individual members, old and young, widows and virgins, backsliders and heretics. They are rich
in practical wisdom and full of encouragement, as every pastor knows.
The Second Epistle to Timothy is more personal in its contents than the other two, and has
the additional importance of concluding the autobiography of Paul. It is his last will and testament
to all future ministers and soldiers of Christ.
The Pauline Authorship.
There never was a serious doubt as to the Pauline authorship of these Epistles till the
nineteenth century, except among a few Gnostics in the second century. They were always reckoned
among the Homologumena, as distinct from the seven Antilegomena, or disputed books of the New
Testament. As far as external evidence is concerned, they stand on as firm a foundation as any other
Epistle. They are quoted as canonical by Eusebius, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaeus.
Reminiscences from them, in some cases with verbal agreement, are found in several of the Apostolic
Fathers. They are included in the ancient MSS. and Versions, and in the list of the Muratorian
canon. Marcion (about 140), it is true, excluded them from his canon of ten Pauline Epistles, but
he excluded also the Gospels (except a mutilated Luke), the Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse.^1195
But there are certain internal difficulties which have induced a number of modern critics to
assign them all, or at least First Timothy, to a post-Pauline or pseudo-Pauline writer, who either
changed and adapted Pauline originals to a later state of the church, or fabricated the whole in the
interest of Catholic orthodoxy. In either case, the writer is credited with the best intentions and
must not be judged according to the modern standard of literary honesty and literary property.
Doctrinally, the Pastoral Epistles are made the connecting link between genuine Paulinism and the
Johannean Logos—philosophy; ecclesiastically, the link between primitive Presbyterianism and
Catholic Episcopacy; in both respects, a necessary element in the formation process of the orthodox
Catholic church of the second century.
The objections against the Pauline authorship deserve serious consideration, and are as
follows: (1) The impossibility of locating these Epistles in the recorded life of Paul; (2) the Gnostic
heresy opposed; (3) the ecclesiastical organization implied; (4) the peculiarities of style and temper.
If they are not genuine, Second Timothy must be the oldest, as it is least liable to these objections,
and First Timothy and Titus are supposed to represent a later development.^1196
The Time of Composition.
The chronology of the Pastoral Epistles is uncertain, and has been made an objection to
their genuineness. It is closely connected with the hypothesis of a second Roman captivity, which
we have discussed in another place.
The Second Epistle to Timothy, whether genuine or not, hails from a Roman prison, and
appears to be the last of Paul’s Epistles; for he was then hourly expecting the close of his fight of(^1195) See the testimonies in Kirchhofer’s Quellensammlung, as translated and enlarged by Charteris, Canonicity, 255-268. Renan
admits the resemblance between the First Epistle of Clemens Romanus (c. 44) and Second Timothy (e.g., in the use of the word
ἀνάλυσις for death), but assumes that both borrowed from a common source, the favorite language of the church of Rome, and
also that the forger of the Pastoral Epistles probably made use of some authentic letters of Paul. L’Église chrét., p. 95: "Quelques
passages de ces trois építres sont d’ailleurs si beaux, qu’on peut se demander si le faussaire n’avait pas entre les mains quelques
billets authentiques de Paul."
(^1196) Baur and Hilgenfeld (Einleit., p. 764) bring them down to 150 (after Marcion, 140), and date them from Rome. But this is
impossible, and rests on a false exegesis. Pfleiderer, of the same Tübingen school, puts 2 Timothy in the age of Trajan, the other
two in the age of Hadrian. He, moreover, regards the passages 2 Tim 1:15-18 and 4:9-21 as fragments of a genuine Epistle of
Paul. Comp. also Holtzmann, p. 271.
A.D. 1-100.