We spent
last night in a rather posh resort hotel in the cosmopolitan city of Atalya on
the Mediterranean coast. A lot of the other guests were Russians who were
pretty clearly well off. Late into the night, we were serenaded by Turkish jazz
from the night club below. It was actually just wonderful, albeit loud.
Today we
traveled to Laodicea and Hierapolis, neighbors of Colossae. Paul’s relationship
with them may have been indirect, mediated by Colossae but that site has not
yet been excavated. The three congregations clearly interacted, sharing Paul’s
letters with one another. The ruins of Laodicea were impressive in that they
are excavating and reassembling the large city (it had a population of 150,000
or so) at a rapid rate. Hierapolis had a lot more touristy stuff, but Hierapolis
was like that in Paul’s time too. By the end of a long, tiring day of touring
-- though todays’ lectures were not about these places – I found a connection
between what I saw and what we had learned in those lectures that gives me a
new slant on Paul’s whole message. It feels as if I have never really
understood Paul until today. Of course I’ve got a lot more to learn but this
feels like a quantum leap and it is because of the connection between Paul’s
“virtue ethics” and the Triune God.
The first
lecture was on Paul & The Law. Protestant Reformation theologians made much
of Paul’s theology of justification by faith and not by works. Biblical
scholars since Albert Schweitzer have cast much doubt on whether Paul said
that, and if he did whether that is a central concern for him. Clearly he had a
lot to say about the law, most directly early on in Galatians and much later in
Romans. His pastoral writing about moral issues in between addresses the
question obliquely. The basic issue is whether he is for it or against the Law.
Bottom line: it’s hard to tell. He seems inconsistent. This may be because he
is writing to different people for different pastoral reasons that call for a
different approach. It may also be that he was trying to think through the
whole thing while he was writing.
But Paul’s
approach to the law becomes coherent if we see two points. I addressed the
first one in LIVE FROM ANATOLIA PART I. Paul is committed to universal
inclusion. To that end, he wants to draw the whole world to Jewish moral
values, so that part of the law is actually quite good. He does not want anyone
cut off from relationship by Jewish ritual purity and cultic worship
requirements. So that part of the law is “a curse,” “a yoke,” the “cause of
sin,” etc.
But even
with regard to the moral law, there is an issue. Morality is a very basic
question: how shall we live? What should we do? What should we refrain from
doing? The Jewish law was a guide. It said, “Do this. Don’t’ do that.” There were
rules – not nit picky stuff like we find in ritual purity regulations, but
really valid rules that reflected the values of caring for others instead of
harming them. These rules amounted to the Halacha,
the way of life. Paul unequivocally shared those values but he did not like
rules and he was quite averse to following rules to get a reward or avoid
punishment. Carrot and stick religion was not for him.
So Paul
basically threw out the rulebook and replaced it with something else. He
replaced it with a relationship – or better, a network of relationship – that
turned our hearts, changed our motivations, and redirected our behavior from
self serving to serving Christ and others. Galatians 5 is for my money one of
the most important parts of the Bible. There he proclaims “For freedom Christ
has set us free . . . . . You, my brothers and sisters were called to be free.
But do not use your freedom to serve the flesh (meaning ego -- not the body);
rather serve one another humbly in love.” Paul goes on to list a series of “works
of the flesh.” They are often not translated well but if they are rightly
translated it is crystal clear he equates those “works of the flesh” with
selfishness and egotism. In contrast he lists “fruits of the spirit,” which are
attitudes of care for others. Galatians 5 has a nifty list but it flowered into
Paul’s immortal hymn to love in I Corinthians 13.
A moral
philosopher would say that Paul has simply shifted from rule-based ethics to virtue-based
ethics. He is not saying, “Do this. Don’t’ do that.” Instead he is saying. “Be
this way. Assume this attitude, and you will then do the right thing from your
heart. Do not be that way because if you do, bad will come of it.” That would
be right. But it doesn’t’ quite get it. Paul’s virtue ethics flows out of the
new relationship we have with God in Christ. That relationship with him changes
our relationship with each other.
What
clicked from me today is that this relationship-virtue ethic is rooted in our
belief in the Triune God. That brings us to the second lecture – The First Two
Ecumenical Councils. Arius was a priest trying to explain God. He took the
metaphor of Father to mean that the Father is God from all eternity. The Son
comes along before the creation of the world, but the Son is secondary to the
Father. Metaphorically speaking, “There was (a time) when he was not.” The
Son’s existence depended on the Father, but not vice versa. That made the
Father God and the Son a kind of lesser heavenly being.
The problem
with Arianism is that it makes God an individual being. Such a God may give
orders. Such a God can make rules. But Trinitarian theology says that God is a
network of relationship. God is the love dance among Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Their divinity does not reside in themselves but in the love flowing
among them. It is there love that makes them God – together! If God were an
individual being, then he might be a powerful ruler of and judge over the
universe. But instead Christianity portrays God as loving beauty. We become
like the God we worship and our path to becoming like God is by treating each
other well.
Paul’s
relationship-virtue ethics, instead of a rule-based tit for tat transactional
stay out of hell and go to heaven by following the recipe ethics, is grounded
in this understanding of God. Paul had not fully articulated this way of
talking about God yet. But his writings were foundational for the folks at the
Councils of Nicaea and Cappadocia who did.
All this
brings me back to Laodicea-Hierapolis-Colossae. It was to the family in whose
home the Colossae church met that Paul wrote his shortest (only 445 words)
letter, Philemon. I used to wonder
how this little letter made it into the Bible. Today I see it as showing Paul’s
approach to morality with crystal clarity.
Paul is a
prisoner when he sends this letter to Philemon and his family by a messenger
Onesimus. For centuries, we have understood from the text that Onesimus was
Philemon’s runaway slave.[i]
If Paul were being godly (godlike) and God were an all-powerful individual,
then Paul might command Philemon to do the right thing and emancipate Onesimus.
But Paul has a different kind of God than that, so he writes, “ . . . I could
be bold and order you to do what you ought to do; yet I prefer to appeal to you
on the basis of love. It is none other than Paul – an old man and now a
prisoner for Christ – that I appeal to you for my son Onesimus who became my
son while I was in chains.” Paul does not claim his authority as an apostle but
appeals, without any claim of power as he is a prisoner, on the basis of love.
Paul urges Philemon to similarly relinquish his power, authority, and even
legal rights. He asks him to give up Onesimus as a slave that he may receive
him back as a brother.
Do you see
how Paul is urging Philemon not to emulate Arius’s God but rather the Triune
Love of the Creeds, to dance in the relationship of love instead of cling to
power? It appears that Philemon emancipated his slave because sometime later
Paul sent to the Colossians his more famous epistle, which was also intended
for Laodicea and Hierapolis, by way of his friend Tychas who “is coming with
Onesimus, our faithful and dear brother, who is one of you.”
[i]
The text plainly states Onesimus is a slave but some contemporary scholars
think this is metaphorical language and imagine Onesimus may be Philemon’s
brother. I don’t see that supported by the text at all. It seems clear from the
letter to me that Onesimus is a runaway slave as everyone has said since John
Chrysostom in the 6th Century.
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