Dane Leitch (2011). Hard Questions: An Exegetical Exploration of Philippians 2:5-11

 Introduction

Few easy answers are discernable from Scripture. Every time “the Bible clearly states” is uttered, somewhere an angel falls from grace out of frustration. Philippians 2:5-11 is the poster child for difficult questions and even more difficult answers. Biblical scholarship has been enamored with the poetic nature of these verses for generations and generations have yet to pass before the last word will be spoken. Although answers are difficult to cull from these words shared by Paul, each attempt peels another layer from the cocoon of uncertainty. A detailed look at the conundrum that is Philippians 2:5-11 has filled volumes, but an overview of the primary issues helps clarify the situation and leads toward answering some very hard questions.

Literary Criticism

The starting point for an exegetical overview of Philippians 2:5-11 must begin with the most basic of literary questions. As far as the letter to the church in Philippi is concerned, “Paul’s authorship of this letter has rarely been doubted.”  Immediately, this fact tempts a reader to merely accept Pauline authorship of the section in question and let bygones be bygones. Such an approach fails to deal with the issue of authorship adequately. Arguments have been made that Paul has waxed poetic before (1 Corinthians 13) and could be doing so again here.  A lack of common Pauline language, however, suggests completely different authorship.  The fact that this text has been taken over by Paul and not written by the apostle has even been called obvious.  Who then authored these words? 

The text itself lends hints toward its original author. Use of kurioV iesouV cristo suggests a Hellenistic creator as opposed to a Jewish author.  Yet, a large list of possible authors have been suggested, heterodox Judaism, Iranian religion, Greek epic tradition, political circumstances, Gnosticism, all could be the tradition from which this text arose.  Hints and shadows do not fully identify the author. More information is necessary before a conclusion can be reached.

Dating, perhaps, can lend the needed hint for authorship. The date of Paul’s use of this hymn is most easily identifiable. Two theories for dating Philippians hold water. Traditional scholarship dates the letter to the Philippians during Paul’s imprisonment in Rome at the end of his life circa 56-60 CE.  An alternative train of thought has suggested a dating for this letter of the early 50’s CE.  If Paul is understood to have authored the piece of poetry, than the dating of 50-60 CE would be appropriate. If Paul merely used the work of another, the more likely possibility, the piece must not only have been written before Paul’s use, but must also have established circulation in at least the Philippian church. Further detail than the broad 35-50 CE range is currently impossible.

Since authorship and dating prove resistant to questioning, perhaps a different tact will be fruitful. More solid decisions may be made in regard to the genre and audience. Study of the text shows near universal acceptance of the hymnic nature these words possess. Although the use, origin, and meaning are all widely disputed, lack of citation shows scholars to believe it common knowledge that the poem is a hymn. “Philippians 2:5-11 is a magnificent hymn, extolling many distinctive doctrines of the Christian faith.”  Martin sees the “stately and solemn ring of the words and the way in which the sentences are constructed” as undeniable evidence of the cultic & confessional aspect of the text which lends itself to a Carmen Christi of the early church.  As far as genre is concerned, Philippians 2:5-11 is most certainly a hymn. 

Paul, himself, points out the intended audience of his use of the text in the introduction to Philippians (1:1). The letter is addressed specifically to the overseers and deacons, which suggests that Paul wanted to not only contact the church as a whole, but sought to pass on teaching to the leadership of the community.  Knowing the genre and audience of the hymn helps to clarify the purpose. Hooker follows her thoughts on the passing on of teaching with the suggestion that there is a non-specific heresy floating around the Philippian church.  Identifying Paul’s audience as the leadership of the church can be filed for later as the layers are slowly stripped. The original audience of the hymn can be inferred as the early church. The Christological and soteriological nature of the text, paired with poetic writing suggest an easily memorized doctrine clarifying the stance of the newly forming Christian wing of Judaism. 

Form Criticism

That same universal acceptance of the hymnic nature of Philippians 2:5-11 does not lead scholars to a unified stance on the structure of the text. Two primary camps exist in regard to an understanding of how the text comes together. Depending on which camp a student finds themselves in will subsequently alter conclusions in regard to the extent of redaction to which the text has been subjected. It should be noted that the New Revised Standard Version accepts a variation of Lohmeyer’s structure.

Lohmeyer founded the first of the two schools of thought, while Cerfaux and Jeremias are given dual credit for the second.  Lohmeyer organized the hymn into six stanzas of three lines each.  The Cerfaux-Jeremias structure splits the text into three stanzas of four lines.  Other suggests generally fall along the lines of these overarching themes. Although not a direct part of this study, the first four verses of Philippians 2 also display a carefully crafted structure.  This observation helps to point out another hint toward answering some of the hard questions. Even if Paul did not write the hymn of verses 5-11 his poetic introduction and the surrounding text show him to have carefully selected this text for inclusion in his letter.

Much like the situation with authorship, more information is needed before a conclusion on structure can be reached. For the moment, merely noting the possibilities of Lohmeyer’s six stanzas, Cerfaux-Jeremias’ three stanzas, or an alternative is sufficient. The questions continue with the text itself.

Textual Criticism

Manuscripts of Philippians 2:6-11 are remarkably consistent. Only a few slight discrepancies exist and those can easily be regarded as inconsequential. Metzger records issues in verses 7, 9, and 11.  

The word anqropoV in verse 7 is occasionally written plural and occasionally singular. From an interpretative standpoint, if anqropoV is singular then Christ took the form of a man. If plural then Christ took the form of men. Either translation leads to only a slight difference in interpretation. The singular would suggest that Christ Jesus took the form of a specific man while the plural offers a more general humanness. For non-specific reasons the committee chose the plural formation.

To onomati in verse 9 also presents a minor difficulty. In Koine Greek, to is the definite article. Some manuscripts omit the to. Omission suggests a non-specific name as opposed to a very specific name. Due to to being the final syllable of the word immediately preceding onomati, the omission may be dismissed as a clerical error. 

CristoV in verse 11 is the final textual discrepancy. Some of the western manuscripts omit CristoV entirely.  The problem with its omission is that losing the title Christ greatly reduces the overall effect of the name above every name. Metzger contends that the purpose for this omission is unclear and the committee choice to retain the term due to a general lack of compelling evidence as to why the word would be excluded. 

Although the manuscripts are mostly intact and agree with one another the manner in which other terms should be translated causes great argument. Coincidentally, there are three interpretive difficulties to match the three manuscript disagreements. Morphe, ekenosen, and the aforementioned onomati. 

Interpreting morphe requires a wider set of sources than just the biblical text. Lightfoot goes into great detail distinguishing between morphe here and schema elsewhere.  In deciphering the word it seems clear that morphe is not just a resemblance or surface similarity, but a very strong connection, the very essence of a thing.  Collange is unconvinced by this argument yet does not address the extra biblical usage.  Aristotle, the great philosopher, described some great image that makes all things identifiable. An observer identifies an object as a chair because it contains some intrinsic form that fulfills the essence of “chair.” Lightfoot presents the word morphe with this same understanding.  He continues by listing other uses Paul made of the word morphe (Romans 8:29, Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Galatians 4:19 and Philippians 3:10).   All these uses are referencing the deep change that Christ brings into a person’s life. Such an understanding of morphe and the idea that Jesus took on both the morphe of God and the morphe of humanity solidifies a divine Christology of this hymn. Only God could have the power to take on the very essence of more than one object. A brief additional difficulty with morphe is that if it is understood as an equivalent of eikon, then the hymn would reinforce Second Adam Christology.  Doxa is also a suggested equivalent, but neither garners sufficient support to take seriously. 

Ekenosen and to onomati cause issue due to the inability to specifically identify what it is Jesus emptied himself of and what name, exactly, is being given. Paul has used ekenosen in other texts to reference the idea of becoming powerless or emptying a thing of significance.  Little reason exists to think this use should be understood differently. Jesus emptying himself is best understood in a relative sense as opposed to a literal complete sense. Compared to the fullness of God, humanity is an empty shell. Jesus did not lose all that made him divine, but narrowed his perspective to that of humanity. He moved from infinite to finite.

To onomati also lacks specificity. What name is being given? One possibility is the name “Jesus.” Having been given to Jesus by his mother after being instructed to do so, that very name Yeshua, “savior,” could be the name. Martin argues for kurioV being the name given.  Since kurioV is the LXX rendering of YHWH this interpretation places extremely high Christological significance on the hymn. The salvific references in the hymn support the former understanding, the name savior, to carry enough weight to make that interpretation plausible. Whoever authored this poetic piece of literature could very well have intended the double meaning of savior and YHWH. Combining these two theories is favorable and supportable by the nature of poetry.

Although insightful and necessary for interpretation, these textual issues only give a little help toward answering the hard questions of authorship and structure. Patience is a vital virtue in pulling these accounts together in order to reach answers. Again, more information is needed. 

Redaction Criticism

What has been redacted requires a decision on structure and structure requires a decision on what has been redacted. This catch twenty-two must be addressed in order to move forward in the exegesis of Philippians 2:5-11. Fortunately, addressing redactions directly can answer some of the structural questions. Lohmeyer and Cerfaux-Jeremias each present a structure that requires additions of some kind to have been made. This editor was most likely Paul. Lohmeyer’s structure needs to have verse 8 added by Paul; while Cerfaux-Jeremias see verses 8, 10, and 11 as Pauline additions.  

What then are glosses by Paul and what are original to the hymn? A brief look at verse 5 will show Paul’s intentions for the hymn.  Paul’s use of the hymn is ethical in nature.  This ethical use is not affected by the glosses, whatever they may be.  Those facts suggest Paul had no concern for the continuity of the piece. Any number of additions or subtractions may have been made. Collange has attempted to bridge a gap by accepting verse 8 as original to the hymn. He adapts Lohmeyer’s structure with verse 8 added.  The hard question of redaction is answerable by understanding the hymn to have some Pauline additions which maintain the gist of the metric structure while reworking the hymn to make a specific point.

Although Paul uses a version of the hymn here to make a point, there are other places in which these words are found. John 13:3-7 contains sufficient similarities to suggest either a common liturgy or one author copying another.  Gibbs sees this particular use of Philippians 2:5-11 as an attempt to explain the relationship between God’s redemptive work and Jesus; he considers it the earliest homologia.  If Gibbs is correct then it would only make since that both the author of John and Paul would pick up on this for such important teachings. Since both the Johannine use and the Pauline use contain the instruction to “do this also,” drawing on the same source seems less likely than the author of John drawing on Paul’s redacted version of the text. This additional uses does not show significant differences, not even a move away from the ethical understanding of the piece.

The only option is to accept the hymn as a whole. Even if Paul edited the original beyond traceability, Johannine tradition upholds Paul’s view. Such a close relationship between John 13 and Philippians 2 could not exist if the John source disagreed with any of Paul’s glosses, assuming that there are any glosses. As to the hard question of redaction, it is a moot point. Paul was a part of the first generation of Christianity. He was a formative leader in the early church. For many of what would become the influential churches of Christianity, his word was law, so to speak. Any additions made by Paul are accepted later in Scripture and thus become a part of the original. There is no longer any tangible way to separate additions from original because it all becomes original.

This conclusion has ramifications for the outstanding hard questions above. Pauline glosses disregarded as unwelcome additions and instead accepted as part of the original impact the understood structure of the hymn. The break in metric that so bothered Lohmeyer, must be accepted as a kind of explanation point used to emphasize that aspect of the poem. Paul may then be accepted as the author, perhaps not the original author, but the author so far as future use is concerned. Textual concerns, especially in regard to non-Pauline language, are left as hard questions, but through using the train of thought above, a reader may accept there to be a previous groundwork on which Paul built this hymn. Further criticisms help to illustrate and support these conclusions.

Source Criticism

Scripturally speaking there are obvious similarities between the Philippian hymn and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.  This comparison could be used to suggest a Jewish-Christian origin of the text. The comparison supports Pauline authorship. Having grown up as a Jew away from Jerusalem and later receiving his education in that city easily explains the use of Old Testament Scriptures. As pointed out in Redaction Criticism above, Paul continues to use the themes presented in Philippians 2:5-11. His favored use of the themes and Old Testament allusions further support Pauline authorship. Isaiah is not the only ancient text to be suggested as being comparable to the Philippian hymn. The famous Wisdom in Proverbs 8, Sirach 24, and Wisdom of Solomon 2-7 have been pointed out by Martin as a necessity for interpreting the hymn.  Less convincingly, Collange cites Deichgraber’s comparison of the songs of Moses and Deborah (Exodus 15 and Judges 5 respectively).  Both suggestions complicate the matter by saying loose similarities are needed for interpretation. Any association between the hymn and those texts can just as easily be explained by Paul’s intense knowledge and study of the Old Testament and other Jewish texts. 

Cultural sources suggest the work to be of, ancient Iranian-Jewish influence, Gnostic influence, or Hellenistic origin. Supposing cultural influence is permitted to be deeply traced, one can appreciate Lohmeyer’s conclusion that the Iranian-Jewish Son of Man mythos influenced the Servant of the Lord in Isaiah, which subsequently influenced the Philippian hymn.  Such a cumbersome trail is difficult to follow. The statement that the Iranian-Jewish Son of Man mythos had no direct influence over the Philippian hymn which was written some 700-800 years after the former had any possible affect on Isaiah, can be safely made.

Gnostic influences are also cited. The use of morphe could be an allusion the “heavenly man” in the Gnostic mythos, but Martin is unconvinced.  Collange, however, sees the Gnostic vocabulary within the hymn as an intentional attack on the ideas of Gnosticism.  Paul could be using the hymn as such with the edits he included. Although such glosses may be included to combat Gnosticism, the original source of the hymn appears more doctrinal than apologetic. 

Lewis understands the cultural ramifications of morphe differently. He supports the these that morphe is the word used by Aristotle in his philosophical understanding of how a chair is recognized because of its essential chair-ness.  Such an interpretation points toward strong Hellenistic influence, which, subsequently, also supports the theory of Pauline authorship. Paul, being raised as a Roman citizen, would have received not only the Jewish education of the time, but also be well versed in Hellenistic literature and philosophy. Since both Jewish and Hellenistic sources have been convincingly presented, who better to bridge the gap than Paul? Scriptural and Cultural sources both support Pauline authorship.

 

Social Historical Criticism

Social Historical issues finalize Pauline authorship. Pliny describes the singing of hymns as second in his list of descriptors of the First Century church.  Paul, being a founder of so many of these first churches, undeniably had influence over their mode of worship. Even if he allowed his Jewish worship habits to dominate liturgical teaching, they too point toward the use of hymns. Martin shows that the borrowing of Psalms from Judaism and singing them at gatherings began in Palestine sometime in this same first generation of the Way.  This adaptation could be a Pauline use of cultural movements. 

Further socio-historical implications are drawn from the composition of the city of Philippi. Many of the people within this city would not have been Jewish, but proud citizens of the Greco-Roman world.  The lack of a Jewish synagogue, as pointed out in Acts 16, further supports Hooker’s conclusion. These Philippian citizens would adhere to the Imperial Cult in the same way as most of the Roman world. In their mind Caesar is kurioV.  Paul’s suggestion that someone else is lord would have certainly grasped their attention. So too would verse 8’s “even death on the cross,” capture Philippian attention. The cross of the Roman world was a powerful symbol of the Empire’s strength and idea of justice. For Paul to suggest that the true kurioV was crucified instead of crucifying is a jab at the Philippian mindset. 

What then of the church itself? Paul apparently sees dissent of some kind within the church. His words in 1:15 and 4:2 clearly state divisions and competition amongst the leadership. Their squabbling could even escalate to the point that the church itself dissolves.  In such dire straits, strong words that carry both ethical weight, to correct their actions, and doctrinal weight, to pull them together under common teaching, is an elegant solution. Paul’s excellent use of double meaning, most notably proved throughout Galatians, show that no one meaning is needed in the interpretation of Paul’s works. Although his obvious use, as explained by his words in Philippians 2:5, is an ethical correction, no strong reason to dismiss a second meaning of teaching and guidance exists. Paul’s brilliance is evidence in the bridging of the issues and undercurrents in the Philippian church and the mindset of the proud Roman Provence.

Praxis

Hard questions have been addressed above, but what final answers may be given? In a practical sense Paul wants the Philippian church to mimic Jesus in pouring themselves out and allowing God to receive all the glory. Such a simple interpretation carries into modernity as an exquisite teaching on humility. The issue of asking hard questions deserves greater attention. An unwillingness to question the text of Scripture misses the purpose of this book. Understanding the impact of words written thousands of years ago requires deep thought. Although the Philippian hymn may be taken as ethical teaching and doctrine the most helpful practical use of the text is the benefit of asking questions to which there may be no simple answers. “The Bible clearly states” is terrible. Studying where God’s Word does not clearly state is what will grow, develop, and solidify faith. That is a use of this hymn of which Paul would be proud.

Christopher M. Date (2016). By Command of God Our Savior: A Defense of the Pauline Authorship of the Pastoral Epistles

https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=djrc

Introduction

   “It is one of the received traditions in New Testament scholarship,” writes Stanley Porter, “that Paul is not the author of the Pastoral Epistles, a view held by the vast majority of scholars.”1 Although a few buck the trend, arguing instead that Paul did write the Pastoral Epistles (PE)—1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus—“most other scholars,” according to I. Howard Marshall and Philip Towner, “now take it almost as an unquestioned assumption that the PE are not the work of Paul.”2 Christian scholars who accept the consensus see the PE as nevertheless canonical and authoritative.

   However, unbelieving biblical scholars like Bart Ehrman leverage the science of historical criticism to cast doubt on the reliability and authority of biblical books, including the PE, by calling into question their traditionally accepted authorship. While giving lip service to the possibility that their contents may nevertheless reflect genuine Christian teaching, Ehrman clearly wants readers to believe they do not, for he says that, by lying to and deceiving audiences by whom they would not want to be lied to and deceived, their authors “did not live up to one of the fundamental principles of the Christian tradition, taught by Jesus himself, that you should ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”3 No doubt many Christians will naturally wonder whether the PE should be treated as authoritative if Ehrman is right, and may lose a great deal of trust in the rest of the Bible—or cease altogether to follow Jesus.

   On the other hand, of the thirteen epistles attributed to Paul—Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, and the three PE—the PE are argued to be the most obviously pseudepigraphal (not actually written by the author they claim wrote them). If the case made by Ehrman and other like-minded scholars rests on shaky ground, and if the case for their authenticity is compelling, Christians are likely to find their faith bolstered, both in the reliability of Scripture, and in Jesus himself.

As it turns out, the evidence offered for denying the apostle Paul wrote the PE is unpersuasive, and explanations thereof, consistent with Pauline authorship, are quite plausible. Meanwhile, other evidence is best explained if Paul really was the author of the PE: the early church’s belief that Paul wrote the PE; their underdeveloped references to the false teachings of which they warn, implying their recipients did not need detail to identify them; so-called “undesigned coincidences” between them and other NT writings; and the abundant similarities between the PE and the undisputed Pauline letters. Christians are thus on solid ground in accepting the traditional Pauline authorship of the PE and other disputed epistles, and need not doubt their reliability or authority.

Examination of Evidence Against 

Examination of Evidence Against “For most modern critical scholars,” writes James Aageson, the question of Pauline authorship “has been largely settled for some time.4 Among their reasons, Aageson includes “linguistic and theological dissimilarities with the seven undisputed Pauline letters,” “the difficulty of situating these three letters in the chronology of Paul’s ministry,” and “the new and seemingly more developed sense of church structure, authority, and leadership reflected in the Pastorals.”5 Each of these features prominently in Ehrman’s case against Pauline authorship, with the exception of chronology. Chronology will therefore be examined here first. 

Chronology

 As explained by Porter, “The view that the Pastoral Epistles are pseudepigraphal began with the difficulty of fitting them within the Pauline chronology, especially 1 Timothy.”6 Porter offers Udo Schnelle as characteristic of German critics who expound this difficulty. Schnelle is insistent: “The historical situation presupposed in the Pastoral Epistles cannot be harmonized either with the data of Acts or with that of the authentic Pauline letters.”7 As the basis for his certainty, Schnelle first offers 1 Timothy 1:3, which presents Paul as urging Timothy to remain in Ephesus as he had done when he left for Macedonia. Acts 19:22, on the other hand, records Paul remaining in Ephesus while sending Timothy to Macedonia, while the next chapter has Paul following him there, and the two of them heading together to Jerusalem a few months later (20:1, 4). And Titus, Schnelle demands, cannot have been written by Paul, because Acts makes no mention either of a mission on Crete (Titus 1:5) or Paul’s stay at Nicopolis (3:12).8 

  Porter observes a certain irony in Schnelle’s argument, for “the long-standing tradition of German criticism of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles is to doubt the historical veracity of Acts,” and so drawing conclusions about authorship of the latter, based on comparison with the former, “appears to be special pleading of the most egregious sort.”9 What is more, the argument appears to presume that any events recorded in the PE must also be recorded in Acts in order to be considered genuine.10 Yet, as Luke Johnson points out, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans— all deemed authentic by Ehrman—record events in Paul’s life not recorded in Acts (e.g., 2 Cor 11:23–24; Gal 1:2; 4:13–14; Rom 15:19).11 In fact, “All [Paul’s] letters together inform us magnificently of the fact that Acts ignores completely: that Paul wrote letters to his churches!”12 And so one need not be able to fit the PE into the chronology of Acts in defense of Pauline authorship. Like many of Paul’s other letters, the PE may simply reflect elements of the apostle’s life not recorded elsewhere. 

   Thus, Porter concludes, “the most plausible explanation seems to be that neither Paul’s letters nor Acts gives a complete chronology of Paul’s life and travels, and hence it is impossible to decide on the basis of chronological issues what to do with the Pastoral Epistles.”13 Lydia McGrew concurs, noting that Acts ends with Paul in prison, and that Paul would surely have continued writing letters after being freed and until his death.14 Perhaps this is why chronology oes not appear to feature in Ehrman’s popular or academic work, no longer seen as the challenge it once was. 

Vocabulary 

  Ehrman instead begins his survey of modern arguments against the Pauline authorship of the PE with vocabulary. “There are 848 different words used in the pastoral letters. Of that number 306—over one-third of them!—do not occur in any of the other Pauline letters of the New Testament.”15 In other words, “over one-third of the vocabulary is not Pauline.”16 Walter Lock admits the challenge posed to Pauline authorship of the PE by the uniqueness of their vocabulary, adding that hapax legomena—words appearing only once in the NT—range in frequency from eight to thirteen per page in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Philippians, but as many as nineteen to twenty-one per page in the PE. 17 On the other hand, Ehrman includes 2 Thessalonians among the deutero-Pauline (pseudepigraphal) epistles, despite its infrequent use of such words. If their frequency in the PE is evidence against Pauline authorship, should not their infrequency in 2 Thessalonians serve as evidence for it? Perhaps, then, Ehrman and others make too much of the uniqueness of PE vocabulary. Indeed, Lock observes that of the 2,500 distinct words attributed to Paul in the NT, roughly half of them appear in just one letter or another. As Terry Wilder puts it, “differences exist within the other Pauline letters which are just as extensive as those between the Pastorals and the rest of the Pauline corpus.”18 One therefore has little reason to disagree with Lock in saying Paul merely exhibits “a great choice of vocabulary and fondness for different groups of words at different times,” a variety similar to that exhibited by the works of Shakespeare.19 Besides, Porter notes that these kinds of statistical analyses are highly dependent on methodology, and that the studies of some researchers, making what they believe are better methodological decisions, counter the claims of Ehrman and the like.20 For these and other reasons, Porter concludes, “it is extremely difficult to use statistics to determine Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles.”21 

   Both Ehrman and Lock, however, point out that more challenging to Pauline authorship is the popularity of the Pastorals’ unique vocabulary in the second century. “Strikingly,” Ehrman writes, “over two-thirds of these non-Pauline words are used by Christian authors of the second century.”22 Lock breaks the numbers down: Of the words to which Ehrman refers, “61 occur in the Apostolic Fathers, 61 in the Apologists, 32 of which are not in the Apostolic Fathers, making 93 in all; and 82 words which are not found either in the N.T. or in these Christian writers are found in Pagan writers of the 2nd century.”23 This, Ehrman argues, “suggests that this author is using a vocabulary that was becoming more common after the days of Paul, and that he too therefore lived after Paul.”24 Lock is not convinced, however, because the vocabulary of second- century Christian writers may have been influenced by the PE. 25 One would expect first-century writings received as Pauline to influence the vocabulary of second-century Christians and the pagans with which they interact. And there is no evidence that such vocabulary could not have originated earlier than the second century. Indeed, William Mounce observes that of the vocabulary in the PE not found elsewhere in Paul, over 90% can be found in writings prior to A.D. 50.26 J. D. Douglas, Merrill Tenney, and Moisés Silva go so far as to say that “detailed study . . . has shown that the Pastoral Letters contain not one single word that was foreign to the age in which Paul lived and could not have been used by him.”27 

   Mounce offers a number of external influences as having plausibly influenced Paul’s vocabulary in the PE. During his four-year imprisonment in Caesarea and Rome, for example, he may have learned Latin so as to be able to minister further westward, which may account for the many words and phrases in the PE which originate in Latin.28 The nature of the heresies the author opposes may also have been unique in Paul’s experience, calling for the use of words not used elsewhere, just as new subject matter specific to the circumstances of the Corinthians and Romans called for the use of words peculiar to Paul’s letters to them.29 From these and other such influences, Mounce concludes, “Every person’s writing style and word choices are, to some degree, affected by the external influences of the particular situation of writing. While the PE do show some differences from what is found in other Pauline letters written to different historical situations and addressing different needs, the use of statistical analysis has far outreached itself.”30 

   A third challenge Ehrman poses from vocabulary, and which cannot be easily explained by external influences and motivations, is the alleged inconsistency between the meaning the author of the PE gives to words that are used elsewhere in the undisputed Pauline corpus, and what they mean there. “The term ‘faith’ [pistis]” for example, refers in the undisputed Pauline letters “to the trust a person has in Christ to bring about salvation through his death” (e.g., Rom 1:12; Gal 2:16), but in the PE it “means the body of teaching that makes up the Christian religion.”31 Ehrman sees this as reflecting a proto-orthodox set of doctrines that developed later in response to groups deemed heretical, like the Gnostics.32 Similarly, “Paul’s word for ‘having a right standing before God’ (literally, ‘righteous’ [dikaios])”—e.g., in Romans 2:13—“now means ‘being a moral individual’ (i.e., ‘upright’; Titus 1:8).33 Yet, pistis does, in fact, seem to refer to a body of doctrine at times in the Pauline corpus (e.g., 1 Cor 16:13; 2 Cor 13:5; Gal 1:23; Phil 1:27). So too does dikaios at times mean something like “right” (e.g., Rom 5:7; 7:12; Phil 4:8). Ehrman’s claim, then, that the author of the PE understood terms differently than the real Paul, is unconvincing. 

    In the end, the uniqueness of vocabulary in the PE poses no real challenge to their authenticity. Paul exhibits a willingness to vary his choice of words throughout his correspondence, often using language specially and uniquely suited to the occasion, and the author’s use of terms that do appear in Paul’s undisputed epistles is consistent with their use there by Paul. 

Content 

     Ehrman acknowledges that arguments from vocabulary are not decisive, but his is a cumulative case that combines the aforementioned lexical evidence for a second-century provenance of the PE with evidence that their content is characteristically second-century in nature. The author’s references, for example, to “myths and endless genealogies” (1 Tim 1:4), to false teachers “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods” (4:3), and to that which “is falsely called ‘knowledge’ [gnōsis]” (6:20) all strike Ehrman as most consistent with secondcentury Gnosticism.34 Johnson notes, however, the characterization of the faith’s opponents by the PE often follows rhetorical conventions of polemic, contemporaneous with Paul, and one cannot therefore determine with confidence the identity of the opponents and thereby place the PE in history.35 Meanwhile, Marshall and Towner observe that the various elements of the opposition’s heresy, including its Jewish myths (Tit 1:14; cf. 1 Tim 1:4; 2 Tim 4:4), asceticism (1 Tim 4:3), and claimed knowledge of God (Tit 1:16; cf. 1 Tim 6:20), as well as the author’s claim to be a teacher of the Gentiles (1 Tim 2:7), to whom he insists salvation is available (1 Tim 2:4 –6; Tit 2:11), can be explained as an early Jewish-Christian sect without recourse to secondcentury Gnosticism.36 “Despite the widespread support which it has received,” they conclude, “the identification of the heresy in the PE as a form of Gnosticism is not only an unnecessary hypothesis but also a distortion of the evidence.”37 While the false teachings of the early sect opposed by the PE may have been a sort of “incipient Gnosticism,” John Rutherford argues that the author would have used language clearly pointing to the more developed Gnosticism of the second century if it were what he had intended to combat.38 

      Ehrman also argues that whereas genuinely Pauline churches in the first century were non-hierarchical, charismatic communities in which no one exercised authority because everyone was endowed with gifts from the Holy Spirit, the churches overseen by the stated recipients of the PE are instead governed by a hierarchical authority that had not yet developed until the second century, after the church had come to terms with the reality that Christ was not to return as soon as previously expected. 39 As Johnson puts the challenge, “Christianity in the Pastorals has come to grips with the delay of the parousia and is adjusting to continued existence in the world by creating an institutional structure.”40 Responding to the challenge, Johnson points out, among other things: that allusions to hierarchy in the PE are scattered and insufficient to paint a complete picture of church order; that they resemble the order of first-century synagogues and Greco-Roman collegia more than they do second-century Christian ones; that whatever hierarchical development has occurred since an earlier time, characterized by more charismatic communities, need not have taken decades; and that Paul does, in fact, recognize authority figures in his undisputed epistles, such as overseers and deacons in Philippians 1:1 and Romans 16:1, and the fellow-workers and laborers of 1 Corinthians 16:15–17 and 1 Thessalonians 5:12.41 Furthermore, Rutherford notes that whereas the PE demand a “presbyterial administration” by bishops, elders, and deacons (1 Tim 3; Tit 1:5), the church in the second century had developed a “monarchial episcopacy.”42 To whatever small degree the PE place a greater emphasis on appointed ministries and their qualifications than do the undisputed Pauline letters, E. Earle Ellis attributes it to the increasing threat of false teachers faced by Paul’s churches, saying the PE “represent an understandable development of [Paul’s] earlier usage.”43 As Douglas, Tenney, and Silva put it, “It is also very natural that Paul . . . should specify certain qualifications for office, so that the church might be guarded against the ravages of error, both doctrinal and moral.”44 Johnson concludes, “When all these points are taken into account, the issue of church order in the Pastorals turns out to be nondeterminative for their authenticity.”45 

      Ehrman points to two additional issues in the content of the PE as evidence against their authenticity. First, whereas the real Paul is allegedly unconcerned with orthodoxy-protecting creeds, “in the Pastoral epistles what is of critical importance is ‘the teaching,’ that is, the body of knowledge conveyed by the apostle, sometimes simply designated as ‘the faith.’”46 But as demonstrated earlier, references to such bodies of doctrine using pistis exist in the undisputed Pauline corpus. And as Wilder points out, in them Paul does, in fact, stress the importance of received tradition (e.g., 1 Cor 11:2), and draws upon early creedal sayings and hymns (e.g., 1 Cor 15:3–5; Phil 2:6–8).47 Second, Ehrman argues that the appeal in 1 Timothy 5:18 to a passage from the Torah alongside a saying of Jesus (Luke 10:7), together identified by the author as “Scripture,” reflects a proto-orthodox development of authoritative canon not seen in the lifetime of Paul.48 However, this appeal to an authoritative NT writing is alone in the PE, and is underdeveloped if anything. It seems eminently plausible that the later proto-orthodox developed such a canonical view of the NT because they found the germ of one in Paul and Peter (2 Pet 3:16). 

    The content, therefore, of the PE does not appear to challenge their Pauline authorship. The false teachings they oppose are easily placed in the first-century lifetime of Paul; the church structure called for by their author represents at most only a slight and warranted development of the offices Paul calls for in his undisputed letters; and their apparent appeal to creeds is consistent with genuinely Pauline literature, their underdeveloped appeal to canon no meaningful challenge to inclusion therein.

 

Examination of Evidence For 

    Of course, from the absence of persuasive evidence against the authenticity of the PE it does not follow that they should therefore be presumed genuine. However, at least four lines of evidence argue in favor of their Pauline authorship: external evidence in the form of early church ascription of Pauline authorship; and internal evidence in the form of vague, unclear references to false teaching only the author’s stated recipients would recognize, “undersigned coincidences” between the PE and events recorded in Acts, and a vast array of similarities between the PE and the undisputed Pauline letters. 

Early Christian Witness 

    Guthrie observes that while “there is a modern tendency to play down the significance of the external evidence . . . it is only against the background of early Christian views about the Epistles that a fair assessment can be made of modern theories unfavorable to Pauline authorship.”49 And the external evidence is clear: The early church consensus was that the PE were written by Paul. 

   The epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians constitutes a very early extra-biblical assignment of Pauline authorship to the PE. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Coxe date it to “about the middle of the second century.”50 Kenneth Berding dates it earlier, preferring A.D. 120, but for the sake of argument accepts a later date of A.D. 135.51 And while he acknowledges that the earlier letters of Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch contain some possible allusions to the PE, he says they are uncertain, identifying Polycarp as the first post- canonical Christian writer to clearly quote from them.52 Berding argues that by clustering such quotations together with others from the undisputed letters, after explicitly mentioning Paul’s name, Polycarp definitively exhibits belief in the Pauline authorship of the PE. For example, in chapters 3 and 4, after referring to “the wisdom of the blessed and glorified Paul,” Polycarp draws from two undisputed Pauline epistles, writing of “that faith which . . . is the mother of us all” (compare Gal 4:26, “the Jerusalem above is . . . our mother”) and of “the armor of righteousness” (compare 2 Cor 6:7, “the weapons of righteousness,” and Rom 6:13, “instruments for righteousness”). Sandwiched between these two references are two quotations from 1 Timothy. Polycarp writes that “the love of money is the root of all evils” (compare 1 Tim 6:10, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils”), and that “as we brought nothing into the world, so we can carry nothing out” (compare 1 Tim 6:7, “we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world”).53 

      According to Berding, Irenaeus of Lyons is the next in history to clearly identify Paul as the author of the PE, some fifty years later.54 Robertson, Donaldson, and Coxe date Irenaeus’ Against Heresies to between A.D. 182 and 188.55 In it, Irenaeus ascribes Pauline authorship to Titus, writing of men “Paul commands us, ‘after a first and second admonition, to avoid’” (compare Titus 3:10, “after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him”), and to 1 Timothy, writing of those Paul says use “novelties of words of false knowledge” (compare 1 Tim 6:20, “Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’”).56 

      As Rutherford observes, “in regard to the genuineness of the [PE] there is abundant external attestation. Allusions to them are found in the writings of Clement and Polycarp. In the middle of the [second century, they] were recognized as Pauline in authorship, and were freely quoted.”57 Rutherford rhetorically asks, “Can it be believed that the church of the [second century], the church of the martyrs, was in such a state of mental decrepitude as to receive [epistles] which were spurious, so far as the greater portion of their contents is concerned?”58 And this historical Christian consensus continued beyond the second century into the third and fourth. The Muratorian Canon is a fragment dating to the late second or early third century.59 It says Paul wrote the PE, which “are hallowed in the esteem of the Catholic Church, and in the regulation of ecclesiastical discipline.”60 The historian Eusebius completed his history of the church in the early fourth century.61 Included among the “undisputed writings” of his time were the PE.62 In fact, Wilder notes that “The Pauline authorship of the Pastorals was not seriously questioned until the nineteenth century.”63 

    In contrast, the pseudepigraphal third epistle of Paul to the Corinthians finds its earliest attestation in the third- or fourth-century Bodmer X Papyrus, apart from which very few witnesses exist. Meanwhile, Tertullian identified it as a forgery in the late first or early second century.64 Ellis thus concludes that in light of plausible answers to challenges posed to the Pauline authorship of the PE, “the critical student [must] give primary weight to the opening ascriptions in the letters and to the external historical evidence, both of which solidly support Pauline authorship.”65 And as Guthrie writes, “when credence is given to the strength of the external evidence, the onus of proof in discussions of authenticity must rest with those who regard these Epistles as non-Pauline.”66

 

Stated Recipients 

    Ben Witherington observes the relevance of genre in discussing whether the PE are pseudepigraphal. “It is clear,” he writes, “that there were pseudepigraphal apocalyptic works both in early Judaism (e.g., portions of the Enoch corpus) and in early Christianity (e.g., the Apocalypse of Peter). . . . One cannot, however, demonstrate that about ancient ad hoc letters” like the PE, “situation-specific letters written to a particular audience.”67 One reason early Christianity did not contain pseudonymous, situation-specific letters is because, as Richard Bauckham explains, if a post-apostolic author wishes to instruct and exhort his intended readers pseudonymously and with the weight carried by genuine NT epistles, “he needs to find some way in which material that is ostensibly addressed to supposed addressees in the past can be taken by his real readers as actually or also addressed to them.”68 After all, if the allegedlyintended readers are still around, they can probably assure the truly-intended readers that the letter is not genuine. And so “any pseudepigraphal letter which has the didactic aims of NT letters must find some such way of bridging the gap between the supposed addressee(s) and the real readers.”69 While this is fairly easy to accomplish in a letter intended for a general readership, it is much more difficult in a letter modeled after the undisputed letters of Paul, containing “material of specific relevance to specific churches in specific situations.”70 As Witherington puts it, such a letter “would likely have to be situation and content specific, but for a situation and with a content that did not actually address the putative audience, but rather another and later one.”71 

     Bauckham offers a possible answer to this challenge. “A useful means of bridging the gap,” he explains, “between the supposed addressee(s) and the real readers of a pseudepigraphal letter was the letter whose contents are explicitly meant to be passed on to others by the named addressee.”72 Bauckham cautions that letters ostensibly intended to be so passed on are only possibly pseudepigraphal, since authentic letters so intended exist outside the NT. However, he argues that the presence in the PE both of this feature (e.g., 1 Tim 4:11; 2 Tim 2:2; Titus 2:15) and, in a manner reminiscent of pseudepigrapha like the Epistle of Peter to James, of warnings against future false teaching and apostasy (e.g., 1 Tim 4:1–3; 2 Tim 3:1–5), “amounts to a careful and deliberate attempt to bridge the gap between the situation at the supposed time of writing and the real contemporary situation of the author and his readers.” 73 

    On the other hand, as Bauckham himself observes, “the authentic real letter can take for granted the situation to which it is addressed,” but pseudepigrapha “must describe the situation of their supposed addressee(s) sufficiently for the real readers, who would not otherwise know it, to be able to recognize it as analogous to their own.”74 And while he suggests that in the PE “the false teachers, supposed to be already active at the supposed time of writing, are described perhaps a little more fully than would be necessary for Timothy and Titus themselves,” he admits that this is “not decisively so.”75 Indeed, it would seem that the PE could contain neither too much detail nor too little for skeptics of their Pauline authorship, for whereas Bauckham sees evidence against it in the former, Robert Wall notes that others see evidence against in the latter, the imprecise description of Paul’s opponents” argued to be evidence “that they are fictionalized and used for rhetorical ends.”76 

     As has already been argued, the descriptions of the faith’s opponents in the PE appear to be too indefinite and underdeveloped to serve as the kind of clear descriptions of second-century Gnosticism necessary to bridge the gap to readers from the author’s fictional first-century recipients. As such, the likelier explanation is that the author’s recipients were truly Timothy and Titus, dealing with an early emerging Jewish-Christian forerunner to Gnosticism they could identify from the author’s incomplete descriptions thereof, and that the author is therefore Paul. 

Undesigned Coincidences 

     Ehrman points out that “forgers typically added elements of verisimilitude to their works . . . designed to make the writing appear to have come from the pen of its alleged author.”77 Points of obvious connection between the PE on the one hand, and the undisputed epistles and other NT books on the other hand, are therefore not generally seen as strong evidence for Pauline authorship, for they may have been intentionally included to deceive readers. However, there are less obvious points of such connection that are unlikely to have been intentional, and thus serve as evidence for Pauline authorship of the PE. 

     McGrew defines an “undesigned coincidence” as “a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that doesn’t seem to have been planned by the person or people giving the accounts. Despite their apparent independence, the items fit together like pieces of a puzzle.”7  Because such connections are apparently unintentional, and thus cannot be explained away as intentionally-added verisimilitude intended to deceive, their presence in multiple documents serves as evidence that said documents are genuine, in the same way that independentlyquestioned eyewitnesses to a crime will be deemed reliable if their accounts fit together in seemingly unintended ways. 

      The author of 2 Timothy writes that his ostensibly-intended recipient has been taught the Scriptures from his childhood (2 Tim 3:14–15) by his faithful grandmother and mother (1:5). Knight observes that the phrase “sacred writings” is how Greek-speaking Jews referred to the OT.79 Its use nowhere else in the NT, Knight suggests, points to the recipient’s Jewish background. These details fit together well with those recorded in Acts 16:1–3, where Timothy is said to be the son of a believing Jewish woman and a Greek man, which would explain why in 2 Timothy the author indicates his recipient is familiar with the Torah since he was a child, and mentions his grandmother and mother but not his father. Yet neither set of details appears to be added to connect it with the other; the author of Acts makes no mention of Timothy’s grandmother, and does not name her or Timothy’s mother, while the author of 2 Timothy makes no mention of the nationality of his recipient’s parents. This “undesigned coincidence,” McGrew concludes, “has the ring of truth. Timothy’s father was a Greek and his mother Jewish, he was raised from childhood in the knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, and both [the author of 2 Timothy] and the author of Acts knew about him and described him accurately.”80 

      The author of 2 Timothy also writes of his recipient’s familiarity with the persecution met by the author in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra (3:11). As McGrew observes, “Paul had undergone so many persecutions in his missionary travels in so many different places that the specification of Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra in this verse should capture the attention. Why,” she asks, “did he mention those persecutions as the ones that would be familiar to Timothy?”81 Acts 16:1 suggests Timothy was already a well-known believer by the time Paul came to Derbe and Lystra, in one of which Timothy must have resided, and both of which were near Iconium. Leading up to this passage, Acts records the persecution of Paul during his first missionary journey in Antioch (13:44–52), then Iconium (14:5), and then Lystra (v. 19), persecutions in a region and period of time of which Timothy, a resident of Lystra or Derbe and a young disciple, would have heard word shortly before being enlisted by Paul. Moreover, the author of 2 Timothy, calling Timothy “my beloved child” (1:2), implies that he was converted by Paul, and probably therefore during Paul’s missionary travels to that region. McGrew thus concludes: 

Notice how indirect all of this is. One infers from II Timothy that Paul had some special reason to mention those persecutions to Timothy and to say that they were known to Timothy. One notes the point in Acts 13–14 where the narrative describes persecutions in those towns. One then infers from Acts 16 that Timothy was already a disciple from that region and had been converted during Paul’s previous visit to the region, described in Acts 13–14, during which the persecutions took place.82 

     It is unlikely, therefore, that either the author of Acts or that of 2 Timothy are intentionally including elements of verisimilitude they hope will convince readers of their genuineness. Such elements would surely be more obvious and less dependent upon inference. Rather, the apparently unintended coincidences between the two strongly suggest that the author and  intended recipient of 2 Timothy are truly the Paul and Timothy whose meeting and travels are recorded in Acts. 

Similarities to Undisputed Epistles 

    Of course, it goes without saying—though George Knight III says it—that “the [PE] all claim to be by Paul the apostle of Chris Jesus” (1 Tim 1:1; Tit 1:1; 2 Tim 1:1), “and this assertion is made in salutations similar to those in the other Pauline letters.”83 In all of them, as in the PE, Paul speaks of “grace” and “peace” being “from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord,” and with few exceptions likewise calls himself “an apostle of Jesus Christ.”84 Significantly, the opening greetings of 1 and 2 Corinthians contain all of these elements, but as reproduced in Ehrman’s own work, so-called 3 Corinthians contains none of these elements apart from Paul’s name, even though its occasion and motivation, in Ehrman’s estimation, are virtually identical to those of the author of the PE.85 If the similarities between the greetings of the PE and those of Paul’s undisputed letters can be chalked up to intentional verisimilitude, one wonders why that of 3 Corinthians is so dissimilar from them all. 

       Douglas, Tenney, and Silva argue that arguments against the authenticity of the PE based on style are “self-defeating, for candid examination of the actual facts clearly points to Paul as the author of the Pastorals.”86 They summarize said facts as follows: 

These three picture the same kind of person reflected in the others: one who is deeply interested in those whom he addresses, ascribing to God’s sovereign grace whatever is good in himself and/or in the addressees, and showing wonderful tact in counseling. Again, they were written by a person who is fond of litotes or understatements (2 Tim. 1:8 [“do not be ashamed”]; cf. Rom. 1:16), of enumerations (1 Tim. 3:1–12; cf. Rom. 1:29–32), of plays on words (1 Tim. 6:17; cf. Phlm. 10–11), of appositional phrases (1 Tim. 1:17; cf. Rom. 12:1), of expressions of personal unworthiness (1 Tim. 1:13, 15; cf. 1 Cor. 15:9), and of doxologies (1 Tim. 1:17; cf. Rom. 11:36).87 

     So conclusively does this evidence point to a genuinely Pauline style in the PE that “many critics now grant that Paul may be the source of some, though not all, of their contents. But this theory does not go far enough in the right direction, for those who hold it are unable to show where the genuine material begins and the spurious ends.”88 

    Given the reasonableness of rebuttals to arguments against the Pauline authorship of the PE, any lines drawn between their authentic portions and their allegedly inauthentic ones must surely be arbitrary. Put crassly, they simply reek of Pauline origin, and in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, they must be accepted as genuinely Pauline.

Conclusion.

    Johnson observes that prior to the nineteenth century, the PE “had been construed as Pauline and, even more important, as Scripture.”89 Since then, the tables have so turned that “the term ‘debate’ is surely too strong for the present situation, which is closer to a fixed academic consensus. Little real discussion of the issue of authenticity still occurs.”90 The evidence here examined, however, does not appear to warrant such an unquestioned consensus. On the one hand, evidence offered against the authenticity of the PE is overstated and plausibly explained by defenders of Pauline authorship. On the other hand, the external and internal evidence in favor of Pauline authorship is powerful and difficult to refute.

    Why, then, the consensus? Johnson reminds readers that “this consensus resulted as much from social dynamics as from the independent assessment of the evidence by each individual scholar. For many contemporary scholars, indeed, the inauthenticity of the PE is one of those scholarly dogmas first learned in college and in no need of further examination.”91 So unquestioned is this “reigning hypothesis” that Marshall and Towner warn it “is in danger of uncritical acceptance.”92 This state of affairs is not unlike that facing students of geology, biology, and climatology, who from very early on are indoctrinated to uncritically accept that the universe is billions of years old, that all forms of life have evolved from a common ancestor, and that humans are responsible for dangerous climate change, respectively

    Christians troubled by the prospect of pseudepigrapha in the NT, and by the possible impact of their presence on its authority and reliability, should find the conclusions of this examination very encouraging. Ehrman writes that whereas “scholars continue to debate the authorship of the Deutero-Pauline epistles”—that is, 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians—“when we come to the Pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, there is greater scholarly unanimity.”93 Thus, if the consensus against Pauline authorship of the PE is unjustified, and if the reasons it offers are highly questionable, then one ought all the more to be skeptical of arguments against the Pauline authorship of the other disputed letters.

Bibliography

Aageson, James W. Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008.

Bauckham, Richard. “Pseudo-Apostolic Letters.” JBL 107, no. 3 (September, 1988): 469–94.

Berding, Kenneth. “Polycarp of Smyrna’s View of the Authorship of 1 and 2 Timothy.” Vigiliae Christianae 53, no. 4 (November, 1999): 349–60.

Douglas, J. D., Merrill C. Tenney, and Moisés Silva, eds. “Pastoral Letters.” In Zondervan

Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 1078–82. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.

Ehrman, Bart D. Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who

We Think They Are. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2011.

———. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. 6th ed.

New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Ellis, E. Earle. “Pastoral Letters.” In Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, edited by Gerald F.

Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid, 658–66. Downers Grove, IL; Leicester,

UK: InterVarsity, 1993.

Guthrie, Donald. The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale New

Testament Commentaries. Nottingham, UK; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1990.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The First and Second Letters to Timothy: A New Translation with

Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Yale Bible. Vol. 35A. New Haven, CT; London,

UK: Yale University Press, 2001.

Knight, George W. III. The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text. New

International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992.

Laird, Benjamin. “Corinthians, Third Letter to the.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by

John D. Barry, et al. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.

Lock, Walter. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (I & II Timothy

and Titus). International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1924.

Marshall, I. Howard, and Philip H. Towner. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the

Pastoral Epistles. International Critical Commentary. London, UK; New York, NY: T&T

Clark International, 2004.

Marshall, I. Howard. “John, Epistles Of.” In New Bible Dictionary, edited by D. R. W. Wood, et

al., 594–7. 3rd ed. Leicester, UK; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity, 1996.

McGrew, Lydia. Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts.

Chillicothe, OH: DeWard, 2017.

Mounce, William D. Pastoral Epistles. Word Biblical Commentary. Nashville, TN: Thomas

Nelson, 2000.

Patzia, Arthur G. The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text & Canon. 2nd ed.

Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011.

Porter, Stanley E. “Pauline Authorship and the Pastoral Epistles: Implications for Canon.”

Bulletin for Biblical Research 5 (1995): 105–23.

———. “Pauline Chronology and the Question of Pseudonymity of the Pastoral Epistles.” In

Paul and Pseudepigraphy, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Gregory P. Fewster, 65–88.

Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2013.

Roberts, Alexander, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds. The Ante-Nicene Fathers:

Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325. 8 vols. Buffalo, NY: The

Christian Literature Company, 1885–6.

Rutherford, John. “Pastoral, Epistles, The.” In The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia,

edited by James Orr, et al., 2258–62. 5 vols. Chicago, IL: The Howard-Severance

Company, 1915.

Schaff, Philip, and Henry Wace, eds. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church:

Second Series. 14 vols. New York, NY: The Christian Literature Company, 1890–1900.

Schnelle, Udo. The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings, translated by M.

Eugene Boring. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1998.

Wall, Robert W., and Richard B. Steele. 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. Two Horizons Commentary.

Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2012.

Wilder, Terry L. “Pseudonymity and the New Testament.” In Interpreting the New Testament:

Essays on Methods and Issues, edited by David Alan Black and David S. Dockery, 296–

335. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2001.

Witherington, Ben III. Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians, Volume 1: A SocioRhetorical Commentary on Titus, 1–2 Timothy and 1–3 John. Downers Grove, IL;

Nottingham, UK: IVP Academic, 2006.

Respuesta a la Escuela Radical Holandesa. Parte I.

 Respondiendo a un artículo del sitio de Hermann Detering: https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/detering.html

Planteará que ninguna de las epístolas paulinas en realidad sea paulina, y que como nos llegaron deben ser posteriores al 130 d.C.

Dudará además de la autenticidad de las cartas de Clemente e Ignacio, para que evidentemente no les respondan con la autoridad de estos Padres testimoniando las cartas paulinas.

Y además, irán contra el consenso de los demás Padres, que acusaban al marcionismo de alterar las Epístolas de Pablo, y sostendrán que en cambio eran escritos originalmente gnósticos alterados por los cristianos.

Alegan, además, que la idea de que fueron los marcionistas los que adulteraron las Epístolas no vienen de los marcionistas mismos sino de sus adversarios, mientras que Marción solo reconocía y se gloriaba haber adulterado el Evangelio de Lucas, pero nada dijo sobre las Epístolas.

 

Pues la verdad que esto último es falso. Ireneo dice que los marcionistas reconocían haber adulterado las epístolas paulinas también:

“Los marcionitas, nos ha dicho anteriormente (III, 12,12), sólo aceptan a Pablo y a su discípulo Lucas como escritores sagrados. Y aun a éstos los censuran, recortándoles aquello que, dicen ellos, les habría añadido subrepticiamente el Dios del Antiguo Testamento. El motivo es la polémica de Pablo contra los fariseos y su intepretación de la Ley mosaica, que, según ellos, probaría que Pablo predicó a un Dios distinto del que dio la Ley.”

 

 En fin. Los argumentos para dudar de la autenticidad de las cartas son (mis respuestas en rojo):

1) La cuestión del repudio de Israel , tratada exhaustivamente en Romanos 9-11 (por ejemplo, Rom. 11:15f; cf. 1 Tes. 2:16), así como la actualización del tema del remanente del Antiguo Testamento (Rom. 9:27; 11:5), solo pudo surgir más tarde, presumiblemente solo después del 135 (como mínimo después del 70).

(El repudio de Israel nada tiene que ver con la destrucción de Jerusalén sino con el fin de la antigua alianza superada por la nueva instaura por Cristo con su muerte en la cruz; y que es el fundamento mismo del rechazo a las leyes ceremoniales y la predicación a los gentiles. Esto ya se ve en los Evangelios y Hechos, y nada nos dice sobre la datación de las Epístolas paulinas).

2) Por las persecuciones de los cristianos, de las que se hace mención una y otra vez en las epístolas paulinas (Rom 8,35; 12,14; 1 Cor 4,12; 2 Cor 4,9; 12,10; Gal 6,12; 1 Tes 2:14 etc.) no hay evidencia antes de Nerón . La supuesta persecución de los cristianos en el 64 tras el incendio de Roma es, además, históricamente discutida. Hablar de persecuciones es, además de las de Domiciano (Eusebio, EH 3.17ss.) y las que sufrieron los cristianos judíos bajo Bar Kochba (Justino, Apol . 1,31; Eusebio, EH 4. 8,4), sólo posible después de 135 en relación con el llamado Aposynagogos , es decir, la exclusión de los cristianos de la vida sinagoga. Y de hecho, los Aposynagogosen sí mismo no está atestiguado antes de Justino a mediados del siglo segundo (Justin, Dial . 48.5).

(Los Evangelios y Hechos, que son aceptados como del siglo I y anteriores a Marción, hablan indiscutiblemente de persecución. Cristo mismo predice que habrá persecución y en Hechos vemos a la Iglesia teniendo su primer mártir San Esteban diácono, además de Santiago. Este último también aparece como mártir en Flavio Josefo. Sin olvidar que la historia misma de Pablo se refiere a él como un perseguidor inicial del cristianismo y que esta historia es originaria del siglo I y se ambienta antes de la persecución de Nerón. Además, los primeros tres versículos alegados hablan de bendecir a los que maldicen, lo cual es enseñanza del mismo Cristo que, justamente, terminó también muerto. Y además de aparecer en los Evangelios aparece también en Didaché 1:3: “Esta es la enseñanza de este discurso: «Bendigan a los que los maldicen y rueguen por sus enemigos, y ayunen por los que los persiguen. Porque ¿qué méritos hay en que amen a los que los aman?”. Texto que incluso muchos apelan a que es tan antiguo como las Epístolas paulinas. Por ejemplo, a eso apelas James Tabor para decir que la Didaché expresa la enseñanza de Santiago contraria a la de Pablo. Por lo que vamos, esto no parece un argumento serio).

3) La disputa sobre la Fe y la Ley, al igual que la cuestión de la circuncisión, ¿pertenece al primer siglo, o más bien al segundo? (Cf. Justin, quien en su Diálogo con el judío Trifón una y otra vez se ocupa exactamente de estas cuestiones: por ejemplo, Dial . 23.4, donde se debate el tema de la circuncisión.)

(Justino habla de la circuncisión porque debate con un judío. Trifón es judío; no cristiano. La postura de Justino supone la resolución del tema entre los cristianos, no el debate entre cristianos sobre el tema. Hipólito y Eusebio también tratan la cuestión en disputa sobre los judíos, y no por eso alguien pensará que hay disputa intra-cristiana sobre el tema en tiempos de Hipólito o de Eusebio. En la apología contra el judaísmo el cristianismo recurrirá siempre a la cuestión sobre la Fe y la Ley, y a la circuncisión).

4) El nivel teológico implícito de las congregaciones de las epístolas paulinas supone un período más largo de incubación y no es posible que se haya llegado a él en dos décadas.

(¿Cómo puede alegarse que se necesita un largo período de incubación, pero a la vez suponer que Epístolas marcionitas fueron aceptadas como auténticamente paulinas sin ninguna discusión en un periodo de tiempo similar? Porque se alega que Justino, cerca del 150-60 no conoce las epístolas paulinas y que Marción es autor de las cartas en el mismo período. Pero ya para el 180 Celso e Ireneo usan las epístolas como paulinas. ¿Entonces?).

El francés DelaFosse, afín a los holandeses, ha llamado nuestra atención sobre indicaciones en las Epístolas Paulinas de que su autor en algunas perícopas se refiere al llamado "conflicto de Pascua" bajo Víctor en el siglo II, relatado por Eusebio (1 Cor. 5:8).45

(¿De qué manera 1 Corintios 5:8 puede referir al conflicto de la Pascua durante el papado de Víctor, cuando para dicho tiempo ya San Ireneo de Lyon escribió Contra Herejes en la que considera a 1 Corintios como epístola Paulina?)

5) El bautismo vicario por los muertos (1 Corintios 15:29) no ha sido confirmado antes que entre los marcionitas en el segundo siglo.46

(¿El hecho de que los marcionitas realicen el bautismo vicario no se debe, más bien, a que tomaron tal idea de la carta original de 1 Corintios, antes que ser ellos autores de 1 Corintios? Plantear que los herejes interpretan un texto de la Escritura de una determinada manera que le es favorable a sus heterodoxias no es un argumento válido para decir que el texto de donde sacan tal heterodoxia es de su autoría antes que del autor al que se atribuye).

 

Hasta aquí.

Su lógica es: Si en las epístolas paulinas hay elementos marcionistas, debe ser porque son marcionitas.

Pero esa lógica es falaz.

No son elementos “marcionitas”. Son elementos paulinos, de los cuales se agarraron los marcionistas para sus interpretaciones. Y como a tales elementos recurrieron los marcionitas para sus extravagantes interpretaciones, ahora pareciera que tales elementos son originalmente suyos.

Que los marcionitas tuvieran un bautismo vicario por los muertos no demuestra que el texto en sí sea de origen marcionita. Demuestra, cuando mucho, que interpretados privadamente pueden sacarse doctrinas heterodoxas de la Escritura.

 

Por otro lado, preguntar si el tema de la circuncisión es del siglo I o II alegando el testimonio de Justino es fútil. Porque el tema de la circuncisión fue una disputa doctrinal entre cristianos. Justino habla de la circuncisión no porque dispute con un cristiano judaizante sino porque está discutiendo con un judío.

Además de que alegar a Justino es hacer salir el tiro por la culata. Porque Justamente la interpretación de Justino presupone toda la doctrina paulina que debe serle precedente.

No puede alegarse que Justino parece no conocer las cartas simplemente por el hecho de que no las cita. Porque su Diálogo con Trifón justamente busca defender, ante un judío, la doctrina que está en las cartas. De allí que para nada le sirve a Trifón citar las Cartas, porque para fundamentar su doctrina tiene que recurrir a las Escrituras que el judío acepta: el Antiguo Testamento. De allí que apenas se cite incluso al Nuevo Testamento, solo para señalar algunas palabras de Jesús.

 

Siguiendo con la respuesta, presenta supuestos elementos marcionistas (copio y pego y respondo en rojo):

1) A este respecto debemos señalar en primer lugar la presencia en las Epístolas paulinas de la cristología docética de origen gnóstico que enseña que Jesús no era un ser humano real de carne y hueso, sino que tenía sólo un "cuerpo aparente" (un fantasma).

Esto sale a la luz, por ejemplo, en la notable expresión de Rom 8, 3, donde el autor dice de Cristo que (en su vida en la tierra) estuvo en homoi�mati sarkos hamartias ("en semejanza de carne de pecado"). Correspondientemente dice también en el Himno a Cristo en Filipenses (2:7) que apareció en homoi�mati anthr�p�n ("en semejanza de los hombres"). ¿Por qué el autor no dice simplemente que Dios lo había enviado "a la carne"? El concepto homoi�ma ("semejanza") es claramente utilizado por el autor de la manera más consciente, para dejar claro el contraste de su punto de vista con el punto de vista católico y judeo-cristiano.54

(¿Y cómo sabe que la expresión “semejante” es algo que contrasta con el punto de vista católico cuando resulta que fue mantenido en las epístolas en su versión católica? Si el editor católico no tuvo ningún escrúpulo en adulterar las epístolas marcionitas para hacerlas ortodoxas, ¿por qué no cambió estos términos que son notablemente -se dice- marcionitas y que, por tanto, revelarían su origen?

Además, el mismo Himno de Cristo en Filipenses no solo dice que Cristo se hizo “semejante” a los hombres, sino que dice que tomó la naturaleza humana tal como existía con la naturaleza divina.

Sin olvidar que eso es tomar las cosas por la mitad. Porque existen multitud de textos de las Epístolas paulinas que muestran que San Pablo no era docetista.

Pero claro, para explicar estos pasajes arbitrariamente se considera que son los añadidos del editor católico porque se presupone que hay una contradicción entre estos pasajes y los pasajes que supuestamente solo pueden interpretarse de modo docetista, pero si nadie acepta ese presupuesto parece carecer de coherencia aceptar que hay una contradicción entre unos versículos y otros. Y así parece no tener sentido querer atribuir las cartas a autores docetistas).

b) Se debe tomar nota adicional del dualismo en la imagen de Dios del autor , que sale a la luz en algunos lugares:

 

En 2 Cor 4, 4 el autor habla de manera dualista del Theos tou ai�nos toutou ("Dios de este eón"), que ha cegado los pensamientos de los incrédulos; cf. también 1 Cor 2:6; 2:8; Efesios 2:2; 6:12.

(Expresión similar se encuentra en Juan 12:31: “Ya está aquí el juicio de este mundo; ahora el príncipe de este mundo será echado fuera”. Lo mismo Juan 14:30: “No hablaré mucho más con vosotros, porque viene el príncipe de este mundo”. O Juan 16:11: “porque el príncipe de este mundo ha sido juzgado”. O Juan 12:40: “Él ha cegado sus ojos y endurecido su corazón, para que no vean con los ojos y entiendan con el corazón, y se conviertan y yo los sane”. Y no por eso el Evangelio de Juan es dualista. Lo mismo en 1 Juan 5:19: “Sabemos que somos de Dios, y que todo el mundo yace bajo el poder del maligno”.

Lo mismo aparece en las palabras que San Pablo atribuye a Jesús según Hechos 26:18: “para que abras sus ojos a fin de que se vuelvan de la oscuridad a la luz, y del dominio de Satanás a Dios, para que reciban, por la fe en mí, el perdón de pecados”. Esto es lo mismo que se dice dos versículos delante de 2 Corintios 4:4.

Además, ¿cómo se concilia la afirmación de que estas ideas son de por sí marcionistas-dualista y por tanto unidas al docetismo, pero a la vez que estén en el Evangelio de Juan y su primera carta, que insisten constantemente en la realidad de la Encarnación?

Lo mismo aparece en la Epístola de Bernabé 18:1: “Pues pasemos también a otro género de conocimiento y doctrina. Dos caminos hay de doctrina y de potestad, el camino de la luz y el camino de las tinieblas. Ahora bien, grande es la diferencia que hay entre los dos caminos. Porque sobre el uno están apostados los ángeles de Dios, portadores de luz; sobre el otro, los ángeles de Satanás. 2. Y el uno es Señor desde los siglos y hasta los siglos; el otro es el príncipe del presente siglo de la iniquidad”. Y está claro que Bernabé no es marcionita.

Todo este punto del “dios de este mundo” ya lo trató ampliamente Tertuliano en Contra Marción, libro V, capítulo XI).

En Rom 5:7 el justo y el bueno son, a la manera de Marcionita, antitéticamente opuestos el uno contra el otro . Mientras que por el justo uno apenas morirá, sin embargo, por el bueno algunos incluso se atreverían a morir. Normalmente se piensa que los dos términos se refieren al hombre (bueno o justo) . Sin embargo, las tortuosas explicaciones de los exegetas son bastante insensatas. Por eso habría que preguntarse si acaso los marcionitas que, como sabemos por Orígenes, 55 apelaron a este texto, tenían toda la razón al entender al bueno y al justo como sus Dos Dioses.

(¿Si los marcionitas apelaban a este versículo por qué no los eliminó el editor católico de las Epístolas? ¿No es, más bien, que la distinción del bueno y justo se origina justamente en la interpretación retorcida de los marcionitas de este versículo, antes que ser la Epístola originalmente marcionita solo porque éstos interpretan a su favor un versículo?

Incluso Justino mártir responde a la distinción que hacen los marcionitas entre el dios bueno y el justo. Lastimosamente su obra contra los marcionitas no sobrevive. Pero el mismo hecho de responder a esto y que su obra haya sido citada por los Padres muestra indirectamente que Justino conocía las epístolas paulinas, y que los Padres pudieron ver a Justino responder a los alegatos marcionitas usando las Epístolas. En caso de haber usado los marcionitas este versículo y suponiendo que Justino no conocía las Epístolas, bien podría haber respondido negando la autoría paulina de dichas Epístolas. Tal cosa habría resultado escandalosa y habría sido resaltado por los Padres. ¿Por qué, entonces, no surgió una disputa entre los cristianos sobre si aceptar o no cartas de dudosa procedencia y, en cambio, se prefirió aceptarlas sin ninguna objeción aunque los herejes apelaran a versículos de ellas para justificar sus herejías?)

A través de la remodelación, el conocido versículo Efesios 3:9 se ha vuelto poco claro. Aquí se dice que Marción adaptó la idea original de que el misterio estaba oculto "en" Dios a su teología de los Dos Dioses simplemente omitiendo la pequeña palabra "en". A través de esta supuesta omisión se dice que surgió un sentido totalmente nuevo, de hecho marcionita, del versículo 3:9, porque el misterio ya no estaba escondido "en" Dios, sino "del Dios" que ha creado todas las cosas. De esta manera se dice que Marción quiso expresar que la obra santificadora del Dios Redentor permanecía oculta al "Demiurgo",56 porque nadie más podría ser para él el "Dios que había creado todas las cosas". Los hechos del caso, sin embargo, son obviamente exactamente lo contrario. El editor católico claramente cambió el punto de la oración al agregar su "en", y así eliminó la idea de un Demiurgo, que es intolerable para el pensamiento católico, aunque a costa de la inteligibilidad del texto ahora completamente oscuro.

(¿Qué evidencia existe de que hubo un editor católico que cambió la oración agegándole “en”? ¿Y de qué manera el texto es ahora “completamente oscuro”, cuando San Juan Evangelista habla en los mismos términos?

No solo eso, sino que además son evidentes las alteraciones de Marción y las cuales se omiten en el análisis. Como señala Tertuliano, Marción adulteró 1 Corintios 15:45 cambiando “segundo Adán” por  “segundo Señor” haciendo que el texto no tenga sentido:

  "Fue hecho el primer hombre Adán alma viviente, el postrer Adán espíritu vivificante". Sin embargo, nuestro hereje, en el exceso de su locura, no queriendo que la declaración permaneciera en esta forma, alteró "último Adán" en "último Señor", porque temía, por supuesto, que si permitía que el Señor sea ​​el último (o segundo) Adán, debemos afirmar que Cristo, siendo el segundo Adán, necesariamente debe pertenecer a ese Dios que también poseyó al primer Adán.  Pero la falsificación es transparente. Porque ¿por qué hay un primer Adán, a menos que haya también un segundo Adán?

-Tertuliano, Contra Marción, libro V, capítulo X.

Lo mismo hace Marción con Efesios 2:14:

“Marción borró el pronombre Su, para que pudiera hacer que la enemistad se refiriera a la carne, como si (habló el apóstol) de una enemistad carnal, en lugar de la enemistad que era un rival de Cristo. 799 Y así has ​​mostrado (como he dicho en otra parte) la estupidez del Ponto, en lugar de la destreza de un marruciniano, 800 ¡porque aquí niegas la carne a quien en el versículo anterior permitiste la sangre!”.

-Tertuliano, Contra Marción, libro 5, capítulo 17.

Lo mismo hace con el versículo 2:20:

"edificados sobre el fundamento de los apóstoles" ----(el añadió el apóstol), "y los profetas"; estas palabras, sin embargo, las borró el hereje, olvidando que el Señor había puesto en su Iglesia no sólo apóstoles, sino también profetas. Sin duda temía que nuestro edificio se levantara en Cristo sobre el fundamento de los antiguos profetas, ya que el apóstol mismo nunca deja de edificarnos en todas partes con (las palabras de) los profetas. Porque ¿de dónde aprendió a llamar a Cristo "principal piedra del ángulo", sino de la figura que le da el Salmo: "La piedra que desecharon los edificadores se ha convertido en cabeza (piedra) del ángulo"?

Por lo tenemos que queda oscuro, en realidad, el texto mutilado por Marción. Lo mismo se puede ver en Romanos, como dice Tertuliano:

“Pero las serias lagunas que Marción ha hecho en esta epístola especialmente, al retirar pasajes enteros a su voluntad, quedarán claros a partir del texto no mutilado de nuestra propia copia. Basta para mi propósito aceptar en prueba de su verdad lo que él ha tenido por conveniente dejar sin borrar, extraños ejemplos como lo son también de su negligencia y ceguera”)

1 Cor 2, 8 incluye también un pensamiento típicamente marcionita: el de la "obra oculta del Redentor" que, no reconocido por el Demiurgo y sus poderes, muere en la Cruz y así redime a la humanidad de su dominio. Correspondientemente también dice en 1 Cor 2:8 que los arcontes de este eón no habrían crucificado al Señor de la Gloria, si lo hubieran reconocido.

(¡Pero para apoyar lo afirmado en 1 Corintios 2:8 el autor de la Epistola en el versículo siguiente apela al Antiguo Testamento! Y la idea de que los arcontes crucificaron al Señor se debe al pensamiento judío de que las autoridades civiles actúan influenciados por el demonio)

La teología paulina de la redención (1 Cor 6,20; 7,23; Gal 3,13; 4,5; 4,9; Col 2,15) parece presuponer un sistema de pensamiento dualista: ¿ De qué redime Cristo? De la Ley, que es casi "personificada" 57 o (lo que seguramente sería más plausible) de los "Príncipes (stoixei=a) del Mundo" (Gál 4,9) como autores de la Ley y por tanto de su comandante supremo, "el Demiurgo"?

(¿De qué manera los versículos allí citados sirven para apoyar el marcionismo, sino es que se toman completamente aislados ya que están fuera de lugar en el contexto inmediato?

Por ejemplo, Gálatas 3:13 dice que Cristo nos liberó de la maldición de la ley haciéndose maldición por nosotros. Pero versículo siguiente se dice que esto es así “Para que la bendición de Abraham llegue en Cristo Jesús a los gentiles”. ¡Los marcionitas rechazan a Abraham!

O por ejemplo, en los demás versículos se habla de que hemos sido comprados por precio, como si eso apoyara al marcionismo. Pera a eso mismo ya respondía Tertuliano en tono irónico: “¡Un precio! ¡Seguramente no se pagó nada en absoluto, ya que Cristo era un fantasma, ni tenía ninguna sustancia corporal que pudiera pagar por nuestros cuerpos!”.

Por lo que los versículos citados no expresan una teología marcionita más que una teología cristiana ortodoxa en la que por la muerte de Cristo somos redimidos de la esclavitud del demonio y de la obligación de la ley. No solo que expresan la teología ortodoxa, sino que incluso pueden usarse en contra del mismo marcionismo, como hizo Tertuliano).

La soteriología paulina-marcionita original ciertamente parece estar desfigurada por la remodelación católica, a menudo fuera de todo reconocimiento. Es debido a la transposición redaccional de pensamientos concebidos originalmente para un sistema dualista (y significativo sólo allí) a un sistema monista (es decir, monoteísta), que la doctrina paulina de la redención se volvió tan confusa e indistinta. Los pensamientos quedan meramente esbozados y se dejan pensar completamente solo al precio de la herejía.

(Aquí vemos cómo es arbitrario: El hecho de que tales versículos pueden entenderse en un sentido perfectamente católico o cristiano ortodoxo se debe a que a que el texto ha sido desfigurado por una remodelación católica mediante la transposición redaccional; y no porque son en sí plenamente católicos y el texto es católico.

Pues con esa manera de interpretar podemos llegar a interpretar cualquier extravagancia con la autoría y alteración de los textos. Y solo apelando al hecho de que como ciertos herejes usan ciertos versículos para justificar sus herejías, atribuir dichos textos a autores originalmente de sus sectas que fueron luego editados para ser católicos.)

 

La existencia de elementos gnósticos-marcionitas en el Corpus Paulinum requiere una explicación. Los exégetas hasta el presente a menudo se han contentado con explicar que, en pasajes donde el texto paulino tiene algo de carácter gnóstico-marcionita, Pablo se ha valido de términos gnósticos sin ser él mismo un gnóstico,58 o quizás que tengamos que ver con interpolaciones posteriores.59 La solución alternativa planteada por los Críticos Radicales Holandeses nos permite ver al(los) propio(s) autor(es) como gnóstico(s)/marcionita(s). Aquí Marción no es la versión radical de Pablo que ha sido considerado por la investigación académica hasta el presente, pero "Pablo" es un Marción mitigado (catolizado), atado al dogma católico del único Dios Creador y Redentor.

(Lógica del análisis: En las epístolas hay elementos que parecen marcionitas. Por tanto, las epístolas eran originalmente marcionitas y fueron luego editadas para ser cristianas.

Bien podríamos retrucar: En las epístolas hay elementos contrarios al marcionismo. Por tanto, las epístolas eran cristianas y los marcionistas se aferraron a algunos versículos aislados que les dieron ocasión para sus interpretaciones heterodoxas.)

 

Hasta aquí.

Por tanto, ¿qué podemos concluir con lo expuesto hasta aquí en lo alegado por defensres de la Escuela radical holandesa? Lo siguiente:

1.- No se apoya en ninguna evidencia positiva.

2.- Es altamente especulativa.

3.- Se sostiene en presupuestos poco aceptables.

4.- Todo descansa en suponer que las epístolas de Ignacio y Clemente no son auténticas.

5.- No es la mejor explicación a los hechos.