The Ethics of the Enactment and Reception of Cruciform Love

The background for the NT’s ethical instructions, especially the vice and virtue lists, are often sought in Hellenistic philosophical texts. John Frederick scrutinizes this tendency by examining Col 3 and argues instead that “Aristotelian, Stoic, and Cynic categories do not form the basis upon which the author of Colossians was constructing his ethical vision for the church” (p. 1). Rather, “Colossians is working from an inherited Jewish Two Way ethic which views ethical realities in terms of binary opposites” (p. 1). Frederick further notes that the Jewish Two Way ethic is significant as it functions to describe the way of the righteous and their character as rooted in the character of God.Frederick describes his methodological approach as a “comparative lexical study and an exegetical, theological, and conceptual study” (p. 27). In ch. 2 (“Aristotle and Colossians”), Frederick takes N. T. Wright’s argument that Pauline ethics is a Christian-ized form of Aristotelian virtue ethics. However, one simply does not find the language of happiness/flourishing (eudaimonia) or the famous doctrine of the mean. Aristotle’s notion of friendships based on pleasure, utility, and virtue finds little to no overlap in Paul’s discussion of community. And the correspondence between Aristotle’s specific set of virtues and those of Paul’s is quite weak. In ch. 3 (“The Cynics and Colossians”), there are almost no significant connections between Cynic and Pauline virtues, and any purported overlaps are superficial. In ch. 4 (“The Stoics and Colossians”) Frederick argues that the distinctive worldview of the Stoics—emphasizing again flourishing, a fixed disposition of virtue, the cosmos and humanity as inherently rational, a high view of human moral agency—is incompatible with Paul’s arguments. While there are obvious overlaps between the Stoics and Paul on a piecemeal level, none of them justify speaking of Paul as “working from an essentially Stoic underlying pattern of thought which was then in some way combined with, or the means by which, he articulated his understanding of the Christian faith. Rather, these parallels simply demonstrate that Paul used popular forms of communication . . . in order to convey his message in ways that would make sense to his audience” (p. 95). This is further established by the fact that the actual overlap between Stoic and Pauline virtues is minimal, and by the fact that Paul relies on virtues such as “mercy,” “patience,” and “humility” which are not found among the Stoics. One really only finds a strong overlap with the virtue of “gentleness.” Some vices such as “wrath,” “anger,” and “desire” are ubiquitous throughout Hellenistic (and Jewish) sources.In ch. 6 (“The Septuagint and Colossians”), Frederick argues that the LXX provides the major context for understanding Paul’s ethical teachings. Specifically, he shows that all of the virtues mentioned Col 3:12 find lexical presence in the LXX and that the majority of them are closely connected to the description of God as righteous and as his character providing the ground for the behavior and virtues of God’s people. Likewise, most of the vices mentioned by Paul in Col 3 are found in Two Way texts from the LXX. Chapter 7 (“Philo, Ben Sira and Colossians”) argues that Philo is closer to the Hellenistic philosophical writings and thereby is unlike Paul’s ethical teachings, whereas the writings of Ben Sira further confirm his argument that Paul’s virtues are grounded in the Jewish tradition that contrasts the righteous and the wicked.The eighth and final chapter (“The Ethics of the Enactment and Reception of Cruciform Love”) is the heart of Frederick’s argument, where he provides an exegetical engagement of Col 1:9–10, 28; 2:1–2, 18–19; and 3:1–17. He summarizes his overall argument as an attempt to “show that the governing ethical pattern of thought in Colossians is rooted in the idea of the ultimate perfection of believers which is a result of their communal access to the wisdom and will of God through their participation in the community of the people of God in Christ, namely, the church” (p. 187).Frederick has shown that any easy claims about the ancient philosophical direct influence on Paul needs to be carefully rooted in lexical analysis. Likewise, I take his argument that given the Stoics, for example, had a highly developed and consistent worldview, one should also be quite circumspect in claiming that Paul’s teaching is analogous to Stoics (or other schools) unless one can make the bold claim that they share a common worldview. His argument that the LXX provides the significant context for many of Paul’s key ethical terms is convincing, and this analysis could be carried over by others into other Pauline letters. Nevertheless, the lexical approach does not seem to me to be the only, or perhaps even the most illuminating, way for approaching the matter. Despite holding very different structures of thought, one can engage in a more profitable comparing of Paul and the Stoics (or the Epicureans, or Aristotle, or Cynics) through comparing how their broader system leads them to develop answers to questions such as: What is the telos of human existence? What role does the sage (or apostle) play as a model in cultivating virtue? What role does community or friendship play in the pursuit of the good? Here I think Frederick might have been helped by an important study that was overlooked which draws out Paul’s relationship to ancient philosophy in a more robust manner, namely, Walter T. Wilson, Paul and the Hope of Glory: Education and Exhortation in the Epistle to the Colossians (Leiden: Brill, 1997)

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