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- Especially university students,
but not just university students,
as they study, as they encounter critical scholarship
for the first time they discover that
critical scholars typically
think that not all of Paul's letters were written by him.
So there's 13 letters in critical scholarship.
The pastoral epistles,
that's 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.
Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, Colossians.
Many scholars think that those letters aren't authentic.
That is, they think they're not written by Paul.
Another word for that is they think
they're pseudepigraphical, that is, falsely written.
As evangelicals we don't accept that view,
and why don't we accept it,
I want to talk about that in a minute.
But why do they even think, why would anyone think
that some of the letters aren't written by Paul?
And what they look at is the style,
the way the letters are written
can be a little different.
The pastorals are different from Romans,
you may notice that even reading in English.
And then the content is different,
and the pastoral epistles, that's 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus,
the pastoral epistles are a good example of that
where you have a lot of emphasis on church order,
you know, elders, and deacons.
The kind of things that Paul doesn't talk about
in his other letters.
So those are sort of the two big issues that cause people
to doubt some of the letters are written by Paul.
So I don't think that's convincing.
I don't think it's convincing at all,
and here's several reasons.
First, let's just start with something really simple.
All the letters claim to be written by Paul.
So if the letters aren't truly written by Paul,
isn't that deceptive?
I would say it is.
That it's deceptive to claim
to write in someone else's name,
that is, Paul.
So there's an issue here of the truthfulness of Scripture,
if these letters weren't truly written by Paul.
But, secondly, some might say well
that was just accepted in that culture.
But secondly I think we see it wasn't
accepted in that culture.
In 2 Thessalonians 2:2,
Paul specifically says that he rejects letters
falsely written in his name.
So, Paul speaks against it specifically,
and then he ends that letter in 3:17
by saying here's my distinguishing mark,
Paul took the pen at that point and wrote his name,
here's my distinguishing mark on all the letters.
So, clearly, Paul is concerned
about authenticity of the letters.
The third thing we can say about the Pastorals themselves,
why are they a little different,
why is the style a little different?
Well, I think we can say
the situation that Paul is writing to,
what Paul writes about is determined in part
by the situation.
The Pastorals are written near the end of Paul's life,
he's thinking about the future,
he's thinking about the future of the church,
who's going to be the leaders,
what the structure of the church is going to be.
So, I think that accounts for the different content,
and it's even possible, when you think of style,
it's even possible that Paul employed a secretary.
That was quite common in the ancient world
so that could account for the style.
Here's another thing we can say that's quite interesting.
Did the early church, after the time of Paul,
were they concerned about these things at all?
So in the second century,
there was a book written called "The Acts of Paul and Thecla."
"The Acts of Paul and Thecla" are part of
the New Testament Apocrypha.
The person who wrote this book was a Bishop,
he was a leader in the church,
but they defrocked him and they removed him
from his Bishopric, they demoted him from office,
because he claimed that Paul wrote it,
he wrote in Paul's name,
but isn't it interesting that the early church
didn't say, well that's fine, you can write
in someone's name, they actually removed him
from office for doing this.
And we see another early writer, Serapion
who writes about the false, falsely letters and documents
ascribed to Peter and he says we reject,
we reject false and inauthentic letters and documents.
So, we have the self-claim of the Scriptures themselves,
right, these letter's claim to be written by Paul,
and then I've given you significant evidence that
the early church, Paul himself, and the early church
writers were concerned about authenticity,
that they thought that writing in someone else's name
was deceptive.
The last thing I want to say,
is that pseudepigraphical letters,
falsely written letters,
letters written in someone else's name,
they were never accepted as authoritative,
as authoritative Scripture.
So, I think we have good reasons for saying,
despite the critical views, we have good reason
for having confidence that Paul wrote all the letters
ascribed to him and I think that's true
of the entire New Testament.
We have authentic documents, Praise the Lord!
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching Honest Answers.
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