224 linda l. belleville
Pauline one.15 typical is the view that the Pastorals are organizational
manuals to guide the well-established churches of the 60s ce. Christology
is commonly understood in terms of pre-Pauline early church traditions
that have little contextual or situational role to play except for that of
an exemplar for εὐσέβεια living. James aageson, who construes the Pasto-
rals as ecclesial documents concerned with good order and leadership, is
representative.16
in addition, there has been a recent call to consider 1 and 2 timothy
and titus individually rather than as a Corpus, given what some argue
to be theological differences especially between 1 timothy–titus and
2 timothy. William richards, for instance, concludes that a detailed analy-
sis of grammatical features shows that they were not written by the same
person.17 raymond Collins argues that 2 timothy (unlike 1 timothy and
titus) is typical of the ancient testamentary genre—a farewell discourse
composed by authors writing about their heroes.18
yet, all of this overlooks the explicit and unifying purpose in writing.19
timothy is told to “command certain people at ephesus not to engage in
false teaching” (ἵνα παραγγείλῃς τισὶν μὴ ἑτεροδιδασκαλεῖν; 1 tim 1:3) and to
avoid “the godless chatter of false teachers such as hymenaeus and Phil-
etus who have swerved from the truth by holding that the resurrection is
past already” (λέγοντες [τὴν] ἀνάστασιν ἤδη γεγονέναι; 2 tim 2:17–18). titus
is reminded that he was left at Crete to tie up loose ends, primary of which
was “to silence those who are destroying whole households by teaching
that which should not be taught” (ἵνα τὰ λείποντα ἐπιδιορθώσῃ... οὓς δεῖ
ἐπιστομίζειν, οἵτινες ὅλους οἴκους ἀνατρέπουσιν διδάσκοντες ἃ μὴ δεῖ; titus 1:5, 11).
15 see, for example guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles; lea and griffin, 1, 2 Timothy. Titus;
liefeld, 1 and 2 Timothy/Titus; John stott, Guard the Truth: The Message of 1 Timothy and
Titus (Bst; downers grove, il: interVarsity, 1997); mounce, Pastoral Epistles, 46–130;
Knight, The Pastoral Epistles, 13–52; Witherington, Titus, 1–2 Timothy and 1–3 John, 49–74;
marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, 57–92.
16 James aageson, Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church (Peabody, ma: hen-
drickson, 2008).
17 William richards, Difference and Distance in Post-Pauline Christianity: An Epistolary
Analysis of the Pastorals (stBl 44; new york: Peter lang, 2002). Compare Karl donfried,
“rethinking scholarly approaches to 1 timothy,” in K. donfried (ed.), 1 Timothy Reconsid-
ered (louvain: Peeters, 2008), 153–82.
18 Collins, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, 181–86; michale gourgues, “Étude critique: la recher-
che sur les pastorales à un tournant?” Science et Esprit 61 (2009): 73–86.
19 see linda l. Belleville, “introduction to the Pastoral epistles,” in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy,
Titus (CBC 17; Wheaton: tyndale house, 2009), 16–17. see the detailed treatment by
george m. Wieland, The Significance of Salvation: A Study of Salvation Language in the Pas-
toral Epistles (Paternoster Biblical monographs; Carlisle: Paternoster, 2006).