BRUCE C WEARNE continues his examination of the opening lines from Paul’s first letter to Timothy…
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the commissioning of our God and Saviour, and of Christ Jesus (Himself), our hope; to Timothy, true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. – I Timothy 1:1-2 (transliteration by Bruce C Wearne)
PICTURE: Art Lasovsky/Unsplash
“My suggestion is that we read this opening as Paul’s recognition that he is indeed in the process of writing a letter and that as a letter it should follow conventional and readily recognisable letter-writing protocols. The development of cultural technologies and artefacts that enable the writing of a letter is evidence of God’s creation opening up under the stewardship of God’s image-bearers.”
We began this discussion by drawing attention to the warmth of Paul’s personal relationship with Timothy. That warmth is in no way contradicted by the formal matter at the letter’s beginning, and the customary style with which he begins and ends his epistles. This is particularly noticeable in the letters written to specific persons – Timothy, Titus, Philemon. The other letters of Paul’s New Testament “file” – to the churches at Rome, Corinth, across Galatia, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica – remind us of Paul’s commitment to his commission to join historically in Jesus’ important project – proclaiming the Good News to the nations.
Luke tells us that, immediately prior to his confrontation with Jesus (Acts 9:1-2), Saul had gone to the High Priest seeking letters addressed to those in charge of the synagogues at Damascus giving him the authority to arrest those who, like Stephen, professed faith in Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah. Saul was carrying these letters with him as he travelled the road to Damascus.
We don’t know anything more about these official documents, but we do know that Paul, as courier and mercenary, became an apostle and writer of letters, many of which we have, letters intended to be read by Christian congregations, synagogues of believers. So we might also say that Saul the Pharisee was converted from being a zealous hunter of heretics, carrying official high priestly authorisation to become Paul the Apostle of Jesus the Messiah, one who also developed the craft of letter-writing.
So then, does this observation about Paul’s customary style, his formal opening and greeting, have anything to say to us today with the problems we face in living and maintaining a “Christian way of life”? Our modern tendency to see in “formality” the extinguishment of personal friendship is certainly not confirmed by Paul’s way of writing to his co-workers, even if he is their “team leader”.
Our inherited political concept of authority in which “personal relationships” and “becoming personally involved” is strictly separated from organisational responsibility is actually put into doubt by Paul’s epistolary style. Of course, we could read our own latter-day dogmatic assumptions into the text but at this point we would have to say that Paul does not teach such a rigid distinction.
It would be a significant stretch of the meaning of the text for us to read him saying, “Whenever you write letters, Timothy, you should adopt the formal tone I have adopted in my opening.” That would be to seriously mis-read the letter.
Now, of course, Timothy may have written letters just like Paul has done and we can expect that he had thereby also learned from Paul something about letter-writing and how he should organise the contents of his letters, how he should frame its greetings and its closing remarks.
My suggestion is that we read this opening as Paul’s recognition that he is indeed in the process of writing a letter and that as a letter it should follow conventional and readily recognisable letter-writing protocols. The development of cultural technologies and artefacts that enable the writing of a letter is evidence of God’s creation opening up under the stewardship of God’s image-bearers. Letter-writing and letters have their place in God’s kingdom and so Paul writes as he does to commend a life-perspective in which everything we do takes places within the creational context of our God-given responsibilities.
Of course, one cannot properly understand the Good News without noting that the preaching thereof put John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles, on a collision course with the Roman occupiers, the Herodian quislings and the Jewish religious authorities. And in that sense, Paul shows, by what he writes, that he knows that such letters with their proclamation has a political challenge of greatest significance. In fact, he refers to his chains that bespeak the political accusation that he, by proclaiming the Kingdom of God, has committed what some presumed was a treason against Caesar.
But we should keep in mind that what we have discussed indicates that the Good News did not only come at that political time. It burst upon the Mediterranean world, as we have noted, at a time in the history of technology. Writing had already developed. Parchment was a taken-for-granted part of studying and communicating in those times. There was pen and there was ink available for Paul to write these letters. The means of transportation had also been developed. Commerce, trade and travel were such that it was possible to communicate between people of different languages.
The New Testament discusses the way a distinctively Christian “way of life” was made possible and opened itself up in various ways in the cultural and political context of the time. It describes for us how it arose amid the dominant cultural forms and processes of the time. It instructs us of how those committed to this way of life refused to allow themselves to become just another Jewish sect – which was increasingly difficult anyway because of the persistent efforts of the Jewish religious and traditional leadership to suppress and, if possible, eradicate any such a zealot sectarian proclamation of a Messiah. And neither did it accommodate itself to the Roman Imperial system that implied the religious devotion to Caesar as a deity who, through the pious obedience of his subjects, would ensure that the Empire would hold together.
OPEN BOOK: PAUL’S FIRST LETTER TO TIMOTHY – FORMAL GREETINGS AND PERSONAL REVELATIONS, PART II
BRUCE C WEARNE continues his examination of the opening lines from Paul’s first letter to Timothy…
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the commissioning of our God and Saviour, and of Christ Jesus (Himself), our hope; to Timothy, true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. – I Timothy 1:1-2 (transliteration by Bruce C Wearne)
PICTURE: Art Lasovsky/Unsplash
“My suggestion is that we read this opening as Paul’s recognition that he is indeed in the process of writing a letter and that as a letter it should follow conventional and readily recognisable letter-writing protocols. The development of cultural technologies and artefacts that enable the writing of a letter is evidence of God’s creation opening up under the stewardship of God’s image-bearers.”
We began this discussion by drawing attention to the warmth of Paul’s personal relationship with Timothy. That warmth is in no way contradicted by the formal matter at the letter’s beginning, and the customary style with which he begins and ends his epistles. This is particularly noticeable in the letters written to specific persons – Timothy, Titus, Philemon. The other letters of Paul’s New Testament “file” – to the churches at Rome, Corinth, across Galatia, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica – remind us of Paul’s commitment to his commission to join historically in Jesus’ important project – proclaiming the Good News to the nations.
Luke tells us that, immediately prior to his confrontation with Jesus (Acts 9:1-2), Saul had gone to the High Priest seeking letters addressed to those in charge of the synagogues at Damascus giving him the authority to arrest those who, like Stephen, professed faith in Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah. Saul was carrying these letters with him as he travelled the road to Damascus.
We don’t know anything more about these official documents, but we do know that Paul, as courier and mercenary, became an apostle and writer of letters, many of which we have, letters intended to be read by Christian congregations, synagogues of believers. So we might also say that Saul the Pharisee was converted from being a zealous hunter of heretics, carrying official high priestly authorisation to become Paul the Apostle of Jesus the Messiah, one who also developed the craft of letter-writing.
So then, does this observation about Paul’s customary style, his formal opening and greeting, have anything to say to us today with the problems we face in living and maintaining a “Christian way of life”? Our modern tendency to see in “formality” the extinguishment of personal friendship is certainly not confirmed by Paul’s way of writing to his co-workers, even if he is their “team leader”.
Our inherited political concept of authority in which “personal relationships” and “becoming personally involved” is strictly separated from organisational responsibility is actually put into doubt by Paul’s epistolary style. Of course, we could read our own latter-day dogmatic assumptions into the text but at this point we would have to say that Paul does not teach such a rigid distinction.
It would be a significant stretch of the meaning of the text for us to read him saying, “Whenever you write letters, Timothy, you should adopt the formal tone I have adopted in my opening.” That would be to seriously mis-read the letter.
Now, of course, Timothy may have written letters just like Paul has done and we can expect that he had thereby also learned from Paul something about letter-writing and how he should organise the contents of his letters, how he should frame its greetings and its closing remarks.
My suggestion is that we read this opening as Paul’s recognition that he is indeed in the process of writing a letter and that as a letter it should follow conventional and readily recognisable letter-writing protocols. The development of cultural technologies and artefacts that enable the writing of a letter is evidence of God’s creation opening up under the stewardship of God’s image-bearers. Letter-writing and letters have their place in God’s kingdom and so Paul writes as he does to commend a life-perspective in which everything we do takes places within the creational context of our God-given responsibilities.
Of course, one cannot properly understand the Good News without noting that the preaching thereof put John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles, on a collision course with the Roman occupiers, the Herodian quislings and the Jewish religious authorities. And in that sense, Paul shows, by what he writes, that he knows that such letters with their proclamation has a political challenge of greatest significance. In fact, he refers to his chains that bespeak the political accusation that he, by proclaiming the Kingdom of God, has committed what some presumed was a treason against Caesar.
But we should keep in mind that what we have discussed indicates that the Good News did not only come at that political time. It burst upon the Mediterranean world, as we have noted, at a time in the history of technology. Writing had already developed. Parchment was a taken-for-granted part of studying and communicating in those times. There was pen and there was ink available for Paul to write these letters. The means of transportation had also been developed. Commerce, trade and travel were such that it was possible to communicate between people of different languages.
The New Testament discusses the way a distinctively Christian “way of life” was made possible and opened itself up in various ways in the cultural and political context of the time. It describes for us how it arose amid the dominant cultural forms and processes of the time. It instructs us of how those committed to this way of life refused to allow themselves to become just another Jewish sect – which was increasingly difficult anyway because of the persistent efforts of the Jewish religious and traditional leadership to suppress and, if possible, eradicate any such a zealot sectarian proclamation of a Messiah. And neither did it accommodate itself to the Roman Imperial system that implied the religious devotion to Caesar as a deity who, through the pious obedience of his subjects, would ensure that the Empire would hold together.
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