Why was rhetoric so important to a young evangelistic religious movement like Christianity? T. Engberg-Pedersen explains the matter perfectly: "Paul has also shown that precisely when the question is one of changing other people's lives the very content of the gospel demands a ‘method' of effecting such changes which is directly opposed to any use of force [or trickery].... It is that of speaking to them in ways that do not encroach upon their independence." One cannot command people to believe the gospel but must persuade them, and the art of persuasion in the Greco-Roman world was rhetoric.
Even after one has persuaded persons to believe, an apostolic figure like Paul knew that it continued to be better to persuade than to command one's converts, as in his words to his coworker Philemon in the midst of another impressive piece of deliberative rhetoric: "Therefore, although I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.... I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would be voluntary" (Phlm. 8-9, 14). Paul knew perfectly well that proclaiming a monotheistic Jewish message in a polytheistic culture where anti-Semitism was rife required more than just words spoken in earnest and with passion. It required persuasion. The objections and the mental and emotional obstacles in the minds and hearts of the listeners had to be answered and removed if Jesus was to become their Lord and not merely another religious sideshow. And Paul knew that God had not left it simply up to the Holy Spirit to do all the heavy lifting of persuasion. Rather God commissioned proclaimers to do their part so that word and Spirit might work together to persuade and convert. The use of rhetoric was especially apropos and important in cities in the empire heavily influenced by Greco-Roman values, including by rhetoric - cities like Philippi, which had at the turn of the era become a Roman colony.
Deliberative rhetoric, had been the rhetoric of the Greek assembly (the ekklesia), the rhetoric of advice and consent, the rhetoric that helped people make decisions about the course they would take into the future. This sort of rhetoric, in the main, is what we find in Paul's persuasive missives as he seeks to shape the course charted by his charges into their future, including when he would no longer be around. As Quintilian stressed, letters that are meant to be proclaimed on arrival are in the main written-out speeches and were closer in both form and substance, in both style and content, to acts of persuasion than to ordinary mundane letters.
A bit more should be said at this juncture about the rhetorical device known as "exemplification." According to Quintilian, a named or anonymous person's character is set forth in part to excite or conciliate an audience's feelings and to spur them on to imitation. Using such examples was not merely an effective way to embellish one's oratory and bring it to the point of persuasion, but also a deliberate means of paraenesis, and used precisely that way by rhetoricians and moralists of Paul's era. The importance of this for analysis of Philippians should be obvious. Paul is using theologically charged arguments, including using a Christ hymn to urge the audience to have the same mindset as was found in Christ and in those who, like Paul, imitate Christ, and to walk worthily of the gospel and its principles.
Even after one has persuaded persons to believe, an apostolic figure like Paul knew that it continued to be better to persuade than to command one's converts, as in his words to his coworker Philemon in the midst of another impressive piece of deliberative rhetoric: "Therefore, although I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I prefer to appeal to you on the basis of love.... I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do would be voluntary" (Phlm. 8-9, 14). Paul knew perfectly well that proclaiming a monotheistic Jewish message in a polytheistic culture where anti-Semitism was rife required more than just words spoken in earnest and with passion. It required persuasion. The objections and the mental and emotional obstacles in the minds and hearts of the listeners had to be answered and removed if Jesus was to become their Lord and not merely another religious sideshow. And Paul knew that God had not left it simply up to the Holy Spirit to do all the heavy lifting of persuasion. Rather God commissioned proclaimers to do their part so that word and Spirit might work together to persuade and convert. The use of rhetoric was especially apropos and important in cities in the empire heavily influenced by Greco-Roman values, including by rhetoric - cities like Philippi, which had at the turn of the era become a Roman colony.
Deliberative rhetoric, had been the rhetoric of the Greek assembly (the ekklesia), the rhetoric of advice and consent, the rhetoric that helped people make decisions about the course they would take into the future. This sort of rhetoric, in the main, is what we find in Paul's persuasive missives as he seeks to shape the course charted by his charges into their future, including when he would no longer be around. As Quintilian stressed, letters that are meant to be proclaimed on arrival are in the main written-out speeches and were closer in both form and substance, in both style and content, to acts of persuasion than to ordinary mundane letters.
A bit more should be said at this juncture about the rhetorical device known as "exemplification." According to Quintilian, a named or anonymous person's character is set forth in part to excite or conciliate an audience's feelings and to spur them on to imitation. Using such examples was not merely an effective way to embellish one's oratory and bring it to the point of persuasion, but also a deliberate means of paraenesis, and used precisely that way by rhetoricians and moralists of Paul's era. The importance of this for analysis of Philippians should be obvious. Paul is using theologically charged arguments, including using a Christ hymn to urge the audience to have the same mindset as was found in Christ and in those who, like Paul, imitate Christ, and to walk worthily of the gospel and its principles.
--- Ben Witherington III, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, 2011.
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