THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
Authenticity Of The Epistle
The external evidence is ample, from the time of Tertullian onward. From him we gather (Contra Marcion., v. 21) that even Marcion's Apostolicon[86] contained Philemon:"The shortness of this Epistle has favoured its escape from the tampering hands (falsarias manus) of Marcion;" that is to say (so Jerome, Preface to Philemon, explains), Marcion had more or less altered every other Epistle which he had admitted, but not this. Origen (Homilyxix. on Jeremiah) quotes Philemon 1:14 almost verbatim, as what "Paul said, in the Epistle to Philemon, to Philemon about Onesimus." He quotes ver. 7 in his Commentary on St Matthew, tractate 34: "As Paul says to Philemon;" and again, ver. 9: "By Paul it is said to Philemon, But now as Paul the aged(senex)." In the Ignatian Epistles there are some apparent allusions to the Epistle. The writer several times (To the Ephesians, 2; To the Magnesians, 12; To Polycarp, 1, 6) uses the Greek phrase rendered in the A.V. of Philemon 1:20, "Let me have joy of thee."
[86] See above, p. 38, note.
In the fourth century the authenticity was sometimes denied, and more often the Epistle was attacked [87] as unworthy to be reckoned Scripture. This is inferred from defences of the Epistle made incidentally by e.g. Chrysostom and Jerome, in the Prefaces to their Expositions. Jerome says that "some will have it that it is not Paul's, others that it has nothing in it for our edification;" "some will not receive it among Paul's Epistles, and say that Paul did not always speak as the organ of Christ's voice in him." Chrysostom says that they are "worthy of countless accusations" who reject this Epistle, as "concerned about so small a matter, and on behalf of an individual only." [88] "The spirit of the age," says Lightfoot, "had no sympathy with either the subject or the handling … Its maxim seemed to be, De minimis non curat evangelium," trifles are beneath the notice of the Gospel. Evidently the objections noticed by Chrysostom and Jerome have not only no moral but no critical value.
[87] Lightfoot speaks of the "fierce" opposition to the Epistle. Is not this word too strong?
[88] See the quotations, Lightfoot, p. 383, notes.
Baur, with an unhappy consistency, rejecting Ephesiansand Colossians, rejected Philemonalso, though with an almost apology, admitting that "this little letter" is penetrated "with the noblest Christian spirit," and that his criticism may seem over-sceptical. On his curiously trivial objections (e.g. the frequentuse of the word rendered "bowels" in the A.V., a word admittedly Pauline) Alford [89] remarks: "I am persuaded that if his section on the Epistle to Philemon had been published separately and without the author's name, the world might well have supposed it written by some defender of the Epistle, as a caricature on Baur's general line of argument."
[89] Greek Testament, iii. 113.
CHAPTER II
Testimonies To The Epistle
St Chrysostom, in his Hypothesis, or Account of the Contents, introductory to his expository Sermons on Philemon, speaks of its value with eloquent simplicity. Not only, he says, ought Epistles to have been written about such small and homely matters, but we could long that some biographer had recorded for us the minutest details of the lives of the Apostles; what they ate, what their daily doings were, what their manner and their utterance. As to this Epistle, think of its many profitable lessons. We learn to neglect nothing, when a Paul can take such pains about a runaway thieving slave. We learn not to think the slave-kind below the reach of good, when this same slave and thief became so virtuous (ἐνάρετος) that Paul would fain have him for his companion and attendant. We learn that slaves ought not to be taken from their masters, when we see Paul refuse to keep Onesimus at his side. If a slave is of high character (θαυμαστός) he ought to remain as he is, to be an influence for good in the household. Say not that servile duties must hinder his devotion to higher things; Paul himself says, If thou mayest be made free, use it rather;that is, stay as you are, and glorify God [90]. Do not tempt the heathen to blaspheme, saying that Christianity (Χριστιανισμός) tends to the subversion of human relations. One more lesson from the Epistle; we ought not to be ashamed of our slaves when they are good, if this greatest of men could say such noble things about a slave. Now, will any one venture to call this Epistle superfluous?
[90] We give without comment this explanation of a difficult text.
Luther writes of the Epistle to Philemon with characteristic human tenderness and Christian insight: "This Epistle sheweth a right noble lovely example (ein meisterlich lieblich Exempel) of Christian love. Here we see how St Paul layeth himself out (sich annimpt) for poor Onesimus, and with all his means pleadeth his cause with his master; and so setteth himself as if he were Onesimus, and had himself done wrong to Philemon. Yet this he doth not with force nor constraint, as if he had full right. Nay, he putteth himself out of his rights; whereby he constraineth Philemon (to perceive) that he also must strip himself of his rights. Even as Christ did for us with God the Father, thus also doth St Paul for Onesimus with Philemon. For Christ also hath put Himself out of His rights, and with love and humbleness hath prevailed with His Father that He should lay aside His wrath and His rights, and receive us to grace, for Christ's sake, who so earnestly intercedeth for us, and layeth Himself out so tenderly for us. For we are all His Onesimi, if we believe it (so wirs gleuben)" [91].
[91] Quoted in part by Lightfoot, p. 383. We have used his translation of his extracts almost verbatim, and completed the quotation. It forms Luther's Vorrede auff die Epistel S. Pauli an Philemon, in his German Bible (ed. Wittemberg, 1540). No one who knows Luther's theology will unduly press one sentence of the above passage as if he meant to say that the Eternal Father, the Giver of the Son, was reluctant to pardon. It is his pictorial way of putting the work of atonement and intercession in view of the claims of eternal holiness. He has a supreme example in our Lord's parables of the Friend at Midnight and the Judge and Widow.
Erasmus, in a note on ver. 20, says: "This Epistle, short as it is, shews us how eminently humane [92] Paul was … What could even a Tully have said, in such a matter, more charming (festivius) than what we have here? Some indeed, in name Christians, in spirit entirely hostile to Christ, count nothing learned, nothing elegant, which is not also pagan (ethnicum). They think the bloom of style quite lost where any mention of Christ comes in, with any relish of His teaching; whereas the first requisite in eloquence is to suit style to subject. I can but wonder the more that any man should have doubted the authenticity of this Epistle; nothing could be more perfectly Pauline in method and manner of treatment."
[92] So I paraphrase Paulum hominem singulari quadam præditum humanitate.
Bengel thus begins his brief commentary: "This familiar letter, wonderfully elegant, about a purely private matter, is inserted in the New Testament for the benefit of Christians as a specimen of consummate wisdom in the treatment of things of this life on higher principles. Frankius" (Franke, the saintly professor of Halle, 1653 1727) "says: -The Epistle to Philemon, taken alone, far surpasses (longissimè superat) all the wisdom of the world" " [93].
[93] Gnomon N. Testamenti, in loco.
Renan [94], in words whose falsetto still leaves their praise significant, calls the Epistle, "A true little chef-d"œuvre of the art of letter-writing."
[94] Quoted by Lightfoot, p. 384.
There is a letter of the younger Pliny's (a generation later than St Paul), the 21st in the ninth book of his Letters, written to his friend Sabinian, asking him to forgive an offending freedman [95]. Its subject is akin to that of our Epistle, and the two have often been compared. It reads as follows:
[95] See below, p. 156. Sabinian might conceivably get the libertuscondemned to slavery again.
"Your freedman, who so greatly displeased you, as you told me, has come to me, fallen at my feet, and clung to them as if they were your own; he wept much, begged much, was much silent too, and in brief guaranteed to me his penitence. I think him really reformed, for he feels that he has sinnd. You are angry, as I know; justly angry, as I also know; but clemency wins its highest praise when the reasons for anger are most just. You have loved the man, and I hope you will yet love him again; in the interval (interim) you are only asked to let yourself be brought to forgive. You will be quite free to be angry again if he deserves it; and this will have the more excuse if now you yield. Allow something for his youth, something for his tears, something for your own indulgence (of him); do not put him to torture, or you may torture yourself too. For tortured you are when you, kindliest of men, are angry. I fear I may seem rather to insist than entreat, if I join my prayers to his. But I will join them, the more fully and without reserve as I chid him sharply and severely, adding a stern warning that I could never beg him off again. This for him, for I had to frighten him; but I take another tone with you!Perhaps I shall entreat again, and win again; so the case is one in which I may properly entreat, and you may properly bestow. Farewell."
It is a graceful, kindly letter, written by a man whose character is the ideal of his age and class; the cultured and thoughtful Roman gentleman of the mildest period of the Empire. Yet the writer seems somewhat conscious of his own epistolary felicity, and his argument for the offender is much more condescending than sympathetic. His heart has not the depth of Paul's, nor are his motives those of the Gospel, which taught Paul to clasp Onesimus in his arms, and to commend him to Philemon's, as a friend in God for immortality. From the merely literary view-point, a perfect freedom of style, along with a delicate tact of manner, easily gives the letter to Philemon the palm over that to Sabinian [96].
[96] We find from a later letter (9 24) that Sabinian forgave the freedman. Pliny asks him to be ready in future to forgive without an intercessor.
CHAPTER III
The Chief Persons Of The Epistle
The chief persons mentioned in the Epistle we know only from it and from Colossians. The chief (certain or probable) details of their lives and circumstances are given in our notes on the text.
Philemon appears as a well-to-do Colossian convert; the proof of his competency of means is not his possession of a slave, for he might have owned only one or two, but his power, well and widely used, to befriend his needing fellow-Christians. He thus appears as an illustration of the fact that primeval Christianity, while calling all Christians to a genuine surrender to Christ of both the self and the property, never condemned the right of property as between man and man, and left the individual perfectly free to ask whether or no his surrender of all to the Lord involved the surrender of his permanent stewardship for the Lord. Apphia, probably Philemon's wife, is called "a deaconess" of the Colossian Church by M. Renan [97], and by other writers, but without proof. In a letter dealing entirely with a domestic matter the mention of her name has no necessary or official significance. The mention of the name of Archippus here with Apphia's makes it extremely likely that he was the son at home with his parents, whether or no his pastoral duties (Colossians 4:17) extended beyond Colossæ to the neighbouring Church or Churches. That he was in some sort of sacred office appears from Colossians 4:17; perhaps the solemnity of the message there was occasioned not, as usually suggested, by misgivings in St Paul's mind, but by some development of Archippus" duties consequent on Epaphras" absence in Italy [98].
[97] Saint Paul, p. 360.
[98] Ramsay (The Church in the R. Empire, p. 469) recites the legend of "The Miracle of Khonai," in which St Michael protects a holy fountain from desecration by bidding the rocks cleave asunder and receive the waters which the pagans had dammed up to flood it. In this legend (probably of cent. 9, in its present form) the first guardian of the fountain is one Archippos, "born of pious parents at Hierapolis,"
Onesimus, the runaway slave of this Christian household, stands almost visibly before us, as St Paul's allusions trace the sketch of his degradation, his spiritual regeneration, his grateful love, and his transfiguration into the resolute doer of right at a possible heavy cost. Dr F. W. Farrar, in his powerful historical story, Darkness and Dawn, has imagined a possible history of Onesimus which assists our realization of the time and conditions. The youth appears there as a Thyatiran, free-born, but sold to pay family debts; accompanies Philemon, "a gentleman of Colossæ," to Ephesus, on a visit which issues in the conversion of Philemon and his household through St Paul's preaching; returns to find "dull and sleepy Colossæ" unbearable after brilliant Ephesus; steals money of his master's that he may run away, first to Ephesus, and then to Rome; there is taken into the household of the Christian Pudens, and thence in time is transferred to Nero's; finds his way through many adventures to the gladiators" school, and to the arena; witnesses the massacre of the slaves of Pedanius; accompanies Octavia, Nero's rejected wife, a secret Christian, to her exile in the island of Pandataria; thence, after her death, finds his way, an awakened penitent, to St Paul; whom ultimately, after emancipation, he attends through his last labours, and to his death.
Historically, we know nothing, outside these Epistles, of the later life of Onesimus. That Philemon granted St Paul's requests, we may be sure; that he formally set free his slave, now his brother in Christ, we may be almost as sure. In Colossians(Colossians 4:9), St Paul speaks of Onesimus in terms which would be impossible if he had felt any serious doubt of the reception Philemon would accord to the penitent. But beyond this point we lose all traces. In the Ignatian Epistles an Onesimus appears as bishop of Ephesus; but the date of these letters falls at earliest after a.d. 105, and the name was common; it is not very likely that we have our Onesimus there. He is otherwise variously said to have been bishop of Berea, in Macedonia, to have preached in Spain, to have been martyred at Rome, or at Puteoli. Lightfoot finds no shadow of historical evidence for any of these accounts.
CHAPTER IV
Slavery, And The Attitude Of Christianity Towards It
Slavery was universal among ancient nations, and is prominent in the picture of both Roman and Greek civilization. In the Greek cities of the fourth and fifth centuries before our Era the slave population was often relatively vast; at Athens, about 300 b.c., it is said that the slaves numbered 400,000, and the free citizens 21,000; but perhaps this means the total population of slaves as against the free adult males only. Even thus however the slaves would number four to one. In the later days of the Roman Republic, and under the Empire, the slaves of Roman masters were immensely numerous. It was not uncommon for one owner to possess some thousands; two hundred was a somewhat usual number; and to keep less than ten was hardly possible for a man who would pass muster in society.
Speaking generally, the slave of the Greek was in a better position than the slave of the Roman. Within limits, the law gave a certain protection to his person, and he could not be put to death without a legal sentence. If not a domestic proper, he was more commonly employed in handicrafts (in which he earned for the owner who fed and lodged him) than was the Roman slave, who was more commonly the mere tool of luxury, often of its most degraded kinds. The relation of Onesimus to Philemon, we may suppose, in quasi-Greek Colossæ, was practically governed by Greek law and usage, though this perhaps might be over-ridden for the worse, where the master was cruel, by the imperial law [99].
[99] But see further, Appendix M.
But the mitigations of Greek slavery did not go very far. To a great extent the slave was entirely in his owner's hands; he could always be severely punished corporally [100]; his word was never taken in court but under torture. In general he was regarded by the law as the personal property of his owner, saleable at any time in the market; just as a horse is now its owner's "thing," though the law may interfere with his treatment of it in extreme cases. "The rights of possession with regard to slaves differed in no respect from any other property" [101].
[100] Onesimus was probably a Phrygianslave; and there was a proverb, Phryx plagis emendatur, "You school a Phrygian with the whip."
[101] See at large Smith's Dict, of Greek and Roman Antiquities, s. v. Servus(Greek) ;and Becker's Charicles, Excursus on "The Slaves."
And what the law enforced, philosophy supported. In the Politicsof Aristotle, in the few opening Chapter s, in a discussion of the Family as the unit of society, several passages bearing on slavery occur. The great thinker regards the slave as the physical implement of the master's mind; as being to his owner what the ox is to the man too poor to keep a slave (ch. 2); as distinguished from the master by a natural (φύσει) difference, not merely a legal; as a living tool, a living piece of property (chattel). Between master and slave there is no proper reciprocity; the master may be a hundred things besides the slave's master, the slave is absolutely nothing but the master's slave; all his actions and relations move within that fact; he is wholly his (ὅλως ἐκείνου). Defined exactly, he is a human being who naturally (φύσει) is another's, not his own (ch. 4); whose function (δύναμις) is to be such, while yet he shares his master's reason so far as to perceive it, without precisely havingit (ch. 5). Such natural slavery, as distinguished from that of captivity by war, is good for both parties, just as the body and the limb are both benefited by their relation; the slave is as it were a portion (μέρος) of the master, as it were a living, while separated, portion of his body (ch. 6).
Such a theory strikes accidentally, so to speak, on some noble aspects of human relation, and wonderfully illustrates the relation of the redeemed and believing to their redeeming Lord; but its main bearing is all in the fatal direction of seeing in the slave a creature who has no rights;in short, a thing, not a person. The cool, pregnant sentences of Aristotle must have satisfied intellectually many a hard-hearted slave-master in the Greek society of St Paul's time [102].
[102] There is another and brighter side to the slave-question in Greek literature. Euripides takes an evident pleasure in giving to slaves, in his Tragedies, characteristics of truth and honour, and makes his persons moralize much on the equal nobility of virtue in the slave and in the freeman. See F. A. Paley, Euripides(Bibliotheca Classica), 1. pp. xiii. xiv. Yet even Plato recommends a law for his ideal Commonwealth, by which a slave, if he kills a freeman, must be given up to the kinsmen and mustbe slain by them. The killer of his ownslave is merely to go through a ceremonial purification.
When we turn from the Greek slave of that time to his Roman fellow (and Onesimus, at Rome, would run all the risks of a Roman runaway), we come on a still darker picture. The Emperor Claudius (a.d. 41 a.d. 54) did something for him [103], in ways which however shew how bad the general condition was. He set free certain sick slaves whom their masters had exposed to die, and decreed that if such slaves were killed, in lieu of death by exposure, it should be murder. Yet even Claudius, and at the same time, directed that a freedman, if giving his ex-master (patronus) cause of complaint, should be enslaved again. For disobedience, in short for anything which in the private court of the dominica potestaswas a crime in his master's eyes, the slave might be privately executed, with any and every cruelty. In the reign of Augustus, the noon of Roman culture, one Vedius Pollio, a friend of the Emperor's, was used to throw offending slaves into his fish-pond, to feed his huge electric eels (murœnœ). He was one day entertaining Augustus at table, when the cupbearer broke a crystal goblet, and was forthwith sentenced to the eels. The poor fellow threw himself at the Prince's feet, begging, not to be forgiven, but to be killed in some other way; and Augustus, shocked and angered, ordered the man's emancipation (mitti jussit), and had Pollio's crystals all broken before him, and his horrible pool filled up; but he did not discard his friend. " -If," says Horace (Satires, 1. iii. 80), -a man is thought mad who crucifies his slave for having filched something from … the table, how much more madmust he be who cuts his friend for a trifling offence!" " [104] In brief, the slave in Roman law is a thing, not a person. He has no rights, not even of marriage. To seek his good is in no respect the duty of his master, any more than it is now the duty of an owner to improve his fields for their own sake.
[103] Suetonius, Claudius, c. 25.
[104] Goldwin Smith, Does the Bible sanction American Slavery?(1863), p. 30. We quote largely below from this masterly discussion. The story about Vedius Pollio is told by Seneca, De Irâ, iii. 40, and by Dion Cassius, liv. 23.
The vast numbers of the slaves occasioned a tremendous sternness of repressive legislation [105]. By a law of the reign of Augustus, if a slave killed his master, not only he but every slave under the same roof was to be put to death. In the year 61, the year of St Paul's arrival at Rome, perhaps after his arrival, this enactment was awfully illustrated. A senator, Pedanius Secundus, Prefect of the City, had been murdered by one of his slaves; and the law called for the death of four hundredpersons. The Roman populace, wonderful to relate, was roused to horror, and attempted a rescue. The Senate, gravely debating the case, resolved that the execution must proceed; it was a matter of public safety. Then the roads were lined with troops, and the doom was carried out to the end [106].
[105] They were not assigned a distinctive dress, for fear they should realize their numbers. They usually wore the common dress of the poor, a dark serge tunic, and slippers.
[106] Tacitus, Annals, xiv. 42.
"A runaway slave could not lawfully be received or harboured. The master was entitled to pursue him wherever he pleased, and it was the duty of all authorities to give him aid … A class of persons called fugitivariimade it their business to recover runaway slaves [107]."
[107] Smith's Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antiquities, s. v. Servus(Roman). See in general also Becker's Gallus, Excursus on "The Slaves."
It has been urged in defence of the principle of slavery that the Patriarchal and Mosaic institutions protected it, and that the Apostles do not denounce it. Mr Goldwin Smith has ably discussed this problem in his Essay, cited just above, Does the Bible sanction American Slavery?He points out that in the patriarchal stage of society a certain absolutism, lodged in the father-chief, was natural and necessary, but also by its nature limited and mitigated; and that the whole drift of the legislation of the Pentateuch is towards the protection not of slavery, but of the slave, who there has manifold rights, is never for a moment regarded as other than a person, and at the Paschal Meal, as well as in all the other functions of religion, takes his place beside his master and the rest of the household. As regards the attitude of the Apostles, Mr Goldwin Smith writes as follows (pp. 54 etc.):
"The New Testament is not concerned with any political or social institutions; for political and social institutions belong to particular nations, and particular phases of society … Whatever is done (by Christianity) will be done for the whole of mankind and for all time. If it be necessary for the eternal purpose of the Gospel, St Paul will submit to all the injustice of heathen governments … If it be necessary for the same purpose, the slave of a heathen master will patiently remain a slave.
"Nothing indeed marks the Divine character of the Gospel more than its perfect freedom from the spirit of political revolution. The Founder of Christianity and His Apostles were surrounded by everything which could tempt human reformers to enter on revolutionary courses … Everything, to all human apprehension, counselled an appeal to the strong hand; and strong hands and brave hearts were ready to obey the call … Nevertheless our Lord and His Apostles said not a word against the powers or institutions of that evil world. Their attitude towards them all was that of deep spiritual hostility and entire political submission … Had this submission … not been preached by them, and enforced by their example, the new religion must, humanly speaking, have been strangled in its birth. The religious movement would infallibly have become a political movement.… And then the Roman would have … crushed it with his power. To support it against the Roman legions with legions of angels was not a part of the plan of God … [108]
[108] See some admirable remarks in the same direction in the late Prof. H. Rogers" suggestive Lectures (1874) on The Superhuman Origin of the Bible inferred from Itself(Lect. iii.). (Editor.)
"The passages in the New Testament relating to the established institutions of the time, inculcate on the disciples resignation to their earthly lot on spiritual grounds … (But) they do not inculcate social or political apathy; they do not pass … upon the Christian world a sentence of social or political despair …
"The relation of the Gospel to slavery is well stated in a passage quoted by Channing from Wayland's Elements of Moral Science: -The very course which the Gospel takes on this subject seems to have been the only one which could have been taken in order to effect the universal abolition of slavery. The Gospel was designed … for all races and for all times. It looked not at the abolition of this form of evil for that age alone, but for its universal abolition. Hence the object of its Author was to gain it a lodgment in every part of the world, so that by its universal diffusion among all classes of society it might … peacefully modify and subdue the evil passions of men, and thus without violence work a revolution in the whole mass of mankind. In this manner alone could its object, a universal moral revolution, be accomplished. For if it had forbidden the evilinstead of subverting the principle, if it had proclaimed the unlawfulness of slavery, and taught slaves to resistthe oppression of their masters, it would instantly have arrayed the two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civilized world; … and the very name of the Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst universal bloodshed. The fact, under these circumstances, that the Gospel does not forbid slavery affords no reason to suppose that it does not mean to prohibit it; much less … that Jesus Christ intended to authorize it."
"Not only did … the Apostles spread principles and ideas which were sure to work the destruction of slavery, and of the other political and social wrongs of which that corrupt and unjust world was full; but they embodied them in an Institution, founded by their Lord, of which it may be said that though so little revolutionary in appearance that the most jealous tyranny might have received it into its bosom without misgiving, it exceeded in revolutionary efficacy any political force which has ever been in action among men. At the Supper of the Lord the conqueror was required … to partake in the holy Meal with the conquered, the master with the slave, and this in memory of a Founder who had died the death of a slave upon the Cross, and who at the institution of the Rite had performed the servile office of washing His disciples" feet … Nor has the Lord's Supper failed to accomplish its object in this respect where it has been administered according to the intention of its Founder …
"No sooner did the new religion gain power … than the slave law and the slave system of the Empire began to be undermined by its influence … The right of life and death over the slave was transferred from his owner to the magistrate. The right of correction was placed under humane limitations, which the magistrate was directed to maintain. All the restrictions on the emancipation of slaves were swept away. The first Christian Emperor recognized enfranchisement as a religious act, and established the practice of performing it in the Church, before the Bishop, and in the presence of the congregation. The liberties of the freedman were at the same time cleared of all odious and injurious restrictions. This remained the policy of the Christian Empire. The Code of Justinian [cent. 6] is highly favourable to enfranchisement, and that on religious grounds …
"But the Roman world was doomed; and … partly because the character of the upper classes had been … incurably corrupted by the possession of a multitude of slaves. The feudal age succeeded; … and a new phase of slavery appeared. Immediately Christianity recommenced its work of alleviation and enfranchisement. The codes of laws framed for the new lords of Europe under the influence of the clergy shew the same desire as those of the Christian Emperors to … assure personal rights to the slave. The laws of the Lombards … protected the serf against an unjust or too rigorous master; they set free the husband of a female slave who had been seduced by her owner; they assured the protection of the churches to slaves who had taken refuge there, and regulated the penalties to be inflicted for their faults. In England the clergy secured for the slave rest on the Sunday, and liberty either to rest, or work for himself, on a number of holy-days. They exhorted their flocks to leave the savings and earnings of the prædial slave untouched. They constantly freed the slaves who came into their own possession. They exhorted the laity to do the same, and what living covetousness refused they often wrung from deathbed penitence …
"If then we look to the records of Christianity in the Bible, we find no sanction for American slavery there. If we look to the history of Christendom, we find the propagators and champions of the faith assailing slavery under different forms and in different ages, without concert, yet with a unanimity which would surely be strange if Christianity and slavery were not the natural enemies of each other."
Mr Goldwin Smith alludes thus [109] to our Epistle: "In a religious community so bound together in life and death as that of the early Christians, the relation between master and slave, though it was not formally dissolved, must have been completely transfigured, and virtually exchanged for a relation between brethren in Christ. The clearest proof of this is found in that very Epistle … which those who defend slavery on Scriptural grounds regard as their sheet-anchor in the argument. St Paul sends back the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master Philemon. Therefore, we are told, slavery and fugitive slave laws have received the sanction of St Paul … It is very true that St Paul sends back a fugitive slave to his master. But does he send him back as a slave?The best answer to the argument drawn from the Epistle to Philemon is the simple repetition of the words of that Epistle [vv. 10 19] … Onesimus is not sent back as a slave, but as one above a servant, a brother beloved … Such a feeling as the writer of the Epistle supposes to exist in the hearts of Christians as to their relations with each other, though it would not prevent a Christian slave from remaining in the service of his master, would certainly prevent a Christian master from continuing to hold his fellow Christian as a slave."
[109] Does the Bible, &c., p. 64.
It may not be out of place to quote here two passages which will bring out another side of the matter:
"Our Lord's miracles upon slaves must not be forgotten. He did not hesitate to set out for the house of the Centurion at Capernaum, at the request of the messengers, in order to heal a paralysed slave. His last act as a free man before His death was to heal the wounded ear of the slave Malchus. He Himself -took the form of a slave," both in ministering to others in His life, and also in the manner of His death. Thus He glorified the relation; and His Apostles were not ashamed to magnify it by styling themselves -the slaves or bondmen of Jesus Christ" " …
"If the abolition of slavery is to turn all servants into hirelings, and make cash payment the only tie between employers and employed, the change will not be an unmixed benefit … If there is to be no bond between servants and masters and mistresses except the contract that determines the time of labour and the rate of payment, then all that ennobles the relation will be lost. Better have the slavery of Onesimus than that. On both sides there ought to be some acknowledgement of a bond, that should not be degraded into bondage, but should make the servant of to-day what the slave of the Old Testament was, only not a son, and capable of filial relationship, if the need should arise. -If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed," not to depart but to abide in the house for ever, as sons and heirs of God through Christ." [110]
[110] C. H. Waller, D.D., Handbook to the Epistles of St Paul, pp. 178 180.
To much the same purpose is the following extract, from the Preface to Philemonin the Berlenburg (or Berleburg) Bible (about 1727); a German translation of the Bible, with Commentary, emanating from a mystic school of Pietism:
"This Epistle is much the shortest of the Epistles of Paul which are contained in Scripture, but it is very nobly (herrlich) and lovingly written … It is really sad that beginners in the Christian life will not take it with a better grace when they have to be servants. Too commonly among the Anabaptists [111] people want not to submit to the straits (Elend) of human life, but to be free. But this is mere self-love; as if we were already really capable of freedom. God helps us to freedom, in Christ, but He does not meanwhile take away from us the burthens of this life, which we must endure in the patience of Christ. The newly converted, even in the early Church, if servants, wanted no longer to do their duty by their Christian masters. The thought is (man denckt), -I am as pious as my master!" But the self-spirit (Ichheit) must die. The Apostles were constrained to raise their admonition against such a state of things. Christianity is essentially submissive (Das Christenthum ist was unterthäniges). So we ought not to burst loose, but to shew that we have a broken spirit."
[111] The reference is to revival movements of the time, which, with many admirable results, had their aberrations.
In closing, we quote a few lines from the recently (1889) recovered Apology, or Defence of Christianity (the earliest extant writing of its kind), written by the philosopher Aristides, and addressed to Hadrian, or possibly to Antoninus Pius, about a.d. 130. The author speaks as in some sense an independent observer:
"Now the Christians, O King, by going about and seeking have found the truth … They know and believe in God, the Maker of heaven and earth, in whom are all things and from whom are all things … They do not commit adultery or fornication, they do not bear false witness, they do not deny a deposit, nor covet what is not theirs; they honour father and mother; they do good to those who are their neighbours, and when they are judges they judge uprightly; … and those who grieve them they comfort, and make them their friends; and they do good to their enemies; and their wives, O King, are pure as virgins, and their daughters modest; and their men abstain from all unlawful wedlock and from all impurity, in the hope of the recompense that is to come in another world; but as for their servants or handmaids, or their children, if they have any, they persuade them to become Christians for the love they have towards them; and when they have become so they call them without distinction brethren." [112]
[112] Texts and Studies; the Apology of Aristides(Cambridge, 1891), p. 49. The translation here given is that of Mr J. Rendel Harris, from the Syriac Version of the Apology. See also an admirable little volume, The newly recovered Apology of Aristides, by Helen B. Harris (Mrs Rendel Harris).
CHAPTER V
Argument Of The Epistle
1 3. Paul, a prisoner for Jesus Christ's sake and by His will, with the Christian brother Timotheus, greets Philemon, that true fellow-worker for Christ [at Colossæ,] and the dear [Christian sister, Philemon's wife,] Apphia, and [Philemon's son] Archippus, true comrade in Christ's missionary warfare. May all blessing be upon them from the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ!
4 7. He thanks his God for Philemon by name, whenever his converts are present in his prayers, hearing, as he has heard [from Epaphras] of his faith reposed on the Lord Jesus and the love be so practically shews towards all his Christian neighbours; praying that the charitable bounty prompted by his faith may tell all around him, giving [the recipients and witnesses of it] a fuller view of all the graces Christians possess, to the glory of Christ. For indeed Paul has received great joy and encouragement on account of Philemon's life of love [reported to him,] as he thinks how the hearts of the Christians have found rest [from the strain of poverty and care] by the aid of this his true brother.
8 21. So [writing to one who understands love,] Paul, though he might claim an apostolic right to speak more freely and authoritatively to Philemon about duty, yet in view of their personal Christian affection rather comes as his suppliant; just in the character of Paul, the aged, and now not only old but helpless, in imprisonment for Christ. He is Philemon's suppliant for a son of his (Paul's), a son whom he has begotten [to a new life in Christ] in his Roman prison. It is Onesimus (" Helpful"), [Philemon's domestic slave]; once anything but profitableto Philemon, [for he had pilfered from him, and absconded,] but profitable now to Philemon, aye and to Paul too, [to whom Onesimus has been devotedly serviceable.] He sends him back to his master [with this letter;] him, or let him rather be called a piece of Paul's own heart! He could half have wished to keep Onesimus at his side, to be his loving attendant (as the substitute of loving Philemon) in this imprisonment endured for the Gospel's sake. But he would not act so without Philemon's decision, [which of course he could not get, at such a distance;] otherwise the kindness on Philemon's part would at least have seemed to be a thing of compulsion, not of freewill. And perhaps it was on purpose for such a return to Philemon, in an indissoluble union, for time and for eternity, that Onesimus had been sent away from him for a little while; [to be given back now by the Lord] no more as a mere slave, but as a brother, a dear brother, dearest to Paul, dearer than dearest to Philemon, to whom he is now joined both by earthly and by spiritual ties. If Philemon, then, holds Paul for an associate [in faith and life], he must receive Onesimus just as he would receive Paul. If Onesimus had stolen, or was in debt, before his flight, let the amount be charged to Paul; here is his autograph note for the repayment. Meanwhile, he will not dwell on the thought that Philemon owes to Paul [not only the new-making of Onesimus but] himself besides, [as his son in the faith of Christ.] Ah, let Philemon give Paul joy, and rest his heart, by action worthy of a man in Christ. He has written thus with full confidence of his assent, and more than assent, to the request.
22. Meanwhile, will Philemon prepare lodgings for him [at Colossæ?] He expects to be restored to his beloved converts, in answer to their prayers.
23 24. He sends greetings to Philemon from [his old friend] Epaphras, who shares his prison; and from Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, who are working with Paul for Christ.
25. May the presence and power of Christ be with the inner life of Philemon and his family.
Grace makes the slave a freeman. "Tis a change
That turns to ridicule the turgid speech
And stately tones of moralists, who boast,
As if, like him of fabulous renown,
They had indeed ability to smooth
The shag of savage nature, and were each
An Orpheus, and omnipotent in song:
But transformation of apostate man
From fool to wise, from earthly to Divine,
Is work for Him that made him. He alone,
And He, by means in philosophic eyes
Trivial and worthy of disdain, achieves
The wonder; humanizing what is brute
In the lost kind, extracting from the lips
Of asps their venom, overpowering strength
By weakness, and hostility by love.
Cowper.
APPENDICES
A. Prof. Ramsay on St Paul's Route (Acts 18:19), and on the Chasm at Colosssæ
B. The Epistles to the Colossians &c., and the First Epistle of St Peter (P. 24)
C. Dr Salmon on Gnosticism and the Colossian Epistle (P. 33)
D. The Literature of "Tendency" (P. 40)
E. Essenism and Christianity (P. 35)
F. Christ and Creation (Colossians 1:16).
G. Developments of Doctrine in Colossians(Colossians 1:16)
H. "Thrones and Dominions" (Colossians 1:16)
I. Hooker on the Church (Colossians 1:18)
K. Peter Lombard on Baptism (Colossians 2:12)
L. The Disputed Reading of Colossians 2:18
M. Master and Slave at Colossæ (P. 154)
N. Dr Maclaren on the last words of Philemon(Philemon 1:25)
A. PROF. W. M. RAMSAY ON ST PAUL's ROUTE (Acts 18:23; Acts 19:1), AND ON THE CHASM AT COLOSSÆ. (Pp. 18, 19, 21.)
In an important book just published (Spring, 1893), The Church in the Roman Empire, Prof. W. M. Ramsay, of Aberdeen, whose authority is special on the geography and archæology of Asia Minor, has discussed these two problems.
On the first, his conclusion is adverse to Bp Lightfoot. He holds (pp. 91, &c.) that Acts 18:23, taken with Acts 19:1, is most naturally explained by supposing St Paul to travel from the southern"Galatian country," the region which included Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium, not from the region commonly called Galatia, in the centre of the peninsula [114]; and so to take not "an enormous circuit through Cappadocia and North Galatia" to Ephesus, his goal, but the direct route, which would pass through Derbe, Lystra, &c., and would lead him by Apamea, Colossæ, and Laodicea on the Lycus, to Ephesus. This theory is elaborately, and we think convincingly, supported in chh. 5, 6, of the book. The question of Colossians 2:1 is discussed pp. 93, 94, as "the one difficulty in this journey from which the North Galatian theory is free." He writes as follows:
[114] Both districts were included in the Roman Provincia Galatia. See Ramsay's Map of Asia Minor.
"In the first place, the journey, so far as it traversed new country, was evidently rapid and unbroken; for there is no allusion to preaching in new places, but only to the confirming of old converts, until Ephesus was reached. It is therefore quite possible that St Paul might have spent a night either at Colossæ or at Laodiceia, and yet that he might several years afterwards write to the Christians there as persons who had never seen his face. Moreover, though trade and vehicles regularly took the road through Apameia and Laodiceia, foot-passengers might possibly prefer the shorter hill road by the plain of Metropolis and the Tchyvritzi Kleisoura … This path would take them by way of Eumeneia and the Cayster valley, and would save a day's journey."
The interesting question whether there once existed a natural tunnel over the Lycus "in Colossæ," is discussed by Prof. Ramsay, pp. 472 476. His conclusion is that Herodotus is our only unmistakable ancient authority for the existence of such a tunnel just there, and that Strabo, who also speaks of an underground course of the Lycus, appears to correct rather than support him. For Strabo says that the Lycus runs underground for the greater part of its course. Now as a fact the "springs" of the Lycus, at the head of the Colossian glen, appear by recent exploration to be not true springs, but the outflow of the river after a long underground course from the upland lake Anava [115]; and this would explain Strabo's statement, while that of Herodotus may be regarded as an inaccurate account of the general phenomena of the limestone channels of the district. As to the deep gorge, or "cutting," found by Hamilton at the site of Colossæ (see our p. 19), Ramsay remarks (p. 476) that "the gorge, as a whole, has been an open gap for thousands of years; on that all are agreed who have seen it … We must admit the possibility that incrustation … may have at a former period completely overarched it for a little way. But such a bridge would not justify Herodotus, who describes a duden" [a disappearance of the river] "more than half a mile long."
[115] Those who know the Jura country will recall the similar immense "source" where the Orbe rushes from the five miles of cavernous tunnel through which it has descended from the Lac de Joux. The Aire, in Yorkshire, shews the same phenomenon on a smaller scale.
B. THE EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND EPHESIANS AND THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST PETER. (P. 24, not[116])
[116] noteColossians, pp. 38 40.
Weiss (Einleitung in das N.T., pp. 271, 272) discusses the question of a kinship between Ephesians(and Colossians) and the First Epistle of St Peter, which announces itself as a Circular to the Churches of Asia Minor. He points out the following among other parallels of thought, topic, and expression between Ephesiansand the Petrine Epistle:
(a) Ephesians 1:4 ("chosen in Him before," &c.):
cp. 1 Peter 1:2.
(b) Ephesians 1:19 ("the inheritance"):
cp. 1 Peter 1:3-5.
(c) Ephesians 1:20-21 [cp. Colossians 2:15] ("the connexion of the [Death,] Resurrection, and Ascension with the subjection of all heavenly powers")
cp. 1 Peter 3:22.
(d) Ephesians 2:3 (the contrast of the past and present position and condition of the Jewish [?] converts)
cp. 1 Peter 1:14-15.
(e) Ephesians 2:18 ("access" to God through Christ)
cp. 1 Peter 3:18.
(f) Ephesians 2:20 ("the Corner-stone")
cp. 1 Peter 2:6.
(g) Ephesians 3:5 (Angels watching the course of man's redemption)
cp. 1 Peter 1:11.
(h) Ephesians 4:11 (all gifts to be used for "service")
cp. 1 Peter 4:10.
(i) Ephesians 4:11 ("shepherds" a designation of Christian ministers)
cp. 1 Peter 5:2.
Ephesians 5:21 to Ephesians 6:9 [cp. Colossians 3:18 to Colossians 4:1] (family duties in the Christian aspect, especially on the principle of submission)
cp. 1 Peter 2:18 to 1 Peter 3:7; 1 Peter 5:5.
Ephesians 5:10 (resistance to "the diabolos")
cp. 1 Peter 5:8.
We may compare too the curious verbal similarity, in the Greek, between Colossians 2:5 and 1 Peter 5:9.
Such correspondences indicate a probable communication between the writers, or at least that one knew the other's writings; and a general likeness in the needs and characteristics of the Churches addressed. Weiss inclines to date the First Epistle of St Peter earlier than Colossiansand Ephesians. But the internal evidence seems to us insufficient for such a conclusion. Surely the tone of 1 Peterbetokens the imminence of a great persecutionfar more than that of the Ephesian group of Pauline Epistles; and this speaks for a later date. No one can read St Peter attentively without feeling that in his First Epistle he shews all along the powerful influence upon him of his "beloved brother Paul" (2 Peter 3:15), as regards the form and expression of his message. But such a connexion and influence cannot decide the historically delicate question of precise relative date of the two writings.
Prof. Ramsay (The Church, &c., ch. 13) prefers a late date for 1 Peter, placing it after the fall of Jerusalem. He thinks that St Peter's death may have taken place long after St Paul's. But these contentions, on the evidence given, seem to us at best not proven.
C. DR SALMON ON GNOSTICISM AND THE COLOSSIAN EPISTLE. (P. 33)
"The third objection [to the genuineness of Colossians is the Gnostic complexion of the false teaching combated, … which, we are told, could not have characterized any heresy existing in the time of St Paul. But how is it known that it could not? What are the authorities which fix for us the rise of Gnosticism with such precision that we are entitled to reject a document bearing all the marks of authenticity if it exhibits too early traces of Gnostic controversies? The simple fact is that we have no certain knowledge whatever about the beginnings of Gnosticism. We know that it was in full blow in the middle of the second century … But if we desire to describe the first appearance of Gnostic tendencies, we have, outside the New Testament books, no materials; and if we assign a date from our own sense of the fitness of things, we are bound to do so with all possible modesty … With respect to the history of [the] undeveloped stage of Gnosticism, I hold the Epistle to the Colossians to be one of our best sources of information; and those who reject it because it does not agree with their notions of what the state of speculation in the first century ought to be, are guilty of the unscientific fault of forming a theory on an insufficient induction of facts, and then rejecting a fact which they had not taken into account, because it does not agree with their theory."
"I am sure no forger could devise anything which has such a ring of truth as the Epistle to the Colossians."
G. Salmon, D.D., A Historical Introduction to the Books of the New Testament, pp. 469, 472, 475.
D. THE LITERATURE OF "TENDENCY." (P. 40.)
Tendenzschriften, "Tendency-literature," is a term familiar in modern historical theology. It denotes the writings which betray an artificial and diplomatic intention; narratives for instance written less to record events than to justify movements or theories, and letters not really dictated by circumstances of the hour, but fabricated to explain or to defend. Such has been held by some modern critics to be the true character of the Acts of the Apostles; a narrative written long after date, to heal and obliterate a supposed energetic opposition of "Petrines" and "Paulines." Such has been the account given of the Epistle to the Ephesians, and even of that to the Colossians [117]; letters fabricated as by St Paul, but in reality polemical attacks upon forms of teaching later than his time. An answer to such attacks upon canonical books may be given in part by a comparison of them with books undoubtedly of the "Tendency" order. Such a book, a favourable example of its class, has lately (1892) been given to the world, after a long oblivion in the recesses of a tomb in Egypt. It is The Gospel of Peter[118]. This narrative of our Lord's Passion and Resurrection bears probable traces of a Docetic"tendency"; i.e. it appears to be written with a purpose of adaptation to the theory that "Jesus" was only temporarily "possessed" by "Christ," who forsook the Man at the Cross, so that "Christ" suffered only in appearance (δοκεῖν). It is instructive to see how such "tendency" was, as by a literary law, associated, in those early days, with imaginative weakness. The spirit of uncontrolled yet weak romance comes in at once. The Crossis made to speak;the Risen One issues from the Tomb with a stature which touches the sky. To the literary student this suggests the reflection that the early Christian generations were wholly unskilled in the subtle art of successful historical imagination. To forsake facts, and their record, in favour of compositions bearing an artificial purpose; to personate, with an intention, the writer of another age; was inevitably, at that stage of literary development, to fall into manifest historical absurdity.
[117] See above, p. 38.
[118] The work referred to does not bear the name; its first pages are still lost. But there is practical certainty that the identification is correct. For an excellent popular account of it see Mr J. Rendel Harris's book, The newly-recovered Gospel of Peter.
Bishop Alexander, of Derry, in a sermon (1890) before the University of Cambridge (since incorporated in his Primary Convictions, New York and London, 1893), has admirably expounded the literary Phenomena of St Luke 24, and has pointed out the literaryreasons or accepting it as a record of fact. The "management of the supernatural" in narrative is one of the great problems of literature; Sir Walter Scott, in the Introduction to The Abbot, has condemned his own attempts to solve that problem in The Monastery. But "the supernatural" moves freely in the transparent narrative of St Luke. Is it unfair to say that St Luke was either a literary artist who more than rivalled Hamletand The Monastery, ora photographer of facts? It is assuredly true that such a manner is good proof that he was not a "tendency-writer" of the second century.
E. ESSENISM AND CHRISTIANITY. (P. 35.)
It has been maintained, sometimes by unfriendly sometimes by friendly critical students of Christianity, that Essenism and the Doctrine of Christ were closely connected, and that our Blessed Lord Himself, and John the Baptist, and James the Lord's Brother, were in some sense Essenes. The prima faciecase is plausible. John the Baptist was an inhabitant of the desert, roughly clothed, an ascetic in diet, and a baptizer. James is said to have abstained from wine, and from flesh-meat, and from the use of oil and of the razor. Our Lord laid the utmost stress upon the vanity of the Pharisaic ritualism, and in some mysterious words in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 19:12) seemed to countenance a possible law of celibacy. His infant Church held goods in common (Acts 4:34-35), and despised wealth. But these and some other traits of actual or possible likeness are shewn by Lightfoot (Colossians, pp. 158 179) to be entirely negatived by much greater unlikenesses. John the Baptist is a desert solitary, not a member of a desert community, and he nowhere preaches an ascetic life, or a life in community. The account of the asceticism of James is late in date, and probably coloured by imagination; and the Acts and Epistles which suggest that the Judaizing Christians claimed in some sense, rightly or not, his support, shew him as a man whose natural sympathies would be with the Pharisees rather than with the Essenes. Our Lord, unlike the Essenes, rebuked a distorted observance of the Sabbath; mingled freely in human social life; powerfully vindicated the sacredness of marriage and fatherhood; fully observed the Mosaic ceremonial, including the Passover; asserted the resurrection of the body; and, last not least, claimed for Himself the Messiahship, whereas no trace of the Messianic hope appears in our accounts of Essene doctrine. And whereas the Essene "despaired of society, and aimed only at the salvation of the individual," our Lord, in the Divine largeness of His teaching, at once put the utmost stress on the regeneration and holiness of the individual, and laid the foundations of a regenerated society in His doctrine of the relation of His followers, in Him their Head, to the whole circle of human life.
F. CHRIST AND CREATION. (Colossians 1:16.)
"The heresy of the Colossian teachers took its rise … in their cosmical speculations. It was therefore natural that the Apostle in replying should lay stress on the function of the Word in the creation and government of the world. This is the aspect of His work most prominent in the first of the two distinctly Christological passages. The Apostle there predicates of the Word [the Son] not only prior but absolute existence. All things were created by Him, are sustained in Him, are tending towards Him. Thus He is the beginning, middle, and end of creation. This He is because He is the very Imageof the Invisible God, because in Him dwells the Plenitude of Deity.
"This creative and administrative work of Christ the Word [the Son] in the natural order of things is always emphasized in the writings of the Apostles when they touch on the doctrine of His Person … With ourselves this idea has retired very much into the background … And the loss is serious … How much more hearty would be the sympathy of theologians with the revelations of science and the developments of history, if they habitually connected them with the operations of the same Divine Word who is the centre of all their religious aspirations, it is needless to say.
"It will be said indeed that this conception leaves … creation … as much a mystery as before. This may be allowed. But is there any reason to think that with our present limited capacities the veil which shrouds it ever will be removed? The metaphysical speculations of twenty-five centuries have done nothing to raise it. The physical investigations of our own age from their very nature can do nothing; for, busied with the evolution of phenomena, they lie wholly outside this question, and do not even touch the fringe of the difficulty. But meanwhile revelation has interposed, and thrown out the idea which, if it leaves many questions unsolved, gives a breadth and unity to our conceptions, at once satisfying our religious needs and linking our scientific instincts with our theological beliefs."
Lightfoot, Colossians, pp. 182, 183.
"From dearth to plenty, and from death to life,
Is Nature's progress, when she lectures man
In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes
The grand transition, that there lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.
The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused,
Sustains, and is the life of all that lives.
Nature is but a name for an effect
Whose Cause is God. He feeds the secret fire
By which the mighty process is maintain'd …
[All things] are under One. One Spirit, His
Who wore the platted thorns with bleeding brows,
Rules universal Nature. Not a flower
But shews some touch, in freckle, streak, or stain,
Of His unrival'd pencil. He inspires
Their balmy odours, and imparts their hues,
And bathes their eyes with nectar, and includes
In grains as countless as the seaside sands,
The forms with which He sprinkles all the earth.
Happy who walks with Him! whom what he finds
Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand, …
Prompts with remembrance of a present God."
Cowper, The Task, Book vi.
The views outlined by Bishop Lightfoot, in the passage quoted above, are pregnant of spiritual and mental assistance. At the same time with them, as with other great aspects of Divine Truth, a reverent caution is needed in the development and limitation. The doctrine of the Creating Word, the Eternal Son, "in" Whom finite existence has its Corner-stone, may actually degenerate into a view both of Christ and Creation nearer akin to some forms of Greek speculation than to Christianity, if not continually balanced and guarded by a recollection of other great contents of Revelation. Dr J. H. Rigg, in Modern Anglican Theology(3rd Edition, 1880), has drawn attention to the affinity which some recent influential forms of Christian thought bear to Neo-Platonism rather than to the New Testament. In particular, any view of the relation of Christ to "Nature" and to man which leads to the conclusion that all human existences are so "in Christ" that the individual man is vitally united to Him antecedent to regeneration, and irrespective of the propitiation of the Cross, tends to non-Christian affinities. It is a fact never to be lost sight of that any theology which on the whole gives to the mysteries of guilt and propitiation a less prominentplace than that given to them in Holy Scripture, tends to a very wide divergence from the scriptural type. Here, as in all things, the safety of thought lies on the one hand in neglecting no great element of revealed truth, on the other in coordinating the elements on the scale, and in the manner, of Divine Revelation.
G. DEVELOPMENTS OF DOCTRINE IN COLOSSIANS. (Colossians 1:16)
In the precise form presented in Colossiansthe revelation of the Creative Work of the Son is new in St Paul's Epistles. But intimations of it are to be found in the earlier Epistles, and such as to make this final development as natural as it is impressive. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 we have the "one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him;" which is in effect the germ of the statements of Colossians 1. And in Romans 8:19-23 we have a passage pregnant with the thought that the created Universe has a mysterious relation to "the sons of God," such that their glorification will be also its emancipation from the laws of decay; or at least that the glorification and the emancipation are deeply related to each other. Nothing is wanted to make the kinship of that passage and Colossians 1 evident at a glance, but an explicit mention of Christ as the Head of both worlds. As it is, His mysterious but most real connexion with the making and the maintaining of the Universe is seen lying as it were just below the surface of the passage in Romans.
H. "THRONES AND DOMINIONS." (Colossians 1:16)
We transcribe here a note from our edition of Ephesiansin this Series; on the words of Ephesians 1:21:
"Two thoughts are conveyed; first, subordinately, the existence of orders and authorities in the angelic (as well as human) world; then, primarily, the imperial and absolute Headship of the Son over them all. The additional thought is given us by Colossians 1:16, that He was also, in His preexistent glory, their Creator; but this is not in definite view here, where He appears altogether as the exalted Son of Man after Death. In Romans 8; Colossians 2, and Ephesians 6 … we have cognate phrases where evilpowers are meant.… But the context here is distinctly favourable to a goodreference. That the Redeemer should be "exalted above" powers of evilis a thought scarcely adequate in a connexion so full of the imagery of glory as this. That He should be "exalted above" the holy angels is fully in point. 1 Peter 3:22 is our best parallel; and cp. Revelation 5:11-12. See also Matthew 13:41; "The Son of Man shall send forth Hisangels."
"We gather from the Epistle to the Colossians that the Churches of Asia Proper were at this time in danger from a quasi-Jewish doctrine of Angel-worship, akin to the heresies afterwards known as Gnosticism. Such a fact gives special point to the phrases here. On the other hand it does not warrant the inference that St Paul repudiates all the ideas of such an angelology. The idea of order and authority in the angelic world he surely endorses, though quite in passing.
"Theories of angelic orders, more or less elaborate, are found in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, (cent. 1 2); Origen (cent. 3); St Ephrem Syrus (cent. 4). By far the most famous ancient treatise on the subject is the book On the Celestial Hierarchy, under the name (certainly assumed) of Dionysius the Areopagite; a book first mentioned cent. 6, from which time onwards it had a commanding influence in Christendom. (See Article Dionysiusin Smith's Dict. Christ. Biography). "Dionysius" ranked the orders (in descending scale) in three Trines;Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers (Authorities); Principalities, Archangels, Angels. The titles are thus a combination of the terms Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, Angels, with those used by St Paul here and in Colossians 1.
"Readers of Paradise Lost, familiar with the majestic line,
-Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Pow'rs,"
are not always aware of its learned accuracy of allusion. The Dionysian system powerfully attracted the sublime mind of Dante. In the Paradiso, Canto xxxviii., is a grand and characteristic passage, in which Beatrice expounds the theory to Dante, as he stands, in the Ninth Heaven, in actual view of the Hierarchies encircling the Divine Essence:
-All, as they circle in their orders, look
Aloft; and, downward, with such sway prevail
That all with mutual impulse tend to God.
These once a mortal view beheld. Desire
In Dionysius so intensely wrought
That he, as I have done, ranged them, and named
Their orders, marshal'd in his thought."
Cary's Dante."
I. HOOKER ON THE CHURCH. (Colossians 1:18.)
"That Church of Christ which we properly term His body mystical, can be but one; neither can that one be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the parts thereof are some in heaven already with Christ, and the rest that are on earth (albeit their natural persons be visible) we do not discern under this property whereby they are truly and infallibly of that body. Only our minds by intellectual conceit are able to apprehend that such a real body there is, a body collective, because it containeth a huge multitude; a body mystical, because the mystery of their conjunction is removed altogether from sense. Whatsoever we read in Scripture concerning the endless love and the saving mercy which God sheweth towards His Church, the only proper subject thereof is this Church. Concerning this flock it is that our Lord and Saviour hath promised: -I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hands." They who are of this society have such marks and notes of distinction from all others as are not object unto our sense; only unto God, who seeth their hearts and understandeth all their secret thoughts and cogitations, unto Him they are clear and manifest. All men knew Nathanael to be an Israelite. But our Saviour, piercing deeper, giveth further testimony of him than men could have done with such certainty as He did, -Behold indeed an Israelite in whom there is no guile." If we profess, as Peter did, that we love the Lord, and profess it in the hearing of men … charitable men are likely to think we do so, as long as they see no proof to the contrary. But that our love is sound and sincere … who can pronounce, saving only the Searcher of all men's hearts, who alone intuitively doth know in this kind who are His? And as those everlasting promises of love, mercy, and blessedness, belong to the mystical Church, even so on the other side when we read of any duty which the Church of God is bound unto, the Church whom this doth concern is a sensible known company. And this visible Church in like sort is but one.… Which company being divided into two moieties, the one before, the other since the coming of Christ, that part which since the coming of Christ partly hath embraced and partly shall hereafter embrace the Christian religion, we term as by a more proper name the Church of Christ.… The unity of which visible body and Church of Christ consisteth of that uniformity which all several persons thereunto belonging have, by reason of that one Lord, whose servants they all profess themselves; that one faith, which they all acknowledge; that one baptism, wherewith they are all initiated.… Entered we are not into the visible before our admittance by the door of baptism.… Christians by external profession they are all, whose mark of recognisance hath in it those things (one Lord, one faith, one baptism) which we have mentioned, yea, although they be impious idolaters, wicked heretics, persons excommunicable, yea and cast out for notorious improbity.… Is it then possible that the selfsame men should belong both to the synagogue of Satan and to the Church of Jesus Christ? Unto that Church which is His mystical body, not possible; because that body consisteth of none but only … true servants and saints of God. Howbeit of the visible body and Church of Jesus Christ, those may be, and oftentimes are, in respect of the main parts of their outward profession.… For lack of diligent observing the difference, first between the Church of God mystical and visible, then between the visible sound and corrupted, sometimes more, sometimes less; the oversights are neither few nor light that have been committed."
Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, iii. 1.
K. PETER LOMBARD ON BAPTISM. (Colossians 2:12.)
Peter Lombard (ob. a.d. 1160), known among medieval theologians as "the Master of the Sentences" (Magister Sententiarum), or simply, "the Master," writes as follows in his Treatise on Theology called Sententiœ(Lib. iv., Distinctioiv., §§ 3 7):
It is asked, how is that text to be received, As many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ.… In two manners are we said to put on Christ; by the taking of the Sacrament, or by the reception of the Thing (Res). So Augustine: -Men put on Christ sometimes so far as the reception of the Sacrament, sometimes so far as the sanctification of the life; and the first may be common to the good and the evil; the latter is peculiar to the good and pious." So all who are baptized in Christ's name put on Christ either in the sense of (secundum) the reception of the Sacrament, or in that of sanctification of the life.
"Others there are … who receive the Thing and not the Sacrament … Not only does martyrdom (passio) do the work of baptism but also faith and contrition, where necessity excludes the Sacrament …
"Whether is greater, faith or water? Without doubt I answer, faith. Now if the lesser can sanctify, cannot the greater, even faith? of which Christ said, -He that believeth in me, even if he were dead, he shall live" … [Augustine says,] -If any man having faith and love desires to be baptized, and cannot so be, because necessity intervenes, the kindness of the Almighty supplies what was lacking to the Sacrament … The duty which could not be done is not reckoned against him by God, who hath not tied (alligavit) His power to the Sacraments …"
"The question is often asked, regarding those who, already sanctified by the Spirit, come with faith and love to baptism, what benefit baptism confers upon them? For it seems to give them nothing, since through faith and contrition their sins are already forgiven and they are justified. To which it may be truly replied that they are indeed … justified, i.e. purged from the stain (macula) of sin, and absolved from the debt of the eternal punishment, but that they are still held by the bond of the temporal satisfaction by which penitents are bound in the Church. Now when they receive Baptism they are both cleansed of any sins they have contracted since conversion, and are absolved from the external satisfaction; and assisting grace and all virtues are increased in them; so that the man may then truly be called new … Baptism confers much benefit even on the man already justified by faith; for, coming to it, he is now carried, like the branch by the dove, into the ark. He was within the ark already in the judgment of God; he is now within it in that of the Church also …
"Marvel not that the Thing sometimes goes before the Sacrament, since sometimes it follows even long after; as in those who come insincerely (ficté). Baptism will begin to profit them (only) when they afterwards repent."
These remarks of a great representative of Scholastic Theology are interesting in themselves, and are instructive also as a caution, from the history of doctrine, against overstrained inferences from the mere wording of, e.g. Colossians 2:12, as if it were unfaithful to history to interpret such language in the light of facts and experience. The great risk of such overstrained exposition is that it tends to exalt the Sacrament at the expense of adequate views of the Grace, and so to invert the scale and relation of Scripture.
L. THE VARIOUS READINGS OF Colossians 2:18
Must we read (a) "The things which he hath not seen," or (b) "The things which he hath seen?"
The documentary evidence may be briefly stated thus:
i. For the omission of "not":
Uncial MSS.: א ABD, the first three of which are, with C, the oldest copies we possess. א B were probably written cent. 4, A cent. 5. D probably belongs to cent. 6.
Cursive MSS.: those numbered 17, 28, 67 in the list of cursive copies of St Paul's Epistles. These belong to centt. 10 and 12. MS. 67 omits "not" by correction only;the correction is perhaps as late as cent. 15.
Versions: the Old Latin (perhaps cent. 2) in three of its texts out of the five which contain the Epistle; the Coptic Version called the Memphitic (perhaps cent. 2); and two others.
Fathers: Tertullian (cent. 2, 3); Origen (cent. 3), but somewhat doubtfully [119]; the commentator Hilary (cent. 4), quoted as Ambrosiaster, as his work is included with the works of Ambrose. Jerome and Augustine (cent. 4, 5) both notice both readings.
[119] He cites the text three times. Two of these occur where his Greek is known only through a Latin Version, and one of these two gives "not." In the third, we have the Greek. Μὴ is inserted by the (last) critical Editor, De la Rue.
ii. For the retention of "not":
Uncial MSS.: C K L P, the first of cent. 5, the others of cent. 9. Besides, the reading οὐ (not μὴ) is given by a corrector of א, who dates perhaps cent. 7, and by correctors of D, who date perhaps cent. 8.
Cursive MSS.: allwith the three exceptions given above; i.e. more than 290 known copies, ranging from cent. 9 to cent. 15 or 16.
Versions: the Syriac Versions (the earliest is probably of cent. 2); one text of the Old Latin; the Vulgate (Jerome's revision of the Latin); the Gothic, Æthiopic, and others.
Fathers: Origen (in one place; see further above); Chrysostom; Jerome (with deliberate preference); Augustine (likewise); Theodore of Mopsuestia; Theodoret, "and others" (Lightfoot).
The late Dean Burgon (The Revision Revised, p. 356, note), thus summarizes the evidence, and remarks upon it:
"We have to set off the whole mass of the copies against some 6 or 7: Irenæus (i. 847), Theodorus Mops. (in loc.), Chrys. (xi. 372), Theodoret (iii. 489, 490), John Damascene (ii. 211) against no Fathers at all (for Origen once has μὴ [iv. 655] [120]; once has it not [iii. 63]; and once is doubtful [i. 583]). Jerome and Augustine both take notice of the diversity of reading, but only to reject it. The Syriac versions, the Vulgate, Gothic, Georgian, Sclavonic, Æthiopic, Arabic, and Armenian (we owe the information, as usual, to Dr Malan) are to be set against the suspicious Coptic. All these then are with the Traditional Text: which cannot seriously be suspected of error."
[120] See just above on this point, in our statement of the evidence for "not". (Editor.)
It must be added that Lightfoot (in loco), and Westcott and Hort (N.T. in Greek, ii. 127), suspect the Greek text of Colossians 2:18 of corruption, and suggest or adopt ingenious emendations. The rendering of the clause in question thus altered would be, "treading the void in airy suspension," or, "treading an airy void." We venture to think the reasons for suspicion inadequate.
M. MASTER AND SLAVE AT COLOSSÆ. (P. 154.)
We have conjectured the possibility that Onesimus" legal position might not be quite so bad as that of the slave of a Roman master. But the difference was probably a vanishing one in fact. Dr E. C. Clark, Regius Professor of Laws in the University of Cambridge, kindly informs the Editor that "little is known of the administration of ordinary justice in the Provinces. But almost all except serious cases seem to have been left to the native local authorities. I should think that no treatmentof a slave by his master could come under the cognizance of a Roman governor; and I see no reason to suppose that the local authorities would be more likely to interfere than the Roman magistrates in similar cases at Rome. Power of life and death would be, I imagine, the rule. The introduction of the theory of a Law of Nature may have led to a few ameliorations in the slave's condition mediately, i.e. through the individual action of humane Emperors. But these modifications of the old barbarity have been overrated. I doubt whether any prohibition of the arbitrary killing of a slave was regularlymade before the time of Hadrian. Philemon would have power, most likely, to treat Onesimus exactly as he pleased."
N. Dr MACLAREN ON THE LAST WORDS OF THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. (Philemon 1:25.)
In his excellent Expository Commentary on our two Epistles (3rd Edition, 1889) Dr Alexander Maclaren writes as follows:
"The parting benediction ends the letter. At the beginning of the Epistle, Paul invoked grace upon the household -from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Now he conceives of it as Christ's gift. In Him all the stooping, bestowing love of God is gathered, that from Him it may be poured upon the world. That grace is not diffused, like stellar light, through some nebulous heaven, but concentrated in the Sun of Righteousness, who is the light of men. That fire is piled on a hearth, that from it warmth may ray out to all that are in the house.…
"The grace of Christ is the best bond of family life. Here it is prayed for on behalf of all the group, the husband, wife, child, and the friends in their home-Church. Like grains of sweet incense sprinkled on an altar-flame, and making fragrant that which was already holy, that grace sprinkled on the household fire will give it an odour of a sweet smell, grateful to men and acceptable to God.
"That wish is the purest expression of Christian friendship, of which the whole Letter is so exquisite an example. Written as it is about a common everyday matter, which could have been settled without a single religious reference, it is saturated with Christian thought and feeling. So it becomes an example how to blend Christian sentiment with ordinary affairs, and to carry a Christian atmosphere everywhere. Friendship and social intercourse will be all the nobler and happier, if pervaded by such a tone. Such words as these closing ones would be a sad contrast to much of the intercourse of professedly Christian men. But every Christian ought by his life to be, as it were, floating the grace of God to others sinking for want of it, to lay hold of; and all his speech should be of a piece with this benediction.
"A Christian's life should be -an Epistle of Christ," written with His own hand, wherein dim eyes might read the transcript of His own gracious love; and through all his words and deeds should shine the image of his Master, even as it does through the delicate tendernesses and gracious pleadings of this pure pearl of a letter, which the slave, become a brother, bore to the responsive hearts in quiet Colossæ."