Part 1 (2/2)
”Can length of years on G.o.d Himself exact, Or make that fiction which was once a fact?
Fix'd in the rolling flood of endless years The pillar of the eternal plan appears; The raging storm and das.h.i.+ng wave defies, Built by that Architect who built the skies.” [3]
For me and for my reader may the two aspects of ”this same Jesus,” the historical and the spiritual, ever combine in one mighty harmony of certainty; faith's resting-place to the end, ”the rock of our heart, and our portion for ever”; at once our peace and our power, in life and in death, and through the eternal day also, in which we shall need Him still in the experiences of heaven.
What shall we say of the place to which the Epistle was sent, and of that from which it was written; and of the writer, the bearer, the readers; and of the occasion and the time?
Philippi now, so travellers tell us, is a scene of beautiful and silent ruin. Near the head of the fair Archipelago, amidst scenery of exquisite beauty, near the range of Pangaeus, now Pirnari, on the banks of the quiet Gangas, lie the relics of the once busy city, visited only by the herdsman and the explorer. By it or through it ran a great road from West to East, called by the Romans the Egnatian Way. The double battle of Philippi, B.C. 42, when the Oligarchy fell finally before the rising Empire, made the plain famous. Augustus planted a _colonia_ in the town. It thus became a miniature Rome, as every ”colony” was. It had its pair of petty consuls (_duumviri_; the _strategoi_ of Acts xvi.
20) and their lictors (A.V. ”serjeants,” _rhabdouchoi_). And it faithfully reproduced Roman pride in the spirit of its military settlers. It had its Jewish element, as almost every place then had; but the Jews must have been few and despised; their place of wors.h.i.+p was but a ”prayer-house” (_proseuche_), outside the walls, on the river's bank (Acts xvi. 13). We need not recount in detail the history of the first evangelization (A.D. 52) of the difficult place. We recollect sufficiently the address to the pious Jewesses and proselyte-women in the ”prayer-house”; the conversion and baptism of Lydia; the rescue of the poor girl possessed with the ”spirit of Pytho”; the tumult, and the trial before the duumvirs; the scourge, the inner prison, the hymn at midnight, the earthquake, and the salvation of the jailor's life and soul; the message sent through the lictors in the morning, then the respectful approach of the magistrates themselves, and the retirement of the Missionaries ”to another city,”
along the Egnatian road. It is enough now to remember, what the very existence of the Epistle reveals to us, the growth and life of the little mission-church planted amidst such storms, and in a climate, so to speak, full of possible tempests at any hour. In the Epistle, we arrive at a date some nine years later than the first visit of St Paul.
Twice during that period, and perhaps only twice, we find him at Philippi again; late in A.D. 57 (Acts xx. 1) and early (it was the sweet spring, the Pa.s.sover time) in A.D. 58; this last may have been a visit arranged on purpose (in Lightfoot's words: _Philippians_, p. 60) ”that he might keep the Paschal feast with his beloved converts.” No doubt, besides these personal visits, Philippi was kept in contact with its Missionary between A.D. 52 and A.D. 61 by messages and by the occasional visits of the Apostle's faithful helpers. But on the whole the Church would seem in a very large degree to have been left to its own charge. And what do we find as the issue when we come to the Epistle? A community large enough to need a _staff_ of Christian ministers, ”bishops and deacons,” ”overseers and working-helpers”
(_episkopoi kai diakonoi_); full of love and good works; affectionately mindful of St Paul in the way of practical a.s.sistance; and apparently shewing, as their almost only visible defect or danger, a tendency to separate somewhat into sections or cliques--a trouble which in itself indicates a considerable society. If we may (as we may, looking at the ordinary facts of human nature) at all estimate the calibre of Philippian Christianity by the tone in which the Apostle addresses the Philippians, we gather that on the whole it was a high tone, at once decided and tender, affectionate and mature. The converts were capable of responding to a deep doctrinal teaching, and also to the simplest appeals of love. Such was the triumph of the mysterious Gospel over place, and circ.u.mstance, and character; the lily flowered at its fairest among the thorns; grace shone and triumphed in the immediate presence of its ”adversaries.”
But the evil we indicated just above was present in the otherwise happy scene. When Epaphroditus crossed the mountains and the sea to carry a generous gift of money to St Paul, risking his life (ii. 27) somehow by dangerous sickness in the effort, he had to carry also news of differences and heart-burnings, which could not but cloud the Apostle's loving joy. The envoy found it needful to speak also of the emissaries of error who at Philippi, as everywhere, were troubling the faith and hope of the believers; ”turning the grace of G.o.d into lasciviousness”; professing a lofty spirituality, and wors.h.i.+pping their appet.i.tes all the while. And side by side with them, apparently, might be found Pharisaic disputants of an older type (iii. 3, 18, etc.).
Such was the report with which Epaphroditus found his way from Macedonia to Rome. Where, in Rome, did he find St Paul, and at what stage of his Roman residence? Our answer must begin with affirming the conviction that it _was_ to Rome, not elsewhere, that Epaphroditus went. The reader is aware that the Epistle itself names no place of origin; it only alludes to a scene of _imprisonment_. And this does not of itself decide the locality; for at Caesarea Stratonis, in Palestine, as well as at Rome, St Paul spent two years in captivity (Acts xxiv. 27). Some modern critics have favoured the date from Caesarea accordingly. They have noticed e.g. the verbal coincidence between Herod's _praetorium_ (A.V. ”judgment-hall”) of Acts xxiii. 35, and the _praetorium_ (A.V. ”palace”) of Phil. i. 13. But Lightfoot[4]
seems to me right in his decisive rejection of this theory and unshaken adherence to the date from Rome. He remarks that the oldest Church tradition is all for Rome; that the Epistle itself evidently refers to its place of origin as to a place of first-rate importance and extent, in which any advance of the Gospel was a memorable and pregnant event; and that the allusion to ”Caesar's household” (though it is not so quite decisive as it might at first sight appear to be) ”cannot without much straining of language and facts be made to apply to Caesarea.”
If now the Epistle was written from Rome, during the ”two whole years”
of Acts xxviii. 30, at what point in that period may we think that the writing fell? Here again is a problem over which much thought and labour has been spent. A majority of opinions no doubt is in favour of a date towards the end of the imprisonment, so that Philippians would follow after Colossians and Ephesians. It is held that (1) the tone of the Epistle betokens the approach of a closing crisis for St Paul; and that (2) it seems to indicate an already developed Christian mission work at Rome, as if St Paul had worked there some while; and that (3) Epaphroditus' visit cannot be adjusted with any probability if we do not allow a good time for previous communications between Rome and Philippi. But here again Lightfoot's view commends itself to my mind decisively. He holds that Philippians was _the first_ of the ”Epistles of the Captivity,” and was written perhaps within the first few months of the ”two whole years.” Two of his reasons seem adequate of themselves to make this likely. The first is, that St Paul's allusion to the profound _impression made on the Roman Christians_ by his ”bonds in Christ” (i. 13, 14) goes well with the hypothesis of his recent arrival as a prisoner for Christ's sake, but not with that of his having been long present on the scene. The other is that the great doctrinal pa.s.sage (iii. 4-9), where he repudiates ”his own righteousness” and commits himself to ”the righteousness which is of G.o.d by faith,” is evidently akin to the group of Epistles to which Romans belongs; and that it seems more likely that the divine Inspirer, in His order of revelation, led His servant so to write while the occasion for the writing of Romans was still comparatively recent, than long after, when the different (though kindred) sides of saving truth dealt with in Ephesians and Colossians had become prominent in his teaching. With reason, I think, Lightfoot ”cannot attach any weight”
to the argument from Epaphroditus' visit, which may well have been planned at Philippi before St Paul actually reached Rome, and planned thus early on purpose, so as to reach him promptly there with the collected gifts of love. Nor are the allusions to a probable impending crisis in the trial before the Emperor important for the date; for quite early in the imprisonment it may well have seemed likely that the case would be soon decided. As for the comparatively advanced state of Roman Christianity, the Epistle to the Romans is evidence enough that a vigorous and extensive mission-church, however it was founded, existed at Rome some years before St Paul arrived.
I will venture then to take it for granted that it was some time in A.D. 61, or at latest early in A.D. 62, that Epaphroditus came, with his collection and his reports, and struggled through his illness, and then prepared to return to Macedonia, carrying this precious Letter with him. We seem to see the scene as he converses day by day with St Paul, and as at length he takes his leave, in charge of this Message of ”faith and love.” We see a large chamber in one of those huge piles of building, storey over storey, of which imperial Rome was full. The window looks perhaps north-westward, up the stream of the Tiber, towards the distant hills of which Soracte is the most prominent. The sentinel, perhaps himself a convert to the Lord, sits motionless at a little distance, chained to the Apostle. The saints pray, converse, and embrace; and then Epaphroditus descends to set out for Ostia, or for Puteoli, on his way home to Philippi.
”The gra.s.s withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever.” The graves of the blessed ones who worked for the heavenly Master then are more than eighteen centuries old now. But the Letter to Philippi is to-day as new as ever. It is addressed to us, that we too may ”believe, unto life everlasting,” on ”that same Jesus.”
[1] Preserved by Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, ii.
[2] Written early in 1896.
[3] Cowper, _Conversation_.
[4] _Philippians_ (ed. i.), p. 30, note.
”Man, like the gra.s.s of morning, Droops ere the evening hour; His goodliness and beauty Fade as a fading flower; But who may shake the pillars Of G.o.d's unchanging Word?
Amen, Himself hath spoken; Amen,--thus saith the Lord.
BISHOP E. H. BICKERSTETH.
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