Commentary on Scripture: Philemon

To Philemon our beloved brother and fellow worker... and to the church in your house: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Phil. 1-3 ~~ Paul's letter to Philemon was written at the same time as his letter to church at Colossae, and was delivered to Colossae by the same messengers: Tychicus and Onesimus (Colossians 4:7-9).

Phil. 4-10 ~~ Paul does not immediately mention the purpose of the letter, but tries to build rapport as a pastoral and apostolic authority over Philemon as a believer.

Phil. 4-5 ~~ Paul's spirit of thanksgiving arises out of Philemon's love "toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints."

Phil. 6 ~~ Fellowship of Christian faith becomes "effective through the knowledge of every good thing which is in in you for Christ's sake." Fellowship and Christian community is reinforced and made complete not only by recognition of the value of others, but also by the recognition of the value of oneself ("every good thing which is in you")!

Phil. 8-9 ~~ Paul clearly states that he has "enough confidence in Christ" (i.e., enough moral confidence in his beliefs) to demand and order a certain course of action, "yet for love's sake I rather appeal to you." Paul returns to this theme in verses 14 and 21, speaking of his desire that Philemon will obey freely without coercion from a spiritual authority. Paul restates in verse 19 his authority to demand obedience ("you owe to me even your own soul as well").

Phil. 10 ~~ Paul finally comes to the point of this personal letter: "I appeal to you for my child Onesimus." This direct appeal comes only after Paul had build up his own credibility (ethos), and is followed by passages that demonstrate the logic of his request (logos) and that reach out to Philemon's conscience and heart (pathos). Paul was a well-educated Pharisee, who was familiar with the Hellenistic culture. The epistle to Philemon is a clear instance of classical rhetoric as developed by Plato and Aristotle.

Phil. 11 ~~ Paul makes a lighthearted pun on the meaning of Onesimus' name ("useful"). Wordplay was a common feature in classical rhetoric.

Phil. 12-14 ~~ Paul's reasons for sending Onesimus back: "without your consent I did not want to do anything, so that your goodness would not be, in effect, by compulsion but of your own free will." This sounds noble, but is incredibly problematic. Paul is delivering Onesimus, a runaway slave, to the estate of his master Philemon, to face probable execution under Roman law. In sending a fellow Christian to the very teeth of persecution without security and only hope. Paul doesn't even exercise what leverage he has to ensure the safety of Onesimus. Paul expresses only his love for Philemon as reasons for his actions, but if that were the sole consideration for his actions, Paul would have failed to act lovingly towards Onesimus. Onesimus must have been consulted, and must have agreed to return to Philemon; otherwise, Paul's actions are indefensible.

Phil. 15 ~~ Paul contrasts the temporary deprivation of a servant with the eternal gain of a brother. "Perhaps he was for this reason separated from you for a while, that you would have him back forward."

Phil. 16 ~~ Paul requests that Onesimus be accepted back and his offenses forgiven, and that Philemon treat this runaway with all of the consideration and love he would regularly extend to his fellow believers. Paul does not directly request Onesimus' freedom, but only his forgiveness ("no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother.") As with similar passages in Ephesians and other NT epistles, Paul's emphasis is to redeem rather than replace social institutions. Paul addressed the individuals within the system and give them guidance to acting with virtue.

Phil. 17-21 ~~ Paul makes an emotional appeal to Philemon, appealing to feelings of gratitude, honor, and even Philemon's sense of pride.

Phil. 19 ~~ Paul restates his ability to command and demand obedience ("you owe to me even your own self") but appeals not to Philemon's humility but to his gratitude and to his trust ("I will repay it").

Phil. 20-21 ~~ Paul appeals to Philemon's sense of pride, not only in being in a position to "refresh [Paul's] heart in Christ," but also in being entrusted with Paul's confidence that he would exceed every expectation on his virtue. Sins and errors are dangerous in proportion to the value and impact of the virtue or truth they distort. Humans struggle with pride so often because the underlying virtue is so foundational: we were created in the image of God, and shall be raised to glory with Christ.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Commentary on Scripture: Colossians

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother. To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are at Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.

1:4-5 ~~ faith in Christ and love for the Christian community are the products of "the hope laid up for you in heaven"

1:8 ~~ the phrase "your love in the Spirit" indicates that obedience to the will of God is itself a gift from God, for we are empowered to follow God through the workings of the Holy Spirit. This doesn't negate the concept of free will, but hints at a reconciliation between our will in following Christ, and Christ's sovereignty in redeeming us.

1:9 ~~ Paul prays that "you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding" so that "you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord" etc.

1:9-12 ~~ Paul lists the products of Godly wisdom, which correspond to the medieval Intelligence. "Knowledge of His will" (Mercury)... "bearing fruit in every good work" (Venus)... "strengthened with all power" (Mars) "according to His glorious might" (Jupiter) "for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience" (Saturn). This list hints at the relationship between these Intelligences. Mercury is the foundation ("wisdom and understand so that...") of the other virtues, especially Venus (beauty and charitable love). Mars (strength and courage) is the first and greatest servant and imitator of Jupiter (majesty and glory), but both exist and lead to Saturn (patience and humility).

1:11-12 ~~ the final item of the list "joyously giving thanks to the Father" corresponds to the symbol of the Sun, symbolizing Joy (the Presence of God) and its effect of us (a spirit of thanksgiving, redemption from sin, and shared inheritance "of saints in Light").

1:15 ~~ "He is the image of the invisible God" (cf. Genesis 1:27) "the firstborn of all Creation" (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:22)

1:16-22 ~~ fairly comprehensive statement of Christology as it relates to the creation, humanity, the church, the nature of the resurrection, the anointing and mutual interpenetration of Father-Spirit-Son, the nature of the passion, the nature of personal conversion, the nature of salvation, and the Final Judgement.

1:23 ~~ reaffirmation of free will especially in light of Christ's soveriegnty.

1:25-26 ~~ word of God = a mystery previously hidden but manifested in the saints.

1:26-27 ~~ "riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." (cf. Colossians 1:15; Christ is the firstborn of all Creation, heralding the redemption and exaltation of humanity).

2:2-4 ~~ a poetic, rhetorical appeal for truth, to inoculate against error (following Plato's conception of a noble use of rhetoric, developed in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus).

2:8 ~~ "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary [first; or, secret] principles of the world." Traditions and wisdom, without God, is hollow and hollowing (cf. Heb. 5:12, "first principles" are systematized, and sin and theology are correlated).

2:17 ~~ "shadow" v. "substances" (OT laws are a shadow of the 'body of Christ').

2:23 ~~ "appearance of wisdom" in self-made religion, especially those that tend towards self-abasement and severe treatment of the body.

3:1-2 ~~ "keep seeking the things above, where Christ is... set your mind on the things above." Instead of denigrating the body and training our souls through our own will, our focus should be on Christ (the 'firstborn of Creation') who is the redemption of the flesh and restoration of the soul.

3:5 ~~ "immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry."

3:8 ~~ "put them all aside: anger wrath malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth." The command to change one's attitude is treated in the same list as the command to change one's words and actions.

3:9-10 ~~ "you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self, who is bing renewed to the true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him."

3:12 ~~ "chosen by God, holy and blameless" (signs of the elect); "heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience."

3:14 ~~ "love, which is the perfect bond of unity."

3:15 ~~ "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were indeed called in one body; and be thankful."

3:16 ~~ "Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you" -- in wisdom, instruct and admonish; "with thankfulness in your hearts to God" sing with psalms and hymns.

3:17 ~~ "Whatever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father."

3:18-22 ~~ list of virtues involved in family life (for wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, and masters) including submission, love, obedience, patience, sincerity, fear of the LORD, and love of justice and fairness.

3:24 ~~ "from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance."

4:1 ~~ reaffirmation of the meaning of hierarchy (masters act justly to slaves, thereby justified to their Master in heaven).

4:6 ~~ "speech always be with grace, [as though] seasoned with salt." See also Ephesians 4:29 ("no unwholesome word," edifying speech, "give grace to those who hear") and Isaiah 6:5-7 (grace to words, and "purification" of the lips -- salt was used as an antiseptic).

4:9 ~~ Paul sends Onesimus to Colossae (the letter of Philemon was sent privately alongside the letter to the Colossian church).

Contemplations in Theology: #10

Praise to the Giver of good things.

As Christians, we recognize the reality of the Redemption: the sacrifice made by Christ, not merely for the forgiveness of sins but for the restoration of souls. We believe in the promise of our future exaltation. As Paul writes, "Do you not know that we will judge angels?" (1 Cor. 6:3). Or, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, every human you have ever met will one day be either a sight worthy of nightmares, or a creature you would strongly be tempted to worship. As humans, we are sons of God, of whom Jesus was the firstborn. We will inherit the Kingdom through Him and with Him.

But exaltation in only one face of the Christian coin. The other is its necessary companion: humility.

In Mark 10, the apostles James and John approach Jesus to ask Him for a seat at His left and right hand when he ascends to glory. Jesus asks them if they are willing to share in the cup that He must endure. "'We can,' they answered. Jesus said to them, 'You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared" (Mark 10:39-40).

In other words, Christ promised them martyrdom, but did not promise them eternal glory. We know the reality of our future exaltation, but for now we must push that out of our minds as much as possible. There is forgiveness promised to all sinners, but that is not to be borne in mind when approaching the Throne. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ declared that the meek shall inherit the earth, but is it meekness that demands of God, "Here I am, humble before You; now give me my inheritance!" Heaven exists, glory and exaltation awaits, but we must not allow ourselves to be bribed by these things.

This point, incidentally, is the redemption of Saturn. I'd earlier tried to marginalize this divine personality as a symbol of tragedy that was ultimately defeated by Christ's victory on the Cross. Yet now I realize that was not complete. After all, though Christ conquered death, are we not called to take up our crosses and follow Him?

How can I reflect Christ's kingship? How do I come into my inheritance as a son of God? By recalling my nature as a son of Man, by humbling myself, by emptying myself that God may fill me.

I've been wrestling with these issues recently. I am tired of sacrificing myself; I'm tired of constantly being dependable and patient; I'm fundamentally tired of being humble.

I think one of the problems is that I've approached this virtue without relying on God, for a life of pure humility is impossible without the grace and joy of God that gives us strength to continue. Is this not the lesson of the heavens? God presides over the infinity of space, in the ineffable majesty of His Presence, while we are the inhabitants of a speck in that infinity, for whom a description as "relatively small" would be a exaggeration of the greatest degree. We are quite literally nothing before Him; even when we inherit His glory, we shall still be nothing before Him. Everything we do and can ever accomplish is with His grace; that is, God willing.

"In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Romans 8:26-27).

Father, help me. Amen.

Confessions: #2

Man possesses an infinite soul; he transcends tragedy. Heaven help me, I know better than most the addicting satisfaction of a tragic mindset--the previous school year was immeasurably difficult for me for this very reason. I have always had a keen awareness of my intellectual gifts, and the distance between me and my peers that it caused. Yet I did not give glory to God for giving me this unique mode of worshiping him, but rather resigned myself to his service. I felt like the servant given ten talents during the master's absence; I was duty-bound to increase those talents until my King returned, yet never able to live up to His expectations. I did not "consider all things joy," but rather considered life to be a responsibility.

I cannot begin to describe how aesthetically satisfying this self-perception was, to consider myself a "tragic hero," a victim of the noble sacrifice.

Nor can I begin to describe how numbing and utterly soul-sucking this self-perception proved to be. My soul was weather-beaten, atrophied, consumed from within as though by disease. It produced both pride and self-loathing, excruciating despair and total apathy. I rarely (if ever) showed this side of my life to my friends or mentors--I wish I had not been so convincing an actor in this regard. But even had I wished it, I'm not sure I could have expressed my sickness. It was an ineffable sin, an inarticulable cancer of the spirit.

If there was any single cause for my spiritual rejuvenation, it was the decision to cast off this misconceived vision of my life. I still believe that it is the most deadly heresy into which we may fall. I should sooner curse the God who loves me and the Son who gave up His life, than fall back into that pit of tragic apathy. "I wish you were either cold or hot. But because you are lukewarm... I will spit you out of My mouth" (Rev. 3:15-16).

In the sphere of Venus I learned war;
In the sphere of Saturn, my heart leapt for Joy.
While bathed in light I accepted your mystery;
when wreathed in shadow my heart discerned God.
God, by your Word, grant me peace in your Name.
My heart is a King's, yet my soul is complacent.
Grant me, God willing, respite from this numbness.
Lord, judge me! Savior, forgive this lukewarm spirit!
Give me the freedom to care and to cry.

God, forgive my complacency. I know Your lovingkindness, that You have borne the weight of sin and defeated the power of death. I am witness to Your suffering, in bearing the weight of tragedy and the curse of the Law. From the instant of Creation You have endured the entirety of suffering that we might not be crushed, for You are the only One who could bear such things. Your hands are scarred; let me touch them! My soul is numbed to the potency of Your love. Console me, reignite my passion to live, place in me a pure heart, to delight and to feel.

Oh! God, my heart is searching Yours; grant me my prayer! Teach me to cry out to You!

Contemplations in Theology: #2

For all my life, I have struggled with my personal faith. I am a rationalist in almost every respect; my mind operates on words, definitions, and discrete thoughts. I think about God; I certainly believed in God. But I did not "experience" God, in the same way that others did; I could not "feel" the Holy Spirit. My faith was rational, not experiential. I was immensely jealous of those who could experience God's presence--perhaps it was a sin, I know not. My desire to feel God led me to a spiritual crisis about two years ago, and it hurt me to my core. I started to question my faith, because I did not relate to how most Christians (and almost all mature Christians who I respected) experienced God. I was insecure in my faith, and it hurt.

Two summers ago, I was reading some books by C.S. Lewis, and I was struck by a thought, an idea--I'll write about that idea in a future post--that drove me wild with Joy. I use that term deliberately, for I had been reading Lewis's spiritual autobiography, "Surprised by Joy." Lewis had related how, as a young child, he had been visited by this sensation of Joy--notably through the vision of a cold northern landscape--which drove him wild with desire for something. He later identified Joy as the fundamental desire for God. I actually disagree with his definition. Joy is not the sensation, but the thing itself: the sight through the glass darkly, past the veil, in the shadows, of God smiling at me--an obscured glimpse of God finding Joy in me.

The concept of Joy is an important one, for more reasons than this. However, to realize that the Joy I felt was an experience of God... how to describe it? I had felt God's presence! Moreover--and here is the crucial aspect as it relates to my argument in these notes--I had felt God's presence not through prayer, not as a distinctly spiritual experience, but in the context of reason. My thoughts had given me Joy.

This is the phenomenon I call "The Aesthetics of Reason." I believe that the contemplation of a truly sublime and profound idea gives the same visceral aesthetic feeling, as experiencing the beauties of Nature, or standing before the majesty of God. Reason, taken in its highest sense, is an aesthetic experience.

The contemplation of God draws me closer to the presence of God.

Why would this be? How could this be? This argument seems to fly in the face of the rather central concept of philosophy and psychology--the mind-body dualism. Experience operates on the sensations; reason operates on the mind. The one is subjective, the other objective. The one is physical, the other immaterial. How can we equate them? Yet I believe we may.

I believe the God of reason is the same God of faith and experience. I believe the God of lights is also the God of mysteries. I believe the God of John 1 ("In the beginning was the Word...") is the same God of 1 John ("What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands..."). Praise be to Him!

There is one last thing which I wish to mention. This concept of the "aesthetics of reason" was a tremendously encouraging one: it was a Joy and a relief. But it is also tremendously practical. Several weeks ago, I was engaged in discussion with several college friends discussing medieval cosmology--the subject of a future note. The conversation lasted about three hours; the last hour of our discussion was almost solely focused on explaining a particular paradox which arose from our earlier discussion. We tossed around a number of ideas, any of which would explain the paradox. However, these did not satisfy; they merely fit, they were useful. At last we hit upon one that gave us those divine goosebumps, an aesthetic sensation of Joy, the feeling that we had hit upon something at the core of who God is. It was this last one that we decided was 'right'--though there was little logical difference between any of these ideas, the last one manifested the aesthetics of reason.

It sounds almost perverse, but we used aesthetic experiences (necessarily subjective) as proof for an objectively rational construct of Truth. It reminded me of John Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn": "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Reason is not independent, but is integrated into, our experience of God.