When we come to the New Testament letter of Philemon, we take the first step in all inductive Bible Study which we call ‘OBSERVATION’, necessary before we deal with ‘INTERPRETATION’ and ‘APPLICATION’. This includes paying attention to the background to the text and to its context. Compared to other epistles, Philemon is not so much a letter – more a postcard! However, though it is short in length it long in the discussion it provokes. The single page that it occupies in our Bibles has incited a voluminous commentary. You could spend weeks dissecting the text but it is important to discern the broad brush strokes that help to illuminate the non-negotiable biblical truths that must be brought to bear whenever there is a need for the reconciliation of broken and severed relationships, whether between brothers, between spouses, between races, between slave master and slave. We are in the process of uploading hundreds of hours of teaching, including a mini-series on Philemon, in which you will be able to catch up on the task of observation: the responses to the text, the writer, the writing, the readers, the reason, the relevance. Philemon must be contextualized in both the history of race relationships in our nation, as well as in the history of interpretation that has affected relationships in the church.
Because this letter has been used defensively by opposing sides in the long struggle for abolition and civil rights, its provenance needs to be addressed in any biblical discussion about race in America, simply because race and slavery are inseparable in our history. It would appear to most that there are two major issues that the apostles did not appear to politically oppose: war and slavery. However, what they did do was make two things clear:
1. It is the responsibility of, and in the power of, Christians to effect changes for the good.
2. It is the responsibility of, and in the power of, Christians to endure manifestations of evil.
The only way slavery could be overthrown in Paul’s time was by bloody, violent revolution. It is estimated that a third of the Roman population in Italy were slaves and that up to 60% of the population in Corinth had been at some time, or were presently, slaves. Paul does not step into the public political arena to debate slavery, but what he does in these early days of the establishment of Christianity, is bring the issue into the context of the local church, the context of personal discipleship and Christian responsibility, the context of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So instead of some generalized rhetoric about the slave issue, this short letter presents a very specific gospel appeal to a very personal problem. Thus a tiny letter to an unknown home-group becomes a time bomb for change, and it is no wonder its message has been twisted and suppressed by those who oppose the reconciling work of Christ, and why for centuries many have questioned its place in the canon. Saint Jerome of the 4th century didn’t beat about the bush: “There is nothing in it for our edification.”
I pointed out that concerns and even objections to the text have sources much closer to home, particularly in the tradition of interpretation in the African-American church that directly counters the established tradition that was influenced by John Chyrysostom in the 4th century, and that was influentially represented in North America by the writings of Cotton Mather, that essentially saw the Christianization of slaves as a way to better the system of slavery, not to abolish it. This was the difference between Whitfield and Wesley. You can hear Chrysostom’s conclusions in Mather’s comments: “Those masters who use their negroes with most Christianity … will find themselves no losers by it.” Mather argued that Christianity “wonderfully dulcifies and mollifies and moderates the circumstances of bondage.” So now the master is doing the slave a favor for which they should be grateful! To those who were having problems with their slaves he commented: “Had they done more to make their negroes willing servants of God” then it may be that “God would have made their negroes better servants of them.” It’s all about improving slavery for the masters’ sakes. This explains why ‘negro’ is a totally unacceptable word and is not a euphemism for ‘black’. It is a slave designation. Mather’s exposition became the dominant one in North America, which ended up supporting the politics and economics of slavery. One historian has commented that that this interpretation of Philemon was “a biblical weapon in the arsenal of the Christian slave-holder.” There were three immediate consequences of this for many churches:
1. There was never any reason to oppose slavery as an institution.
2. Slaves were meant to be obedient and not protest.
3. Slave-holders could happily exist in the Christian community.
The antebellum pro-slavery advocates described Philemon as “the Pauline Mandate” of American slavery. Furthermore, the interpretation sanctioned the Fugitive Slave Law, essentially that slaves were but property, thus chattel slavery, and the owners had a right to recover their property. Paul was seen as sending a fugitive back to his master. The response to all of this by Allen Dwight Callahan, a leading African-American New Testament scholar, is to the point: that this is nothing less than “a racialized colonialist reading.” It also ought to be added that the gospel consequences for slaves coming to Christ was not lost on some, and thus the ‘evangelism’ justification for slavery quietly melted into silence, as it did not help the slave-masters’ cause.
There is a context for this text that has to be considered, given the nature of the institution of slavery and given the interpretation of this letter in church history. As far as the institution is concerned, it is important in the course of discussing the text, to understand the culture of Graeco-Roman slavery that Paul had experienced in his life and travels, and was now addressing. It was very different in so many crucial ways from the institution of slavery as it was established in the formative years of North America. This is important, because there is no way, given these differences, that any Christian in the antebellum south could possibly have treated their chattel slavery as the same as Onesimus’ enslavement, and therefore being possibly endorsed in any shape and form by Philemon. There was no possible comparison and any attempt to argue a similitude is simply false exegesis. The better life-styles and opportunities for advance and freedom and for relationship in a household that were experienced by Graeco-Roman slaves, does not justify or exonerate slaveholders at Paul’s time, whether Christian or non-Christian, but it does lead one to think that if Paul was addressing his current slavery issues as he did, how much more would he have expressed his vehement outrage at American slavery.
African-American New Testament scholar, Lloyd Lewis, an esteemed professor of New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, (till his retirement in 2012), has a seminal essay on Philemon is in a collection of studies titled “Stony the road we trod” (edited by yet another honored local African-American professor, Cain Hope Felder of the School of Divinity at Howard University.) The title was chosen because the phrase epitomized, not only the struggle of slaves, but the struggle of African-American biblical scholars, given that a doctorate in theology was a lesser traveled road. (As you know, the phrase comes from what is known as “The Negro National Anthem: Lift every voice and sing” by James Weldon Johnson. The beginning of the second stanza reads: “Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died.”)
Professor Lewis talks of Paul as “more bane than blessing” and it is the letter of Philemon that in particular is “a good example of the issue of conflict between a text and the methodology of its interpretation.” He is then specific about how it is “odious to many black exegetes by its ambiguous position on slavery.” What is the fall-out? Philemon is “a letter that black people have heard as a proof text to justify slavery in the past and to some extent, racial bigotry in the present.” But Lewis argues strongly that if Paul’s language and argumentation is truly understood, then there is “a chance for black exegetes to claim Philemon as their own and as an indication of good news and of a new arrangement for blacks.” Coming to a heartening conclusion, he writes: “I believe that African-American people who study the Bible and who are concerned with issues of human freedom and liberation can take heart from Paul.”
Pastorally yours,
Stuart McAlpine
(This cannot be reprinted without permission.)