3. With less confidence, but still with a reasonable degree of probability, we may infer that Archippus, who is likewise mentioned in the opening salutation, was a son[[694]] of Philemon and Apphia. The inscriptions do not exhibit the name in any such frequency either in Phrygia or in the surrounding districts, as to suggest that it was characteristic of these parts[[695]]. |His office|Our Archippus held some important office in the Church[[696]]; but what this was, we are not told. St Paul speaks of it as a ‘ministry’ (διακονία). Some have interpreted the term technically as signifying the diaconate; but St Paul’s emphatic message seems to imply a more important position than this. Others again suppose that he succeeded Epaphras as bishop of Colossæ, when Epaphras left his native city to join the Apostle at Rome[[697]]; but the assumption of a regular and continuous episcopate in such a place as Colossæ at this date seems to involve an anachronism. More probable than either is the hypothesis which makes him a presbyter. Or perhaps he held a missionary charge, and belonged to the order of ‘evangelists[[698]].’ Another question too arises respecting Archippus. Where was he exercising this ministry, whatever it may have been? At Colossæ, or at Laodicea? |and abode,|His connexion with Philemon would suggest the former place. But in the Epistle to the Colossians his name is mentioned immediately after the salutations to the Laodiceans and the directions affecting that Church; and this fact seems to connect him with Laodicea. |Laodicea, rather than Colossæ.|On the whole this appears to be the more probable solution[[699]]. Laodicea was within walking distance of Colossæ[[700]]. Archippus must have been in constant communication with his parents, who lived there; and it was therefore quite natural that, writing to the father and mother, St Paul should mention the son’s name also in the opening address, though he was not on the spot. An early tradition, if it be not a critical inference from the allusion in the Colossian letter, makes him bishop not of Colossæ, but of Laodicea[[701]].
His career.
Of the apprehensions which the Apostle seems to have entertained respecting Archippus, I have already spoken[[702]]. It is not improbable that they were suggested by his youth and inexperience. St Paul here addresses him as his ‘fellow-soldier[[703]],’ but we are not informed on what spiritual campaigns they had served in company. Of his subsequent career we have no trustworthy evidence. Tradition represents him as having suffered martyrdom at Colossæ with his father and mother.
4. Onesimus.
4. But far more important to the history of Christianity than the parents or the son of the family, is the servant. The name Onesimus was very commonly borne by slaves. Like other words signifying utility, worth, and so forth, it naturally lent itself to this purpose[[704]]. Accordingly the inscriptions offer a very large number of examples in which it appears as the name of some slave or freedman[[705]]; |A servile name.|and even where this is not the case, the accompaniments frequently show that the person was of servile descent, though he might never himself have been a slave[[706]]. Indeed it occurs more than once as a fictitious name for a slave[[707]], a fact which points significantly to the social condition naturally suggested by it. In the inscriptions of proconsular Asia it is found[[708]]; but no stress can be laid on this coincidence, for its occurrence as a proper name was doubtless coextensive with the use of the Greek language. More important is the fact that in the early history of Christianity it attains some eminence in this region. |Its prominence among the Christians of proconsular Asia.|One Onesimus is bishop of Ephesus in the first years of the second century, when Ignatius passes through Asia Minor on his way to martyrdom, and is mentioned by the saint in terms of warm affection and respect[[709]]. Another, apparently an influential layman, about half a century later urges Melito bishop of Sardis to compile a volume of extracts from the scriptures; and to him this father dedicates the work when completed[[710]]. Thus it would appear that the memory of the Colossian slave had invested the name with a special popularity among Christians in this district.
Position and conduct of Onesimus.
Onesimus represented the least respectable type of the least respectable class in the social scale. He was regarded by philosophers as a ‘live chattel’, a ‘live implement[[711]]’; and he had taken philosophy at her word. He had done what a chattel or an implement might be expected to do, if endued with life and intelligence. He was treated by the law as having no rights[[712]]; and he had carried the principles of the law to their logical consequences. He had declined to entertain any responsibilities. There was absolutely nothing to recommend him. He was a slave, and what was worse, a Phrygian slave; and he had confirmed the popular estimate of his class[[713]] and nation[[714]] by his own conduct. He was a thief and a runaway. His offence did not differ in any way, so far as we know, from the vulgar type of slavish offences. He seems to have done just what the representative slave in the Roman comedy threatens to do, when he gets into trouble. He had ‘packed up some goods and taken to his heels[[715]].’ Rome was the natural cesspool for these offscourings of humanity[[716]]. In the thronging crowds of the metropolis was his best hope of secresy. In the dregs of the city rabble he would find the society of congenial spirits.
His encounter with St Paul in Rome
But at Rome the Apostle spread his net for him, and he was caught in its meshes. How he first came in contact with the imprisoned missionary, we can only conjecture. Was it an accidental encounter with his fellow-townsman Epaphras in the streets of Rome which led to the interview? Was it the pressure of want which induced him to seek alms from one whose large-hearted charity must have been a household word in his master’s family? Or did the memory of solemn words, which he had chanced to overhear at those weekly gatherings in the upper chamber at Colossæ, haunt him in his loneliness, till, yielding to the fascination, he was constrained to unburden himself to the one man who could soothe his terrors and satisfy his yearnings? Whatever motive may have drawn him to the Apostle’s side—whether the pangs of hunger or the gnawings of conscience—when he was once within the range of attraction, he could not escape. |and conversion.|He listened, was impressed, was convinced, was baptized. The slave of Philemon became the freedman of Christ[[717]]. St Paul found not only a sincere convert, but a devoted friend, in his latest son in the faith. Aristotle had said that there ought not to be, and could not be, any friendship with a slave qua slave, though there might be qua man[[718]]; and others had held still stronger language to the same effect. The Apostle did not recognize the philosopher’s subtle distinction. For him the conventional barrier between slave and free had altogether vanished before the dissolving presence of an eternal verity[[719]]. |St Paul’s affection for him.|He found in Onesimus something more than a slave, a beloved brother both as a slave and as a man, ‘both in the flesh and in the Lord[[720]].’ The great capacity for good which appears in the typical slave of Greek and Roman fiction, notwithstanding all the fraud and profligacy overlying it, was evoked and developed here by the inspiration of a new faith and the incentive of a new hope. The genial, affectionate, winning disposition, purified and elevated by a higher knowledge, had found its proper scope. Altogether this new friendship was a solace and a strength to the Apostle in his weary captivity, which he could ill afford to forego. To take away Onesimus was to tear out Paul’s heart[[721]].
Necessity for his return