Prof: What we're doing
this week is extending our conversation we started last
week about how was Paul used as a figure in early Christianity.
Today we're going to talk about
the Pastoral Epistles, which is I and II Timothy and
Titus, and then next time we'll talk
about The Acts of Paul and Thecla because these are two
practically opposite ways of interpreting Paul and using Paul
that came about probably in the second century.
The Pastoral Epistles are
called "pastoral" because it presents Paul as
writing to Timothy and Titus, two of his followers,
but he's telling them how to be good pastors of a church.
In fact he's also doing
something like almost acting like they're going to become
bishops; they are also supposed to be
appointing other people as pastors of churches.
We call these the Pastoral
Epistles because it presents Paul as himself serving in a
sort of pastoral role for his churches and assigning Timothy
and Titus pastoral roles for his churches also,
and establishing leadership positions,
what kind of leadership structures he wants to go on in
the churches. Most of us scholars believe
that these letters are pseudonymous.
We don't believe Paul wrote
them. There has been some question in
the last several years that maybe the actual historical Paul
wrote II Timothy because II Timothy looks sort of like a
last will and testament of Paul that he may have written in
prison. But I don't tend to buy that.
I tend to group all three of
them together as being probably by the same author and all being
pseudonymous. Why do we think they're
pseudonymous? Well again, as we saw with
Ephesians and Colossians, the writing style in these
letters is very different from the seven letters that scholars
all agree Paul actually wrote, so the writing style is a big
issue. As I'll show today there are a
lot of ways of seeing that these letters simply presuppose a
different stage in early Christianity.
They don't look like they're
from the more primitive sort of time of when Paul was actually
founding churches. The theology looks different,
the church structure looks different,
as I'll talk about, positions on the household,
on marriage, on slavery, on family,
on women, all of these things are different.
I'm using the Pastoral Epistles
in this lecture as one illustration of how Christianity
changes in different trajectories.
One trajectory becomes very
much pro-household. The traditional Roman style or
Greco-Roman family is promoted as the Christian way for
families to be and even the church itself is molded to look
like a household with a paterfamilias,
the head of the household on top, women below that,
children and slaves below that. When we get to The Acts of
Paul and Thecla, we'll see that that interpretation of Paul
makes Paul anti-household. He actually is presented as
going around preaching against marriage,
against sex, against the Roman household,
and preaching a very kind of hierarchical disrupting,
even city-, polis-disrupting Gospel
and certainly a household- and family-disrupting Apostle.
These two trajectories of
Pauline Christianity show the diversity of Christianity as it
developed, and even how they used the same
figure, Paul, as founder of
Christianity in radically different ways.
When did these letters come
about? It's everybody guess.
I actually tend to think that
the Pastoral Epistles were probably written sometime in the
second century, and maybe even toward the
middle of the second century. That's a bit later than a lot
of scholars would put them, and we're just guessing anyway.
We sort of have to imagine what
kind of level of early Christianity,
what kind of phase of early Christianity do we imagine
taking place before we can get this kind of a letter with this
kind of theology and church structure written.
It is interesting that when we
talked about Marcion early, remember the heretic in Rome
who made his own first Canon list of New Testament books?
Remember he included Luke as
his Gospel in his own edited version of it and he included
the letters of Paul. We don't have any evidence that
Marcion actually knew about these three letters,
I and II Timothy and Titus. If Marcion was writing in the
middle of the second century, maybe Marcion,
if he didn't mention them, maybe he didn't know them,
and maybe that's evidence that they weren't yet highly
circulated so that's one of the things that people have talked
about, the dating of these letters.
Since Marcion didn't seem to
know them, perhaps they were either just being written or not
long written around the middle of the second century.
First let me back up because I
want to go through Paul really quickly and talk about what
Paul's own view of the household is.
Look with me in 1 Corinthians
7, we're going to review some things that we've gone on before
but keep your Bibles in front of you.
Look at 1 Corinthians 7:1:
Concerning the matters about which you wrote,
"it is well for a man not to touch a woman."
But because of cases of sexual
immorality each man should have his own wife and each woman her
own husband; the husband should give his
wife her conjugal rights, likewise the wife to her
husband. Notice how Paul balances these
things. He tells basically the man,
you have control of the body of your wife, but he also tells to
the woman, you have control of the body of your husband.
There's something of
reciprocity in 1 Corinthians 7. This will be important because
that kind of reciprocity doesn't exist when you get to the
Pastoral Epistles. That's one thing to notice.
Verse 5:
Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for
a set time to devote yourselves to prayer.
Then come together again so
that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self
control. This I say by way of
concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I
myself am but each has a particular gift from God,
one having one kind and another a different kind.
Notice he's basically saying,
have sex within marriage. He's not condemning sex,
but he really prefers that all Christians be single like he
himself is. Paul's preference is not
marriage and sex within marriage.
That's a concession that he
gives for people that he says can't control themselves.
To the unmarried and widows,
I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am,
but if they are not practicing self control they should marry.
It is better to marry than to
burn. That's what the Greek actually
says, "It is better to marry than to burn."
That's been an interesting
question of scholars, what does he mean by
"burn"? Does he mean burn in hell?
That it's better to marry than
to be tempted to sin with sex outside of marriage and then
you'd burn in hell? I've argued that what he means
is "burn with desire" because it was very common in
ancient Greek culture to portray any kind of erotic desire as
actually a physical burning. They even portrayed it as a
disease. When you start having that
itchy feeling that we all know so well,
that's because your body is actually heating up,
and that's what causes that desire.
The ancient Greek doctors,
Greek and Roman doctors, gave all kinds of prescriptions
to people to control that burning so they can control
their erotic desire because they felt like it made you actually
unhealthy. Desire was unhealthy and sexual
activity was dangerous. This was a concern throughout
the ancient world and I think that's what Paul's talking
about. What I've argued,
and have argued this in my Corinthian body book and a few
other places, is that Paul actually prefers
that people avoid sex entirely, Christians avoid sex entirely.
If they can't avoid sex
entirely, and they're starting to have sexual desire burning in
them and that gets dangerous, then they should get married
and have sex but only to decrease the burning.
What Paul wants is for them to
experience sexual intercourse, even in marriage,
without any erotic desire. Now that's kind of a radical
idea but I believe that's actually what Paul was teaching
here, is that he concedes it possible
that Christians could have sex without experiencing desire,
and that's his goal. Notice Paul doesn't have a very
positive view of sex, even within marriage,
it's a concession he allows people.
Notice in none of this passage
does he talk at all about having kids.
Sexuality for Paul is not to
make children in Paul's own letters.
You have sex in marriage only
to keep you from desiring. That's Paul's concern.
That will change later.
That's one place where--we also
saw in I Thessalonians 4, if you'll remember,
we had this same kind of thing. There, Paul is just talking to
the men of the congregation and he says, don't you start wanting
your brother's wife. He calls them skeuos,
your vessel, he says, "Each of you
should have your vessel." And the debate is whether he's
talking about their genitalia, which is one possible
interpretation of the Greek, or their wife's body,
which is another possible interpretation of the Greek.
For Paul, in I Thessalonians 4,
he's telling men also, control yourself--and he says,
"Not in passion of desire like the Gentiles,"
so there again, in I Thessalonians,
4, Paul is really concerned that the Thessalonian disciples
are not lusting after their fellow Christian's wife.
Keep your own vessel,
and that's how your control yourself.
And notice again he's excluding
the idea of passion and desire. It just does not have a part in
it. I admit that this is kind of a
radical argument, and there are a lot of people
out there who haven't bought my argument,
but that seems to me to be precisely what the text is
saying. Paul never allows for a good
notion of sexual pleasure or sexual desire.
He seems to want to exclude it
in order to keep you from experiencing desire and he
believes that he can do that even by having sex.
In those ways we see Paul is
not anti-marriage exactly, but he's certainly not
pro-marriage, and he's not anti-sex exactly,
but he's certainly is not pro-sex.
The one thing he does seem to
be anti is desire, sexual desire.
All right, where do women fit
in all this? I pointed out that in I
Thessalonians 4 Paul doesn't seem to think about women at all
there. In fact, I even proposed when I
lectured on I Thessalonians that by the time Paul wrote that
letter, which is one of his earliest
letters, maybe the earliest letter we
have in the Canon, Paul may have been conceiving
of the Christian group as being sort of a male club because
that's the way he tends to be talking to them.
A male club of mainly working
class manual laborers. That's changed by the time we
get to I Corinthians, right?
Because Paul directly talks
about women a lot, he sees women as being in
something like a co-relationship with their husbands and sexual
activity in I Corinthians 7. He addresses women as leaders
of churches at times. So by the time Paul writes I
Corinthians, women are acknowledged as an important
part of his churches. But in 1 Corinthians 11,
look there, he doesn't have women on a completely equal
stance with men apparently. In I Corinthians 11 he says:
I commend you because you remember me in everything and
maintain the traditions just as I handed them onto you.
But I want you to understand
that Christ is the head of every man and the husband is ahead of
the wife as God is ahead of the church.
There is a clear hierarchy
there, and Paul goes on to talk about what this is going to have
to do with women veiling their heads when they pray and
prophesy, which another very complicated
and controversial passage in Paul.
It's clear that Paul views,
just as he views God as the head of Christ,
that is Christ of being somewhat inferior person
compared to God the Father, so women are in an inferior
position with regard to their husbands.
The Greek words here,
they're just the words for "man"
and "woman." But since the Greek doesn't
have special terms for "husband"
and "wife," when you see a Greek term like
this in this context, you have to make the decision:
are you going to translate this as "man"
or "woman," and make this a generic kind of
idea that women in general are supposed to be subordinated to
men in general, or do you take the terms and
translate them into "husband"
and "wife." Both translations are fine,
as far as the Greek goes, and then you're taking that
sort of inferiority subordination complex to be
something that's talking about with husbands and wives.
Look at I Corinthians 14:33:
As in all the churches of the saints,
women should be silent in the churches for they are not
permitted to speak but should be subordinate as the law also
says. If there is anything they
desire to know, let them ask their husbands at
home. For it is shameful for a women
to speak in church, or did the word of God
originate with you, or are you the only ones it has
reached? That's odd, he seems to telling
the women not to speak in church at all,
although previously he had given instructions for how they
could pray and prophesy in church as long as they are
wearing a veil. What is going on here?
Also, doesn't this have
something--have something of a conflict with Galatians 3:28
which is a famous verse in which Paul says,
"In Christ there is no Jew nor Greek,
there's no free or slave, there's no male and
female." Now that verse has been
interpreted, especially since the 1970s, as teaching that Paul
taught the equality of men and women in Christ;
if in Christ there's no male and female doesn't that mean
they're equal? Yes sir.
Student: What letter is
that? Prof: Galatians 3:28.
This has been an argument,
this is why I'm talking about the stuff--
those of you who are writing papers this week need to talk
about, but notice this is complex.
You've got Galatians 3:28 that
looks like an egalitarian statement,
except a very famous biblical scholar wrote an article arguing
that Galatians 3:28 is not an egalitarian statement because
Paul was talking about in the resurrection human beings--
Christians will be androgynes, that they'll be male/female
combinations, and in that male/female
combination the masculinity is still superior to femininity
even in the androgyne body of the resurrection.
Is Galatians 3:28 an
egalitarian statement by Paul? Some people say yes.
Is it not an egalitarian
statement by Paul? I say it's not.
That's a complicated argument
also. If Galatians 3:28 is an
egalitarian statement, how does that fit then with
this 1 Corinthians 14 passage where Paul seems to be saying
women should be silent in church and be subordinate,
ask your husband at home. Did any of you notice that
those verses I just read in 1 Corinthians 14 are in some
translations in brackets, in parentheses?
How many people have a
translation of 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 that's in either
brackets or parentheses? Raise your hand.
How many people have a
translation where they're not in brackets or parentheses,
anybody? Okay, so some of you don't have
them in brackets. That's showing you that these
editors are not sure whether that was actually part of the
original letter. There's a dispute here.
If you looked at your footnotes
of your Bible, your footnotes might even say,
"some ancient authorities"
don't include this or include these verses in a different
place. This is the issue,
and we do have some Greek texts,
some Greek manuscripts that either don't have these verses
or have them in a different place in the text.
Well how would that happen?
Well, the idea goes that some
scribe, at some point,
was copying over I Corinthians 14 and got to the point where
this is in the text and wrote out in the margin,
well wait a minute this is not right because of course the
scribes are living at a later time when women definitely were
in a more inferior position in churches.
They couldn't be priests,
they couldn't be bishops and this sort of thing,
and that scribe writes in, well no,
of course, women can't do that, so there's a little note that
occurs there on the margins of the text.
Other scribes come along and
find this manuscript and they decide, well that shouldn't be
out here in the margin; that should go into the text
someplace. So one scribe copying it over
puts that excerpt in this part of the text and another one puts
it in this part of the text in different places.
And then those manuscripts are
copied over by other scribes. And you end up with Greek
manuscripts with these verses in different places in I
Corinthians 14. Some scholars have said that
all looks like those verses that teach the subordination of women
in I Corinthians 14 were not originally by Paul but were a
later scribal interpolation, insertion into the text.
Other scholars disagree with
that, and they think that these verses were original with I
Corinthians 14. In other words,
I've given you a lot of problems to deal with.
If you're going to talk about
what was Paul's view of women you've got to figure out,
well, what do you think Galatians 3:28 really teaches.
Is it an egalitarian statement
or not? Is I Corinthians 14--these
verses--is that part of Paul's original teaching or not?
Then you've got the situation
where in Romans 16, several verses in Romans 16,
Paul actually addresses women as leaders of churches.
There are places where Paul is
willing to talk to women as leaders of churches.
In fact, one of the verses in I
Corinthians 16, Paul addresses two people,
Andronicus and Junia, and he says,
"These are esteemed among the Apostles."
"Among the Apostles,"
that sounds like he's actually saying that Andronicus and Junia
are themselves Apostles. And Paul thinks himself--the
Apostles, in Paul's view, doesn't include just the
twelve, right? Because he thinks he's an
Apostle and he's not one of the twelve.
The word "Apostle"
for Paul is wider than the twelve, and it refers to people
who go out and spread the Gospel.
Apparently, Paul is calling two
people, Andronicus and Junia, "Apostles"
in Romans 16. Interestingly enough,
that word "Junia," that might be in your
translation as "Junia" nowadays,
but in older English versions, it was translated as
"Junias," which would be a man's name.
In Latin, if you add an
"s" on that word it looks like a
man's name, if you don't have the
"s," it looks like a woman's name.
There was debate among scholars
about how to translate it. It looks the same basically in
Greek because of the way the word occurs in the sentence.
When you translated it,
are you going to make it a man's name or a woman's name?
People had always made it a
man's name. Why?
Because scholars just
thought--of course all these scholars are men themselves
throughout hundreds of years of tradition--
they thought, well you can't have a woman
Apostle, so it must be a man's name.
In the seventies some feminist
biblical scholars came along and pointed out that
"Junias" is a very,
very, very rare man's name but "Junia"
is a very common woman's name, and argued again through
textual criticism that Paul originally was addressing a
woman, Junia. And now you have basically most
scholars admitting that this is a woman.
It's a woman's name.
Paul was addressing a man,
Andronicus, and a woman, Junia, and calling them both
Apostles. There's some evidence that Paul
actually doesn't have such a negative view of women if he's
going to allow them to have leadership roles in his
churches. So you've got Paul in rather
confusing situations. Is Paul a feminist?
Is he for egalitarian theology
with men and women? How does this relate to these
different issues that come up in his letters?
Those are Paul's basic views of
both marriage and the family, and sex, and the roles of
women. Often in early Christianity,
in the history of Christianity, these two things go together.
What a text is going to teach
about the role of women in the church and in the world often
has something to do with what it teaches about the family.
Most of the time when a text is
really, really pro-family, they teach the subordination of
women more directly. When they're anti-family,
they often tend to allow women bigger roles in their
congregations. So it's kind of a pairing that
goes along, and that's exactly what we'll
see this week when we see the Pastoral Epistles that take Paul
down the pro-family anti-woman route,
and The Acts of Paul and Thecla,
which takes Paul down the anti-family pro-woman route.
Let's look at the Pastorals,
first. What is this author in I
Timothy attacking? I'm going to spend most of my
time in I Timothy because that's where I can get these examples.
A lot of this stuff occurs in
the letter to Titus also because the letter to Titus repeats a
lot of the stuff that's in the first letter of Timothy.
In I Timothy 1:3,
I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia,
to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people
not to teach any different doctrine,
not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies
that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is
known by faith. This and vain discussions and
genealogies--in I Timothy 4:7 he talks about godless and silly
myths. Titus 1:10 and 14 also--and he
also in Titus says that he's against people who are teaching
circumcision and Jewish myths, he calls them.
What are these myths?
Well, we're not really sure.
Are these sort of Gnostic-type
myths about many different gods doing things and having to
placate those gods in order to reach the highest God as we've
seen in some Gnostic texts that we talked about earlier in the
semester? We don't know,
but there's some kind of stories about either angels or
gods that some people are teaching, and this author is
writing against it. Some aspect--something's Jewish
about this he doesn't like. Look at I Timothy 4:1:
Now the spirit expressly says that in later times [in the
latter days] some will renounce the faith by
paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of
demons, through the hypocrisy of liars
whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.
They forbid marriage and demand
abstinence from foods which God created to be received with
thanksgiving by those who believe and know the
truth." This author is against people
who are challenging marriage. He's against people who are
promoting some kind of ascetic behavior with regard to food,
so avoiding certain kinds of foods: is this kashrut?
Maybe he's talking about people
who are teaching people not to eat pork, not to eat shellfish.
Are they teaching Jewish food
laws? He's not explicit.
He's against people who are
teaching that, he's against people who are
forbidding marriage and teaching any kind of dietary
restrictions. Look at I Timothy 5:23.
This is when he tells Timothy,
"No longer drink only water but take a little wine for
the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments."
Why does he have to tell
somebody to drink some wine and not just drink water?
Well, because there were
ascetics who taught to avoid wine in the ancient world.
That was one of those things
that very strict ascetics might decide to avoid was wine and
rich food. This author says to Timothy,
nope, you should drink wine. This was our favorite verse
when I grew up in a church that didn't allow drinking,
of course. I always like to throw this one
back at the elders of the church.
Look at I Timothy 6:20,
"Timothy, guard what has been entrusted
to you. Avoid the profane chatter and
contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge."
What is the Greek word for
knowledge? Pardon?
Student: Gnosis.
Prof: Gnosis,
exactly. See, you're getting more than
you paid for in this course. You didn't know you were going
to learn Greek, and you're getting some good
cocktail party information, and even some Greek language.
Gnosis is the word for
knowledge here, and this guy is attacking
people who are going around boasting about falsely called
knowledge. Again, that's led some scholars
to say is he talking about some kind of Gnosticism?
Is that what he's opposing?
That would go along with this
idea that they're using this word gnosis in ways he
doesn't like. They're teaching myths,
they're teaching asceticism, they're teaching the avoidance
of marriage, well that does look a bit like
other early Christian, second century Christian
groups, some of whom their opponents would call Gnostics,
but we don't have enough information for it to be easy to
tell. Now look at one more text,
this is II Timothy 2:18, he's actually giving some names
of people he doesn't like. In 2:18 it says,
"These people have swerved from the truth by claiming that
the resurrection has already taken place."
He's condemning that.
Remember how I even talked
about with Colossians and Ephesians last time,
you had this idea that they almost sound like the
resurrection has already taken place.
In your baptism with Christ you
have been raised with Christ, and maybe there are other
people wandering around the second century,
Christians, saying that you've already been raised from the
dead, you've already experienced the
resurrection. This author really condemns
that. He wants to say,
no, the resurrection hasn't taken place yet,
so he's condemning false teachers for all kinds of
different activities and teachings that he doesn't like.
So we're seeing a definite
split here between different kinds of Paulinism.
There's a Paulinism represented
by these texts which is pro-family, pro-marriage,
pro-procreation. We'll talk about later that
he's for having children and mentions this explicitly;
anti-asceticism, against forcing people to
control what they eat and these sorts of things and this idea
about maybe Jewish myths being something and the teaching of
the resurrection. I Timothy 1:9,
then, gets us into another issue: what is the law and what
is this author's take on it? I Timothy 1:9,8:
"Now we know that the law is good if one uses it
legitimately." That of course can be a
quotation right out of Romans because Romans itself has Paul
says the law is good. This means understanding that
the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and
disobedient, for the godless and sinful,
for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father
or mother, or murderers,
fornicators, sodomite,
slave traders, liars, perjurers,
whatever else is contrary to sound teaching that contradicts
the gracious, the glorious gospel of the
blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
Notice this guy doesn't have
really a problem with the law that we've seen sometimes in
Paul's writings. The law is basically just a set
of rules designed to keep people who can't control themselves in
line. In fact, he goes on to say that
if you're a good person you don't even need to worry about
the law. Now this is again different
from what Paul's view is. Paul did not want his Gentile
followers to keep the Jewish law, and Paul said in Romans
that the law is good. For Paul the law is still this
cosmic entity almost that invaded history.
This is very much Galatians,
remember when I gave the lecture on Galatians and Romans
I talked about how the Jewish law for Paul is not simply a
list of rules. It was this thing that came
into the cosmos as an invader, it enslaved humanity,
it was the pedagogue that swatted humanity down when
humanity was in its childish state.
Obeying the law for Paul is
equal to trying to worship the stoichea of the cosmos,
these elemental spirits of the universe.
So the law for Paul isn't
simply a list of rules. The law for Paul is a very
ambiguous cosmic entity. It's just mythological in a
sense for Paul. For this author that's not what
the law is. The law--you don't need to obey
it, he says, and he's against
teaching his Gentile converts to keep the Jewish law,
but he just says, it's not important.
It's only for people who are
sinners who can't control themselves.
As long as you're not a sinner,
as long as you don't do this list of things that I can give
you, you don't need to concern yourself about the law.
So this is another one of the
reasons that people like me say, this is not Paul writing.
People who believe Paul wrote
these letters would say, well they're written years
later, it's to a different context,
and Paul changed his mind, or Paul's nuancing his message
differently for a different context.
So there are scholars who would
defend these letters being by Paul and that's what they would
say. I look at it and I say that's
so not like Paul. It's a totally different view
of the law and its role in the cosmos than you see in Romans or
Galatians, which is another piece of
evidence for me that Paul is not the author of this letter.
The strategy,
then, of this author, he's trying to argue against
all kinds of myths and practices that somebody's going through
Paul's churches and teaching. So he writes a letter in Paul's
name, seemingly addressed to Paul's follower Timothy,
and he lays out what he doesn't like about that.
But that's not all of his
strategy. What is his strategy for
combating these things that he considers false teachings?
First, he makes the church
itself a household. Now this is where all that
lecturing in the first part of the semester,
when I talked over and over again, what is the patriarchal
household, what is the Roman household,
what is the paterfamilias,
what is the structure of the household,
what is the patron client relationship,
what is the role of wives and women in the household,
and children, and slaves? All of that was because when
you get to some of these aspects of early Christianity,
this author is using the Roman household as the model for the
church itself. That wasn't the way Paul did
it, right? Paul never talked about the
church as if it just had the same structure of a household.
He didn't talk about men always
being on top of the leadership organization,
and he didn't promote marriage very much, which is what this
author does. I Timothy 3:14:
I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these
instructions to you so that if I am delayed you may know how one
ought to behave in the household of God,
which is the church of the living God,
the pillar and bulwark of the truth.
The church is the household of
God. The same thing happens in I
Timothy 5, the beginning of I Timothy 5:
Do not speak harshly to an older man;
speak to him as a father, to younger men as brothers,
to older women as mothers, to younger women as sisters,
with absolute purity. Notice everybody in the church
has some familial role. Older guys are fathers,
your younger men in the church are your brothers,
younger women sisters, older women mothers,
everybody has a household role in the church.
This is different--we might
think this is automatic but, notice, this is not treating
the church as an ecclesia,
that Greek word that we translate "church."
Where did the term
ecclesia come from? Do you remember?
In Greek, what does the term
ecclesia originally refer to in classical Greek?
Student: Assembly.
Prof: The assembly of
the city. It's the assembly of the
city-state that came together for political purposes and to
vote. It comes out of the Greek
democracy, with its notions of some kind of equality among
citizens and all the--at least the men citizens getting a vote.
It's important that early
Christians, for some reason, chose this word ecclesia
to describe their house churches.
It was ridiculous.
An outsider would have--might
have thought this is kind of ridiculous;
you're using the term that people would have heard as the
town assembly for a few people who can fit into one dining
room? It's kind of acceding more
importance to yourself than you really should.
I think it's important that
early Christian groups use that term for themselves.
Why didn't early Christian
groups call themselves "synagogues"?
That was a term already in use
by Jews; it would have been a normal
term to use. We don't find many early
Christians using the term "synagogue"
for their groups. We do find them using
ecclesia very quickly, but an ecclesia isn't a
household. What this author is doing is
shifting, in a not so subtle way,
understanding these house groups as being more like town
assemblies, and making them look more like
Roman household. Also, then, men have certain
roles. I Timothy 2:8:
"I desire than that in every place the men should pray,
lifting up holy hands without anger or argument,
also that the women should pray lifting up holy hands without
argument." No, Dale's lying to you again.
The women should dress
themselves modestly, decently, and in suitable
clothing, not with their hair braided
[girls, are you listening?]
or with gold, pearls,
or expensive clothes, but with good works as is
proper for women who profess reverence for God.
Let a woman learn in silence
with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or
have authority over a man. She is to keep silent.
For Adam was formed first,
then Eve, and Adam was not deceived but the woman was
deceived, and became a transgressor.
Yet she will be saved through
childbearing, provided they continue in faith
and love and holiness with modesty.
Now this is something that my
mom used to hate it when they would preach about this in
church. Also, it's controversial;
does it mean that she's saved from the dangers of
childbirth? That's one way of reading it.
She'll be saved from the
dangers of childbirth if she lives a pious and holy life.
Or, a bit more of a radical way
of reading, it would be to say,
by having babies women help constitute their own salvation--
that having children is one of the ways that women save
themselves. Either way you look at it,
this author really wants women to be in a subordinate role,
silent in church. They can't have any leadership
authority or teaching authority over a man.
As we'll see,
they do have some offices. There are roles that women can
play in the Pastoral Epistles, but not in authority over men.
Then there's this odd thing
about childbearing. And I think what it means is
that childbearing actually can help save women from their sins
in some way. Women have to be modestly
dressed, no jewelry, saved through childbearing.
In order to maintain this kind
of household structure, a very hierarchical household
structure, this author sets up offices in the church.
And here's another reason to
call these "the Pastoral Epistles,"
because he's setting up pastoral offices.
Look in I Timothy 3:1-7,
"The saying is sure whoever is aspires to the office
of bishop desires a noble task."
Now a bishop--does anybody have
a different translation for what I just read as
"bishop"? Student:
"Overseer." Prof:
"Overseer," yes, "overseer"
is a translation. Anybody have a different
translation? The word "bishop"
here is-- the Greek word is
episkopos, where we get the English word
"bishop" and you get the name for the
Episcopal church because it's a church that has bishops.
In Greek it basically means
"an overseer" or "someone in
charge." The bishop must be above
reproach, married only once,
temperate, sensible, respectable,
hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard,
not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome,
not a lover of money. He must manage his own
household well, keeping his children submissive
and respectful in every way. For if someone does not know
how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's
church? Again the church is a household.
If you're going to be the
bishop over the church you have to be married,
because how can you manage the household of the church if you
can't prove it by managing your own household well?
"He must not be a recent
convert…" The bishop or the
episkopos is already himself now a male head of
household. The other office he talks about
in 5:17, "Let the elders,"
now just as the word we translated "bishop"
or "overseer," comes from the Greek word
episkopos, the Greek for elder here is
presbyteros, presbyter, and this is where
the Presbyterian church gets the name of its church.
They're Presbyterians because
the Presbyterian church rejected the use of bishops like they
found in Catholic and Anglican churches,
and chose a plurality of elders, so they're called
"elders" in the Presbyterian church,
and the Presbyterian church comes from this Greek word
meaning "elder," presbyteros and this is
actually-- this came to be later in
English the name for a bishop who was not just the head of one
particular church but became the head of a series of churches,
a bunch of churches, that is the bishop now is not
the head of one church but the head of a whole diocese,
that is a geographical grouping. The word's changed a bit but
that's-- bishop comes from this word and
presbyteros turned into the word priest,
so one of the suggested etymology's for where the
English word "priest" came from is from this Greek
word itself, and you can kind of say
presbyteros, priest.
It just kind of happens in
English over a few hundred years.
Elders also have to have wives,
be family men, and all this sort of thing.
There are other offices to look
at--real quickly we're going to go through this.
Deacons: 3:8:
Deacons likewise must be serious, not double-tongued,
not indulging in much wine, not greedy for money.
They must hold fast to the
mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.
Let them first be tested,
then, if they prove themselves blameless, let them serve as
deacons. Women likewise must be serious.
Now there's an exegetical
problem, does this "women"
refer to women who would themselves independently be
deacons? In other words,
is he allowing women to be deacons on their own,
or is it supposed to be taken to be just the wives of the male
deacons? That they're called deacons
also, or deaconesses; the word for "deacon"
here comes from the Greek diakonos,
it comes into English directly,
and that word just means "a servant,"
"someone who serves or ministers."
The women in 3:11--some
exegetes would say this shows that this author does allow at
least women to be deacons, deaconesses,
and they have certain kinds of roles.
Verse 12: "Let deacons be
married only once, let them manage their children
and their households well, for those who serve well as
deacons gain a good standing for themselves."
Notice, in the beginning,
all of these roles, whether it's the elder,
presbyter, or the bishop-- and there's some debate about
whether "presbyter" refers to the same role as a
bishop in these letters-- they seem to be combined in
some of the later pastoral letters,
or whether they refer to two separate offices,
so there's a bit of a debate. All of these people,
whether you're from bishops, presbyters, deacons,
they all are required to be married and all are required to
have children. In the beginning of early
Christianity, see, you did not have the
celibate ministr. The celibate ministry comes
about later. This is in line with this
author's intention to set up the church as a household structure
with men on top, women having their own roles.
Now there are other roles here
too, look at I Timothy 5:3-10, "Honor widows,"
this is I Timothy 5:3: Honor widows who are really
widows. If a widow has children or
grandchildren they should first learn their religious duty to
their own family and make some repayment to their parents,
for this is pleasing in God's sight.
The real widow,
left alone, has set her hope on God and continues in
supplications and prayers, night and day.
But the widow who lives for
pleasure is dead even while she lives.
Give these commands as well so
that they may be above reproach. Whoever does not provide for
relatives, and especially for family members,
has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
[Now it gets really
interesting.] Let a widow be put on the list,
let her be registered. It seems like he's actually
creating another kind of office in the church,
that is, the office of widows. And, sure enough,
in Christianity later, "widow"
became almost like an office in early Christianity.
They could be registered,
and they received financial help from the churches.
"Let a widow be put on the
list if she is not less than sixty years old and has been
married only once." Notice over and over here,
we've seen this thing about being married once.
Apparently this author believes
in marriage and wants people to be married, but his ideal is
that people should be married once.
You certainly should not be
divorced and remarried. Paul himself forbids people in
his church from being divorced and remarried,
as we saw in I Corinthians 11. But this author seems to say
that if you're married and your spouse dies, he still kind of
prefers that these women be married once.
He also said that the bishop or
the presbyteros should be men who are married only once,
so multiple marriages are really frowned on even though
marriage itself is highly valued.
This led to what is currently
the practice in many of the eastern churches.
Eastern Orthodox,
the Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox,
they do not forbid their priests from being married,
but you have to be married before you become a priest.
So you'll have a lot of young
men in Greece or Russia who are going to become priests,
and they want to quickly get married right out of seminary.
So they're looking around for a
partner, because if they become ordained as a priest and they're
not married, they're expected to stay unmarried.
If their wife dies after they
become a priest, they're expected to stay
celibate and single for the rest of their lives also.
This led to the tradition in
Eastern Christianity, that you can be a married
priest, unlike the Roman Catholic Church,
but only if you get married before you become a priest.
And it kept this idea of being
married once only. I can't go into the rest of
this but notice how this whole hierarchy of man and woman in a
household, old and young,
is also extended to children and slaves.
Already in Colossians and
Ephesians we had what we called the household codes:
masters treat your slaves well; slaves be obedient to your
masters; husbands treat your wives well;
wives submit to your husbands; children submit to your fathers;
fathers treat your children--these are called
household codes. Already in Colossians and
Ephesians they set up the household in a clear
hierarchical patriarchal situation.
That is intensified in the
Pastoral Epistles. You have much longer household
codes, and, whereas in Colossians and Ephesians
that--those writers at least said there was some reciprocity.
They would address the slaves,
you would have to obey the master but they would also
address the master and say, treat your slaves well.
When you get to the Pastoral
Epistles they left out the reciprocity,
it's mainly directed to the slaves,
to the children, to the wives,
saying, submit.
This is the strategy that this
writer uses to combat the forms of Christianity that he doesn't
like, to construct the church as a
rigid patriarchal household in which each person has a role.
Even young women,
he says they're not supposed to be enrolled as widows,
if you have young women who are widows,
and they start running around gossiping and getting in a lot
of trouble, he says get them married off
again. Old women, of course,
you couldn't marry off again, they're not enough old men
around in the ancient world to marry them off,
so he creates this structure by which women,
older women, get pulled back into the
household by this role as widows.
No matter what happens to a
woman, in this author's view, they have to be put back into
their submissive place in the household structure,
even if that means creating a new role for them called
"widows." This strategy this author uses
to bring Paul into his own time. He's taking a Paul that we've
seen as a bit different from this and he's reinventing Paul
for a second century Christian environment and restructuring
the church as a household. We'll see an author on
Wednesday doing precisely the opposite with Paul.
See you next time.
