9 - Exploring the building site

Summary

In a well-known passage in 1 Corinthians 3 Paul compares his work as an apostle to that of a builder. The building is the church, and the letters which he writes may fairly be regarded as the tools of his trade. Despite the dangers of over-simplification and of forcing the material into a rigid pattern, it may provide a helpful structure for our consideration of the theology of the letter to the Philippians if we take up this metaphor. We shall therefore consider in successive chapters:

the site on which the building was to be erected,

the foundation on which the building rests,

the materials used to bind the stones together,

the character and structure of the new building,

the relation of this particular task of building a church to Paul's other, similar tasks and

the continuing usefulness of the building for today.

Although there are various other angles from which Paul's work can be considered, we shall confine ourselves to a study of the theology which he develops in order to build the church. The primary aim of Philippians is a theological one, however much personal and social factors may affect its character and presentation, and what we want is to find out the character of the theological points that Paul specifically makes in it and to relate these to his underlying theology.

Paul resembles a person who knows a particular language; what he says on a given occasion does not express all of that language, although from what is said one could produce a tolerable picture of its structure.