Paul’s Challenge to Caesar

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When Paul brings the argument of Philippians 3 to its climax, he uses language and imagery to describe Jesus that his hearers would readily identify as belonging to Caesar. Philippi was a Roman colony. The cult of Caesar was growing rapidly in the eastern part of the empire at this period, and no one would miss Paul’s point: “Our citizenship is in heaven; and from there we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation to be like the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself” (Philippians 3:20–21). Caesar’s titles, Caesar’s attributes.

This is often noticed. What is not so often spotted is how the beginning of the chapter prepares for this moment. Verses 2–11 are normally read as a straightforward statement, parallel to similar language in Galatians and Romans, of Paul’s rejection of his earlier Judaism and his embracing of Jesus as the Messiah, through whom he receives not “a righteousness of my own, based on the Law, but…the righteousness from God, bestowed upon faith” (Philippians 3:9). Much debate has concerned why Paul is telling the Philippians all this: Does he have Jewish, or Jewish Christian, opponents in mind? I suggest that this is not his primary purpose. His concern is to warn the Philippian Christians of the dangers of the Caesar cult, and all that went with it, but his warning is given, until near the end, in code. He tells them the story of how he had abandoned his non-messianic Jewish privileges in order to find the true status of one “in the Messiah,” and he encourages them to imitate him.

But how can they imitate him? They are not Jews. They cannot abandon the privileges he has abandoned. No, but Philippi has privileges of its own. What will they do about them?

Read this way, the chapter gains both in coherence and in subtlety. This explains, for a start, why Paul says that writing these things is “safe” for his audience (Philippians 3:1). What Paul wants is that they should think their way into his situation, and then work out what it might mean for them to do with their privileges what he had done with his.

What then is the main thrust of Philippians 3:2–11?

“Look out,” he says, “for the dogs; the evil workers; the mutilation-people.” He has Jews in mind, but Paul sees himself here as a true Jew and his opponents as false, counterfeit Jews. This kind of language was normally used by Jews against pagans—and also by sectarian Jews against other Jews—as a way of claiming to be the true heirs of Judaism and of designating opponents as no better than the goyim, the pagan nations. Paul, very much a part of the world of Second Temple Judaism, uses this language to denote non-messianic Jews, i.e., those who do not accept Jesus as the Messiah. This is not, then, “supersessionism.” It is a standard way in which different Jewish groups in the ancient world (and sometimes in the modern world, too) define themselves over and against one another.

Paul is doing something new, however. By employing this intra-Jewish rhetorical strategy, in which one’s opponents were cast as pseudo-pagans, he is able to turn the device in a quite new direction, making it serve his anti-Caesar message.

What, then, does Paul want his hearers to do? Renounce their citizenship? Start a revolution? Presumably not. Paul’s view is more nuanced; he did not renounce his citizenship, after all, and many Christians in Philippi might not have been full citizens anyway. But even noncitizens might expect to derive benefit from intimate association with Rome, and hence with Caesar, the lord, the savior, the great benefactor. Paul is warning them not to compromise their allegiance to Jesus and to be prepared, by refusing to take part in cultic and other activities, to follow their Messiah along the path of suffering, knowing that Jesus, the true Lord, was also the true Savior who would give them the only glory worth possessing. There is an interesting possible parallel with the argument of 1 Corinthians 8:10, where Paul insists both that meat offered to idols may in principle be eaten and that Christians should shun idol temples themselves.^a The analogy would suggest that it was all right to be a citizen, but not to worship at Caesar’s shrine. It would not be long before this issue, out in the open, brought about martyrdom on a regular basis.

Philippians 3 concludes with the promise of resurrection, seen (very Jewishly) as the vindication of the suffering people of God. This is the end of a train of thought that ties together the middle chapters of the letter. The resurrection and glorification of Jesus (Philippians 2:9–11) is the basis for Paul’s confident hope of resurrection for himself (Philippians 3:10–11), which is then the model for the Philippians’ expectation (Philippians 3:21). And just as Jesus’ 047Resurrection declared him to be the Son of God, confronting all other claimants to the title “Lord of the world” (see Romans 1:4), so the promise of resurrection for all God’s people in Christ carries a strongly political edge. Here, despite appearances, is the true empire, giving allegiance to the true Lord. The resurrection hope constitutes this people, not just as a conglomeration of saved souls, but as a human community that by its breaking down of all traditional barriers, demonstrates in Caesar’s world that the God of Abraham is the true God and that his kingdom shall come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

When Paul brings the argument of Philippians 3 to its climax, he uses language and imagery to describe Jesus that his hearers would readily identify as belonging to Caesar. Philippi was a Roman colony. The cult of Caesar was growing rapidly in the eastern part of the empire at this period, and no one would miss Paul’s point: “Our citizenship is in heaven; and from there we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation to be like the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make […]