The Undisputed Letters

Seven letters — Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon — are accepted as authentically Paul’s by virtually all scholars across the confessional and critical spectrum. They are the bedrock of any account of the apostle, the first-person witness against which his life is reconstructed and his theology read, and the criterion by which the authenticity of the remaining letters is tested. This file surveys the seven — their occasions, contents, and dates — and their standing as the secure foundation of the corpus.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Seven and Why They Stand

The “undisputed” or “authentic” Pauline letters are seven: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Their authenticity rests on convergent grounds — they are attested early and widely, they share a consistent vocabulary, style, and theology, and each is anchored in concrete circumstances of Paul’s mission that fit his career as known from Acts and the other letters (Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 1997; Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life, 1996). Across the spectrum from conservative to radical criticism these seven are not in serious doubt; even scholars who reject most of the rest of the corpus retain them. They are therefore the foundation: what Paul thought and did is drawn first from these, and the contested letters are weighed by their conformity to them (see The Disputed Letters and the Corpus).

1 Thessalonians: The Earliest Letter

By the common reckoning, 1 Thessalonians is the earliest surviving Christian writing, sent from Corinth around A.D. 50–51 to the young church Paul had founded at Thessalonica and been forced to leave (Acts 17:1–10; 1 Thess. 2:17–3:10). It is a warm, pastoral letter, reassuring converts about those who had died before the Lord’s return (“them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him,” 1 Thess. 4:14) and exhorting them to holiness and watchfulness in view of the parousia (1 Thess. 4:13–5:11). It shows Paul’s eschatological hope in its early, vivid form.

Galatians: The Charter of Freedom

Galatians is Paul’s most combative letter, written to churches in Asia Minor that had been unsettled by teachers urging circumcision and Law-observance on Gentile believers. Paul defends his apostolic independence (Gal. 1–2, including his account of the Jerusalem meeting and the confrontation with Cephas at Antioch, Gal. 2:11–14; see The Antioch Incident) and argues fiercely that “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16). Its theme is freedom: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Gal. 5:1). Its date depends on the unresolved Jerusalem-visit question (see Acts and Pauline Chronology), falling somewhere in the late 40s to mid-50s.

1 and 2 Corinthians: The Pastoral Correspondence

The two Corinthian letters are the richest window onto Paul as a pastor wrestling with a difficult and gifted community. 1 Corinthians (from Ephesus, c. 53–55) addresses divisions, sexual immorality, lawsuits, marriage, food offered to idols, the conduct of worship, spiritual gifts, and the resurrection — containing the great hymn to love (1 Cor. 13), the earliest account of the institution of the Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:23–26), and the foundational resurrection chapter (1 Cor. 15). 2 Corinthians is a more anguished and personal letter (or, on a common view, a composite of letters), in which Paul defends his apostleship against rivals, speaks of the “treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7), the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18–21), his “thorn in the flesh” and the power made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:7–10), and the catalogue of his sufferings (2 Cor. 11:23–28). Some scholars regard 2 Corinthians as a redactional combination of two or more genuine Pauline letters [Disputed: the unity of 2 Corinthians is questioned by many who detect seams (e.g. chs. 1–9 vs 10–13, and 6:14–7:1 as an insertion), proposing it is a compilation of two to five Pauline fragments; others defend its integrity — in either case the material is judged authentically Pauline (Murphy-O’Connor 1996; Brown 1997)].

Romans: The Fullest Statement

Romans, written from Corinth around A.D. 56–57 to a church Paul had not founded and hoped to visit on the way to Spain (Rom. 15:22–29), is the longest and most systematic of the letters and the nearest thing to a sustained exposition of his gospel. It expounds the universal need of Jew and Gentile alike (Rom. 1–3), justification by grace through faith on the model of Abraham (Rom. 3:21–4:25), the new life in Christ and the Spirit (Rom. 5–8), the destiny of Israel (Rom. 9–11), and the shape of the Christian life (Rom. 12–15). It is the letter the Fathers commented on most — above all Chrysostom, whose Homilies on Romans are the supreme patristic engagement with Paul (see Chrysostom and the Apostle) — and the letter most pivotal in later Western controversies over grace (see Grace and Righteousness).

Philippians and Philemon: The Letters from Prison

Philippians is a letter of joy and friendship written from imprisonment (Phil. 1:13) to the church that had supported Paul, containing the great Christ-hymn of self-emptying and exaltation — “Who, being in the form of God… made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant… wherefore God also hath highly exalted him” (Phil. 2:6–11) — and the autobiographical reckoning of Philippians 3. Philemon, the shortest letter, is a personal note to a Christian slave-owner on behalf of the runaway slave Onesimus, whom Paul sends back “not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved” (Philem. 16) — a small letter of immense moral weight, showing the gospel quietly transforming a social relation from within. The place of imprisonment from which Philippians and Philemon were written (Rome, Ephesus, or Caesarea) is debated, affecting their date [Disputed: the “captivity letters” Philippians and Philemon were traditionally dated to Paul’s Roman imprisonment (c. 60–62), but many scholars argue for an earlier Ephesian imprisonment (mid-50s) on grounds of the travel implied; the question is unresolved (Murphy-O’Connor 1996; Brown 1997)].

The Bedrock

Together these seven letters give us Paul in his own words: his gospel of grace, his theology of the cross and resurrection, his ecclesiology of the body of Christ, his ethics of love and freedom, his eschatological hope, and his own embattled, suffering, joyful person. Everything else known of Paul — the narrative of Acts, the contested letters, the later tradition — is read in their light, and the Orthodox commentary tradition, from Origen and Chrysostom to Theodoret and John of Damascus, made these letters the constant matter of its preaching and exegesis (see The Eastern Reading of Paul).

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, King James Version. The Epistles to the Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon.
  • Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997.
  • Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. Paul: A Critical Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
  • Bruce, F. F. Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977.