Abstract
COVID-19 has stimulated reflections on crisis as a catalyst for interpretation in both the present and the past. This article reads Philippians as embedded in different forms of crisis, most specifically the negotiation of Paul’s own context of crisis: his imprisonment. The bodily, social and spiritual dimensions of this liminal incarceration experience are here set out and the ways in which these influence the fulfilment of mission within the epistle are outlined.
Highlights
Paul’s letter to the Philippians is a text born out of crises and embedded in the context of overarching crises
Paul is in a crisis situation due to his imprisonment, the Philippian community is in crisis due to internal strife and external pressures, while the past and future of both Paul and the Philippians is determined by, on the one hand, the crisis of the crucifixion and, on the other hand, the crisis of the upcoming eschaton
Crisis serves as a heuristic tool for the exegesis of the letter, and what follows can be understood as a heuristic experiment with this tool, in part following David Horrell’s lead arguing that the context of crisis functions as a catalyst for reinterpretation of classics (Horrell 2010: 3-30);2 the focus on Philippians serves to broaden the perspective on ‘crisis’ in the Pauline epistles, given that much attention has, so far, been given to the ‘Galatian crisis’,3 but other texts have not been addressed through this lens as much
Summary
While scholarship on Philippians has devoted a great deal of energy attempting to determine in which city Paul was imprisoned, considerably less attention has been given to asking what his physical circumstances would most likely have been while in prison. The physical reality of prison is not often considered in scholarship on Philippians or Paul more generally, with the exception of the work of Wansink, Cassidy and Standhartinger, discussed above. While these authors do take these circumstances into account, they direct their attention to what such circumstances mean for how Paul would be seen by his audience. If he would have tried, as he does with other adversaries in ch. 3, he may have turned out to be less than objective, but it would still amount to an acknowledgment of the others’ position; concerning his trial, he lets the voice of his foes disappear behind his own interpretation of the events
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