger it.
'His was altogether a different kind of spirit from that which burns and throbs in every page of the genuine Paulines' (Harrison [P. N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles, 1921.]).

2. Connected with this is the quality of the style, which is 'correct and diffuse, somewhat lacking in warmth and colour'.
'The syntax is stiffer and more regular' (Lightfoot [Biblical Essays, p. 402.]).
'The comparative absence of rugged fervour, the smoother flow of words, and the heaping up of epithets, all point to another sign-manual than that of Paul' (Moffatt [Introd. Lit. NT., p. 407.]).
Even if St. Paul wrote the epistles in a period of release and a second Roman imprisonment, which is improbable (see below), it is difficult to believe that his mind could have lost so much of its fire and force in two or three years.

3. Not only in style but also in vocabulary, e.g. Latinisms, new compounds, particles, favourite expressions, &c., the difference from the Pauline epistles is very great, in spite of several Pauline words and expressions that the writer adopts.
And what is un-Pauline is scarcely more remarkable than the absence of words, particles, and constructions that are distinctive of St. Paul.
The absence of the following Pauline particles and prepositions is very striking, as particles express the style and 'the style is the man': ἄρα,ἄπα, οὖν, ἄρτι, διό, διότι, ἐπεί, ἐπειδή, ἔτι, ἴδε, ἴδού, νυνὶ, δέ, ὅπως, οὐκέτι, οὔτε, πάλιν, ποῦ, ὥσπερ, ὥστε.
The vocabulary stands on the whole nearer to that of the Christian writings of the second century than to the Pauline epistles. This is shown in the exhaustive study by Harrison, to which the reader is referred.

[But it must be noted that Dr. Harrison's list of Pastoral hapax legomena gives not the earliest but the latest appearance of these words; cf. the valuable criticism by F. R. M. Hitchcock, J.T.S. xxx, 1928-9, pp. 272-9.]

4. The ecclesiastical organization includes directions regarding the bishop, presbyters, deacons and their wives, widows.
None of these, indeed, imply a state of development impossible in St. Paul's lifetime.
But when he deals with them it is mostly in answer to questions, and often on the basis of the highest moral principles and profound Christian doctrines.
The writer of these epistles, on the other hand, is occupied with questions of ecclesiastical arrangement and personnel as such, in the hope that a well-ordered Church may stand as a bulwark against the flowing tide of heresy.
And for this purpose he simply lays down a series of authoritative directions.

5. In doctrine the writer is a devoted Paulinist.
He teaches 'life eternal, won by Christ's death, which has brought salvation to all mankind; and this life must show itself by a high Christian morality, and be ready to face the appearing of Jesus Christ' (Lock [Hastings's D.B. iv. 773.]).
But the last sentence should be noted.
In earlier days St. Paul, as a Jew, had placed eschatology in the forefront of his teaching.
But a comparison of 1, 2 Thessalonians with Colossians and Ephesians (if Pauline) shows how his mind was changing its point of view; in Colossians and Ephesians the emphasis was on the 'Coming Age' as an eternally existent reality, not on it as a future event.

The emphasis, which the writer lays on, the nature of God by means of epithets, [See A. H. McNeile's .New Testament Teaching, pp. 207-13.] μόνος (monos - 'only'), σωτήρ (soter - Saviour), μακάριος (makapios - 'blest'), ἄφθαρτος (aphthartos - 'imperishable', 'immortal'), ἀόρατος (aoratos - 'invisible'; cf. 1 Tim.vi.l6), τοῦ ζωογονοῦντος τὰ πάντα (tou zoogonountos ta panta - 'who quickeneth, or endueth with life, all things'), μέγας (megas - 'great'), ζῶν (zon - 'living'), ψευδής (apseudes - 'without deceit', 'that lieth not'), was occasioned by the heresies which he was combatting.
But St. Paul, in Colossians and Ephesians, though he is dealing with similar heresies at an earlier stage, gives little direct teaching on the nature of God.
He mostly takes that for granted, as understood by his readers; and throughout his epistles his point of view is Christo-centric.

An expression unique in the New Testament occurs in 1 Tim.ii.5: 'There is one Mediator (μεσίτης - mesites) between God and men, [being Himself] Man, Christ Jesus.'
This is connected with the preceding words 'our Saviour God who willeth all men to be saved, &c.', and with the following, 'who gave Himself a Ransom on behalf of all as being their Equivalent' (ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων - antilitron uper panton).
Being both God and Man, the Equivalent of our Saviour God and the Equivalent of man who is to be saved, He is able to ransom all.
The meaning of the word 'mediator' should be compared with that in Gal. iii. 20, where St. Paul says that in the New Dispensation no mediator corresponding with Moses is needed, and in Heb.viii.6; ix.15; .24, where Jesus is the 'Mediator of a new covenant' transcending Moses.
Both St. Paul and the writer of Hebrews are concerned mainly with the death of Christ.
For the former His birth into human life, 'born of a woman, born under the law', was only the necessary step for placing Himself under law and curse, and being 'made sin on our behalf, in order that by death He might burst free from them, and so conquer them.
St. Paul never speaks of the Incarnation as having the significance in the plan of salvation that is accorded to it by the writer of 1 Timothy.

The conclusion, as has been said, is irresistible.
The epistles, as they stand, cannot be from St. Paul's pen.
The theory that the differences from his other epistles are due to the work of an amanuensis
[W. Lock, Pastoral Epistles (Intern. Crit. Comm., 1924), thinks it possible that these fragments and the epistles are alike genuine, but originally unconnected.
The fragments were bound up with the rest, as, for example, was Rom.xvi.]
is quite inadequate to account for the facts.
Some have thought that the apostle wrote 2 Timothy, and not the other two.
But all the three as wholes are too closely similar in style, language, and thought to be thus differentiated.
[Cf. Goguel, op. cit. iv. 2, pp. 500-4.]
They must stand or fall together.

A more probable theory, as said above, is that they contain some original Pauline fragments incorporated by a disciple: these seem to form a larger portion of 2 Timothy than of the others, and to consist for the most part of personal allusions.
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Personal allusions.

(2)  He says that Titus has gone to Dalmatia (v. 10).
But this would mean that he had deserted his charge of the Church in Crete (Tit.i.5), where he still was when St. Paul wrote his epistle to him, came to the apostle at Rome, and then left him, not to return to his work, but to go elsewhere.

(3)  Because Titus, Demas, and Crescens had gone, only Luke was with him (v. 10).
But he does not explain the absence of four other Christians who were with him just before in the same imprisonment, and sent greetings to the Colossians (Col.iv.10-14) and (three of them [Perhaps all four. Jesus Justus can be included if Ἰησοῦς is read for Ἰησοῦ , or added after it.]) to Philemon.

(4)  He tells Timothy, 'Take Mark and bring him with thee, for he is useful to me for service' (v.11).
The words suggest that St. Paul was sending for him to come to be his personal attendant in Rome for the first time.
And yet he was already with him when he wrote to the Colossians (iv.10) and to Philemon (v.24), and was about to pay Colossae a visit, which he would probably not do if St. Paul needed him for service.

No one disputes that the Pauline authorship of all these epistles requires a period of release and a second imprisonment.
This is rendered still more certain if the apostle made a journey to Spain, as he hoped to (Rom.xv.24, 28).
But the evidence for this journey is very slender.
Apart from the sentence in the Muratorian Canon, 'sed et profectionem Pauli ab urbe ad Spaniam proficiscentis', which need not be more than a deduction from Rom. loc. cit., there is only an obscure remark of Clement Rom. (ad Cor. v), that St. Paul 'having come to the limit of the West (ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεης - epi to terma duseos), and having borne witness before the rulers, so was released from the world and went to the holy place'.
When we find that Ignatius (ad Rom. ii) uses the same word δύσις, 'West', of Rome, it is unsafe to conclude that Clement means Spain.
[See A. H. McNeile's St. Paul, pp. 256 f.]
Apart from this, the internal allusions in our three epistles are our only guides.
But even the assumption of a second imprisonment is not free from difficulties.
St. Paul might have wanted his cloak in prison,
[If φελνης - phelones - means a cloak (= φαινλης - phainoles = paenula ).
But Chrysostom says that some understood it to mean τὸ γλωσσόκομον (glossokomon - the bag, cf. John i.29) in which the books lay.
So the Syriac.
Or it may have been a travelling bag or case, not necessarily for the books.]
and conceivably his books and parchments (2 Tim.iv.13); but his request for the latter, and the injunction, 'Do thy diligence to come before winter' (v. 21), hardly sound as if he were on the point of martyrdom, as he declares in v. 6.
If only Luke was with him (v. 11), how is it that he can send greetings from Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brethren (v. 21)?
And after the careful injunctions to Timothy as to his behaviour in the execution of his office at Ephesus (i.6-iv.5), it is strange that St. Paul should urge him to leave his post and rejoin him as speedily as possible (iv.9, 21).
If, on the grounds stated above, it is impossible to assign the three epistles as wholes to St. Paul, the genuine fragments which his disciple incorporated probably refer to events not later than, but within, the period of the Acts.

In this case the personal allusions afford no indication of the order in which the epistles were written.
But since 1 Timothy is the richest in doctrinal and ecclesiastical matter, and 2 Timothy contains least of these but apparently most of St. Paul's own work, it is probable that the order of writing was 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 Timothy.
The present order will, in that case, have been due to the editors of the Pauline corpus, who collected the epistles, probably at Ephesus.
They placed first the two to Timothy, who was left at Ephesus, and the longer was prefixed to the shorter.

Several suggestions, some of them more plausible than others, for the identification of the fragments may be seen in Moffatt. [Introd. Lit. XT., pp. 403 f.]
A more recent attempt is made by Harrison (op. cit.).
He finds five genuine notes:

(1) Tit.iii.12-15, written from western Macedonia several months after 2 Cor.x-i, and before 2 Cor.i-ix (see pp. 139-42 above), bidding Titus, who was at Corinth, join him in Epiruswhich he did, bringing the good news of the submission of the Corinthians.

(2) 2 Tim.iv.13-15, 20, 21 a, written from Macedonia after the visit to Troas mentioned in 2 Cor.ii.12 f., bidding Timothy, who had returned to Ephesus, join him before winter.
On leaving Ephesus St. Paul had gone first to Miletus, taking Trophimus the Ephesian with him, and had left him there sick. Meanwhile Timothy, since he was with St. Paul when 2 Cor.i-ix was written, must have returned to Ephesus, and there received a note, i.e. the present fragment, telling him to come.

(3) 2 Tim.iv.16-18a (?18b), written from Caesarea soon after the soldiers had escorted him from Jerusalem (Acts xi.31 ff.).
His 'first defence' was the apologia of Acts x.1, when none of the brethren supported him.

(4) 2 Tim. iv.9-12, 22b, written from Rome to recall Timothy, probably from Philippi (Phil.ii.19, 23).
All the friends who had been with the apostle at Rome were scattered, with the exception of Luke.
Mark was at some place known to Timothy, probably Colossae (Col.iv.10), who would pick him up en route.

(5) Various fragments, 2 Tim.i.16-18; iii.10, 11; iv.1, 2a, 5b, 6-8, 18b, 19, 21b, 22a, which Harrison thinks were the principal Grundschrift of the epistle, written from Rome as a farewell to Timothy when the apostle was hourly expecting martyrdom.
It would reach him at Ephesus as he was hurrying Romewards in response to the preceding note (4).

Moffatt says that 'the net result of such investigations is negative'.
But though certainty may never be reached as to the exact extent of Pauline material, which the author incorporates, there is little doubt that parts of the epistlesor at least of 2 Timothy and Titusare the work of St. Paul, and larger parts are not.
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BOOKS

COMMENTARIES

M. Dibelius (and ed., 1931),
B. S. Easton (1948),
Sir Robert Falconer (1937),
W. Lock (1924), R. St. J. Parry (1920),
E. F. Scott (1936),
C. Spicq (1947).
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