Fr. Dave's Thoughts - August 29th, 2025
Dear friends,
This week, I want to take you on a brief tour of Paul’s epistles or letters. Paul’s letters make up the bulk of the New Testament and are the oldest writings we have from the apostolic age. His letters predate the Gospels and the Book of Acts by some 30 to even 50 years in the case of the Gospel of John. It is believed that Paul died around 64 or 65 AD, so his letters date from the early 50’s to the early 60’s. He definitively wrote at least ten of the epistles in the New Testament and maybe as many as 13. I Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, also called the pastoral epistles, may or may not have been written by Paul. Here is the list in the order they appear in our Bible:
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
I Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians
[I Timothy]
[2 Timothy]
[Titus]
Philemon
Notice that I have put the pastoral epistles in brackets. I will discuss them here, but it is widely believed that they were written by a disciple of Paul’s and not Paul himself. Before we move into the letters themselves, there is something important that we need to understand about all the letters from the apostolic era. This will come into play more in next week’s discussion of the Catholic Epistles, but in the first century at least it was not unusual or in the least bit wrong to write a letter and ascribe it to an apostle or somebody who was recognized to have authority. This was done to give the letter more weight. So, the pastoral epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) were ascribed to the Apostle Paul, but most likely not written by him. The word to describe this is pseudepigraphical. We will see this again next week when we talk about 1 and 2 Peter and 1, 2 and 3 John. It would be scandalous for us today to write something under an someone else’s name simply to give it more weight or influence, but it was not scandalous in the first century. In fact, it was a very common practice.
All of Paul’s letters follow a pretty basic five-point structure:
Salutation – opening that identifies the letter’s sender and addressee and offers a greeting.
Thanksgiving – prayer of gratitude delineating major themes of the letter.
Body – the main argument and substance of the letter.
Instructions – the final exhortations for how to live the Christian life.
Conclusion – greetings and a benediction.
Let’s take a look at each of these books in the order they appear in our Bible:
Romans is the longest of Paul’s letters and perhaps the most weighty and influential. It was written between 54 and 58 to a church that he did not start, but whose favor and support he sought. Because it was not written to a church that he had started to address specific issues, Paul could focus more on the theoretical and philosophical aspects of the faith. The letter to the Romans was carefully crafted to be the fullest expression of Paul’s theology. It is a difficult letter to get through, but it offers a clear picture of what Paul believed about Jesus and the work of the Christ.
I Corinthians is a response by Paul to reports that he had received regarding various conflicts and problems within the Corinthian church, a church that he founded. The letter brings to life a vivid picture of the actual life and problems that were taking place in a particular local church in the middle of the first century. Paul’s overarching strategy was to admonish those who were amongst the social and economic elites asking them to forego their privilege in order to assist those who were weaker in their faith and of lower social standing. This is the letter that has the Words of Institution that we use in our Eucharistic Prayer (chapter 11:23-26).
2 Corinthians is Paul’s second letter to that same church in Corinth. It was written because Paul had become estranged from the Corinthian Christians, and he wanted to try to reconcile their differences. In the letter he condemned a group he refers to as “false apostles” who were teaching a message contrary to the one Paul had taught them from the beginning. We see these kind of struggles going on in various places throughout the epistles in the New Testament.
Galatians is one of Paul’s angriest letters. Apparently, a group he called the “Judaizers” had come into Paul’s church while he was away and began teaching them that in order to be true followers of Jesus, they needed to first be circumcised. Paul blew a gasket at this and wrote this letter in response to what he considered a perversion of the gospel that Jesus had taught. Galatians contains that great verse, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
Ephesians is a letter that doesn’t really address any specific situation. Some early manuscripts of this letter and some commentators in the early church make no reference to Ephesus in chapter 1 verse 1 nor does Paul, if he is the author, deal with any specific problems within a particular congregation. Hence Ephesians is widely regarded as a “circular letter” not written specifically for the Christians in Ephesus, but one that was distributed to several churches in Asia Minor. Through the years, it has been assumed that that Ephesians was written by the apostle Paul, late in his career and from prison, probably Rome. It is a beautiful letter and the first place where we encounter the household codes, wives were told to be subject to their husbands and husbands were commanded to love their wives. Children were to obey their parents and slaves were to obey their masters. This was actually a very gracious hierarchical structure for its day, though it was patriarchal. Women and children were understood in this letter to be fully human which wasn’t generally the case in the first century. Today of course we live in a very different context. We don’t believe in slavery, nor do we understand women and children to be without agency. Context is always important when we read these letters.
Philippians is another amazing letter written to the saints in Philippi. The church in Philippi was the first church established by Paul on European soil according to Acts 16:11-13. From the beginning of Paul’s work in Philippi, there had been opposition and apparently this opposition to the church was very active at the time Paul wrote this letter. Paul’s main theme of Philippians was to encourage the Christians there to be persistent in their faith in the face of the opposition and death threats. At the center of this letter is the powerful and hymn-like passage from chapter 6: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though, he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross…” (Philippians 6:5-8). Philippians is my personal favorite of Paul’s epistles.
Colossians has some parallels to the letter to the Ephesians. The cities of Colossae and Ephesus were very near to each other in Asia Minor. Like Ephesians there is some question as to whether Paul wrote this letter, but unlike Ephesians it does address a specific situation. The letter is confident that the believers have basically been faithful to Paul’s teaching, but his teaching was being threatened by persons who were teaching a gospel that was contrary to Paul’s. Those persons are not clearly defined in the letter. Colossians is the other letter that spells out the household codes that are also found in Ephesians.
1 Thessalonians was Paul’s first letter and the oldest document we have in the New Testament. Paul founded the church in Thessalonica shortly after he left Philippi. This letter reflects the life of a congregation that was devoted to its faith and strongly aware of its separation from the society in which its member had at one time found their values. At the same time, Thessalonica was a community threatened by social pressures and persecution intended to turn them back to the life from which they had come. The big issue in this letter was death. “What happens to those saints who have died before our Lord’s return?” A clear theme throughout Paul’s epistles is the idea that Jesus was going to return in their lifetime. Naturally people were worried about their loved ones who had died before the second coming. Paul admonished them not to grieve as others who had no hope; the dead would be raised to live with Christ, he told them.
2 Thessalonians continues to deal with the issues raised in 1 Thessalonians, ie. how to understand the fulfillment of God’s promises in the return of Christ, and how to act in the meantime.
I Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus are letters that are hard to ascribe to Paul. Timothy was from Lystra in Asia Minor and the son of Greek father and a Jewish mother who had become a Christian. (Acts 16:1). In Acts, Timothy is mentioned as a companion of Paul’s in his travels. Titus on the other hand is not mentioned in the Book of Acts, but appears to have been an important companion of Paul’s. We read about him in Galatians 2:1-3 and in various places throughout the Book of 2 Corinthians.
1 Timothy deals with issues that seem to have come along much later in the first century. The letter seems to have a dual purpose: to provide guidance in the area of church administration and to oppose false teaching of a speculative and moralistic type. As far as church administration goes, the book lays down the qualifications for bishops (3:1-7) and deacons (3:8-13). The subject of church administration and idea of bishop and deacon didn’t come along until much later as the church began to understand that Jesus was not coming back right away. Certainly, these were issues that came up after Paul had died.
2 Timothy is the most personal of the pastoral letters; most of it being directed toward Timothy. This letter makes the best case for being authored by Paul as it is an earnest pastoral letter from a veteran missionary to a younger colleague.
Titus has strong parallels to 1 Timothy. The letter has three main topics:
To set forth what is required for church leaders
To suggest the proper approach to different groups in the church ie. older men, older women, younger men, and slaves.
To look at how the church should act in the world.
Again, these are issues that came about much later in the first century if not the early second.
Philemon is the shortest of Paul’s epistles. It is a personal letter to a man named Philemon to be delivered by Onesimus, a slave who had emancipated himself. Paul was sending him back to his master, as the law required. However the letter implores Philemon to accept Onesimus back not as a slave but rather as a brother in Christ. Paul asked Philemon to offer the same welcome to Onesimus that he would afford Paul himself.
Peace,
Dave.