Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church (review)

James Aageson's engaging book examines the ways various groups within the early Church developed and utilized differing images of Paul. Rejecting the notion that only Gnostics and others on the fringe of the developing Church accepted Paul as an authority, he shows how various early Christian writers used both their image of Paul and Paul's letters as sources for their theological positions. Aageson's method is to compare the patterns and structures of the thought and theology of individual writings, rather than identifying features of the tradition and comparing each text to that synthetic structure.

Using this method, Aageson concludes that 2 Timothy was either written by someone other than the author of 1Timothy and Titus or that the situation it addressed was so different that it required a significant reorientation of thought. He also finds diverse patterns of thought in the manners in which Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen develop their images of Paul and use Pauline texts. Aageson's analysis of how the Acts of Paul constructs and uses its image of Paul undermines the notion that this work simply opposes the line of tradition the Pastorals represent by showing that in some ways, it stands close to the image of Paul in 2 Timothy, while in others, it opposes the outlook of 1Timothy and Titus.

Aageson demonstrates clearly that the church fathers did not belong to a monolithic tradition of developing orthodoxy that demanded conformity; rather, they drew on a range of developing trends, trends that sometimes stood in tension with one another. Christians such as those who wrote the Acts of Paul drew on some of the same trajectories, even as they interpreted them differently and used their image of Paul to advocate alternative views. Still, most recognized Paul as an authority and by the third century drew on his writings as authoritative.

The complexity Aageson uncovers shows that no simple model of conflict or separate trajectories sufficiently accounts for what we find in early Christian writings. Neither can models that assume movement from orthodoxy to heresy, or the reverse, explain the differences and commonalities in the theological structures and thought of these works. Aageson suggests a "multiplex"approach that recognizes commonality and tension within a shared tradition that contains competing elements and makes competing uses of common materials.

Readers will disagree with some specifics of Aageson's interpretation of individual texts, but such disagreements do not undermine his comparisons or his method of comparison. One might also ask for a larger and more diverse comparative base, but the series in which the book appears limits its length, as well as its explicit exchange with the scholarly literature on the works it does treat. These quibbles do not, however, significantly weaken Aageson's convincing case for acknowledging the complexity of the development of the Church's theology, ecclesiology, and ethic through the third century and the resultant need to move beyond the oppositional models that many still use to interpret the theological differences present in the early Church.