Hearing that Paul may not have written Ephesians or 1 Timothy can feel like a crack in the foundation. It does not have to. The authorship debate is a genuine historical question about who held the pen for six letters. It is not the same question as whether those letters are trustworthy, and treating the two as one is usually what turns curiosity into crisis.
This guide trains one habit: holding an open scholarly question steadily, seeing what the evidence shows and what it does not, without dismissing the question or letting it become a verdict on your faith. The disputed letters are the practice ground. You can work through it alone in about an hour, or with a group over one long session or two shorter ones.
Begin with where you actually stand
Before reading anything else, take two minutes and finish this line in one sentence: If it turned out Paul did not write one of these letters, I would conclude that… Do not polish it. Fold the paper or close the note. You will come back to it at the end. In a group, no one needs to read theirs aloud.
You are in honest company if your sentence is anxious. Lisa Fields first met this debate in a university course taught from a liberal perspective, and she has described the effect plainly: “the foundation of scripture was really rocked for me.” The critical view was presented as settled fact, “and it was as if that nothing else existed.” Later study exposed her to more than one view, and she landed in the middle, in what she calls “the most intellectually honest position,” weighing arguments rather than adopting a camp. That movement, from shock to study to a considered position, is the arc this guide asks you to practice.
Read what the letters say about their own making
Much of the relevant evidence comes from inside Paul’s letters. Read each passage below slowly and write down one thing it tells you about how a letter was produced or used.
- Romans 16:22. “I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.” Romans is one of the letters almost no one disputes. Who held the pen?
- Galatians 6:11. “Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.” Why would Paul point out his own handwriting if he always wrote the whole letter himself?
- 2 Thessalonians 3:17. “The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.” This claim appears in one of the disputed letters. What does that do to the conversation?
- Colossians 4:16. “And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.” What does this suggest about how far a letter traveled beyond its first readers?
Paul’s letters were written down by others at least some of the time, and Paul sometimes added a closing line himself. Letters passed between churches. None of this answers the authorship question. It does change the picture of what “Paul wrote this” meant in practice. A modern reader tends to imagine one man alone at a desk. The letters describe something more collaborative.
What a careful scholar puts on the table
Dr. Dennis Edwards, a pastor who holds a PhD in biblical studies, walked through the debate with Lisa Fields on a Jude 3 Project podcast episode. In his account the usual list of disputed letters is Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, and the arguments fall into three kinds: vocabulary and style, theology, and history. This guide is less interested in each argument than in how Edwards holds them. Watch four moves he makes.
First, he states the questions at full strength. On Ephesians, he notes that Acts records Paul spending a long time in Ephesus and leaving with a tearful farewell, yet the letter ends with none of the personal greetings Paul usually includes. He also notes that the words “at Ephesus” in the opening are missing from some ancient manuscripts, which raises the question of who the first readers were.
Second, he labels the weight of each argument. About style, he says, “Some of that might be a subjective argument,” since a writer’s choice of words shifts for many reasons, and a scribe may have shaped the wording. His conclusion is measured: “I think we don’t have to see different hands just because some language and grammar changes.”
Third, he offers a reason where he has one. On 2 Timothy, he points to the time between Paul’s early letters and the end of his life. “We’re talking 20 years. My own theological thoughts have developed over time,” he says, and he argues that “it’s fair to give somebody space to develop their thought over time.”
Fourth, he admits what he has not resolved. “I confess though, I still have some struggles with other books like second Peter,” he says. About the historical puzzles in the pastoral letters: “I’m not saying there aren’t answers to them, but I am saying they spark questions for us, and the careful reader will acknowledge that.”
Pause on that fourth move before going on. When a teacher tells you what he still finds hard, what happens to your confidence in the things he says he is sure of? Write down your honest reaction. You will return to it in the discussion.
The practice: sort before you conclude
This exercise takes about twenty minutes. Divide a page into three columns: What I can see in the text, What someone infers from it, and What my faith actually rests on.
- Read Romans 16:1-16, then Ephesians 6:21-24. In the first column, write what you observe about how each letter closes. Be specific: count the names greeted in each.
- In the second column, write two different inferences a reader might draw from that difference. One might be that a different writer composed Ephesians. Another might be that Ephesians was meant for more than one church. Add a third if you can. Do not choose yet.
- Now compare how two letters talk about salvation. Romans 13:11 reads, “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” Ephesians 2:6 and 2:8 read, “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” and, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Edwards observes that some scholars hear in Ephesians a salvation that has already happened, where other letters often point forward. In column one, write what each passage says about when salvation happens. In column two, write at least two explanations for the difference: a different author, a different emphasis for a different audience, a writer whose thought developed, or something else.
- In the third column, write what these passages teach about Christ, grace and the church. Then ask: does anything in column three change depending on which inference in column two turns out to be right?
- Under the page, write one sentence: What evidence would move me toward one inference over another? If you cannot name any, notice that. It may mean you are holding a position by habit rather than by reasons, in either direction.
The fear underneath: what if the name is wrong?
The hardest form of the objection deserves a direct look. Edwards separates two situations. Some books never name their author, and the church has relied on them anyway; Hebrews is his example, and the Gospels carry their names by tradition rather than in their text. A disputed Pauline letter is different, because it opens with Paul’s name. As Edwards puts it, “So it’s not to me that I don’t know who wrote something, it’s more the question of is it the person whose name is on the book?”
He does not dismiss that concern. He mentions that writing in a respected teacher’s name was a known practice outside Christian circles, and adds that whether it happened within Christian circles is itself debated. So that point cannot simply make the problem disappear. What he insists on is proportion: “So it is important that we trust the reliability of the works, and that may touch on authorship.” It may touch on authorship. Trust in these letters does not stand or fall on that question alone.
Edwards describes the early church weighing writings by how they reflected the faith and practice handed down from the apostles, and by how close they stood to the apostles. “I try to give the benefit of the doubt to the forebearers that they were seeking to keep the faith,” he says. The concern they guarded is named in Jude 1:3: “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
This is where the third column of your page matters. Jude 3 Project holds that Scripture is the inspired, authoritative Word of God, fully trustworthy in all it intends to teach. That conviction concerns what the letters teach. Who physically wrote each of the six is a historical question, and the scholars Edwards names reach different answers to it. The habit you are practicing is keeping those two questions in their own columns.
Questions for discussion or personal reflection
- Look back at what you wrote beside Romans 16:22 and Galatians 6:11. What, if anything, do those verses change about what you think it means for a letter to be “by” someone?
- From the sorting exercise, which inference about Ephesians seemed strongest to you, and what made it stronger than the others?
- Return to your note on Edwards’s fourth move. What does admitting uncertainty do to your trust in a teacher, and when does it do the opposite?
- Edwards distinguishes an unnamed book from a book carrying a name. Do you find that distinction important, or does it matter less to you than he suggests? Why?
- Lisa Fields describes a classroom where one view was presented as if no other existed. Where else have you received a confident verdict on a hard question without hearing the alternatives? What did that do to your thinking?
- What would it look like, for you, to refuse a viewpoint “hook, line and sinker,” as Edwards puts it, in either the skeptical or the defensive direction?
For whoever is leading a group
Some people arrive at this topic curious and some arrive shaken. Do not assume which is which, and do not ask anyone to explain how their faith is doing. If a participant leaves still unsure about a particular letter, the session has not failed. The aim is a steadier way of holding the question, not agreement on every case.
During the sorting exercise, redirect anyone who jumps straight to a conclusion by asking them to finish column two first. If the group splits on an inference, have each side restate the other’s reasoning until the other side agrees it was stated fairly. Only then discuss which reading accounts for more of the evidence.
For further reading, Edwards recommended introductions that lay out the arguments in more detail, including one by D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo that argues for Pauline authorship and earlier dating, and works by Mark Allan Powell and Luke Timothy Johnson. Reading more than one is itself part of the practice.
Return to your first sentence
Open the sentence you wrote at the start and read it next to your three-column page. Would you write it the same way now? If you would change it, write the new version underneath and keep both. The distance between them is what you learned.
Edwards described his hope for this kind of study as “this sense of intellectual honesty and wrestling with things,” the sort that lets people “make educated, credible decisions and not throw out babies with bath water.” Paul’s advice to the Thessalonians fits the habit: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). The next time a hard question about Scripture reaches you, ask first what you can see, then what someone infers, and only then what your faith actually rests on.