High estimate of modern writers.
In modern times there has been no disposition to under-rate its value. Even Luther and Calvin, whose bias tended to the depreciation of the ethical as compared with the doctrinal portions of the scriptures, show a true appreciation of its beauty and significance. |Luther.|‘This epistle’, writes Luther, ‘showeth a right noble lovely example of Christian love. Here we see how St Paul layeth himself out for poor Onesimus, and with all his means pleadeth his cause with his master: and so setteth himself as if he were Onesimus, and had himself done wrong to Philemon. Even as Christ did for us with God the Father, thus also doth St Paul for Onesimus with Philemon.... We are all his Onesimi, to my thinking’. |Calvin.|‘Though he handleth a subject’, says Calvin, ‘which otherwise were low and mean, yet after his manner he is borne up aloft unto God. With such modest entreaty doth he humble himself on behalf of the lowest of men, that scarce anywhere else is the gentleness of his spirit portrayed more truly to the life.’ And the chorus of admiration has been swelled by later voices from the most opposite quarters. |Later writers.|‘The single Epistle to Philemon,’ says one quoted by Bengel, ‘very far surpasses all the wisdom of the world’[[732]]. ‘Nowhere’, writes Ewald, ‘can the sensibility and warmth of a tender friendship blend more beautifully with the loftier feeling of a commanding spirit, a teacher and an Apostle, than in this letter, at once so brief, and yet so surpassingly full and significant[[733]].’ ‘A true little chef d’œuvre of the art of letter-writing,’ exclaims M. Renan characteristically[[734]]. ‘We have here’, writes Sabatier, ‘only a few familiar lines, but so full of grace, of salt, of serious and trustful affection, that this short epistle gleams like a pearl of the most exquisite purity in the rich treasure of the New Testament[[735]]’. Even Baur, while laying violent hands upon it, is constrained to speak of this ‘little letter’ as ‘making such an agreeable impression by its attractive form’ and as penetrated ‘with the noblest Christian spirit’[[736]].
The epistle compared with a letter of Pliny,
The Epistle to Philemon has more than once been compared with the following letter addressed to a friend by the younger Pliny on a somewhat similar occasion[[737]]:
Your freedman, with whom you had told me you were vexed, came to me, and throwing himself down before me clung to my feet, as if they had been yours. He was profuse in his tears and his entreaties; he was profuse also in his silence. In short, he convinced me of his penitence. I believe that he is indeed a reformed character, because he feels that he has done wrong. You are angry, I know; and you have reason to be angry, this also I know: but mercy wins the highest praise just when there is the most righteous cause for anger. You loved the man, and, I hope, will continue to love him: meanwhile it is enough, that you should allow yourself to yield to his prayers. You may be angry again, if he deserves it; and in this you will be the more readily pardoned if you yield now. Concede something to his youth, something to his tears, something to your own indulgent disposition. Do not torture him, lest you torture yourself at the same time. For it is torture to you, when one of your gentle temper is angry. I am afraid lest I should appear not to ask but to compel, if I should add my prayers to his. Yet I will add them the more fully and unreservedly, because I scolded the man himself with sharpness and severity; for I threatened him straitly that I would never ask you again. This I said to him, for it was necessary to alarm him; but I do not use the same language to you. For perchance I shall ask again, and shall be successful again; only let my request be such, as it becomes me to prefer and you to grant. Farewell.
as an expression of character.
The younger Pliny is the noblest type of a true Roman gentleman, and this touching letter needs no words of praise. Yet, if purity of diction be excepted, there will hardly be any difference of opinion in awarding the palm to the Christian Apostle. As an expression of simple dignity, of refined courtesy, of large sympathy, and of warm personal affection, the Epistle to Philemon stands unrivalled. And its pre-eminence is the more remarkable because in style it is exceptionally loose. It owes nothing to the graces of rhetoric; its effect is due solely to the spirit of the writer.
Its higher interest.
But the interest which attaches to this short epistle as an expression of individual character is far less important than its significance as exhibiting the attitude of Christianity to a widely spread and characteristic social institution of the ancient world.
Slavery among the Hebrews.