Essay / Theology

Joy in Philippians

This is post 2 of 4 in a series on the emotions in Philippians. It looks forward to the publication of Isaac Blois’ new book in the LNTS series with Bloomsbury T&T Clark: The Role of Emotions in Philippians: Discerning Affections. Join us in this article as Dr. Blois highlights the need for attending to the emotional landscape of Philippians and sets the vision for the forthcoming book:

Having established in my previous post the significance of attending to emotions within Philippians, I turn now to an analysis of Paul’s most central emotion in the letter, namely, joy. My claim is that the emotion of joy plays a pivotal role in the type of Christian virtue about which, in reference to the Philippian believers, Paul offers thanks to God and for which the apostle prays. Paul understands his leadership role among his communities—not least with this beloved Philippian congregation—as being a “helper in [their] joy.” [1]Eduard Lohse, “Gehilfen der Freude: Die Freude in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus,” in Freude des Glaubens: Die Freude im Neuen Testament (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 57-72, 57 … Continue reading He is engaged in the process of guiding the psyche of his converts, forging and shaping their inner identity by teaching them how they should feel towards various circumstances. [2]Ellen Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 82, in order to frame Paul’s project of transforming his … Continue reading Indeed, “Paul…does everything in order to bolster the joy of the community.” [3]Gerhard Friedrich, “Der Brief eines Gefangenen: Bemerkungen zum Philipperbrief,” in Auf das Wort kommt es an: Gesammelte Aufsatze zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Johannes H. Friedrich (Gottingen, … Continue reading

While joy is a prominent theme in Philippians, it is important to remember that the joy which Paul both models for and calls forth from these believers is variegated, emerging in a number of different forms. In this way, Paul’s usage of joy in this letter agrees with what Dinkler has noted about the wider usage of joy throughout the New Testament corpus, namely, that “The New Testament invokes, evokes, represents, and recommends joy for multiple reasons and in complicated ways.” [4]Michal Beth Dinkler, “Reflexivity and Emotion Narratological Perspective: Reading Joy in the Lukan Narrative” in Mixed Feelings and Vexed Passions: Exploring Emotions in Biblical Literature, ed. … Continue reading In what follows, I will analyze Paul’s use of joy in Philippians by way of
presenting five types of joy that appear, namely, an emotional joy, an evaluative joy, a communal joy, a Scriptural joy, and a moldable joy. The overall analysis will demonstrate, first, that Paul’s understanding of joy is closely interwoven with his presentation of (and invitation to) a holistic phronesis, a way of being in Christ that includes both habits of mind and habits of heart. [5]For this concept of communal culture being characterized by both habits of the heart and habits of the mind, cf. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, who points to society having “mores,” … Continue reading Secondly, I will show that joy in Philippians is something that can be taught, it is shown
throughout the letter to be a learned habit, and, indeed, it is one of Paul’s primary purposes in writing the letter that this community of beloved sisters and brothers would grow in their ability to discerningly feel the right way toward Christ, toward Paul, and toward the world around them.

An Emotional Joy

The apostle is not interested in a way of living for the gospel which is solely outward; rather, he envisions a relation to Christ that inscribes itself within the inner being, encompassing mind, heart, and body, including both ψυχή and σῶμα. This fact can be demonstrated in the letter by Paul’s manifold descriptions of his own inner life, throughout which a comprehensive joyfulness emerges. As was noted above, his prayer of thanksgiving for these believers occurs “with joy” (1:4), and after this initial pointer to his inner state while praying, he goes on to refer to his “confidence” (πεποιθώς, 1:6), his “mindfulness (φρονεῖν) on behalf of” these believers (1:7a), his having them “in the heart” (ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ, 1:7b), and his longing (ἐπιποθῶ) for them “with the compassions (ἐν σπλάγχνοι) of Christ Jesus” (1:8). Joy, thus, appears as one among a panoply of emotions emerging within this letter, though it takes pride of place among them all. Joy is the unifying emotion, presented as the centerpiece of the Christian life.

In discussing the joy presented in Philippians as emotional, it is necessary to offer a brief definition of that term. Inselmann has appealed to Lazarus’s scholarship in the field of functional psychology to furnish an understanding of joy. Lazarus’s main argument regarding positive emotions like joy is that these are “goal congruent” emotions, as opposed to “goal incongruent (negative)” emotions. [6]Richard Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 265. For Lazarus, joy is found within the “emotion families resulting from a primary appraisal of goal relevance and congruence, the classically positive emotions, which refer to diverse forms of goal attainment or the movement toward it.” [7]Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation, 82. Cf. his later comment, 92, that “Emotions are first and foremost reactions to the fate of active goals in everyday encounters of living and in our lives … Continue reading In another vein, Roberts argues that emotions represent “concern-imbued construals” of reality. [8]Robert C. Roberts, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 79: “Emotions are concern-based construals, that is, construals imbued, flavored, … Continue reading Wierzbicka includes both goal and construal, arguing that “There are two crucial cognitive components in the joy scenario, an evaluative one: ‘something very good is happening,’ and a volitive one: ‘I want this to be happening.” [9]Anna Wierzbicka, Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversities and Universals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 50.

Both of these models for understanding what emotions are, either as goal (un)attainment or as a construal of reality in which one is deeply concerned, can combine to provide a helpful way to understand how Paul is using joy in Philippians. Roberts’ understanding of joy as a construal that “impinge[s] satisfyingly on one or another concern of the subject” [10]Roberts, Emotions, 279. prompts us to speak now of the cognitive, that is, evaluative way in which joy emerges in Philippians.

An Evaluative Joy

Paul presents his ministry among the Philippians as primarily directed toward their progress in the “joy of the faith” (Phil 1:25), and his prayer that they be able “to discern what really matters” (εἰς τὸ δοκιμάζειν ὑμᾶς τὰ διαφέροντα, 1:10) is intricately linked with this progress in joy. The distinguishing between things that matter and things that don’t matter (adiaphora) was an important aspect of ancient discourse about joy. Stoic philosophy in particular made much of this distinction, especially when it came to mitigating against the dangers that could arise when falling prey to the emotions. For the Stoics, emotions represented weaknesses within humanity, an instance in which rationally controlled virtuous action gave way to irrationally being swept away into vice. To combat such attacks against human virtue and indeed against human flourishing, the Stoics sought to cultivate a rational approach to life that devalued irrational emotions as human goods. Thus, they posited a rational version of emotions, the eupatheiai (“good emotions”), which were limited to three: joy, watchfulness, and wishing.

Emotional experience and cognitive valuation thus became intricately linked in this line of philosophic thought. Indeed, as Holloway asserts, “The third and final of the εὐπάθειαι, χαρά,…became the characteristic emotion of the wise man.” [11]Paul A. Holloway, Consolation in Philippians: Philosophical Sources and Rhetorical Strategy, SNTS 112 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 79. See also idem., “Paul as a Hellenistic … Continue reading In Engberg-Pedersen’s perspective, the theme of rejoicing in Philippians must be connected with Paul’s emphasis on having a right construal of reality, the ability to grasp what really matters and therefore what actually possesses value and worth.

This evaluative aspect of joy combines with the strong emphasis the apostle places throughout the letter on phronesis, or correct thinking. The way that one “considers” the world and what it brings ultimately determines one’s emotional response to those occurrences. Joy thus becomes possible when believers align their thinking and feeling with that of Christ (2:5).

A Communal Joy

Insofar as the theme of joy in Philippians involves properly evaluating the world, the emotional experience of joy thus becomes a matter of value-sharing, which makes it an inherently communal emotion. Paul advocates for a unified phronesis, a unified pattern of emotions (“feel the same thing” [2:2b; 4:2]; “feel the one thing” [2:2e];]), and so it is not surprising that he also advocates for a unified experience of rejoicing. Paul explicitly calls for the community to share his rejoicing at 2:17-18, where he reflects upon the possibility that his trial before Rome will result in his martyrdom. Since Christ’s narrative has reshaped Paul’s view of what matters and what does not matter, the idea of a martyr’s death is not cause for sorrow but rather for yet further rejoicing, and the apostle even invites his friends to share his rejoicing about this situation.

Beyond this explicit invocation of shared joy among the community, however, Paul throughout Philippians highlights the social dimension of joy, especially in how it serves as an identity-shaping reality for the community. Chaniotis has called attention to the reality of “emotional communities” in the ancient Greco-Roman world. Discussing the regularly occurring injunction in decrees issued by the polis that all people “join the king and citizens in a display of joy,” Chaniotis notes that decrees like this “[make] clear that the entire population should constitute a community of joy.” [12]Angelos Chaniotis, “Displaying Emotional Community: The Epigraphical Evidence” in Emotion and Persuasion in Classical Antiquity, ed. by E. Sanders and M. Johncock (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner … Continue reading He further describes how such a “shared display of affection and grief unites the city, regardless of social and legal status; and it enhances togetherness.” [13]Chaniotis, “Emotional Community,” 97.

Inselmann calls attention to the way that positive emotions, such as joy, serve especially to reinforce and strengthen goal-congruence towards already-established behaviors. [14]Anke Inselmann, “Zum Affekt der Freude im Philipperbrief: Unter Berücksichtigung pragmatischer und psychologischer Zugänge,” in Der Philipperbrief des Paulus in der hellenistich-römischen … Continue reading She argues that reciprocal emotions “can stabilize and strengthen the (In-)Group.” [15]Inselmann, “Freude im Philipperbrief,” 273 n. 57. Barton helpfully describes this community-forging and identity-shaping aspect of emotions in general, and the emotion of joy in particular: “In the form of feelings, behaviour-rules and symbols, [joy] helps constitute an ethos and culture distinctive in certain respects from the surrounding world.” [16]Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions,” 191.

Along these same lines of joy as that which provides identify for a group, one can also see how joy protects the unity of the group. Joy serves as an “antidote,” [17]Mark J. Keown, Philippians, ed. H. Wayne House, W. Hall Harris, and Andrew W. Pitts, EEC (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017). as a “safeguard” [18]R. Kent Hughes, Philippians: The Fellowship of the Gospel, Preaching the Word (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007). against the heterodoxy of Paul’s opponents. In contrast, joy becomes a contagious attitude within the community, with the joy modeled by Paul “infecting” [19]Giuseppe Barbaglio, “Alla Chiesa di Filippi,” in La teologia di Paolo: Abbozzi in forma epistolare (Bologna: EDB, 2008), 313-399 (342 n. 101, “Intende ‘contagiare’ i suoi interlocutori del … Continue reading the Philippian auditors and thereby
establishing them into a unified emotional front that can withstand opposition.

Another way to approach the communal joy presented throughout Philippians is within the context of friendship. The ideal picture of friendship, presented especially by Aristotle and Cicero, depicted friends being emotionally bound together, each party participating mutually in the feelings, both positive and negative, of the other. [20]For a fuller treatment of the sharing of happiness within ancient friendship, see Isaac D. Blois, Mutual Boasting in Philippians: The Ethical Function of Shared Honor in Its Scriptural and … Continue reading The prospect of friends sharing each other’s joy became appropriated into the sphere of the polis as well. It was essential for the health of the community that all members of the polis shared in a common sense of values, that they agreed about what was upheld to be “worthy” and virtuous behaviors and equally felt disgust and shame at the appropriate negative and vicious actions.

Alongside Paul’s promoting in Philippians a unified emotional stance toward the world, we find an equal concern about heterophronos (3:19), about feeling wrongly toward the world. Essentially, Paul is concerned about heteropathos among the community, seeking to consolidate the emotional life of the group into a unified orientation towards the “one” thing that they should celebrate: namely, life in Christ. On par with the apostolic concern for orthodoxy, stands the Pauline emphasis on ortho-pathos, since the battle for human ethics occurs just as much in the realm of the emotions as it does in the field of cognition. Far from Paul being stifling, though, in seeking to control the emotions of his converts, Paul’s “emotional regime” is essentially freeing. [21]Cf. Stephen C. Barton, “Eschatology and the Emotions in Early Christianity,” JBL 130 (2011), 571-591, 578, who argues that emotional regimes are not “necessarily restrictive. On the contrary, … Continue reading

A Scriptural Joy

It is well recognized that Paul’s epistles have constant recourse to Israel’s Scriptures, and so the prospect that the apostle draws on Israel’s description of the cult for his presentation of joy in Philippians is quite probable. Particularly noteworthy is the apostle’s repeated imperative that the community “rejoice in the Lord” (3:1; 4:4 [bis]). Such an imperative that mandates an emotional response from the community is prominent as well within the book of Deuteronomy, a Scriptural text which emerges as formative in Philippians for Paul’s self-understanding (as a possible Moses figure) and for his understanding of communal identity (as the “circumcision” [3:3] and as the “children of God” [2:15]). [22]See Blois, Mutual Boasting, 132-141. By tethering the believing community at Philippi together with God’s historical people of old, Paul has effectively transferred to this Christ-following community the emotional norms guiding Israel’s religious practices, among which joy stands out as primary. Barton concisely describes this Scriptural attitude of joy as the “positive posture of piety,” [23]Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions,” 178. and we see in Philippians that Paul “orients his life with the attitude that the OT commends (Lev 23:40; Deut 12:7, 12; Zech 9:9) for those who serve the Lord.” [24]James W. Thompson and Bruce W. Longenecker, Philippians and Philemon, Paideia (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 27.

Deuteronomy is recognizable for its focus on joy within Israel’s cultic life. As Fishbane has highlighted in his treatment of joy within the Jewish religion: “The state of joy is a particular feature of the religious psychology advocated in the book of Deuteronomy: whole-hearted and willing service.” [25]Michael Fishbane, “Joy and Jewish Spirituality” in The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 151-186, 151-152. Cf. Georg Braulik, … Continue reading Indeed, we find in Deuteronomy the most salient Hebrew term for joy, שׂמחה, used more than any other book of the Hebrew Bible other than the Psalter, with the injunction to “rejoice before YHWH” (שׂמח לפני יהוה) occurring frequently, particularly in Deuteronomy (cf. Deut 12:7, 12, 18; 14:26; 16:11, 14, 15; 26:11; 27:7; cf. Lev 23:40; Num 10:10).

In Philippians, Paul draws on this precedent from Deuteronomy for placing the joy of God’s saints in the imperative. [26]Cf. Ian Y. S. Jew, Paul’s Emotional Regime: The Social Function of Emotion in Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, LNTS 629 (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 90, who argues that it is the Psalmists’ … Continue reading As Gulin ponders:

What does χαίρετε ἐν κυρίῳ mean? Is this expression perhaps a call back to the OT cult, where שׂמחו (cf. גלו) ביהוה (‘rejoice in the Lord!’) appears often? [27]E. G. Gulin, Die Freude im Neuen Testament (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1932), 174 (my translation).

While, it is true, Paul’s language for rejoicing does not match up exactly with that of the LXX his thematic understanding remains quite similar. There is indeed a strong correspondence between Paul’s presentation of rejoicing ἐν κυρίῳ (in the Lord) and the LXX Deuteronomy notion of rejoicing ἐναντίον κυρίου (before the Lord, cf. Deut 12:12 LXX). [28]Cf. Braulik, “The Joy of the Feast,” 65, who argues that the “fraternal spirit” of rejoicing reflected in the early church (citing Acts 4:32) “constitutes a fulfillment of Deuteronomy’s … Continue reading

As Paul appropriates this Deuteronomic joy, he shifts it so as to be a joy in the Lord. By de-spatializing the joy, but then retaining its unifying element for the community, Paul centers the celebration and shared joy “in the Lord,” that is, in the person of the exalted Lord Jesus. Wright, thus, rightly labels rejoicing in Philippians as a “celebrating [of] Jesus’s lordship.” [29]N. T. Wright, “Joy: Some New Testament Perspectives and Questions,” in Interpreting Scripture: Essays on the Bible and Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 192-209, 204-205.

Gaide points out that, whereas commonly one would rejoice on account of another person, either about something that they have done for you or represent to you, Paul asks these believers to rejoice in someone, since theirs is a joy “that results from the union with Christ, an interior joy communicated to members of his mystical body by means of faith” (cf. Rom 15:13). [30]Gilles Gaide, “Joie et Paix dans le Seigneur: Ph 4, 4-7,” AdS 7 (1969), 59-64, 60 (my translation).

A Moldable Joy

In light of the foregoing presentation for the various types of joy that emerge from Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, one thing that stands out is the way in which joy is a moldable phenomenon. It can be shaped, guided, and directed. [31]Robert D. Webber, “The Concept of Rejoicing in Paul” (Ph.D. Diss., Yale University, 1970), 323, speaks of Paul’s imperatives that the Philippians “rejoice in the Lord” as a strategy in … Continue reading Hence, Paul’s important role as this community’s psychagogue, that is, the leader who guides the emotional lives of those around him. Paul becomes the community’s emotional teacher, offering in his letter a “pedagogy of joy” through providing for them a “hermeneutic of joy,” [32]Cf. Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions.” an interpretive framework in which they can understand and engage with the world around them so as to respond with joy in the Lord.

As the Puritan commentator, Matthew Henry, has remarked about Paul’s warnings against the false teachers in Philippians chapter 3, Paul’s goal in exhorting this community to rejoice in the Lord is that such joy would then ultimately “put [their] mouths out of taste for those pleasures” which seek to lead them away from the mindset (and heart-set) of Christ. [33]Cited in Hughes, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon: The Fellowship of the Gospel and the Supremacy of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013). Essentially, Paul is seeking to train the pallets of his beloved sisters and brothers, to guide them into learning to delight in, to savor, and to rejoice over the appropriate goods, namely, the things of Christ, and also to feel disgust over those things that stand in opposition to Christ’s cross.

References

References
1 Eduard Lohse, “Gehilfen der Freude: Die Freude in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus,” in Freude des Glaubens: Die Freude im Neuen Testament (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 57-72, 57 (my translation).
2 Ellen Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 82, in order to frame Paul’s project of transforming his congregations’ phronesis, points to Wayne Booth’s idea of “colonizing the mind” through reading, as well as to Martha Nussbaum’s claim that “truths of human life can be better grasped through emotional engagement stimulated by literature than by abstract philosophical treatises that appeal only to cognition.”
3 Gerhard Friedrich, “Der Brief eines Gefangenen: Bemerkungen zum Philipperbrief,” in Auf das Wort kommt es an: Gesammelte Aufsatze zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Johannes H. Friedrich (Gottingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 224-235, 234 (my translation).
4 Michal Beth Dinkler, “Reflexivity and Emotion Narratological Perspective: Reading Joy in the Lukan Narrative” in Mixed Feelings and Vexed Passions: Exploring Emotions in Biblical Literature, ed. F. Scott Spencer (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 265-286, 270.
5 For this concept of communal culture being characterized by both habits of the heart and habits of the mind, cf. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, who points to society having “mores,” defined as “moral habits…which one might call the habits of the heart, [alongside] the different notions men have,…the different opinions which have currency among them, and…the whole body of ideas from which the habits of the mind are
formed.”
6 Richard Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 265.
7 Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation, 82. Cf. his later comment, 92, that “Emotions are first and foremost reactions to the fate of active goals in everyday encounters of living and in our lives overall.”
8 Robert C. Roberts, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 79: “Emotions are concern-based construals, that is, construals imbued, flavored, colored, drenched, suffused, laden, informed, or permeated with concern.” Stephen C. Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions in Early Christianity: The Case of Joy,” in The Bible and Spirituality: Exploratory Essays in Reading Scripture Spiritually, ed. Andrew T. Lincoln, J. Gordon McConville, and Lloyd K. Pietersen (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2013), 171-193, 191, offers a corresponding definition of joy: “joy is…the felt knowledge of what really matters.”
9 Anna Wierzbicka, Emotions Across Languages and Cultures: Diversities and Universals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 50.
10 Roberts, Emotions, 279.
11 Paul A. Holloway, Consolation in Philippians: Philosophical Sources and Rhetorical Strategy, SNTS 112 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 79. See also idem., “Paul as a Hellenistic Philosopher: The Evidence of Philippians” in Paul and the Philosophers, ed. Ward Blanton and Hent De Vries (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 52-68, 63, where he aptly summarizes that “Paul [in Phil 1:10] adopts as his principle strategy of consolation the Stoic theory that grief lies in mistaking things that do not matter for things that do.” Cf. Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions,” 189: “expressions of joy constitute a pervasive, even predominant, cognitive evaluative feature of early Christian self-definition.”
12 Angelos Chaniotis, “Displaying Emotional Community: The Epigraphical Evidence” in Emotion and Persuasion in Classical Antiquity, ed. by E. Sanders and M. Johncock (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016), 93-111, 96.
13 Chaniotis, “Emotional Community,” 97.
14 Anke Inselmann, “Zum Affekt der Freude im Philipperbrief: Unter Berücksichtigung pragmatischer und psychologischer Zugänge,” in Der Philipperbrief des Paulus in der hellenistich-römischen Welt, ed. Jörg Frey and Benjamin Schließer with Veronika Niederhofer, WUNT 353 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 255-288, 267.
15 Inselmann, “Freude im Philipperbrief,” 273 n. 57.
16 Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions,” 191.
17 Mark J. Keown, Philippians, ed. H. Wayne House, W. Hall Harris, and Andrew W. Pitts, EEC (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017).
18 R. Kent Hughes, Philippians: The Fellowship of the Gospel, Preaching the Word (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007).
19 Giuseppe Barbaglio, “Alla Chiesa di Filippi,” in La teologia di Paolo: Abbozzi in forma epistolare (Bologna: EDB, 2008), 313-399 (342 n. 101, “Intende ‘contagiare’ i suoi interlocutori del suo gioire”).
20 For a fuller treatment of the sharing of happiness within ancient friendship, see Isaac D. Blois, Mutual Boasting in Philippians: The Ethical Function of Shared Honor in Its Scriptural and Greco-Roman Context, LNTS 627 (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 87-89.
21 Cf. Stephen C. Barton, “Eschatology and the Emotions in Early Christianity,” JBL 130 (2011), 571-591, 578, who argues that emotional regimes are not “necessarily restrictive. On the contrary, they may offer resources shaped by time and tradition that increase an individual’s emotional range rather than inhibiting it.”
22 See Blois, Mutual Boasting, 132-141.
23 Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions,” 178.
24 James W. Thompson and Bruce W. Longenecker, Philippians and Philemon, Paideia (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 27.
25 Michael Fishbane, “Joy and Jewish Spirituality” in The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 151-186, 151-152. Cf. Georg Braulik, “Joy of the Feast” in The Theology of Deuteronomy: Collected Essays of Georg Braulik (North Richland Hills, TX: BIBAL Press, 1994), 27-65, 28: “In the book of Deuteronomy, cultic joy becomes a central part of faith in YHWH.”
26 Cf. Ian Y. S. Jew, Paul’s Emotional Regime: The Social Function of Emotion in Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, LNTS 629 (London: T&T Clark, 2020), 90, who argues that it is the Psalmists’ “perspective on joy [that] is to form the framework, both theological and experiential, in which the Philippians are to understand Paul’s injunctions [to rejoice]…in the entire epistle.”
27 E. G. Gulin, Die Freude im Neuen Testament (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1932), 174 (my translation).
28 Cf. Braulik, “The Joy of the Feast,” 65, who argues that the “fraternal spirit” of rejoicing reflected in the early church (citing Acts 4:32) “constitutes a fulfillment of Deuteronomy’s notion of a future fraternal community.”
29 N. T. Wright, “Joy: Some New Testament Perspectives and Questions,” in Interpreting Scripture: Essays on the Bible and Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 192-209, 204-205.
30 Gilles Gaide, “Joie et Paix dans le Seigneur: Ph 4, 4-7,” AdS 7 (1969), 59-64, 60 (my translation).
31 Robert D. Webber, “The Concept of Rejoicing in Paul” (Ph.D. Diss., Yale University, 1970), 323, speaks of Paul’s imperatives that the Philippians “rejoice in the Lord” as a strategy in which the apostle is “schooling his churches in the Christian disposition of joy. He is, in a sense, training their affections” (italics added).
32 Cf. Barton, “Spirituality and the Emotions.”
33 Cited in Hughes, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon: The Fellowship of the Gospel and the Supremacy of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013).
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