THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. T HE Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles
has been disputed, and defended, by great authorities,—disputed on the ground that the Church conditions alluded to in the letters to Timothy and Titus are such as could not have grown up during the lifetime of St. Paul, and defended because, to use Jowett's words, "there are passages in those Epistles which breathe the very life and spirit of the Apostle." Having regard to the cogency of the arguments on both sides, many Biblical scholars, including Renan, and perhaps Jowett, have satisfied their doubts and their convictions about the matter by a theory of interpolation. At present the trend of Biblical criticism is towards conservatism. Scholars of great weight give the Pastoral Epistles back to St. Paul, maintaining that our slender knowledge of the Apostolic age, wherein institutions grew rapidly and "opinions were like meteors," forbids the historian to deny that the state of things in Ephesus between 60 and 70 A.D. may have been such as the writer of the Epistles implies.
It comes to this, then. The scholars have given the ordinary reader leave to use his own judgment, and, using it, he can hardly refrain from summing up for the Apostolic authorship. It was surely St. Paul—and no forger of his
personality—who, looking forward to his death and backwards upon his life, declared that he had "fought the good fight" and " kept the faith," and who bitterly lamented the desertion of his friends in the same breath that he ardently rejoiced in the companionship of Christ. It was surely he who ful- minated against Alexander the coppersmith, who had done him much injury, and blessed Onesiphorus, who "oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain." It is difficult to think it was another than St. Paul who in the first chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy rebuked the workers of iniquity with all the minatory force of a clear conscience, and yet exalted to the heavens the long-suffering of God, Who had chosen the "chief of sinners " to convert the Gentiles in illustration of His boundless power to forgive, and who, while he defended sound doctrine with all his heart, admitted that when all arguments are over "the end of the commandment is charity." The light which flashes again and again from the recurrent clash of St. Paul's antitheses reveals his personality. If we admit that he wrote the Pastoral Epistles within sight of "the time of [his] departure," they are of intense interest for the picture they give of St. Paul's mind in his last years, and of the ideals, both ethical and doctrinal, of the Church at that moment when the prospects of Christianity were not bright, when so many had "turned aside," and when, though faith was at a low ebb, an insidious wave of superstition prevented men from consenting "to sound words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ." No one, we think, could read the Pastoral Epistles through in an unbiassed mood and not be struck by the austerity of their moral standpoint and the simplicity, and what would now be called the extreme breadth, of their dogmatic teaching.
When St. Paul sent his suffragan Timothy to preach a reformation in the Church at Ephesus, to bring his converts back to the pure worship of "the King eternal, incorruptible, invisible, the only God," and to turn them from " old wives' fables," and from " doting about questionings and disputes of words," be made no impassioned appeal either to the emotions or to the intellect of those whom he desires to instruct. " Charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience," are, he says, essential parts of the Christian religion, and those who forget this " make shipwreck concerning the faith," and become mere sources of "wrath and disputing." The polemical and revolutionary tendencies which he hears of in the Church at Ephesus alike distress him. The purity of the faith must be maintained, and submission made to pagan authority in all things lawful. At the same time, he will allow of no com- promise with pagan ideals. In these Epistles SL Paul carries the duty of submission to law very far indeed. The powers that be are not to be spoken against, and slaves are to be warned not to despise Christian masters "because they are brethren," but to show them " all good fidelity," for it is their duty to " adorn the doctrine of God our. Saviour," and not cause it to be spoken against as subversive of order. The Church is every- where to pray for all in high places, making intercession and giving thanks for rulers of every description, and not forgetting that the Church is but part of a larger com- munity, " that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who willeth that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth." Against this "gravity" of mind St. Paul believes that the women of the Christian community at Ephesus are militating. They are, he hears, becoming worldly, and he desires that their too great influence should be suppressed, and deprecates the extreme conspicuousness of their attitude in all Church affairs. He is hot about the matter, and does not, as in a former Epistle, remind his readers that his attitude towards women has no warrant from Christ. Yet stern as is his view of " how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God," he has yet no leaning at all towards asceticism, and no patience wits those who are "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanks- giving." He makes a curious criticism upon these fanatics, declaring that those whose sense of right and wrong is thus perverted have, as a rule, a conscience " branded " as " with a hot iron." All officers of the Church are to be chosen for their blameless and temperate lives. They are to be sober men, the husbands of one wife, and to "have good testimony from them that are without," not money-loving, " no brawlers," and " no strikers." It is evident all through this Epistle that St. Paul regarded belief in a future life not only as an essential part of Christian doctrine, but as a part having an intimate effect upon conduct, making men serious and conscientious as well as religious. He condemns the doctrine of those who say that "the resurrection is past already," and fears its moral effect, but he does not deduce from the " sound doctrine " of the future life any weapon to produce fear. Christ, he maintains, "abolished death," and those who believe in his teaching have their "hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe."
But even more than he fears superstition, or argumenta- tion, or lawlessness, the Apostle, who is so soon to be a martyr, fears the love of money. For greed more than anything else is calculated to destroy religion. " They that desire to be rich," he says, " fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition." At the root of all kinds of evil lies, he says, the love of money, " which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows," for though godliness is no " way of gain," yet " godliness with contentment is great gain." Few wants make without doubt for happiness.
The doctrine of the Pastoral Epistles is, to the thinking of the present writer, simpler than that of St. Paul's earlier writings, though the following verse from the First Epistle of Timothy may be said to sum up the Pauline theology as well as it could be summed up in so few words :—" There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all." The Apostle was face to face at Ephesus with great evils, which he evidently considered to be intimately connected with each other—superstition, scepticism, contentiousness, the spirit of revolt, and the love of luxury—and he combats them all by exhortations to simplicity. A simple creed and a simpler life he would have the Christians at Ephesus accept for their soul's health. Neither emotionalism, nor asceticism, nor Socialism finds any encouragement in the Pastoral Epistles. " Godliness and gravity " is the sole burden of their discourse. It is in this direction only that his hearers must look for a cure. Bitter specifics they probably appeared to the first readers of the Apostle's letters; but the Apostle is assured of their tonic effect. Plain living and high thinking he prescribes to the Christian community, which has lost the purity of its earlier faith. Men must realise what in life is really worth having, and be prepared for some sacrifice if they would " lay hold on the life which is life indeed." What be hopes for his converts is not that they should be overwhelmed by emotion or con- founded by logic, but that they should "recover themselves," being "taken captive by the Lord's servant unto the will of God."
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