The life and work of St. Paul

PISTLK8 OF THE CAPTIVITT. 595
not doubt that he pleaded with God for the life of his sick friend, and God
had mercy on him. Epaphroditus recovered; and deeply as Paul in his
loneliness and discouragement would have rejoiced to keep him by his side,
he yielded with his usual unselfishness to the yearning of Epaphroditus for
his home, and of the Christians of Philippi for their absent pastor. He there-
fore sent him back, and with him the letter, in which he expressed his thank-
fulness for that constant affection which had so greatly cheered his heart.
And thus it is that the Epistle to the Philippians is one of the least
systematic, the least special in character, of all St. Paul's writings. But it i?
this which raises the genuineness of the letter, not indeed beyond cavil, but
far beyond all reasonable dispute. The Tubingen school, in its earlier stages,
attacked it with the monotonous arguments of its credulous scepticism.
With those critics, if an Epistle touches on points which make it accord with
the narrative of the Acts, it was forged to suit them ; if it seems to disagree
with them, the discrepancy shows that it is spurious. If the diction is
Pauline, it stands forth as a proved imitation ; if it is un-Pauline, it could not
have proceeded from the Apostle. The notion that it was forged to introduce
the name of Clement because he was confused with Flavius Clemens, and
because Clement was a fellow-worker of St. Peter, and it would look well to
him in connexion with Paul and the notion that in Phil. ii. 6 8 the
place
words form and shape express Gnostic conceptions, and that the verses refer
to the Valentinian JEon Sophia, who aimed at an equality with God are
partly founded on total misinterpretations of the text, and are partly the
perversity of a criticism which has strained its eyesight to such an extent as
to become utterly purblind. 1 This Epistle is genuine beyond the faintest
shadow or suspicion of doubt. The Philippian Church was eminently free
from errors of doctrine and irregularities of practice. No schism seems to
have divided it ; no heresies had crept into its faith ; no false teachers had
perverted its allegiance. One fault, and one alone, seems to have needed
correction, and this was of so personal and limited a character that, instead
of denouncing it, Paul only needs to hint at it gently and with affectionate
entreaty. This was a want of unity between some of its female members,
especially Euodia and Syntyche, whom Paul begs to become reconciled to each
other, and whose feud, and any partisanship which it may have entailed, he
tacitly and considerately rebukes by the constant iteration of the word " all "
to those whom he can only regard as one united body. In fact, we may say
that disunion and despondency were the main dangers to which they were
exposed ; hence " all " and " rejoice " are the two leading words and thoughts.
But this absence of any special object makes the letter less doctrinally dis-
tinctive than those which are more controversial in character. It would,
indeed, be colourless if it did not receive a colouring from the rich hues of the
writer's individuality. It is not, like the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, a
1
Baur, Paul. ii. 50, seqq. Schwegler, Nachapostal. Zeital. ii. 133, seqq. The three
arguments are : (1) Gnostic conceptions in ii. 69 ; (2) want of anything distinctively
Pauline ; (3) the questienableness of some of the historic data.