Reading Philippians: A Theological Introduction (Cascade Companions)

Top Highlights

“His overaching goal was for his readers/auditors to faithfully, joyfully, and freely embrace the fullness of the gospel.” (Page 9)

“Boring explains that ‘Paul and the early Christians adopted a this-worldly cultural form that functions on the horizontal plane of history.’² This reminds us that Paul’s letters, like Philippians, are not general abstract theological teachings. They are words of faith and life that came from a real person, in gritty, real-life circumstances (even sometimes from prison: Phil 1:1), written to real people (like Euodia and Syntyche: Phil 4:2–3) with real challenges.” (Pages 2–3)

“Now, for Paul, on average he writes about 2,500 words, and sometimes as many as 7,000.⁷” (Page 7)

“M. Eugene Boring reminds us that it was unprecedented for the early Christians to teach their values through letters. Boring wonders why letters became the dominant genre (e.g., letters in the New Testament attributed to Paul, John, Peter, and James, and in Revelation 1–2). He imagines that it could have been different. Why not a major focus on collections of Jesus sayings, or essays, or guidebooks of church order (like the Didache)? ‘In no other religious community have letters become sacred Scripture or played such a formative role.’¹ Note how even after the first century, early Christian leaders continued the tradition of instructional letters (e.g., 1 Clement).” (Page 2)

“More accurately, as an apostle, pastor, and evangelist, he wrote letters to help believers to make sense of their life in Jesus Christ and persevere in faith, hope, and love embracing unity with their Christian brothers and sisters, rejecting false teaching and counterfeit gospels, and growing into righteousness, wisdom, and holiness.” (Page 20)