Kindle Notes & Highlights
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September 2 - September 18, 2017
Rarely, if at all, has the other central figure, regarding whom and about whom the letter was written—Onesimus—stepped out of the background. He has been mentioned, discussed, referenced; subtly present, but voiceless, powerless, hidden in the shadows and without agency.
Philemon has suffered the fate of marginalization for a number of reasons, one of which is that it seems to contain little theological content
an alternate reading wherein Paul could be seen as negotiating Onesimus’s humanity within the Christian church’s precarious presence in the Roman Empire.
the biblical criticism that emerged in the early modern period sought to break itself free from the presumed theological constraints of church, creeds, and dogma.
Thus anything nonwhite, nonmale, nonheterosexual, impure, nonrational, becomes part of “disorder,” and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational, pure modern society. The ways that modern societies go about creating categories labeled as “order” or “disorder” have to do with the effort to achieve stability.
Postmodernism, however, critiques grand narratives with the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice.
Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors “mini-narratives,” stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern “mini-narratives” are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, ultimate truth, reason, or stability.
in the reading strategies of Postcolonial (biblical) criticism, cultural studies, feminist biblical criticism, and African American biblical hermeneutics. These approaches do not represent a particular method but are reading strategies that seek to ask certain questions from their contextual situations about the relationship between rhetoric and power. In
When one of the editors, James A. Noel, was engaged in a discussion about Philemon with members of his congregation at a Wednesday night Bible study, one of the participants asked: “Pastor, what do you think would have happened if a runaway slave in America had carried this letter back to his master?” That question was the germ of the present volume.
African Americans were engaging in a form of biblical interpretation that functioned as the “critique of the Enlightenment critique.”
In chapter 3, James A. Noel argues that Nat Turner’s career represents the historical analogue to the psychoanalytic phenomenon that Sigmund Freud identified, in Civilization and Its Discontents, as the “return of the repressed.”
Johnson shows further that Paul’s pleading betrays a deeper telos (“goal”) of the Christian faith—the liberation of the oppressed and their inclusion in the Beloved Community—that operates as the eschatological point of finality in Pauline thought.
Wilkerson also asks whether Paul expected Philemon to effectively make the past disappear by saying to Onesimus, “I’m sorry I enslaved you.” This is another way of raising the question Johnson raises about Onesimus’s voice: if he cannot articulate the anger and pain he endured in the past, this means he is being silenced in the present. Wilkerson pursues this line of questioning to probe the hard issue of what is required for real racial reconciliation to take place in America.
when the African American religious tradition is mined, one discovers that there is a rich and revered tradition that offers an alternative view. Paul in this venerable tradition is appropriated and enlisted as a viable partner in the struggle for African American freedom.
Ideological criticism, in simple terms, explores the relationship between rhetoric and power.
ideology of texts themselves—that is, the ways in which ideology has shaped biblical texts and how the text affects readers in their own situation. Ideological criticism, then, “is a deliberate effort to read against the grain—of texts, of disciplinary norms, of traditions, of cultures. It is a disturbing way to read because ideological criticism demands a high level of self-consciousness and makes an explicit,
warns, “As such there is no such thing as an innocent reading, we must say what reading we are guilty of.”
Chrysostom and other ancient interpreters explained the significance of Philemon as providing lessons for Christian living. On the one hand, they expounded the letter’s value for showing the depths of Paul’s humility and caring as an example to all Christians; and on the other, they emphasized Philemon’s usefulness for showing how believers from different social levels are to relate to one another. These early interpreters, moreover, established a pattern or interpretive tradition of employing Philemon as a text for moral lessons that began with Chrysostom, Theodore, and Jerome and would
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Thomas Aquinas asserted that Philemon exemplified how earthly masters and slaves are to relate to one another. Martin Luther viewed Philemon as the epitome of Christian love: “What Christ has done for us with reference to God the Father, thus St. Paul also did for Onesimus with reference to Philemon . . . [and] we are all [Christ’s] Onesimi, if we believe it.”
It is clear from the tradition that Philemon inevitably raises larger questions about slavery and the New Testament views of its significance with respect to Christian theology and practice.
It is clear, however, that early church leaders used Philemon as an instrument for fighting certain monastic and “enthusiastic movements” that rejected slavery.
Paul could not and did not command Philemon to set Onesimus free. Instead he put the matter into Philemon’s hands: “Paul’s sole injunction to him is the commandment of love as the norm for his conduct.”
Winter differs from the traditional interpretation on several points. First, she argues that the letter to Philemon is not a personal letter at all because of the large umber of legal and commercial terms typical of public documents. For this reason, the letter is intended for the “whole church” and not just Philemon, Archippus, or Apphia—the three named in the prescript (v. 1).
Philemon 16 “is the only place in the New Testament where a slave is directly called a brother, and this fact must be allowed to have its full force.”
Philemon’s ownership of Onesimus fades into the background because now that Onesimus has become a believer, his status as “beloved brother” far overshadows his status as slave: they are related in the Lord, which entails a new and deeper relationship.
Wilson notes that “in the flesh and in the Lord” appears only here in Paul. It succinctly describes the nature of the new relationship.
The idea of two equal and competing spheres of existence—what believers are “in the Lord” and what they are “in the flesh”—is foreign to the New Testament understanding of the Lordship of Christ.
Philemon is not asked outright to free Onesimus; instead he is urged to confirm his own reputation for love and generosity. Paul’s subtle use of naming demonstrates the possibility for fostering new possibilities for changing deeply ingrained patterns of domination in a world where it is difficult to see “the other” as a “beloved sister or brother.”
Take note of the leadership Paul is undertaking at this point
Philemon has exerted enormous practical impact in modern times.
And likewise for Moo, “As important as it is, however, slavery is not what Philemon is ultimately ‘about’ . . . the central theme of Philemon is koinōnia, ‘fellowship.’”
The North Atlantic slave trade was a new development under completely different circumstances, which cannot in any way be condoned. Except for captives taken in wartime, there was no wholesale transportation of slaves in the ancient world or a practice of lifelong servitude for themselves and their descendants. Therefore contemporary readers are advised not to transpose their legitimate condemnation of the American slave trade back into the ancient world, where the conditions that brought people into slavery were very different.
As noted above by many interpreters, Paul does not utter an overt word in Philemon about the liberation of Onesimus, but he apparently hopes that the Christian faith has the potential to eliminate the barriers created by status.
Nor does Paul write overtly as one who is trying to challenge the Roman laws of slavery. Sadly, he nowhere comments on the social effects of the gospel. Many argue in this regard that Paul’s view of the justice to be achieved in this case can be realized best through the character of a “graceful persuasion to justice,” and this is perhaps its most descriptive epitaph overall. It is through graceful partnership, which is sustained and constantly renewed by the Lord, that Paul anticipates breakthroughs in social relationships.
As with other newer approaches to biblical criticism, African American biblical interpretation does not represent a particular method but a reading strategy that seeks to ask certain questions
Postcolonial biblical criticism, then, is interested in discovering how the Bible has been used as a tool for domesticating and “civilizing” the indigenous peoples of conquered countries and against lingering attempts by European scholars to control the reading and use of the Bible after colonialism is formally dissolved.
While the terminology “useless” and “no longer as a slave” point to Onesimus’s marginality, the opposing language, “useful” and “but as beloved brother,” indicates some degree of social integration. These “contradictory principles” are indicative of what Orlando Patterson refers to as the “liminality of slavery.”
As human property and members of the household, the slave’s contradictory and ambiguous status was marked by both “social death” and inclusion into a social unit.
the language of utility he employs reflects a shared language and culture regarding the expectations slave owners had of slaves. This language of utility signifies ideas of productivity inherent in the social construction of slavery. The more productive and/or useful a slave was determined to be, the more valued and valuable. The more valued the slave, the greater the lengths to which a slave owner would go to maintain and keep his human property.
In Greco-Roman slave society, slave owners concerned themselves with the well being of their slaves in order to retain or to enhance the usefulness and obedience of their slaves.
Slaves were useful to the extent that they were inexpensive to keep. Frugality and profitability should be the operative motivation for owning slaves. Diogenes, according to Seneca, had only one slave, named Manes, who ran away. When Diogenes caught up with him, he decided not to pursue Manes because the costs associated with food, clothing, and thefts outweighed the benefit of Manes’s servitude.
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, the believer’s relationship to Christ is likened to slave obedience (Rom. 6:13, 16-20). The New Testament household codes demonstrate that slaves as members of a believer’s household are not exempted from the expectation of obedience to their masters (Eph. 5:21—6:9; Col. 3:1—4:1; 1 Tim. 6:1, 2; Titus 2:1-10; 1 Pet. 1:18—3:7). Ironically, in 1 Corinthians 7:21, Paul states if a slave is presented with the opportunity to become a freedperson (eleutheros), then he should certainly make use of (mallon chrēsai) the opportunity to become a freedperson. Paul is not
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the economy of slavery was founded upon the ideas and ideals of absolute and perpetual control over human property so as to exact utility and productivity. Slave owners expected complete submission from their slaves and their resignation to their inferior social status. The language of friendship functioned as euphemistic rhetoric designed to create the illusion of equality but with no intention of ameliorating the oppressive social status of slaves.
The “social death” of the slave, whereby a slave is forever separated from all previously recognized social relationships, together with the overall cruelty and inhumanity associated with being reduced to human property, could not be mitigated by their ambiguous incorporation into the master’s household, nor by the language of fraternal love and other fictive-kinship rhetoric.
Because ancient slavery was not based on skin color, runaway slaves could attempt to pass as freeborn persons.
the Torah required that the Israelites grant asylum to fugitive slaves rather than returning them to their masters (Deut. 23:15-16).
Manumission in Greco-Roman society did not signify complete freedom from obligations to the former master, nor did it remove the social stigma of slavery. Freedom
That is, proslavery advocates employed their mis-reading of Philemon to lend theological legitimization to the aforementioned Fugitive Slave Act. I will argue that such a reading distorts the text through a construction of what I term “Pauline paternalism,” which imagines the possibility of an authentic human relationship between a master and slave as a means of continuing, rather than obliterating, what Hegel described as the dialectic of master/slave.
Much of US legal history can be read as furthering the repressive/oppressive impulses originating from slavery, a collective defense mechanism functioning to avoid the basic and authentic human encounter with the “Other”
Military campaigns to extend Rome’s sphere of domination resulted in its being the world’s greatest slave society. From 30 to 50 percent of Rome’s population consisted of slaves.
Given the above sketch of slavery in Roman society, we can assume that even though it was not based on the construct of race—which is a modern invention—the slave experienced his or her body differently than the free person.
