Rejoice in the Lord Always

Like most people, I like a good mystery. Paul’s letter to the Philippians (abbreviated hereafter as “Phil”) is something of a mystery because we don’t know when or where it was written. There is also some debate as to whether the letter as we have it today was one, two or three separate letters.

Location, Location, Location

Phil is a fairly short letter that Paul wrote from prison (Phil 1:7, 13, 17) to the church in Phlippi, the first church that he founded in Europe. The occasion for the letter is to assure the Philippians that Epaphroditus has survived a life-threatening illness. The Philippians, hearing of Paul’s imprisonment, sent Epaphroditus with a gift (4:18). While with Paul, Epaphroditus fell ill and news of this reached the church in Philippi. Paul sent Epaphroditus back to them (2:25-30) and he hopes to be able to send Timothy soon and come for a visit himself (2:19-24).

What possible locations fit these facts? From later in Acts, we learn that Paul was arrested in Jerusalem and imprisoned in Caesarea for two years. It seems like an obvious choice except that, as summarized above, the letter presupposes frequent contact between Philippi and Paul. Caesarea is 1000 miles from Philippi by sea and travel on the Mediterranean during winter would be out of the question. An overland route would be arduous as well. The turnaround time on a letter would be months.

Acts ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome. While seemingly closer to Philippi, the geography of Italy and Greece would require a 900-mile voyage skirting their coastlines. The shortest route would be overland across the width of Italy, then by boat across the Adriatic to Corinth, and then up the coast of Greece to Philippi. At 700-miles, it still poses a formidable challenge to messengers travelling back and forth between Paul and Philippi.

Ephesus would solve the problem of frequent contact as Philippi is only 400 miles away by sea. A ship could cover that distance in seven to nine days. Unlike Caesarea or Rome, we know that Timothy was with Paul at Ephesus (1 Cor 4:17; 16:10; Acts 19:22). The only problem is that Acts does not mention Paul being imprisoned there. Paul refers (metaphorically) to having fought “wild beasts” at Ephesus (1 Cor 15:32) and almost receiving a sentence of death while in Asia (2 Cor 1:8-10). A lengthy imprisonment in Ephesus could explain why Paul spent three years there and why he later avoided the city on his journey from Macedonia to Jerusalem.

If Ephesus is the city of origin, Phil would have been written around 56 CE.

The Apostle Paul (c. 1657) by Rembrandt

E Pluribus Unum

The other mystery about Phil is whether it is one letter or a compilation of multiple letters Paul sent to the church in Philippi. If you read the first two verses of Phil 3, you can easily see why many scholars think more than one letter may have been combined:

Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.
To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.
Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!

Up to this point, the tone of the letter has demonstrated the warm affection Paul has for the Philippians with the repeated mention of the word “rejoice.” Starting chapter 3 with “finally,” you think Paul is bringing the letter to a close and he will continue with the theme of rejoicing. But then he abruptly changes subject to repeat admonitions that he has apparently written in previous letters. The shift in tone from “rejoice” to “beware” is quite jarring. But when you get to Phil 4:4, the refrain of “rejoice” returns. And then there’s another conclusion beginning with the word “finally” at 4:8.

Other oddities can be observed. Paul acknowledges receiving Epaphroditus (4:18) after he writes that he is returning the messenger to Philippi (2:25-30). Logically, you would expect it to be the other way round. Paul typically discusses his travel plans at the end of his letters, but in Phil they appear in the middle (2:23-30) right before the false ending (the first “finally”) at 3:1.

Some biblical scholars argue for Phil containing content from two original letters and others suggest content from three separate letters. There’s no consensus on the topic. I’m inclined to the theory that a short note (4:10-20) acknowledging the Philippians’ gift was combined with a later letter sent back with Epaphroditus after he regained his health. The warnings against the circumcisers (3:2-11) could have come from one or both of these letters, or even a separate letter. One can’t be too precise in these matters.

Imitation of Christ

The most famous part of Phil is the christological hymn that appears in 2:5-11. Most scholars believe Paul did not originate these lines, but instead inherited them, either in Greek or Aramaic. If it was originally composed in Aramaic, Paul may have learned the hymn in the years following his conversion in the mid-30s.

The original purpose of the hymn would have been to proclaim Jesus as Lord in a liturgical context. The structure consists of six verses of three lines each (Paul adding the part about “even death on a cross”). The first three verses have Jesus not claiming his equality with God, but taking the form of a slave and becoming obedient to the point of death. The last three verses explain that, because of this, God exalted him so that all of creation should bend the knee to him and confess his new name, “Lord”.

Although the hymn’s original purpose was to praise Jesus as Lord, Paul asks his readers to take as their example the exalted Christ. Instead of having the mindset of bettering themselves at the expense of others, they should take on the mind of Christ and look after the interests of others (2:3-4). The way to God is not through climbing the ladder of success, but by becoming humbly obedient to God, even to the point of death.

Competitive Christianity

If you want to buy a personal computer today, you have a choice between Apple and Windows-based systems. But almost 40 years ago you could have chosen from models by Commodore, Apple, Tandy, Atari, Sinclair, and a variety of other vendors, all incompatible with each other’s software. Only with the creation of IBM’s original PC and the multitude of PC-clones that offered the same functioning hardware at a cheaper price point did some semblance of standardization take hold, eventually leading to the binary choices in personal computers we have today.

Similarly, it would be wrong to think that the Christianity we know today was the only brand of Christianity operative in the 1st century. A close reading of the NT literature indicates there were a variety of preachers and prophets all trying to spread their own version of Christianity. Paul regarded his opponents as “false prophets” and, in all likelihood, they would have said the same of him. The average Gentile convert had no idea which of these competing gospels were authentic.

The Baptism of John

Acts 18:24-28 and 19:1-7 present us with some Christian odd-fellows in the form of Apollos and a dozen believers who were unfamiliar with the Holy Spirit and only knew the baptism of John. Previously, I wrote about how John’s baptism of Jesus and Jesus’ continuation of John’s ministry were suppressed in the NT. In his time, the Baptist was very popular but Jesus eventually came to supplant him and the Baptist was re-cast as a precursor of Jesus. So it is not impossible that some of the Baptist’s disciples would have spread outside of Judea alongside traditional Christian missionaries.

Apollos, a Jewish convert from Alexandria, is introduced upon his arrival in Ephesus in Acts 18:24-28. Although he was described as eloquent, well-versed in Scripture, and “taught accurately the things concerning Jesus,” he “knew only the baptism of John.” Fortunately, Prisca and Aquila were able to explain Christianity to him “more accurately.” Luke does not describe how one could both “teach accurately” yet still need instruction to be “more accurate.”

The next episode (19:1-7) presents a similar scene in Ephesus. Paul found some dozen disciples who, like Apollos, had only received John’s baptism of repentance and knew nothing of the Holy Spirit. After being baptized in the name of Jesus, Paul laid hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and prophesying. (In the previous episode, no mention was made of Apollos being re-baptized.) There is insufficient information to be sure but my impression is that Apollos and the other twelve were early disciples of Jesus – and not the Baptist’s disciples – who did not possess the charismatic gifts associated with the Holy Spirit.

We know from Paul’s correspondence that Apollos was a popular teacher in Corinth. Indeed, divisions developed in Corinth among those who considered Apollos their spiritual leader (1 Cor 3:4-6). Factionalism was an apparent problem not only in Corinth but Philippi as well. This seems to be a logical outgrowth of Paul’s missionary program: he would establish a church, provide some basic instructions on how to live according to the Spirit, and then move on. Without any explicit rules to follow, it was only natural that individual Christians would disagree as to how a Christian was to behave.

Church Divisions

While Corinth and Philippi faced divisions from within, the churches of Galatia were confronted with outsiders who undermined Paul’s work. After the Council of Jerusalem, we saw how Paul had a falling out with Peter and Barnabas over whether Jewish Christians would be allowed to have table fellowship with Gentile Christians. Paul lost that battle and it may have also led him to cut his ties with the Antiochene church. He therefore missed the subsequent letter from the Jerusalem authorities that required Gentile Christians to follow Jewish restrictions on diet and sexual unions.

The opponents Paul attacks in his letter to the Galatians went beyond the requirements of the Jerusalem decree. A linchpin of their teaching was strongly encouraging – if not compelling – Gentile Christians to become circumcised. They also wanted the Galatians to observe Jewish feasts and festivals. To win over the Galatians, they had to discredit Paul as an apostle and explain why the Mosaic Law was the foundation on which Christians could ground their new life in Christ.

Paul spends the first two chapters of Galatians defending himself as an apostle commissioned by the risen Lord and accepted by recognized authorities in Jerusalem like Peter and James. After establishing his bona fides, Paul spends the rest of the letter elaborating on how it is faith in Jesus Christ and not obedience to the Law which justifies a person before God. The Law was the disciplinarian until Christ came, but after one has received the Spirit, that person is no longer subject to the disciplinarian. He pleads with the Galatians to reclaim the freedom of the gospel and not turn to the slavery of the Law, which is what accepting circumcision would entail.

There were other flavors of Christianity in the air. Notable among them is the version seen in the Gospel of John and the three Johannine epistles. The Johannine Christians seem to have evolved from Hellenist Christians like Stephen who taught that Jesus replaced the essentials of Judaism like Temple worship and festivals. They had an elevated view of Jesus, almost to the point of denying his humanity. Over the decades, without a church authority structure to combat false teaching, the Johannine churches were torn apart by divisions. Some finally accepted the authority of the greater church, while the rest spun off into Gnosticism, the belief that one is saved by a secret knowledge (gnosis).

All of these Christianities competed in the marketplace of ideas. The more extreme elements – Judaizers on one side and Gnostics on the other – fell by the wayside. The Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine elements combined together to give us the church that we see emerging in the 2nd century writings of the early Church Fathers like Ignatius, Polycarp and Justin Martyr. This is the brand of Christianity that was refined in the crucible.