The Pastoral Letters

The name Pastoral Epistles is modern, popularised in the eighteenth century, and it is a little misleading. These are not letters to pastors in general. They are letters to two named coworkers about specific assignments: Timothy has been left at Ephesus to instruct certain men not to teach false doctrines (1 Timothy 1:3, in the BSB's words; the Greek tisin means 'certain persons'), and Titus has been left in Crete to set in order what was unfinished and appoint elders in every town (Titus 1:5).

They differ from each other more than the shared label suggests. 1 Timothy is mostly instruction about congregational order. Titus is similar but shorter and blunter, with an eye on a difficult island and a memorable quotation, at Titus 1:12, of a line traditionally attributed to the Cretan poet Epimenides to the effect that Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. The attribution is ancient but the line survives in no work of Epimenides, so it is safer to say traditionally attributed than to say he wrote it. 2 Timothy is a different kind of document altogether: personal, valedictory, written by a man who expects to die, full of names and errands.

Lesson 1 of this module set out the authorship debate in full and will not repeat it here. Recall only the shape of it. The vocabulary and sentence rhythm differ measurably from the undisputed letters; the church structure is more defined; and the travels presupposed do not fit anywhere in Acts, which requires either a release from Roman custody and a further period of ministry or a later writer. Against that, the samples are small, the genre and addressee are different, overseers and deacons already appear in Philippians 1:1, and a secretary given latitude would account for much of the style. Serious scholars hold each position. Luke Timothy Johnson's Anchor Bible commentary is the fullest recent defence of authenticity from within critical scholarship, and most critical introductions take the other view.

What this lesson does is read the letters for what they say. That work is the same either way. If Paul wrote them, they are his mature instructions for handing a movement on. If a follower wrote them a generation later, they are the earliest surviving evidence of how the Pauline churches organised themselves once the apostle was gone. Both are worth knowing, and in either case they are scripture.

1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 give qualification lists for two offices, and the striking thing about them is how ordinary the qualifications are. An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not dependent on wine, not violent but gentle, peaceable, free of the love of money, managing his own household well, not a recent convert, and of good reputation with outsiders (1 Timothy 3:2-7). Almost every item is about character in public and at home. Exactly one is about competence, able to teach. There is nothing about charisma, education, eloquence or results.

The vocabulary of office is not yet fixed. Titus 1:5 tells Titus to appoint elders, presbuteroi, and then 1:7 gives the reason using a different word, since an overseer, episkopos, must be above reproach. The two terms are used of the same people, and Acts 20 does the same thing, calling the Ephesian elders overseers. The later pattern of a single bishop over a body of presbyters, which you meet clearly in Ignatius of Antioch around AD 110, is not yet in these letters. Churches today draw different conclusions from that, and the honest observation is simply that the terminology is still fluid here.

Deacons get their own list in 1 Timothy 3:8-13, and verse 11 raises a real question. In the middle of the deacon material comes an instruction about gunaikas, which can mean either the wives of the deacons or women who are themselves deacons. The Greek is genuinely ambiguous; there is no possessive pronoun. Two external facts bear on it. Romans 16:1 calls Phoebe a diakonos of the church at Cenchreae, using the masculine form of the noun; the BSB prints 'servant' there, though it prints the same Greek word as 'Deacons' in 1 Timothy 3:8. On verse 11 itself, the BSB prints 'the women', which does not settle the matter but, coming after 'In the same way', can be heard as women deacons; translations that print 'their wives' hear it the other way, and both are defended. And Pliny the Younger, writing to Trajan around AD 112, says he interrogated two slave women whom the Christians called ministrae, the Latin equivalent. Neither fact settles the verse, but they show the question is not invented.

Chapter 5 is where the letter becomes most practical and least quoted. There are rules for rebuking older and younger members, an enrolment procedure for widows with an age threshold of sixty and criteria for a life of service, an instruction that families must support their own widows rather than burden the church, double honour for elders who lead effectively, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching, which most take to include financial support, a rule that no accusation against an elder be entertained except on the testimony of two or three witnesses, a warning against laying on hands hastily, and a note to Timothy about using a little wine for his stomach. This is the administrative reality of a congregation: money, discipline, food, reputation, and who is on the list. A course that teaches only the doctrinal high points of the New Testament leaves students unprepared for the work these chapters describe.

Timothy's assignment is stated in the first paragraph of 1 Timothy: stay on at Ephesus to instruct certain men not to teach false doctrines or devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies (1 Timothy 1:3-4, in the BSB's wording; the Greek behind 'certain men' is tisin, certain persons, with no sex specified, which matters when the passage in section 4 is read against this background). Reconstructing what that doctrine was is mirror-reading of the kind lesson 3 warned about, and the reconstruction is correspondingly uncertain.

The clues run like this. The teachers want to be teachers of the law but do not understand what they are saying (1 Timothy 1:7), which sounds Jewish. They forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods (4:3), which sounds ascetic. They trade in myths and genealogies and in 'irreverent, empty chatter and the opposing arguments of so-called "knowledge"' (6:20). Hymenaeus and Philetus say that the resurrection has already happened (2 Timothy 2:17-18), which sounds like an over-realised eschatology in which the decisive event is already behind us. And some are in it for money: 1 Timothy 6:5 speaks of men who regard godliness as a means of gain, and Titus 1:11 says they teach for dishonorable gain.

Older scholarship often used the word knowledge at 6:20 to argue for second-century Gnosticism and therefore a late date. That argument has weakened considerably. Claims to special knowledge are much older than the developed Gnostic systems of the second century, the word itself is ordinary Greek, and the ascetic and Jewish features of this teaching do not match the Gnostic schools we actually know. The most that can be said is that something at Ephesus and on Crete combined Jewish legal interest, speculative myth, ascetic practice and financial opportunism. That combination is not otherwise documented, which is a caution against confident labels.

Notice the shape of the response, because it differs from Galatians. In Galatians Paul argues theologically at length. Here the answer is largely structural: appoint qualified elders, guard the deposit, teach sound doctrine, silence the profiteers, and keep the household of God in order. Whether that is Paul in a different mode or a different author in a different generation is precisely what lesson 1 left open. What is clear is that the strategy assumes the church will be here a long time.

This passage divides the global church today. Denominations have split over it, faithful Christians on each side regard the other as mistaken about something serious, and a survey course cannot responsibly hurry past it or pretend the matter is obvious. This course does not take a side here. What follows is an attempt to state each main reading as its own best defenders hold it, to locate the contested Greek so you can do the work yourself, and then to point you to where the argument is conducted at length, in the Hermeneutics track's lesson Which Commands Are Culture-Bound, which argues both readings of this passage at full strength and sets out the criteria traditions use for weighing them.

The text, in the BSB. Verse 11: 'A woman must learn in quietness and full submissiveness.' Verse 12: 'I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet.' Verse 13: 'For Adam was formed first, and then Eve.' Verse 14: 'And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and fell into transgression.' Verse 15: 'Women, however, will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.' Note what the BSB has done with verse 15: the Greek has a singular (literally, 'she will be saved'), followed by a plural, 'if they continue', and the BSB resolves that shift by printing 'Women' as the subject of both, which settles in English one of the questions discussed under verse 15 below. Read it several times before reading any argument about it, including this one.

Now the contested Greek, which is where an honest treatment has to start. First, authenteo in verse 12, translated exercise authority. It occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, so its sense must be established from a small number of occurrences in other Greek literature, spread across centuries, and those occurrences are read differently by competent scholars. Some argue the verb carries a neutral sense of holding authority; others argue it carries a negative colouring of seizing, dominating or acting autocratically, and note that Paul has ordinary words available for authority, exousia and its relatives, and did not use them here. Second, the linking word oude, or, joining teach and exercise authority. Andreas Köstenberger published a syntactical study in 1995 arguing that in this construction the two joined activities are always viewed the same way, both positively or both negatively, so that since teaching is a good thing, the second term must be a neutral exercise of authority rather than domineering. Philip Payne and others dispute the corpus and the rule, and argue that the two verbs form a single idea, something like teaching in a domineering manner. Third, hesuchia in verses 11 and 12: it is quietness or settledness rather than muteness, and the cognate adjective hesuchios describes the tranquil and quiet lives Christians are to pray for in 2:2, which is the same root in a different part of speech rather than the same word. Fourth, gune and aner, which mean woman and wife, man and husband, with no separate words available; context alone decides, and the household setting of the surrounding chapters is part of that context. Fifth, the present tense of I do not permit, which some read as a ruling for the present situation; others reply that the Greek present tense by itself carries no such limitation.

The first main reading, stated at full strength. Paul is giving a standing instruction, not a local emergency measure, and the decisive evidence is his grounds. Verse 13 begins with a causal for, and what follows is not a fact about Ephesus but a fact about creation: Adam was formed first, then Eve. Appeals to creation elsewhere in Paul, as in 1 Corinthians 11, function as transcultural grounds. On this reading the restriction concerns the authoritative teaching office in the assembly, not women teaching in general, and it is consistent with Priscilla instructing Apollos privately in Acts 18:26, with women praying and prophesying in 1 Corinthians 11:5, and with the older women teaching in Titus 2:3-4. Supporters add that this reading has been the overwhelming practice of the church east and west for most of its history, which is not decisive but is evidence about how the text was read by those closest to it. Douglas Moo, Thomas Schreiner and Köstenberger are among its careful modern defenders, and the volume 'Women in the Church' collects the technical case.

The second main reading, stated at full strength. The letter itself says why Timothy is at Ephesus: to stop people teaching a different doctrine. 1 Timothy 5:13 describes younger widows 'going from house to house' and being 'gossips and busybodies, discussing things they should not mention', and 2 Timothy 3:6-7 describes false teachers who 'captivate vulnerable women' (the BSB's gloss on a Greek diminutive), who are 'always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth'. On this reading verse 11 is the surprising part of the passage, because it commands that a woman learn, which in that world was not assumed, and verse 12 is a temporary restraint on untaught women teaching while they are being taught. Verses 13 and 14 are then read as an analogy rather than a rule: Eve was deceived because she was not there when the command was given, which is exactly the situation of the untaught teacher, and Paul uses the Eve comparison the same way for a whole congregation in 2 Corinthians 11:3. Defenders add that Paul elsewhere names women in leading roles without apology: Phoebe a diakonos, Priscilla teaching, women prophesying, and Andronicus and Junia in Romans 16:7, of whom the BSB says 'They are outstanding among the apostles', the rendering defenders of this reading prefer, while the ESV says they are well known to the apostles. The BSB has taken a side there, and also in printing the feminine name Junia (some argue for a masculine Junias). Those who hold the first reading answer that the Greek construction (episemoi en tois apostolois) can mean esteemed by the apostles rather than counted among them, and that case is serious. The two renderings say different things, so the verse is evidence only once you have decided how to read it. Craig Keener, Linda Belleville, Gordon Fee, Ben Witherington and Philip Payne are among the scholars who have made this case at length.

Three further things belong in an honest account, and the first two are a matched pair. Each reading has arguments in circulation that its own best defenders would not lean on, and a student should be able to spot them on both sides. On the second reading, the argument to treat with caution is the proposal by Catherine and Richard Kroeger in 1992 that authentein means to claim to be the originator of a man, tied to a reconstructed Ephesian myth of female primacy in the Artemis cult. It has been criticised on lexical and evidentiary grounds by scholars on both sides, including egalitarian ones, and S. M. Baugh has argued that the picture of Ephesus as a matriarchal religious society is not supported by the epigraphic evidence.

On the first reading, two arguments are similarly overextended. One is the appeal to an unbroken consensus of the whole church until modern times, which claims more than the record will carry: Romans 16:1 calls Phoebe a diakonos, Pliny reports women called ministrae, and the later practice of east and west is more varied than the slogan allows. Careful defenders of this reading generally rest the case on the exegesis of verses 13 and 14 rather than on the historical claim, and they are right to, because the exegetical case does not need it. The other is treating Köstenberger's study of the oude construction as though it closed the question, when a single syntactical survey over a limited corpus cannot by itself fix the sense of a verb that occurs once in the New Testament. It is also worth noticing that Genesis 2 does not itself say that being formed first confers authority, and that the animals were formed before Adam, which is a point pressed by critics and conceded by some who hold this reading, who ground the argument in Paul's use of Genesis rather than in Genesis alone. A weak argument does not damage only the person who uses it; it damages the position, and that is true in both directions.

The third thing is verse 15, which is one of the hardest sentences in the New Testament. The BSB prints 'Women, however, will be saved', which smooths the Greek shift from singular to plural and leans toward the reading in which the verse speaks of women generally. Proposals include: she will be kept safe through childbirth; she will be saved through the Childbearing, that is, the birth of Christ; she will be saved while fulfilling her ordinary domestic calling; and, given that 4:3 says the false teachers forbid marriage, that Paul is rebutting a teaching which held that bearing children endangered a woman's salvation. Any proposal also has to account for the shift from the singular she at the start of the verse in the Greek to the plural they in the condition that follows. Candidates for that plural include women generally, the husband and wife together, and the woman and her children, and which candidate you choose interacts directly with which of the four readings you can hold. No proposal commands a consensus, and any reading of verses 11 to 14 has to say something about verse 15.

What is settled and what is not. Settled: the passage exists, it is scripture, its wording is not in textual doubt, and both readings are held by people with a high view of its authority and a working knowledge of its language. Not settled: the meaning of authenteo, the force of the oude construction, the scope of the prohibition, whether verses 13 and 14 function as ground or as analogy, and what verse 15 means. A related textual and interpretive question hangs over 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, discussed in lesson 3 of this module, and the two passages are usually argued together.

This course does not tell you the answer, and that is a deliberate decision rather than cowardice. A survey of the New Testament owes you the text, the contested words, the strongest form of each reading and an accurate map of who holds what. Much of the full argument, including the grammar of authenteo, the force of the oude construction, the weight Paul's appeal to creation carries, and the criteria traditions use to sort binding commands from culture-bound ones, is taken up in the Hermeneutics track, in the lesson Which Commands Are Culture-Bound. Work through this passage there, with the time it deserves. The ordination question and the pastoral consequences of each position reach past what this school currently covers, and you should take those from your own tradition's best writers on each side rather than from us. In the meantime, the discipline to practise is the one the last inquiry question asked about: how to teach a text you have not yet settled, to people who assume you have.

2 Timothy reads differently from the other two, and whoever composed it meant it to. The tone is not administrative but valedictory. Timothy's grandmother Lois and mother Eunice are remembered by name. There are repeated appeals to hold on, to guard the deposit, to endure suffering, to be ready in season and out. 3:16 gives the sentence 'All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness', and it is worth noticing that the sentence is a working instruction to a man with a job rather than an abstract statement about the Bible.

Then chapter 4. The anchor text of this lesson comes from it: already being poured out like a drink offering, the time of departure at hand, the good fight fought, the race finished, the faith kept. Around that famous passage sit details of a much smaller kind, and they are the ones that stay with most readers. Demas, 'in his love of this world', has deserted him. Crescens has gone to Galatia and Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with him. 'Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is useful to me in the ministry', which is a quiet resolution of the quarrel over Mark in Acts 15. Alexander the coppersmith did him great harm. Trophimus was left sick in Miletus, which is a striking note from a man whose ministry included healings. And then verse 13: 'When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.'

Verse 16 is the hardest line in the letter: 'At my first defense, no one stood with me, but everyone deserted me', followed immediately by the prayer 'May it not be charged against them.' Whatever you conclude about who wrote these letters, that sentence is not the work of someone constructing a heroic portrait.

It is honest to say that these personal details are themselves part of the authorship argument, and they function differently for each side. Those who hold Paul wrote the letters point to them as exactly the material no imitator would invent: a cold apostle wanting his coat, a friend left sick, a public abandonment. Those who hold a later writer composed the letters answer either that such details are the recognised technique of verisimilitude, or, in a suggestion going back to P. N. Harrison, that genuine fragments of Paul's notes were preserved and set into a later framework. There is no way to decide this from the evidence we have.

What the letters leave you with, on any reading, is a picture of what the movement looked like once its founder was going or gone: elders being appointed in ordinary towns, money being argued over, widows being fed, a man asking for his scrolls, false teachers inside the congregation rather than outside it, and the instruction repeated in every one of these three letters to hold on to what was handed over and hand it on again. That is the shape of Christian ministry in the century after the resurrection, and it is recognisably the shape of it now.