Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 76:1 (NA 2025)
Article: Dissertation Summary The Plan Of Salvation In The Letters To Timothy And Titus
Author: John Percival

TynBull 76:1 (2025) p. 205

Dissertation Summary
The Plan Of Salvation In The Letters To Timothy And Titus¹

John Percival

[email protected]

This thesis launches from two notable weaknesses in scholarship around the letters addressed to Timothy and Titus (LTT). First, they are commonly known as ‘The Pastoral Epistles’, but it is increasingly recognised that an unfortunate effect of this designation is that the distinctive contents of each of the three LTT are eclipsed by their combined teaching and outlook. Secondly, narrative analyses, which have proven fruitful in exploring theological aspects of Pauline letters, have largely not been applied to the LTT.1

This thesis employs a narrative approach to analyse the salvation-historical outlook found in each of the LTT. Taking one letter at a time, the various elements of a narrative ‘plan of salvation’ are delineated through careful exegesis. Next, the relationships between these elements are analysed for their contribution to the salvation-historical aspects of the theology and to the letter’s rhetorical purpose. The conclusions demonstrate the fruitfulness of examining the distinctiveness of the three LTT and serve to highlight areas where earlier scholarship has misconstrued the theology of the epistles individually and collectively.

Chapter 1 introduces the thesis, situating it amongst earlier work, especially that of Lewis Donelson and George Wieland. After setting out an approach to the letters which is, for the sake of argument, author-agnostic, there is a discussion of narrative approaches to the Pauline letters, particularly the

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nature of the narrative seen in salvation-historical and apocalyptic approaches to Paul. This leads to three research questions:

1. What narrative elements, particularly events and characters, are found in the texts? (This provides an inventory of items, grouped under four areas, that emerged: the period before Christ, the Christ event, the present age, and the eschatological end.)
2. To what extent and in what ways do the elements relate to one another within a narrative substructure? (This examines relationships between elements and determines to what extent they fit together as a whole, drawing especially on the varying construals of Pauline salvation history. In particular, the thesis considers whether there is a single, coherent story, the significance of history before Christ, and the place of the future within the narrative substructure.)
3. How do the narrative elements and substructure function rhetorically within the letters?

The next three chapters apply these que...