In these opening lines, I want to introduce the reason why I am writing this book. I have been moved by the interest in learning more about the Pauline epistles because they are practically the only resource that we, as God’s people, have to learn about the doctrinal themes of the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Some might not entirely agree with this statement, but if we make a brief account of what the 27 books of the New Testament present to us, we will realize that most of them do not delve into matters of faith life to the same magnitude as the Pauline epistles do.
The Gospels present to us Jesus’ Work, his life and deeds, his Words, his example, his sacrifice on the cross, out of love, to save mankind from total perdition, but it is Paul’s teachings that lead us to interpret and understand what the message of the cross means; a sacred history without the proper doctrinal content to support it leads us only to develop a religious philosophy that walks parallel with the natural paganism that emerged mythologically with the beginning of every civilization.
So, if you can appreciate it now, studying the Pauline epistles is a necessity for spiritual growth; ignoring them leaves us with a Christian identity, yes, but without the true sense of what it means to be Children of God.
When I began to study them, I believed, like many readers of them, that the thirteen, or fourteen, epistles we know of Paul were all that he wrote, and he did so with the purpose of recording in them his knowledge and doctrinal Revelation of the Gospel.
In the development of my study, I discovered that these two statements were not exactly what moved Paul to write, but rather that in his task as a pastor-writer, there was much more abundant production than what we know today. In the development of this introduction, I intend to explain what were the true motives that led the apostle to write epistles as part of his apostolic task.
Paul’s Revelation
The Revelation that Paul received of the Gospel was not the product of systematic study of the Torah and/or the prophetic books; the Revelation of the Gospel in Paul was by direct intervention from God, who after his conversion on the road to Damascus, instructed Paul divinely about its content and meaning; in the epistle to the Galatians, Paul explains:
“But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Galatians 1:11-12
When we speak of the Revelation of the Gospel in Paul, we are not only referring to the saving message through the Grace of Jesus, this is not only Paul’s message of the cross; Paul’s Gospel also means, and additionally, the doctrinal content that has to do with the life of faith, with the new man, with the worship of God, with spiritual warfare, with the liberation from demons, with the second coming of Jesus to Jerusalem, and of course, with Jesus’ millennial reign.
Regarding the apostle Paul having a singular Revelation about the Gospel, there are testimonies that justify this.
In the second epistle that the apostle Peter wrote, he refers to Paul’s epistles and admits that some are difficult to understand, which the unlearned and unstable twist; this difficulty in understanding refers precisely to the doctrinal content with, and by, which the apostle Paul wrote.
The apostle Paul himself testifies about himself, recognizing the doctrinal Revelation that was delivered to him directly from the Almighty; Paul writes to the faith community of Ephesus, and tells them: “by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ.”
In his second epistle to the Corinthians, we find another reference:
“It is doubtless not profitable for me to boast. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord: I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”
2 Corinthians 12:1-4
Although Paul speaks of a man in Christ who was caught up to the third heaven, Paul is referring to himself in the third person, precisely for this reason he says, I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. How much could Paul have received from the Lord, and not transmitted in any of his epistles? The Lord knows.
The important thing about all these assertions is to understand that each of the Pauline epistles has a content of the Revelation of the Gospel that the apostle received from the Lord, but that each of them is not all of the apostle’s Revelation.
The True Purpose of the Pauline Epistles
There are two important points that I must emphasize and explain regarding Paul’s way of writing, and I begin right here.
First, the Pauline epistles were not written to record the Revelation that God gave to Paul; the epistles are not a compendium, or doctrinal manual, that each faith community had under its jurisdiction and that should be consulted to impart discipleship doctrine.
The epistles were written out of Paul’s need to maintain contact with the faith communities he established along his way, and to instruct and correct certain Judaic doctrines that infiltrated among the communities also due to the constant visits of the Jews.
The Pauline epistles were, therefore, an instrument for Paul to ‘ensure’ that no faith community, however new, would suffer doctrinally for not having anything to refer to in times of turmoil due to theological infiltrations not conforming to Jesus’ Gospel.
The content of Revelation with which Paul established the Truth of the Gospel served to establish instruction, correction, and direction; each community increased its knowledge based on what the apostle established through them.
In this sense, the Pauline epistles, each in their order, contain levels of Revelation to the extent that they faced the doctrinal problem that threatened to dissolve the faith community. The content of Revelation is not the same for all; not all faced the same issues.
The Evidence of a Greater Literary Work
Secondly, regarding Paul’s way of writing, not everything that came to us from Paul is all that the apostle wrote. When we begin to study the Pauline epistles, the concept that we form a priori is that Paul wrote only thirteen epistles throughout his ministry, fourteen if we consider Hebrews as his authorship; however, in Paul’s own accounts, we find certain evidence that suggests to us that the apostle’s literary production was much greater than thirteen epistles.
In the remainder of this section, I will cite some of this evidence and comment on it.
I will begin with this reference that we find in Paul’s epistle to Titus:
Titus 1:5: “For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city as I commanded you.”
The reference that the apostle himself makes of this instruction to Titus is not recorded in The Acts of the Apostles, and one might ask, at what moment of the three apostolic journeys did the apostle visit Crete and commission Titus for this mission?
We know that Paul wintered in Crete on his way to Rome, but the epistle to Titus was written from Ephesus, during his third apostolic journey, so this reference by the apostle himself recorded in his epistle to Titus does not have a parallel reference in The Acts of the Apostles to be able to locate it in time.
It seems as if Titus is part of a different story than the one presented in The Acts of the Apostles; however, in the apostle’s own epistles, we find a good number of references that lead us to see Titus as present with Paul as Timothy was.
Although in the epistle he calls him “a true son in our common faith,” The Acts of the Apostles does not include him as a co-protagonist alongside Paul; however, Paul assures that Titus accompanied him on his journey to Jerusalem to meet with the elders and apostles regarding the circumcision of the Gentiles. The second epistle to the Corinthians also references Titus, by the apostle himself, that Titus visited Corinth by Paul’s instruction.
In this first evidence, we can observe that a good part of Paul’s ministry, in relation to Titus, was not told by Luke, or was lost from the original account, who knows.
Let’s look at a second piece of evidence:
2 Corinthians 11:25: “Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep;”
At what point during his apostolic journeys did Paul suffer three shipwrecks? The only shipwreck we know of is the shipwreck on his journey to Rome, and the second epistle to the Corinthians, from where he makes this reference, was written at the end of his third apostolic journey, he had not yet begun his journey to Rome.
Again, we have a reference of which nothing is told to us in The Acts of the Apostles, which clearly points to the fact that the apostle developed much more activity than what is recorded in The Acts of the Apostles, this opens up the possibility for us to understand that Paul could have written much more than just thirteen, or fourteen, epistles.
Let’s look at a third piece of evidence:
2 Peter 3:15-16: “and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.”
This reference is what the apostle Peter makes in his epistles about ‘some’ of Paul’s epistles, we don’t know exactly which ones; but the important thing about this reference is that, if we verify the recipients of the apostle Peter’s epistles, they all belong to regions that Paul did not visit.
Let’s see it in more detail. In the introduction of the two epistles of the apostle Peter, he writes, and I quote, “to the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia”; according to the writings of The Acts of the Apostles, Paul did not visit, at least, Pontus, Cappadocia, or Bithynia; so, which epistles of Paul does the apostle Peter refer to?
There is no doubt, then, that the epistles to which the apostle Peter refers could not have been any of the thirteen that we have recorded in our Bibles, because if people from Pontus, Bithynia, and Cappadocia knew of the epistles to which Peter refers, Paul could well have written to communities that he did not necessarily visit.
This leads us, again, to admit that the apostle Paul wrote epistles that did not reach us.
Let’s look at a fourth piece of evidence:
Colossians 4:16: “Now when this epistle is read among you, see that it is read also in the church of the Laodiceans, and that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.”
This reference is made by the apostle himself, in which he mentions the epistle to the faith community of Laodicea, of which we have no physical evidence of its existence. This reference verifies that there were ‘other’ epistles of which we have no copy.
Let’s look at a fifth piece of evidence:
1 Corinthians 16:19: “The churches of Asia greet you…”
Asia, in this context, does not refer to a continent, it refers to a Roman province that was included in what is now Turkey.
The churches of Asia, to which the apostle refers, correspond to the various churches that were founded within the Roman province of Asia, in present-day Turkey, which according to historical knowledge, was formed by the cities of:
- Ephesus, the capital of the province
- Smyrna (present-day Izmir)
- Pergamum
- Thyatira
- Sardis
- Philadelphia
- Laodicea
- Colossae
- Hierapolis
- Miletus
- Troas
According to the references in The Acts of the Apostles, Paul resided for three years in Ephesus, but it does not reference trips to all these cities, which indicates that not everything the apostle did during his ministry is referenced in the books that describe his ministry.
If Paul assures that the churches of Asia greet you, it is because he had contact with each and every one of them.
Let’s look at a sixth piece of evidence:
2 Thessalonians 3:17: “The salutation of Paul with my own hand, which is a sign in every epistle; so I write.”
This is the second epistle he writes, but it gives the impression that he had written many others…
The apostle’s greeting that appears in the second epistle to the Thessalonians gives the impression that the apostle has written many more epistles before this one; however, according to the records, this epistle is the second that he wrote, How in his second epistle does he assure that this is his sign in every letter of his, if he has just recently written his first epistle?
The above is not conclusive in terms of understanding that not everything that came to us, and that we have recorded in the Bible, is everything that the apostle wrote during his apostolic ministry.
A final piece of evidence:
Romans 15:19: “in mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.”
This is the last reference we want to present, in which the Roman province of Illyricum is mentioned, which if the reader looks at any map from Paul’s time, will realize that such province corresponded approximately to part or all of the territories of present-day Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia.
Illyricum is not described in the accounts of The Acts of the Apostles, but the apostle Paul assures that to this western frontier he filled with the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven. There is activity of the apostle Paul’s ministry that is not recorded in The Acts of the Apostles.
Implications for our Understanding
We must be aware that because the Pauline epistles were not written to record all his doctrinal Revelation about the Gospel and the Kingdom of God, many doctrinal themes were not transmitted opportunely, and our generations must derive it supernaturally through the intervention of the Holy Spirit; a clear example we have in a reference that the apostle makes in his second epistle to the Thessalonians, speaking about the apostasy and the son of perdition, Paul closes the paragraph with them, saying: “Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things?”
Paul explained to the Thessalonian community about the apostasy and the son of perdition, they knew about the matter, but no written reference remained about what and who are the characters referred to in the story, which leaves us with an ignorance that has to be Revealed in the supernaturality of the Holy Spirit’s manifestation.
This last reference confirms that the purpose of the Pauline epistles was not to leave a record of the doctrinal Revelation content that the apostle carried from God.
So, it is very important that we take into account the pastoral value, of instruction, correction, and guidance that the apostle assigned to his epistolary writings; although they contain doctrinal Revelation, it is not all that Paul received from God.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that the apostolic, regional coverage of the apostle Paul was in reality much broader than what is presented to us in The Acts of the Apostles; with this we come to the conclusion that Paul founded many more faith communities, to which, no doubt, he dedicated time, effort, and pastoral care, and although there is no record within his own writings about how many epistles he wrote, and to whom he wrote them, the evidence points to the fact that the epistles we have in the Bible were not all the epistles he wrote; we would not be surprised if traces of some other of his epistles suddenly appeared.
