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polation by a later hand has something in its favour. Paul mentions, however, those who preside (poïrτάuevo) in Thess. v. 12 and Rom. xii. 8, and a deaconess in Rom. xvi. 1; so the possibility that, in official actions such as the present to Paul, the church at Philippi was even then represented by bishops and deacons cannot be entirely excluded. (2) The curious fashion in which the preaching of Christ by Paul's opponents is spoken of in i. 15 does not correspond to his uncompromising rigour elsewhere; e.g., Gal. i. 8 f. But does not Paul in the Epistle to the Romans also deal with the Jewish Christians at Rome much more gently than with the Judaising agitators of Galatia? If we remember that they were only a small minority (Twés), and that the reproach brought against them is personal illwill to Paul, not actual false doctrine, we can quite understand the gentleness of his judgment. And it becomes perfectly comprehensible if we might suppose (following Weizsäcker's noteworthy suggestion) that among those who with ill intentions contributed to the extension of the Gospel there were included not only hostile Christians but Jews and heathen, who by their disputes about the Christian cause involuntarily spread the knowledge of it. If we take into consideration also that the apostle as a prisoner at Rome was confronted with new and strange circumstances which lay outside his own control, we shall find the tone of mingled gentleness and resignation in i. 15 ff. so exactly in harmony with the situation that we can hardly suppose it to be a later invention. (3) It is asserted that the passage ii. 6 ff. is not in accordance with Pauline

Christology as set forth elsewhere, inasmuch as the pre-existing Christ is represented, not, as elsewhere, as the Heavenly Man, but as a God-like being, and the earthly Christ is represented not as real man but only as a being resembling man (docetically). This is so far true that the whole of the expressions in ii. 6 f. are unusual and seem to demand an interpretation which differs from the rest of the Pauline Christology; with reference to this I consider the suggestion lately put forward (Brückner, Schmiedel) that verse 6 f. was interpolated by a "deutero-Pauline " well worthy of notice.1 (4) The judgment on Paul's past life as a Jew expressed in iii. 6 that he was "as touching the righteousness of the law, blameless," is un-Pauline, because it implies that the Mosaic law is only considered as a ceremonial law, contrary to Rom. vii. 12, 14. But in Galatians also Paul put the law on the same the same footing as the " beggarly elements of the world," and in Gal. i. 14 he estimates his legal righteousness in the same way as in Phil. iii. 6; Rom. ii. 6 ff., also, shows that where the doctrine of justification did not come into view he can recognise a relative moral judgment. (5) The doctrine of salvation in iii. 9 is un-Pauline, because it confuses the objective faith-righteousness with the subjective righteousness of life resting on union with Christ, making the latter a condition of salvation, and salvation therefore uncertain (ews, verse 11). But a similar combination of inward and attributed righteousness is found elsewhere not infrequently in Paul (cf. 2 Cor. v. 14-21; Rom. vi. 4 ff., viii. 2 ff.),

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1 This will be referred to in greater detail below in connection with the Pauline Christology.

and the ethical condition of the final attainment of salvation is as definitely asserted in many passages (cf. Rom. viii. 17, 13; Gal. vi. 7 ff.; 1 Cor. ix. 2327 et al.) as the unconditionedness of the certainty of salvation, from the religious point of view, undoubtedly is in others. This, like many other antinomies, merely shows that Paul was not the systematic thinker that he has often been supposed to have been. Finally (6 and 7), if objection be taken to the way in which Paul in iii. 15 ff. and iv. 9 holds himself up as an example of virtue, and to the elaborate manner of his thanksgiving for the gift of the Philippians in iv. 10-18, and these are held to be unworthy of the apostle, that is too much a matter of taste (others have taken exactly the opposite view) to quarrel about or build anything upon. While none of these grounds of doubt is convincing, they are confronted with a strong argument in favour of the genuineness of the epistle in the difficulty of inventing the individual traits and trains of feeling which are so unmistakably appropriate to the position of the imprisoned apostle, and especially the improbability that a later writer would, after the apostle's death, have attributed to him such a confident hope of a favourable issue of his trial and an early visit to the Philippians.

To that must be added finally the evidence of Polycarp, who in his Epistle to the Philippians expressly mentions one or more letters of Paul addressed to the church.1 That our epistle had one

1 Polyc. ad Phil. iii. 2: (Paul) kaì åπìv vμîv čypayev émiσtodás. According to Zahn, Einleitung, i. 378, the plural refers to the letters of Paul to the Macedonians, including Thessalonians.

or more predecessors has been inferred also from iii. 1, since the remark that it did not weary him to write the same thing to them cannot refer to what had been already written in this letter, and must therefore refer to earlier correspondence. Others have divided our epistle itself into two separate parts, first combined at a later date; a hypothesis which finds a certain support in the abrupt transition from iii. 1 to 2, but makes shipwreck on the difficulty that in that case each of the two epistles had lost one essential part: the first, in particular, lacking an expression of thanks for the gift from the Philippians, which must nevertheless according to ii. 25 have already taken place. Moreover, the numerous sudden transitions are quite intelligible in the case of an occasional letter which is so little doctrinal and so predominantly personal.

THE WRITINGS OF PAUL

CHAPTER XII

THE LETTERS TO PHILEMON AND THE COLOSSIANS

THESE epistles are closely connected, both as regards the situation of the writer and the place of residence of the persons addressed. The church of the Phrygian city of Colosse was not founded by Paul, but probably by Epaphras, whom Paul speaks of as his beloved fellow-servant and a faithful minister of Christ (i. 7). He had come from Colosse, where his home was (iv. 12), to visit the imprisoned apostle in Rome, and had brought him cheering news of the loving sympathy of his church for Paul, and the orderly and steadfast character of its faith (i. 7, ii. 5), but at the same time reported the anxieties and struggles (iv. 12) which had been caused him, in all probability, by the appearance in the church of false teachers. To oppose the danger which threatened from this direction, and to confirm the Colossian church in the true faith, was the object of the epistle which Paul despatched by Tychicus to the Colossians (iv. 7). Along with him he also sent thither Onesimus (iv. 9), the slave of Philemon, whom he had converted, and to whom he gave a short letter to his master, in which he exhorted him for his

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