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0010.1177/0034637314564548Review & ExpositorWerntz

research-article2014

Article

The fellowship of suffering:

Reading Philippians with
Stanley Hauerwas

Review and Expositor

17
The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0034637314564548
rae.sagepub.com

Myles Werntz

Palm Beach Atlantic University, USA

Abstract
[AQ: 1]

Keywords
[AQ: 2]

It should come as no surprise that one of the most prominent themes of the New Testament is also
one of its most neglected themes: suffering. Permeating Acts and the letters are martyrdom
accounts, depictions of Pauls own hardships, and the ever-present reminder, as Phil 3:10 puts it,
that there is a fellowship which comes in sharing the suffering of Christ, to the degree that Pauls
individual suffering is cast as part of a much larger story in which Paul is not the beneficiary of his
own suffering. Throughout the letter to the Philippians, the apostle weaves an intricate story in
which Christs work is advanced and in which our suffering for Christ is not for our own benefit,
but one in which, through suffering, the church of Jesus Christ appears as that body which learns
from, walks with, and helps nurture those who suffer.
While this theme of physical affliction has been well-studied in New Testament circles, the work
of Stanley Hauerwas has been scarcely mined in this regard. This neglect regarding Hauerwass
work is particularly puzzling given the triad of books Hauerwas has written around the topic of
human suffering. Thus, in what follows, I will bring Stanley Hauerwass treatment of suffering into
conversation with Phil 3:10, showing the ways in which Hauerwass work expands the Christian
imagination on what Christians are to make of suffering.

The fellowship of sufferings: Circling in on Phil 3:10

Before we can productively approach the relationship between suffering and the Christian faith that
Paul gives us in Philippians, a caveat must be put in place. From the outset, we must resist the common mode of thinking that physical suffering incurred by the Christian for the sake of the gospel
is, in and of itself, transformative for the one suffering. Troublingly, Paul seems to have no conception here that suffering intrinsically does something good for the sufferer. Beginning in Phil
1:1214, Paul refers to his chains, which have not only served to advance the gospel, but which
Corresponding author:
Myles Werntz, Palm Beach Atlantic University, 900 Quartz Terrace, West Palm Beach, FL 33413, USA.
Email: myles.werntz@gmail.com

Review and Expositor

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 Pauls 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 Pauls physical suffering and his own conformity to Christ.2
Put differently, Paul does not posit a strict correlation between physical trials and his own discipleship, 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, Pauls 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 Pauls 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 characterizes 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 mention 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 undergoeven suffering (physically, mentally, and emotionally) for the sake of Christis not
intrinsically 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 Christs 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 suffering 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
1. Gordon Fee, Pauls Letter to the Philippians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995),
112, notes that this refers to Pauls influence among the Praetorian guard, with possible reach beyond.
In any event, the provenance of the letterwhether in Ephesus, Caesarea, or the traditionally assumed
Romeis 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, Pauls 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

Werntz

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 2:111, Paul calls for the Christian to imitate Christs
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 of
death, 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
sufferings telos is oriented away from our own benefit and toward Christs work, the suffering
bodies of Christians prove to be transfigured signs of Christs work. Pauls famous rejection of his
past in 3:26 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 Christs own model and for Christs sake draws one into
fellowship with Christ, as ones 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 present 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 suffering 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 3:19 famously details Pauls
response to those promoting circumcision, rebuffed by Pauls assertion that his own lineage surpasses those of his opponents. But in light of what has been discussed thus farthe various sufferings of Paul, his associates, and of the Philippiansthis passage should now take on a different
cast. 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 sufferinga life characterized by hiding within the safety of a
theological lineage and/or pious activityPaul commends the way of life he has been detailing
throughout Philippians: one that embraces suffering. Phil 3:19 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 understanding how these twin lines of suffering for the Gospel and the presence of the church come together.
Jerry L. Sumney, I Fill Up What Is Lacking in the Afflictions of Christ: Pauls Vicarious Suffering in
Colossians, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 68 no. 4 (2006): 66480 for discussion of this theme.
4. Stephen Fowl, Philippians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005), 41.

Review and Expositor

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 Pauls desire: Christ, the power which
resurrected Christ, and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings. As we have already seen, this
suffering is not strictly for the sake of ones 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 Epaphroditusand later, the work of Eudoia and Syntyche (4:23)
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 (2:2830), the way the church is named as the central imitator of Christs own
life (2:511), and in the ways the suffering of other Christians serves as encouragement for the
church (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 Christs
own life, and is made more confident by seeing the faithful suffering of its members. Apart from
Christs 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 Christs 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. In
the 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 communal 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-narrated 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 Hauerwass 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, Hauerwass 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 Hauerwass rich work on suffering, but rather to bring Hauerwas
into conversation with Philippians, to help extend Pauls thinking, and perhaps, to offer a corrective
to Hauerwass work on this point.
Exegetically, the ecclesiological dimensions of suffering in Philippians are a natural match to
Hauerwass work, although Hauerwass most explicit writings on suffering deal with medical

Werntz

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 wider
end.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 alienate
us from ourselves. They make us what we do not know.8 All sense of control, in light of an inexplicable tragedy, is utterly shattered, leaving us subject to the formative desires and intents of
another. As we saw with Philippians 12, 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 consequence
of 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 sciencewe 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 sufferingthat our physical suffering is intricately related to sins we have committedwe run the risk of saying that suffering 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 ones 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:

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.

Review and Expositor

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 momentary 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 communities save individuals, but individual lives are given placement and meaning within the lives of
healthy communities.11
Here Hauerwass work intersects most clearly with Pauls 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 Epaphrodituss suffering from the abyss of meaninglessness.
Returning to Pauls 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 sufferingin life or for the gospelthat 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 override 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
Gods secret providence, that cannot help but make God at best a tyrant and at worst a cosmic torturer.12

In Hauerwass earlier work, the place of the individual in the communitys narrative, and particularly the role of the suffering individual, remained a strong theme. In more recent work, however, 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

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., 10715.
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 characterizes 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.

Werntz

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 Hauerwass emphasis in this communal
dynamic has shifted away the suffering individual and toward communal formation, with his writing gravitating toward what this dynamic means for the church body, and not as much for the suffering 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 narrative 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 Pauls concern for the
suffering of individuals and the role that suffering plays in the formation of the church.
Hauerwass work is most instructive in approaching Philippians by bringing to the surface the
ecclesial logic that runs throughout Pauls 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, sufferingfor 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 witness 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: myles.werntz@gmail.com]

15. Ibid., 8084.

16. Ibid., 8489.
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,
93103.
18. On this, see most particularly Hannahs Child: A Theologians Memoir (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010).