PASTORAL, LETTERS. - Common designation for I and II Timothy (v.) and Titus (v.),—also called pontifical in the seventeenth century (C. Magalianus)—justified by their being addressed to pastors of Churches and by their content (cf. Muratorian Fragment, in Enchiridion Biblicum, Rome 1927, no. 4; Tertullian, Adv. Marc., V, 21: PL 2, 556).
In them the community appears only indirectly, since the writer addresses the leaders directly in order to instruct them concerning the duties of their office: the selection of ministers, the example of a holy life, the defence of sound doctrine. The community, however, was to learn the content of these letters from the voice of those through whom Paul exercised his higher authority as Apostle (I Tim. 2, 1 ff.; 4, 12; 6, 3 ff., 21; Tit. 2, 1 ff.; 3, 15; II Tim. 4, 22).
Language and style also help to distinguish the pastoral letters both from the group comprising Romans, I and II Corinthians, and Galati, and from the prison epistles; to the latter, however, they are closer in time and in the circumstances of composition, as well as in their defence of Christianity against the first attacks of false gnosis. In the pastoral letters it is difficult to discern a plan: teachings, exhortations, and polemical hints follow one another, often without any evident connection. Together with Philemon, they are the most familiar among the letters of St. Paul, and the furthest removed from the literary character of the “epistle” genre.