Werntz PDF Hauerwas

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2 Review and Expositor

1. Gordon Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995),112, notes that this refers to Paul’s influence among the Praetorian guard, with possible reach beyond.

In any event, the provenance of the letter—whether in Ephesus, Caesarea, or the traditionally assumed

Rome—is a matter of debate. Cf. Fee, Philippians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 33–

35; Dennis Hamm, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 62; Ben

Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: William

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2011), 8.

2. As the Reformer Henry Airay wrote, “Is it by the merits of the saints, by the virtue of their sufferings,

by the force of their blood which they shed for the gospel? No, for all their merits are not of that worth,

all their sufferings and deaths do not have that virtue … How does it come to pass that the persecutions

and sufferings of the saints do further the gospel? By the power of Christ. By the example of the saints’

constancy in their sufferings …,” in Reformation Commentary on Scripture: Philippians and Colossians,

ed. Graham Tomlin (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 21.

3. More provocatively, in Col 1:24, the author (presumably Paul) writes, “I rejoice in my sufferings for you

and fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body, which is the church.” See

have encouraged others to “speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.” 1 What is

notable is the instrumental nature of the relation between gospel and physical suffering that Paul

posits here; while there is certainly benefit from Paul’s physical suffering, it is clear that what has

occurred benefits others and perhaps even God (through the expansion of the gospel), but there is

no “necessary” relation here between Paul’s physical suffering and his own conformity to Christ.2

Put differently, Paul does not posit a strict correlation between physical trials and his own disciple-ship, as if one needs to undergo shipwrecks, imprisonments, and beatings to be a true disciple.

Paul expands his instrumental thinking concerning hardship as the letter unfolds. Consider the

description of his own suffering in 1:20, in which he hopes that “Christ will be exalted in my body,

whether by life or by death.” Similarly, in 1:23, Paul’s famous lament that “it is more necessary for

you that I remain in the body” echoes these earlier sentiments: physical suffering, in and of itself,

is not sanctifying; rather, this suffering is redeemed insofar as it is of benefit to Christ and to the

watching church. Lest the reader miss Paul’s point, he is careful to note the ways in which the

moral benefits of suffering come to the companions and churches of Paul, but only sometimes by

the one undergoing them.

Although it is not uncommon to see Paul apply this logic to his own life, this theme also char-

acterizes other sufferers in the letter. Later in chapter 1, Paul turns his attention to the travails of

Epaphroditus, the Philippian Christian, stating that the trip Epaphroditus had taken to assist Paul

had nearly cost Epaphroditus his life (1:27). Epaphroditus, who “almost died for the work of

Christ,” is to be honored as one who risked “his life to make up for the help [the Philippians] could

not give [Paul]” (1:30). But again, the sufferings that this brave congregant experienced are not

described as conforming Epaphroditus into the image of Christ; significantly, Paul does not men-

tion whether God has used them to this end either. Rather, the sufferings that Epaphroditus endures

are, as was the case with Paul, for the benefit of others, both in the church and in the world.

The importance of this initial point cannot be overstated as we approach Philippians. Pastorally,

the example Paul provides here is a difficult word that has been sadly neglected: that the suffering

we undergo—even suffering (physically, mentally, and emotionally) for the sake of Christ—is notintrinsically beneficial to the one suffering, according to Paul. To suffer, whether from human

frailty or for Christ, can, as Paul writes, benefit those who behold the suffering Christian, the

church that is encouraged by the one suffering, and Christ and Christ’s work in the world. Paul

certainly calls for Christians to rejoice in their suffering and to consider what has been lost in light

of what has already been gained in Christ. But, this is different than saying that the benefit of suf-

fering lies with the sufferer immediately. As Paul notes, suffering can certainly be an opportunity

to “conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel” (v. 27), and at times the substance of

Christian discipleship (v. 29).3 But it appears (troublingly, to those looking for suffering to be



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Jerry L. Sumney, “‘I Fill Up What Is Lacking in the Afflictions of Christ’: Paul’s Vicarious Suffering in

Colossians,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 68 no. 4 (2006): 664–80 for discussion of this theme.

4. Stephen Fowl, Philippians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 41.

therapeutic or character-forming) that suffering incurred for the sake of the gospel has an object

beyond the one suffering, according to Paul.

Moving through the famous passage of 2:1–11, Paul calls for the Christian to imitate Christ’s

humility, modality of service, and obedience during times of suffering. But, here again, if we are

looking for some way in which suffering benefits us directly, we will be disappointed; as we are

called to “do nothing of selfish ambition” (2:3), we find ourselves being humbled to the point ofdeath, as Christ (2:8). It is through this suffering that we, indeed, are found “blameless and pure”

(2:15), but for the sake of being able to “shine among them like the stars in the sky.” In this witness,

the Philippians join with Paul, who is likewise being “poured out like a drink offering” (2:17).

Through the letter, Paul seeks, in part, to provide a new vision of suffering, that when our vision of

suffering’s telos is oriented away from our own benefit and toward Christ’s work, the suffering

bodies of Christians prove to be transfigured signs of Christ’s work. Paul’s famous rejection of his

past in 3:2–6 follows in this vein, as Paul considers the things he has lost for the gospel as “loss

compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord … (v. 7). Again, Paul is not

disparaging physical life, but Christologically reorienting it.

Thus far, we see that, for Paul, Christian witness is ultimately at stake in terms of the nature of

suffering. Suffering commensurate with Christ’s own model and for Christ’s sake draws one into

fellowship with Christ, as one’s suffering benefits the watching world and the church. What has

remained implicit throughout this letter, however, is that at each juncture, the church has been pre-

sent as the interpreter of and beneficiary of the sufferings of Paul and Epaphroditus. As Stephen

Fowl observes,

In 1:12, Paul, rather conventionally, began to make known the disposition of his own circumstances … It

turns out, however, that these things are only indirectly about Paul. Clearly, here, as in many other places

in the epistles, Paul and his story are integrated so thoroughly into the story of Christ that it becomes

difficult to separate the two. Paul has learned to see that his circumstances are part of this larger ongoing

story.4

Put differently, the church in Philippi has been the body that has helped Paul and Epaphroditus see

what their suffering has been for, and the body that is encouraged by and benefits from that suffer-

ing of its members. Such a theme can be troubling for any number of reasons, most evidently

because it may lead us to instrumentalize the suffering of individuals for some greater good. But

Paul has more in mind than simply the social benefits that occur through the examples of those who

suffer.

In 3:10 this larger picture comes most fully into view. Phil 3:1–9 famously details Paul’s

response to those promoting circumcision, rebuffed by Paul’s assertion that his own lineage sur-

passes those of his opponents. But in light of what has been discussed thus far—the various suffer-

ings of Paul, his associates, and of the Philippians—this passage should now take on a differentcast. Rather than using an isolated argument about circumcision, Paul appears to be making an

argument about the lengths to which we are to go with regard to our self-abnegation! Rather than

approve of a life that would avoid suffering—a life characterized by hiding within the safety of a

theological lineage and/or pious activity—Paul commends the way of life he has been detailing

throughout Philippians: one that embraces suffering. Phil 3:1–9 is not a disparagement of family

lines or piety as such, but an argument against certain forms of material life that enable us to avoid

the suffering of the Gospel. Verse 3:10, in turn, becomes much more crucial in terms of understand-

ing how these twin lines of suffering for the Gospel and the presence of the church come together.




As the crescendo to this letter-long argument, Paul writes this:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,

becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:10)

In this one sentence, three terms are interlinked in terms of Paul’s desire: Christ, the power whichresurrected Christ, and “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” As we have already seen, this

suffering is not strictly for the sake of one’s moral health; instead, in suffering, one is knit into the

purposes of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the world. This is not to say that Paul advocates a utilitarian

vision of persons, that their value lies only in what they contribute to the whole of the church; as

Paul highlights the work of Epaphroditus—and later, the work of Eudoia and Syntyche (4:2–3)—

he does so in a way that attends to their individual needs, albeit in the context of the common life

of the Philippians. Rather, Paul says that suffering for Christ creates a communion, knitting together

the one suffering with the church that walks alongside them, in Christ.

We have seen this already in the way the Philippian church helps name physical suffering as the

imitation of Christ (2:28–30), the way the church is named as the central imitator of Christ’s own

life (2:5–11), and in the ways the suffering of other Christians serves as encouragement for thechurch (1:14). In each of these previous cases, suffering is transfigured beyond its immediate moral

benefits, insofar as suffering is ultimately that which extends the work of Christ, even in the face

of death. Moreover, at each juncture, the church is called on to reclaim trauma as benefiting Christ’s

own life, and is made more confident by seeing the faithful suffering of its members. Apart from

Christ’s body, the church, which helps reclaim physical and emotional traumas, the violence visited

on believers is viewed as senseless, and historical tragedies are viewed as blind fate. These

instances, I suggest, come together in 3:10, as we see that in naming, benefiting, and aiding the

suffering, the church and the suffering members come together in what Paul terms “the fellowship

of Christ’s suffering”; in suffering, we see Christ forging a body that is not only able to care for the

suffering but is able to name suffering as that which is not beyond the care or concern of God. Inthe absence of this role, individuals are left with their suffering, floundering on their own, unable

to have their own wounds attended to, and unable to be knit into a larger work of Christ.

The phrase “fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” can be read in an individualist fashion,

meaning that Paul desires an individual communion with Christ. But this reading ignores the com-

munal dynamic of the suffering of Christians that has been in play throughout the letter. “Fellowship,”

in other words, denotes a communion with Christ that takes into consideration the ways in which

the church has helped name suffering, re-narrate suffering, and reclaim suffering as having benefit

for other Christians. Put differently, for Paul, to enter into communion with Christ by suffering for

Christ is to enter alongside those who have encouraged you, witnessed your suffering, and re-nar-

rated and transfigured your vision of suffering, that you may read your struggles for the gospel as

having had benefit for both the world and the church.

Reading Paul on suffering, with Hauerwas

At this point, I want to turn to Stanley Hauerwas’s work on suffering to help tease out some of the

ecclesial dimensions that have been noted throughout Philippians. Although best known for his

work in political theology, ethics, and ecclesiology, Hauerwas’s earlier writings in medical ethics

help shed light on the role of the church in relation to suffering. In what follows, I will not attempt

to provide an exhaustive account of Hauerwas’s rich work on suffering, but rather to bring Hauerwas

into conversation with Philippians, to help extend Paul’s thinking, and perhaps, to offer a corrective

to Hauerwas’s work on this point.Exegetically, the ecclesiological dimensions of suffering in Philippians are a natural match to

Hauerwas’s work, although Hauerwas’s most explicit writings on suffering deal with medical



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5. Stanley Hauerwas, Suffering Presence: Theological Reflections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped,

and the Church (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 165.

6. See Roy A. Harrisville, Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the

Biblical Writers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006).

7. Hauerwas, Suffering Presence, 167. 8. Ibid., 166.

9. Ibid., 33.

ethics rather than suffering incurred on behalf of the faith. Nonetheless, Hauerwas elucidates what

is at the heart of the question of suffering when he writes:

“To suffer” means to undergo, to be subject … Suffering names those aspects of our lives that we undergo

and which have a particularly negative sense … Suffering carries a sense of “surdness”: it denotes those

frustrations for which we can give no satisfying explanation and which we cannot make serve some widerend.5

In other words, “suffering” names a question mark on the sense-making of certain life events,

analogous to what one author has named as the ongoing fracture within Scripture: that some events

are simply apocalyptic for our reality and cannot be housed within existing frames of meaning. 6

Philippians, emphasizing the “peace of God which transcends all understanding” (4:7), certainly

wants to guard against a kind of nihilism that would allow any and all suffering to undo us.

Nonetheless, Hauerwas correctly observes that, “We rightly feel that some forms of suffering can

only be acknowledged, not transformed.”7 Put in Philippians’ terms, the pain of Epaphroditus and

Paul cannot be wished away, but must be acknowledged truthfully by the church.

The difficulty with these apocalyptic forms of pain, he notes, is that “Pain and suffering alienateus from ourselves. They make us what we do not know.”8 All sense of control, in light of an inex-

plicable tragedy, is utterly shattered, leaving us subject to the formative desires and intents of

another. As we saw with Philippians 1–2, this too was the experience of Paul and his companions;

the threat of persecution and suffering was not simply that they might die but that Paul, Epaphroditus,

and the Philippians were in danger of losing their desire to persevere and becoming overwhelmed

by their pain. In losing this struggle, the greater danger, then, is that the Philippians might lose their

selves, becoming persons unrecognizable to themselves.

In light of such trauma, our temptation, Hauerwas notes, is to attempt to distance suffering from

any moral intelligibility whatsoever. While doing so pushes suffering away from ourselves and

renders its threat to our personal integrity null and void, this move has the unintended consequenceof banishing suffering to a place beyond the grasp of moral reasoning:

Medicine thus schools us to think of suffering in terms of a mechanical model. This is often done in the

name of science—we now know that cancer is caused by X or Y and not by living a sinful life. But what

we must understand is that “science” so used is motivated by the powerful moral claim that our suffering

should not be brought within the realm of moral intentionality.9

In other words, in the attempt to refuse a Deuteronomic understanding of suffering—that our physi-

cal suffering is intricately related to sins we have committed—we run the risk of saying that suffer-

ing is a-moral and without sense; what begins as a good intention ends with us denying moral

reasoning any capacity to rehabilitate or transform suffering.The distancing of moral reason from unjust suffering plays itself out, ultimately, in the form of

despair. By viewing one’s condition, whether for the sake of the gospel or in the hospital, as isolated

from any larger scope of reason, we also isolate our condition from any larger narratives that might

help us make sense of our circumstance. Writing on the despair that leads to suicide, he notes:




10. Stanley Hauerwas, with Richard Bondi and David B. Burrell, Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further

Investigations into Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 106.

11. See Ibid., 107–15.

12. Hauerwas, God, Medicine, and Suffering (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,

1990), 89.

13. Part of what drives this, I suspect, is the manner in which political liberalism became a conversation

partner for Hauerwas in the years following his early work on medical ethics. Returning to these themes

of medical ethics and disability in his 2008 Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of

Weakness (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008), co-authored with Jean Vanier, Hauerwas charac-

terizes individual agency in terms of its association with “liberal political theory.” What is problematic

for Hauerwas is the manner in which modern political philosophy forms us to see ourselves as “people[who] believe they have no story except the story they chose when they thought they had no story” (82).

14. Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 84.

The Christian should have a particular aversion to the use of memory which shuts out the future. This use

of memory shows a distrust of the mercy, power, and love of God who is the source of all time and

creation.10

Rather than allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by trauma as mindless or meaningless, Hauerwas

suggests that communities not only help us remember the narratives that are larger than our momen-tary pain, but that individuals are responsible to communities in their moral lives. By this, he means

that the relationship between the individual and the community is reciprocal: not only do communi-

ties save individuals, but individual lives are given placement and meaning within the lives of

healthy communities.11

Here Hauerwas’s work intersects most clearly with Paul’s exhortations to the Philippians. As we

see in the letter to the Philippians, there is an interplay between the encouragement received by the

community at Philippi from the example of individuals such as Paul and Epaphroditus and the way

in which the Philippians help rescue Epaphroditus’s suffering from the abyss of meaninglessness.

Returning to Paul’s interlocking triad in Phil 3:10, that of Christ, the power which resurrected

Christ, and “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,” Hauerwas helps us to see that this triad is

sustained not simply by wishful thinking, but by the church standing alongside its suffering members, and reminding the suffering—in life or for the gospel—that their lives are being used of God

in witness, both to the church and the world.

In their zeal to bring moral meaning to tragedy, however, Christians must be careful not to over-

ride the suffering of the individual. Hauerwas is worth quoting at length at this point:

It is crucial for us to recognize, however, that while it is perfectly appropriate for us to discover the

suffering we experience in illness to have a telos in our service to one another in faith, it is not appropriate

for us to try to force that account on another. When we do that we can force pointless suffering and pain

into a teleological pattern that cannot help but be destructive. If we try to attribute these terrible results to

God’s secret providence, that cannot help but make God at best a tyrant and at worst a cosmic torturer. 12

In Hauerwas’s earlier work, the place of the individual in the community’s narrative, and par-

ticularly the role of the suffering individual, remained a strong theme. In more recent work, how-

ever, the question of suffering has become more muted, while the role of the confessing church for

Christian faith has remained prominent.13 In his Sanctify Them in the Truth, for example, he draws

upon 1 Corinthians 15 to make the case that, for Paul, holiness is not a concern primarily for the

individual, but for the community. As he writes, “Holiness is not, for Paul, a matter of individual

will. Holiness is the result of our being made part of a body that makes it impossible for us to be

anything other than disciples.”14



Werntz 7

15. Ibid., 80–84.

16. Ibid., 84–89.

17. Hauerwas has similar suspicions regarding claims for our need to have agency as individuals. See his

chapter “Going Forward by Looking Back: Agency Reconsidered,” also in Sanctify Them in Truth,

93–103.

18. On this, see most particularly Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (Grand Rapids: William B.

Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010).

Hauerwas argues here, as he does in other works, that our lives are not self-sustaining, and that

we are, theologically speaking, “permeable selves” who cannot be our selves without others.15

Suffering, in this context of the church, is a challenge to members of the church who would see

themselves as untouched by the hardship of others in the community, to remember that the fate of

one intimately affects all others in the body. On this count, Hauerwas resonates strongly with

Philippians’ message.16 But over time, it seems that Hauerwas’s emphasis in this communaldynamic has shifted away the suffering individual and toward communal formation, with his writ-

ing gravitating toward what this dynamic means for the church body, and not as much for the suf-

fering individual. In other words, his earlier caveat concerning individuals that “it is not appropriate

for us to try to force that account on another” has been somewhat muted in favor of his concern for

there being a communal narrative which forms a faithful people of God.17

I am not suggesting that, in making this choice, Hauerwas is unconcerned with the suffering of

individuals; his earlier work, as well as his tender accounts of his friends and loved ones, amply

testifies to his concern for suffering individuals.18 I am suggesting, however, that Hauerwas has, in

his constructive reflections, at times overvalued the communal benefits and the communal narra-

tive of the Gospel, and neglected the ways in which the individual narratives puncture and trouble

communal narratives. As we saw in Philippians, there is a dynamic between Paul’s concern for the

suffering of individuals and the role that suffering plays in the formation of the church.

Hauerwas’s work is most instructive in approaching Philippians by bringing to the surface the

ecclesial logic that runs throughout Paul’s letter. By emphasizing the way in which the “self” is in

part a modern construct, Hauerwas seeks to pull our attention back to the church as we consider

what to do with suffering, for three reasons. First, if, as Paul points out, we are knit together into

one body, then the suffering that Christians undergo for the gospel may or may not be for our direct

benefit; if we grapple to make sense of our struggles apart from the witness of others, our logic may

very well lead us to pagan conclusions, making God into a tyrant rather than the one who suffered

on our behalf. Second, by suffering alongside the church, we remember that our present suffering

is not the final story of our lives. Finally, suffering—for those who stand beside those suffering— proves a troubling of the waters, a challenge to lives of solitude, and a push toward solidarity with

those who suffer. At each juncture, Paul, and Hauerwas after him, offers a subtle and provocative

picture of Christian suffering that refocuses the end of our suffering beyond what we might learn

from it, and toward what the church is called to nurture, make use of, and redeem.

Author biography

Myles Werntz is Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Palm Beach Atlantic University in

West Palm Beach, FL. His research interests lie at the intersection of the doctrine of the church and ethics,

helping Christians to understand the deep connection between their corporate life as Christians and their wit-

ness in society. Dr. Werntz is the author of Bodies of Peace: Nonviolence, Ecclesiology, and Witness (2014),

as well as several other chapters and articles on ecclesiology, war and peace, and Christian witness. He also

served as editor of two posthumous volumes of work by the Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder.

[Email: [email protected]]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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