44. The Apostle Paul in Rome. Two Years of Captivity. The Epistles Written From Rome—to the Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon. The Apostle’s Release and the Epistle to the Hebrews

Having settled into his new circumstances in Rome, the Apostle Paul wished first of all to address the preaching of the Gospel to his kinsmen by blood—the Jews. Summoning the chief representatives of the Jewish population of the capital, he addressed them as «brethren» and endeavoured to explain his situation. He assured them that he was not hostile to their people and was not subverting their institutions. In spite of this, he had been seized in Jerusalem and handed over to the Roman authorities; yet the Romans, upon examining the case, had declared him entirely innocent and were ready to release him, had not the opposition of the Jews compelled him to refer his case to Caesar for decision. The apostle did his utmost to make them understand that he had by no means intended by this to set the Roman power against his own people, and that the cause of his chains was his faith in the fulfilment of that messianic hope which the whole of Israel cherished. The Jews’ reply was very diplomatic. The divisions that had arisen in their own midst from disputes about Christ had aroused such general indignation against them that some ten years before they had suffered a ruinous and shameful expulsion from Rome by edict of the Emperor Claudius. That edict, to be sure, had not been enforced in all its rigour; but the Jews had no wish to incur so ruinous a calamity again. They therefore gave an evasive answer, declaring (how sincerely we cannot tell) that they had received no adverse report about the apostle, either in writing or by word of mouth. If any Jews had gone to press the Sanhedrin’s charge against him before Caesar, they could only have set out at the same time as Julius and might thus have been detained by the same storms. The Jews, however, wished to learn from the Apostle Paul the substance of his religious views; and since he was a known Christian, all they could say was that «this sect is spoken against everywhere.» In order to become better acquainted with this teaching, they expressed a wish for further conversation with the apostle, and the next time came to him in considerable numbers. At this time there were up to sixty thousand Jews in Rome; they had seven synagogues, and the number of their rulers alone was such that the apostle could probably have addressed his preaching only to them. For an entire day, from dawn to evening, he laid before them his personal testimony and set forth arguments from Holy Scripture. That his discourse was not without effect is evident from its very length; yet only a few were persuaded, while all the rest remained in their unbelief. By the end, the discussion even took on a somewhat turbulent character, and before it concluded the Apostle Paul turned to the unbelievers with a speech in which he applied to them a passage from the prophet Isaiah, one that even the Saviour had cited—namely, that they would not see and not hear, because they had no will to see or hear, and that their blindness and deafness was the punishing consequence of the hardening of their hearts. And then he solemnly warned them that the salvation of God was now being sent to the Gentiles, and that the Gentiles would hear the proclamation offered to them.

From this point the Apostle Paul went his own way, making no further attempts to reach his obstinate kinsmen. For two full years he remained in Rome as a prisoner, but lived at his own expense, encouraged by the visits of his most devoted and beloved fellow-workers, among whom were Luke, Timothy, Aristarchus, and others. He could of course hold out little hope of justice from an emperor who, in the words of Tacitus, was by this time openly inclining toward a criminal way of life; and therefore he seized every opportunity to preach the word of God, even to those stern soldiers who were changed daily to guard him. His bonds throughout the two years of imprisonment were, moreover, so mild that he «received all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance» (Acts 28:30–31).

The reason for such a prolonged imprisonment of the apostle is not difficult to understand. For the hearing of his case the personal presence of his accusers—the Jews—was necessary; but they were slow in appearing. In the first year of the apostle’s imprisonment in Rome, a deputation arrived from Jerusalem headed by the high priest Ishmael and the temple treasurer Helcias—on a matter of dispute between Agrippa, the procurator, and the Jews concerning the temple wall. Even if this deputation had been entrusted with the case of the Apostle Paul as well, it could hardly have attended to it, for Nero received it with suspicion in Rome; and besides, the Jews themselves found it expedient for the time being to protract the proceedings and thus keep the apostle imprisoned as long as possible, since they had never been able to hope to obtain his condemnation before the Roman government. Meanwhile, for the apostle himself, this imprisonment was a period of ceaseless apostolic labours, which were so fruitful that he soon had spiritual children born to him in his bonds (Phil. 10), and his preaching penetrated even to the household of Caesar (Phil. 4:22).

But the apostle did not confine himself even to this activity. Though in chains in far-off Rome, he never ceased to care for the other churches he had founded earlier. He maintained constant communication with these churches through his co-workers and brethren, who came to Rome in turn from the most distant lands and went out again to them with various commissions from the apostle. The Apostle Paul thus had full opportunity to follow the condition of all the churches known to him, and when the need arose, being unable to instruct them in person, he addressed them with epistles. Four such epistles were written by him during this period, of which three are addressed to churches and one to a private individual on a private matter. These are the epistles to the Philippians, to the Colossians, to the Ephesians, and to Philemon. All of these epistles are filled with the same spirit of fatherly love that breathes through the other epistles of the Apostle Paul, and at the same time represent further stages in the unfolding of those Gospel truths whose proclamation had been especially entrusted to the Apostle to the Nations—truths centred on the proclamation of the abolition of the ancient bondage under the law. They were directed in part against the Judaizers, who clung slavishly to the forms of the abrogated law, and in part against new errors beginning to take root on pagan soil itself, such as the so-called gnosticism—and they thus clearly testify to the vigilance with which the apostle stood guard over the churches he had founded against every hostile attack that threatened them from one quarter or another.

The Epistle to the Philippians was written by the apostle as an expression of his personal love and devotion to them for the care they had shown for the apostle in his bonds: they had sent him a monetary gift, which had enabled him to live in Rome at his own expense. The contribution was brought by Epaphroditus, a devoted fellow-worker of the apostle who had suffered a serious illness during the journey. With him, on his return, the apostle sent the epistle, in which he pours out feelings of love and gratitude, reports on his life as a prisoner, and says that «his bonds in Christ have become known throughout the whole praetorian guard,» and that the Gospel was being preached even in Caesar’s household.

The Epistle to the Philippians appears to have been written toward the end of the apostle’s two-year imprisonment. Written before it was the Epistle to the Colossians, that is, to the inhabitants of the city of Colossae. This city is nowhere mentioned in the account of the apostle’s missionary labours, so that it is unknown exactly when the apostle visited it—or indeed whether he visited it at all during his missionary journeys. It was an ancient but already declining city of Phrygia, situated on the great road between Ephesus and the Euphrates. Standing on the bank of the river Lycus, it lay adjacent to the cities of Laodicea and Hierapolis, which with time came to overshadow it. The church there was probably founded by one of the apostle’s nearest co-workers, but he himself regarded it with extraordinary attention and joyfully received every report testifying to the good condition of the church. Thus among other things the apostle received a visit in Rome from Epaphras, a citizen of Colossae who appears to have been a minister of the church and who was «always striving on behalf of its members in prayers, that they may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.» But along with the good news, the apostle also heard from Epaphras news of dangers threatening the church from various false teachers—namely, the Judaizers, who seized every opportunity to destroy the apostle’s work and to bring those he had converted back under the abrogated yoke of legal bondage. The Judaizers also preached to the Colossians some kind of gnostic philosophy, against which the apostle warns as «empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ» (2:8). The apostle then imparts a series of instructions in the realm of religious, moral, and social life, and in conclusion sends greetings from himself and his nearest co-workers, among whom are mentioned Epaphras, Luke «the beloved physician,» Aristarchus, Mark, and others. The epistle was dispatched with Tychicus and Onesimus, who were to convey in person the details of the apostle’s life in Rome. The epistle concludes with the apostle’s customary greeting in his own hand, in which he says: «I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you all. Amen.»

To carry the epistle to its destination, alongside Tychicus there was sent also Onesimus—whom the apostle calls his «faithful and beloved brother»—himself from among the Colossians. He was carrying also another letter from the apostle to a private individual, namely to his former master Philemon, and he trembled for his fate. He was Philemon’s slave, but having offended against him in some way and fearing punishment, he had fled from him and, as a runaway slave, had sought refuge in the squalid warrens of Rome. There he had wandered for some time, and soon of course had spent whatever he had been able to steal from his master. Inevitable ruin from hunger and universal rejection awaited him. But in this extremity he turned to the great apostle, who with truly fatherly love received and embraced him, saving thereby not only his body but also his soul. The worthless Phrygian slave, who by Roman law deserved only perpetual servitude or even crucifixion, was received into the fellowship of Christians and became «a beloved brother.» To restore him fully to his human rights, the apostle sent him to Colossae with a letter to his former master Philemon, a distinguished and wealthy man who held a prominent position in the Colossian church. In this epistle the apostle touchingly pleads for the forgiveness of Onesimus, whom the apostle calls his son, «born to me in my imprisonment.» «He was formerly useless to you,» the apostle writes, «but now he is indeed useful to you and to me; I am sending him back to you.» The apostle then urges Philemon to receive Onesimus again, «no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother.» The degree to which the loving apostle was concerned for Onesimus is shown by the fact that he promises in the epistle to repay personally everything that Onesimus may owe to Philemon. The apostle concludes his epistle by expressing confidence that Philemon will fulfil the request made to him and will in fact do even more than that. He also asks him to prepare a lodging, since he hopes for release soon. — The Epistle to Philemon, despite its brevity, was of immense social significance in clarifying the relationship of Christianity to the greatest evil of the pagan world—slavery. Hitherto the laws of almost all the peoples of the civilised world had divided humanity into two categories—free and slave, those with rights and those without, and human dignity was recognised only in the former. This view had so deeply rooted itself in the consciousness of ancient humanity that it could not conceive of society without slaves as a particular class of labouring beings obliged to carry out the will of their masters without question. Even the greatest thinkers, such as Plato and Aristotle, recognised this division of humanity as necessary and looked upon slaves as a soulless instrument. Rome gave full practical expression to this view and developed slavery to horrifying proportions. Slaves filled all the households and estates of the wealthy and distinguished, and the law treated them with such inhumanity that it permitted cruel and capricious masters to abuse them in every way, and at personal whim or for the slightest offence to execute, crucify, or even throw them to the dogs in the kennels and the fish in the ponds. There were cases where, for the slightest offence of some slave against his master, the whole of his household was put to death, even though none of its other members had any connection with the offence—and such cruelty was explicitly upheld by a specific law. This state of affairs, by depriving slaves (who were twice as numerous as free persons) of all human dignity and reducing them to the level of dumb working cattle, on the other hand also corrupted the masters, fostering in them a false sense of their immeasurable superiority over persons just like themselves. And from this slavery became the greatest social evil, from which the very foundations of the social, political, and moral life of ancient humanity were decomposing—giving rise to terrible upheavals and bloodshed, as was especially the case in the last period of the Roman Republic. And now the apostle was proclaiming a truth to which even the greatest minds of antiquity had been unable to rise—namely, that a slave is the same kind of human being as his master, that the same soul lives in him as in others, and that under the beneficent moral influence even the most worthless slave can become «a dear brother,» as was the case with Onesimus. By this, a decisive blow was struck at slavery—at its very foundation. Christianity did not proclaim the abolition of slavery, which would have led to fruitless slave revolts and bloodshed; on the contrary, the same apostle who wrote the Epistle to Philemon frequently exhorted slaves in his other epistles to obey their masters. But the very idea of the spiritual equality and brotherhood of slave and master destroyed the very foundations of slavery, and this evil was henceforth bound to diminish and disappear—as an ice-floe diminishes and disappears under the ever more blazing rays of the spring sun.

The messengers sent to Colossae had to travel through Ephesus, and the apostle availed himself of this circumstance to write an epistle also to his beloved Ephesians, with whose elders he had so touchingly conversed and taken his leave when passing through Miletus. Being written at almost the same time as the Epistle to the Colossians, the Epistle to the Ephesians has much in common with it in content. In addition to clarifying the principal truth that Christ is the Head of the Church and of all creation, the Author of our salvation and the pledge of our future inheritance, the epistle elaborates in detail the nature of the New Testament Church, its hierarchical structure, and the relationship within it between pastors and flock. The closing chapters provide various moral instructions for husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and slaves, and in general for all members of the Christian Church.

All of these epistles were evidently written not long before the apostle’s release from his two-year imprisonment. In some of them—in the Epistle to the Philippians and especially in the Epistle to Philemon—the apostle expresses a clear hope of an early and favourable resolution of his case, to the point of asking Philemon to prepare a lodging for him. But the matter was not quickly resolved, and one might even have feared the worst, for the state of affairs in Rome was growing ever more alarming. Nero was becoming year by year an ever more cruel and dissolute despot, who drove from his side all servants of the throne possessed of any integrity—such as the well-known philosopher Seneca—and entrusted power to favourites who in every way encouraged the emperor’s vile inclinations. In such a state of affairs it was difficult to hope for justice, the more so as Nero, having murdered his wife Octavia, had then married his concubine Poppaea who, as a proselyte to Judaism and being under the influence of Jews, could also have turned her imperial husband against the apostle whom they so hated. Fortunately, in relation to the apostle’s case, Nero’s better feelings prevailed. Despite all his eccentricities, Nero, who had been educated under the rigorous discipline of Seneca, had retained in himself something of the sense of justice and Roman probity. Consequently, when the apostle’s case was laid before him, he—probably regarding him as a simple fellow-tribesman and co-religionist of Poppaea—acquitted him without further investigation.

Upon his release from bonds, the apostle resolved to travel east to visit his beloved churches. As he did so, he could not help remembering that he would have to encounter chiefly his own kinsmen and former co-religionists—the Hebrews. Some of them had received Christianity, but the majority rejected it and even strove in every way to hinder its spread. This thought struck at the apostle’s heart with a pang, and he resolved to address to his countrymen an epistle in which he would finally clarify their error and demonstrate the truth and superiority of Christianity, for which all the Old Testament dispensation had been merely a preparation. All of this the apostle set forth in his famous Epistle to the Hebrews, in which at the same time the Christian doctrine of justification was finally developed and clarified—namely, that a person is justified by faith demonstrated through good works. The epistle was written from Italy, since it contains a greeting from those of «Italy,» and specifically shortly after the apostle’s release from bonds, when he was preparing to visit the East (Heb. 13:23–24).