Comments
on the Book of Titus
At the right is someone's idea of an Acts-based timeline for the ministry of Paul, tied into the other epistles of the New Testament.
For this third in the series of bible commentaries on the 'little' letters
of Paul, I've chosen to swing by the letter to Titus. This is
not a
letter whose authorship is
undisputed Paul. Some seem to think that the
three little books of 1 & 2 Timothy, and Titus (collectively called the
Pastoral letters because they are giving pastoral advice about leadership in
the gatherings of Jesus followers), despite their claims to be authored by
Paul, are in fact later creations of Paul's communities. There's a bit of
circular reasoning here: if you don't think Paul wrote about church leadership,
then these letters are perhaps outside his writings. None of the undisputed
letters address the topic in this detail. If you do think Paul could have
written these, then it just requires us to expand the definition of what is
considered “authentic Paul.” The language of the pastorals also contain
vocabulary and phrasing different from the undisputed letters. The timeline of the Book of Acts also undermines the claim of Titus to be authentic Paul. The letter mentions that 'I left you [presumably Titus] behind in Crete...' that doesn't square with the Acts timeline, that stops at a Roman imprisonment for Paul. In order to posit that Titus was written by Paul, some have assumed a second Roman imprisonment after Paul's letter to Titus.
So, what's at stake in the truth, or not, of Pauline authorship?
For some, if the letters claim to be written by
Paul, and they are not, it undermines the credibility of what they are
advocating.
Thus these writings are not
just pseudonymous (written with a pen name), they are forgery.
This is a complex topic.
If you have scholarly inklings, try digesting
this complex article
whose author supports the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral letters. For
others, the authority of the advice given by the author of Titus should stand
on its own, whether or not Paul was the author.
For others, if Paul is not the author, then the advice given in the
letters shouldn’t have the same weight as if Paul was the author, and perhaps the letters shouldn't have been included in the canon of the New Testament.
We can only say that enough ancient
Christians were convinced of the value of the letter for it to survive in the
canon of the New Testament.
So what is the value of this advice for Christians?
Clearly the writer is concerned that church
leadership is an important topic.
He or
she wants the reader to see that character matters in the choosing of
leadership.
We would do well to pay attention to this ourselves. Note that in this very early
form of church leadership there doesn’t seem to be much concern about the
process of choosing, just the
outcome.
Leaders ought to have a variety
of personal characteristics that put them above reproach,
according to the standards of well-run households of the first century.
There is no indication here that Christian
leadership should emulate
higher
standards, which might put followers of Jesus into conflict with the
society around them.
Thus we see that
the writer is advocating some behavior that we, and perhaps even 1
st
century Christians, would find incompatible with the life of Jesus.
For example, the writer advocates slaves
being subject to their masters, and wives to their husbands.
What's going on here? It’s fascinating to note what the writer gives as the reason for advocating this
behavior—
so that the word of God might not be discredited. [2:5a]
In other words, the writer is advocating for
conformity
to the culture, in order for the Christian gospel to get a hearing, and to
be protected from slander.
I haven’t
seen any bible commenters that pick up on this issue for our time.
In our day, some would say that the Christian
who conforms to the culture to get a hearing for the gospel is somehow ‘selling
out.’
What do you say?
