Posts

Showing posts with the label Pastoral epistles

Gays and the Bible (1 Timothy)

Image
Image via Wikipedia By Elodie Ballantine Emig The most natural place to turn, after an examination of Paul’s vice list in I Corinthians , is to his vice list in I Timothy .  Since the early 19th century, it has been alleged that Paul couldn’t possibly have written the Pastorals. The most common objections are: The writing style and word choices are different from Paul’s earlier letters. The Pastorals don’t fit with what we know of Paul from Acts . The heresy combated is second-century Gnosticism . The church is too developed for the first century. The theology of the Pastorals lacks Paul’s distinctives. The Pastorals are not contained in the oldest (mid-third-century) codex we have of the Pauline epistles . Before briefly answering these objections, I must state my conviction that the burden of proof is on the scholar who denies Pauline authorship to books regarded as genuine for eighteen centuries. I Timothy claims to have been written by Paul, and it was preserved and ca...