When stepping into the world of Paul’s letters, teachers and students find themselves inside a multitude of principles and doctrines taught by the Apostle while, under divine nudging, he moved across the northern Mediterranean world. For English readers, except for a few well-known and oft-quoted passages, part of the problem in understanding Paul’s expressions lies in the King James Version of the Bible that was published more than four hundred years ago. But let us not fall into discouragement when trying to grasp the ideas of a very smart and faithful servant of Jesus Christ. With persistence, we can view clearly Paul’s portrait of the celestial harmony and personal responsibility that emerges from Christ’s grace, which the Father bestows upon the faithful as both a free and reciprocal gift, inviting a covenant relationship.
It is a matter of historical record that Paul wrote many letters to individuals and Christian communities to address their needs and doctrinal questions, to provide encouragement, and to admonish them to repent and follow Christ. These Epistles, containing as they do only Paul’s side of all the communication that passed between him and these individuals and groups, often make his intended meaning notoriously difficult to ascertain (see 2 Pet. 3:15–16). It seems that the Epistles Paul wrote to one individual Christian community or another, although inspired, were not necessarily binding for the entire emerging Christian community in the Mediterranean region. In a different vein, the presence of letters assigned to Paul in the New Testament, especially those letters that are disputed as coming from him, sets up the question of whether a letter possibly written by an admirer of Paul, even if now in the New Testament canon, is as valuable as one written by a person possessing the apostolic authority he did. If and when we can responsibly embrace the point of view that Paul was the author of a certain letter, or even that an Epistle was written under his direction, that letter then carries the weight of an Apostle commissioned by Jesus Christ himself. In this way, the gap between an admirer’s letter that has made its way into the New Testament and letters from the Apostle himself is more than minimal. It becomes enormously significant.
The thirteen Epistles ascribed to Paul, in time, became part of the scriptural canon established by Athanasius (AD 296–373).1 As the bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius organized Paul’s Epistles based on the descending length of the original Greek text, beginning with Romans and ending with Philemon.2 However, the actual chronological order of the books in the late AD 40s and into the 50s probably was 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and Romans.3 Today, with the exception of an academic group who holds that Paul wrote only four surviving letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians), most scholars consider the letters listed above to be the work of Paul himself. That is not the case with the rest of the Epistles traditionally identified with Paul. Scholars are more or less evenly divided about whether or not Paul authored Colossians and 2 Thessalonians, while most scholars consider Ephesians and the pastoral Epistles of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus to be pseudepigraphical (Greek for “written down as an imitation or falsely”).4 Hebrews was not attributed to Paul in the earliest manuscripts, and today it is not considered Pauline, as the recently published volume in the BYU New Testament Commentary concludes.5 Its authorship will not be discussed in this essay.6 In its simplest sense, the term “pseudepigraphical,”7 as understood in academia, only means that scholars believe that a work was written by someone other than Paul. When judging authenticity, scholars generally consider the writing style, the theology, and the general themes of the seven authentic Epistles to be similar, while the other Epistles seem quite different, and therefore many scholars reject them as written by the Apostle.
Again, the term “pseudepigraphical,” which has often been used to categorize the above-mentioned six Epistles, does not mean they are false or erroneous but only that they were written by someone other than Paul. They could, however, still bear his imprint. An unnamed secretary, who was authorized by him, may have composed them under his direction—and thus they would still be authoritative. On the other hand, the term also applies to documents that were written much later by someone other than the assumed author and were designed to corrupt Christian doctrine or to gain more readers and fame and to make money. Does it matter whether an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ like Paul wrote a text or some other faithful Church member wrote it, someone like a modern stake president, who did not wear the apostolic mantle but followed the Apostles and may have even written down their words as closely as he or she could remember? In response, the term “pseudepigraphical” is not definitive enough to be helpful for Latter-day Saints to indicate the authority (or lack of authority) behind a given New Testament work.8
Concerning whether Paul wrote the six Epistles in question, from a Latter-day Saint point of view, prophets have frequently used spokesmen and scribes to do God’s work. For example, we think of Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe, and Tertius, the penman for Paul (see Jer. 36:1–4 and Rom. 16:22). What is most important to know is not so much who the original author was but whether the resulting Epistle was composed under the influence of revelation and the Holy Ghost. We accept “the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated [or transmitted] correctly” (A of F 1:8), and so these writings were inspired. Therefore, as far as the Church is concerned, these six Epistles are legitimate and authoritative.
This position stands in contrast to scholars who have argued that these Epistles were actually written by Paul’s disciples a generation or two after the Apostle’s death. According to these scholars, these pseudepigraphical letters became part of the Christian corpus of scripture because they were subsequently accepted by Jesus’ followers to be in general accord with Pauline ideas. Such individuals also believe that they are not necessarily binding on the Christian community today.9 However, late first- and early second-century Christians attributed these six letters to Paul and therefore accepted them as binding.
The modern unwillingness to accept them as Pauline is partly due to theological bias. Particularly, most Protestant biblical scholars have commonly believed that a church organization did not develop until after Paul’s death. They have therefore traditionally considered Ephesians and the pastoral Epistles to have been written much later by individuals motivated to justify the existence of Christian churches and doctrines present in early Catholic tradition.10
Like some New Testament scholars today, Martin Luther had no scruples about ranking different books of the Bible as more or less valuable depending on whether they evidenced his defining message of grace and justification by faith (sola gratia and sola fide). He liked certain Pauline works, such as Romans and Galatians, because they contained proof texts that were central to his theology.11 Matching this same bias, a current group of scholars believe some of the letters that they judge to be pseudepigraphical have a softer tone than that of the alleged radical Paul, who, in their view, preached free grace and justification by faith. Thus they consider them as not written by Paul and, hence, as less authoritative. In many ways, modern scholars, like Luther, may have not recognized or controlled their biases. They may have categorized the Epistles as authentic or questionable based on their preconceived notions about the teachings of Jesus’ followers, the meaning of Paul’s writings, and how closely a particular letter fits with their current theologies of faith, justification, and grace. Nevertheless, all six Epistles, including Hebrews, became part of the biblical canon beginning in the late fourth century.
Paul’s Epistles were popularly circulated and read aloud among various churches (Col. 4:16; 1 Thes. 5:27). Peter noted that Paul composed these letters in wisdom, but Peter or his scribe asserted that the meanings of these Epistles were changed and twisted, knowingly or unknowingly, by the unlearned “unto their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:15–16). In other words, even in very early times, just like today, some Christians did not understand the supposedly straightforward meanings of Paul’s Epistles, and they were spiritually harmed because of their occasional willful ignorance. Misunderstanding these Epistles had serious spiritual consequences during the Apostasy because many interpreted them to validate such false doctrines as the total depravity of man, cheap grace, easy faith, predestination, determinism negating moral agency, indulgences, and many similar teachings and practices.
Latter-day Saints believe the Bible, except for the Song of Solomon, bears the inspiration of God when rendered faithfully into a modern tongue. The translation of the Bible is, in fact, of equal concern for Latter-day Saints as its authorship. Joseph Smith believed “the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers.”12 However, he also taught that the Bible had been twisted and changed by “ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests [who] have committed many errors.”13 Much of the doctrinal uncertainty of the Bible stems from incorrectly and anachronistically interpreting Paul’s Epistles to support such theological beliefs as those promoted by Augustine and Luther.
For example, in the first century, faith (pistis in ancient Greek) was associated with gaining knowledge, making covenants, becoming faithful, and maintaining relationships with God and fellow humans through the patron-client system.14 That is to say, in this ancient Mediterranean system of vertical reciprocity known as charis, “grace,” a powerful patron would provide gifts to a lowly client to increase his reputation in society. Upon accepting the patron’s generous gifts, this client was then obligated to support and reciprocate the patron in whatever way the lower-ranking person might be able. This charis convention of gift exchange thereby formed a social and political alliance, similar to how most social organizations work today. Of course, the client could never fully repay the patron for his obliging charis gift, known in anthropology and sociology as vertical reciprocity. Almost without exception, the humble client sought to give something in return to his generous patron. Significantly, this patron-client system of charis connected Paul’s ancient Mediterranean world together, and Paul utilized this convention to explain to early Gentile Christian communities how God the Father’s charis obligated his children to form and develop a relationship with him through making and keeping covenants, thus undercutting the conventional and traditional Protestant belief of easy grace and salvation by faith alone (sola gratia and sola fide).
However, beginning with Augustine (AD 356–430) and because of the widespread influence of Neoplatonism, faith became a mystical, emotional, and inner experience that God enigmatically granted by ephemeral grace to some who were mysteriously and unexpectedly predestined to receive salvation. The Roman world of the fifth century AD was politically collapsing and no longer associated charis with covenantal relationships of the client-patron system. Augustine and many others twisted the active, relational covenant nuances of faith into the “Rule of Faith,” which eventually meant possessing only a mental ascent to or a mental belief in the creeds and doctrines of the orthodox tradition. Augustine also misunderstood Paul’s use of charis when he asserted that it was a no-strings-attached, unconditional, free gift.15 These ideas were all based on Augustine’s own innovative interpretations of the Pauline Epistles that he chose to feature largely because of Neoplatonic philosophical ideas that he had embraced. However, grace in the first century implied receiving all the gifts of God, especially Christ’s Atonement, and then reciprocating with God by making covenants with him as a partnership of discipleship within the patron-client relationship. This relationship was anciently strengthened by means of loyal devotion to God the Father and cultivating discipleship, as it also is today.
What some consider to be the “authentic” Pauline Epistles have also served to justify other later doctrinal errors, including but not limited to original sin, infant baptism, limited atonement, assured salvation of believers, irresistible grace, justification by faith alone, the wickedness of the Fall, and Adam’s alleged sin.16 As already noted, Joseph Smith pointed out that “from sundry revelations which had been received, it was apparent that many points touching the salvation of men, had been taken from the Bible, or lost before it was compiled.”17 It is certainly possible that some of these Pauline Epistles had suffered from copying and recopying even before Augustine and then Luther received and misinterpreted them. It is likely that 1 Nephi 13–14 pointed to some in the Hellenistic and later medieval church as possible culprits for introducing changes in how people understood scripture.18 Whatever the character of the original New Testament text was, 1 Nephi 13:26 notes that many plain and precious parts and covenants of the gospel were taken out, and that very possibility includes the Pauline Epistles through their transmission, misinterpretation, and mistranslation.19
Even allowing for mistakes and deviations in his letters, Paul’s Epistles can still be supernal in establishing doctrines of the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially when translated and read in light of their first-century context and illuminated by the Restoration. Paul taught doctrines and principles to his readers that were often neglected in Christian historical thought and were not comprehensible until the Restoration, such as his teachings about the Fall (Rom. 5), the Atonement (Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15; etc.), baptism for the dead (1 Cor. 15:29), charity (1 Cor. 13), gifts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12), the holiness of one’s body (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:15, 19), and the essential character and meaning of baptism (Rom. 6). Despite the idea that New Testament texts were changed according to the doctrinal biases promoted at the time, the Book of Mormon and other Restoration scripture, including the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and other teachings of modern prophets, can restore correct doctrine that was lost or made unclear in Paul’s Epistles.
