God and Christian existence in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus

• Main Author: Couser, Greg A.
• Published: University of Aberdeen 1992
• Subjects: 230
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.592277

The present study is a comprehensive examination of the statements about God in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus to redress their neglect and to attempt to resolve questions concerning their nature, their function, and the conception of God which lies behind them. In chaps. 2-4 we make a careful contextual study of the way the author speaks about God. The letters are addressed individually to avoid blurring distinctions between them or neglecting individual emphases. The theo-logical statements are grouped according to common forms or motifs. However, singular statements are also addressed. These letters reveal that the author incorporated OT tradition as mediated via the LXX and wider circles of Hellenistic Judaism, the Jesus tradition, and Pauline Tradition within an overall Pauline soteriological framework. Where statements about God occur, they serve to ground the ethical admonitions; theology interpenetrates ethics. Also, his constant stress upon the nature of God's saving work in Christ counters the heresy which the author understands to be distorting God's saving plan. Thus, the author's focus upon God and Saviour and the way he saves fulfils hortatory and polemical aims. He conceives of God as both transcendent and personal. He sits enthroned over the power structures of the cosmos, yet he is also actively and directly involved in the world toward the execution of his saving purposes. Finally, the examination addresses questions concerning the uniqueness of the author's terminology and its relation to the heterodoxy envisioned. Arguments for the use of traditional concepts selected and molded within the Ephesian community against an Ephesus-based Christian group are presented as a possible basis for the terminology used. Lastly, we suggest that the soteriological focus and the way the author speaks of God's saving work reflect a pointed response to a heresy which was perverting God's saving plan.