There are some theological statements in the Pastoral epistles, but there is little theological argument, and the most obvious feature of these letters is that they are largely given over to ethical teaching. The question that this raises is the extent to which theology is merely incidental to the ethical interest of these epistles. It is important not to impose a framework on the texts we are examining, so we begin by considering their primary ethical content and asking how this interacts with, moulds or reflects their theology.

In the Greco-Roman environment, ethics was a branch of philosophy, and so might theology be, but there was usually little perceived connection between the two. In Jewish tradition, however, ethics and theology were inseparable: for the way of life set forth in Torah, revealed by God, constituted Jewish ethics. To what extent did the Pastorals inherit that Jewish perspective? Or has ethics lost its theological foundation and become ‘autonomous’? Is it true that these epistles continue ‘the movement … away from the Pauline theological-eschatological grounding of ethics towards an unreflected ethics that is indistinguishable from good citizenship’?

One charge brought against the Pastorals is that their ‘bourgeois’ ethics and social conformity value respectability rather than holiness. That would be another way of characterising a perceived drift away from a theological view of ethics, away from the assumption that the will of God is the source and ground of human conduct.