The Pastoral Epistles, read individually or together, give us glimpses into the way the church was developing institutionally and the way the Christian message was to be understood and handled in the period beyond Paul’s death. They represent a particular way of thinking about the church and exercising leadership in a church that was moving from a charismatic movement to an institutional reality prepared for life in the Greco-Roman imperial world. In short, the Pastoral letters represent an important hinge point in the development of early Christianity and, as such, they are fascinating both historically and theologically and deserve attention in their own right.

In the second century, Ignatius and Polycarp made an impact across Asia Minor. Ignatius, travelling under guard to Rome, wrote seven letters, six to churches and one to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. This may be behind Lucian’s idea of Peregrinus, the Cynic philosopher, before his death, sending ‘letters to all the glorious cities that were Last Wills and Testaments’. Polycarp, Ignatius’ addressee, died in Smyrna in 155, after visiting Rome the year before. As a teacher of Christianity, Polycarp challenged the established sacred canopy – a system taught (at the elite level, in Smyrna) by Scopelian of Clazomenae. Polycarp’s contacts included people whose children would have been Scopelian’s students. He performed for the masters and mistresses of the world. Polycarp, by contrast, spoke from outside the dominant culture, so that listening to him constituted a ‘journey into darkness’ (Peter Berger). Paul and Thecla, the story of a woman from Iconium converted to Christianity because of Paul the Apostle, was written in Asia Minor after Polycarp’s time. A tract in novelistic form commending sexual continence, Paul and Thecla offers an insight into the Asian Christian experience.