Paul's Letters

Paul, the greatest apostle, was also the greatest author of primitive Christianity. But he had no intention of being an author; his literary remains consist not of books but of genuine letters, although, apart from Philemon, they are not private letters. His place in literature is made plain by the fact that frequently his letters ascend from the immediate subject matter to become something of general validity in the manner of a sermon, and also by the fact that the intimacy of the correspondence is not lost. This is seen especially in the personal tone of the expressions they use and also in that they deal with the requirements of the people addressed.
A large number of Pauline letters appear to have been dictated (Andrews 88). Frequently the remark "My greetings with my own, Paul's, hand," at the end of the letter, shows that Paul has himself taken the pen from the hand of the amanuensis who has hitherto been wielding it (Andrews 98). On one occasion, Romans xvi, 22, this amanuensis interpolates his own greeting. Indications of remarks written by Paul himself are to be found in 1 Cor. xvi, 21; Col. iv, 18; and 2 Thess. iii, 17. Probably Gal. vi, 11 is also to be understood in this way. This custom of Paul's (of dictating) is not without significance for the style of his letters. In reading them we must bear in mind that Paul usually, perhaps always, spoke these sentences aloud, and that they were intended to be read aloud in the assembly of the church. This fact conditions, e.g., the formulas of the prayers with which Paul occasionally concludes a passage ( Rom. xi, 36; xv, 6; 2 Cor. ix, 15; 1 Thess. iii, 11-13).
Thus in many respects the style of the Pauline letters is that of spoken language, the characteristic formlessness of which can be traced in Paul's writings, e.g. in the interjected corrections of himself (as in 1 Cor. i, 16), in incomplete sentences ( Rom. v, 12), and in the heaping up pointed expressions (e.g. Col. ii, 20-3) (Rall 100).
What are the writings which can be accepted as authoritative sources for Paul's teaching? In the first place, we have the four main Epistles, that to the Galatians, the two to the Corinthians, and that to the Romans. The authenticity of these are accepted by F. C. Baur (1792-1860) and the Tbingen school which derived from him, though they declared the other writings attributed to St. Paul to be spurious and sought the author of these writings in the ranks of the Gentile Christian party which, after Paul's death, was involved in controversies, on the one hand with Jewish Christianity, and on the other with the beginnings of Gnosticism (Bacon 133). The four great Epistles were called in question only by Bruno Bauer (1809-1882), and the Dutch radicals Allard Pierson and A. D. Loman, and those who as their successors in this line of criticism endeavoured to prove Paulinism to be a literary creation of the second century (Rall 77).
Since Baur's day the objections brought by the Tbingen school against the genuineness of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Epistle to the Philippians, and to Philemon have been shown to be untenable (Andrews 89). These writings, in addition to the four main Epistles, may now be treated as unquestionably genuine.
On the other hand, the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, the two Epistles to Timothy, and the Epistle to Titus are not genuine. Against the genuineness of 2 Thessalonians, in addition to the suspicions roused by the language, there is the difficulty that it explicitly opposes the idea that the Return of Jesus is immediately at hand, and enumerates all that must happen before that Day can dawn (2 Thess. ii. 1-12). It was only at a period subsequent to the death of Paul that Christian teachers found themselves obliged to find such means of reconciling believers to the delay of that event (Rall 111).
A special problem is presented by the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians. They differ in a peculiar way from those to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians. At the same time they have so much in common with these that the assumption of spuriousness offers almost as many difficulties as that of genuineness. The style of these two writings is more elaborate and, at the same time, clumsier than that of the others (Bacon 118). The thoughts of Paul are present here, but they no longer present the same clear outlines as do the other Epistles, and in part have begun to undergo a process of transformation (Rall 170). The struggle against circumcision seems to have reached an issue, as well as that with the Jewish zealots and the Apostles at Jerusalem who stood behind them. The Paul of the Epistle to the Ephesians speaks of the "Holy Apostles" as though he did not belong to the same generation and did not hold himself to be an Apostle (Eph. iii. 5).
Whatever solution may be given, however, to the complicated literary problem of the Colossian and Ephesian Epistles it is not of primary importance for the exposition of Paul's teaching. There is so much that is peculiar in their ideas that these cannot in any case be simply dovetailed with those from the certainly genuine Epistles, but must in some way be allowed to take a place alongside of them.
Similarly 2nd Thessalonians and the Pastorals, if an attempt is made to use them as genuine, neither enrich nor make clearer the picture of Paul's doctrine arising from the other Epistles.
Paul's Letters are "occasional" writings. He did not compose them with a view to giving a connected account of his teaching, but expounded his views only as fully as the circumstances which gave rise to the Letters appeared to demand. We have to try to recreate a connected picture of his teaching from fragments. The fact that this is to some extent possible shows that we are dealing with ideas which are derived from a fundamental conception and are closely connected with one another. Produced by ProfEssays - custom essay, term and academic paper writing service
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