EL RETO SUPREMO: EL CICLO DE LA MADUREZ

The evidence before us indicates that joy, for Paul, is a crucially important emotional corollary of certain key theological values in the Christian life. More

specifically, we may say that Paul sees joy as the believer’s deep-seated, embodied, and enacted pleasure that emerges through his or her discernment of, and active

participation in, God’s eschatological renewal of creation and creature in the light of the work of Christ and the coming of the Spirit.565 The good news is that Christ has come, and that he is coming again; Christian joy is grounded in these realities and therefore profoundly connected to the advancement of this good news and to the growth in faith of those who accept it. To be joyful is thus to believe rightly in the truths that the gospel of Christ proclaims; and the implication is that the quality of a person’s joy is in some sense an indication of the extent to which these truths have actually taken hold of the person’s thinking566—and thereby shaped his or her Christian identity, outlook in life, and sense of mission.

Moreover, since the basis of joy consists in God’s eschatological act of renewing the world, the presence of suffering in the here and now does not need to cripple the believer’s joy. Paul does not shy away from telling the Philippians that suffering for the sake of the gospel is part of what it means to follow Christ. For just as it was for Christ, lying behind such suffering is the promise of ultimate vindication. Therefore suffering becomes, in a way, a theological crucible in which the melding together of pain and a renewed, Christ-focused perspective on such pain produces the possibility of a deeper and richer understanding of the Christian life, as the believer learns to fix his gaze on the eschatological horizon, thereby becoming increasingly cognizant of the hope—and accompanying joy—that are also present realities.567 Joy is thus an experience of revitalization—one that is “so profound, so touched by transcendence, that it makes possible the transcendence of suffering, grief, shame, and all that is death-dealing, even and especially death itself.”568 Putting these things together, it seems entirely reasonable

565 _{See also Barton, “Spirituality,” 183.}

566 _{As Wright, “Joy,” 61, observes: “Not to celebrate, not to express joy in the lordship of the}

crucified and risen Jesus, would be tacitly to acknowledge that one did not really believe.”

567 _{To use Nicholas Lash’s apt expression: joy is “the felt form of Christian hope.” See his Seeing in}

the Dark (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005), 201; quoted in Barton, “Spirituality,” 190 n.40.

to conclude that for Paul joy is to be regarded as a primary, and perpetual, orientation within the life of the believer (cf. Rom 14.17).569

In addition, Paul clearly regards joy as being also a social phenomenon: socially generated in relationship with fellow believers, and socially displayed through

expressions of mutual joy that reflect and reinforce the fact that each believer’s story is part of a larger narrative, one in which God has the final word. We may therefore say that joy is the collective manifestation of salvation and spiritual transformation in the lives of individual believers. Throughout the letter, Paul places joy within the context of his special relationship with the Philippians: he repeatedly makes clear his desire that they know and share his joy, and so attain a greater fullness of joy in their own lives. The mutuality and sociality of joy are thus foregrounded; it would certainly seem that Paul sees joy as being a critical ingredient in the establishment of a distinctively

Christian culture, in view of its powerful potential to structure both personal sensibility and public behaviour. One might even say that here in Philippians Paul regards joy as a responsibility of the believer, because of the far-reaching ways in which joy expresses key aspects of Christian belief and is thus constitutive of the emotional ethos of a community that is truly Christian.

All this helps to explain why Paul takes such great pains to call forth joy from the Philippians by making it the subject of repeated pedagogy, as well as to exemplify it in his own life and ministry. It is interesting to note that like the Stoics, Paul develops a process to inculcate Christian joy: Paul knows that it can be taught (and conversely, also learned), modelled, requested, and also reinforced through the solidarity of shared feelings. And like the Stoics, in his understanding of joy Paul assumes that some kind of grand ordering of the cosmos is at work. But here any superficial similarities end, not least because Pauline joy and Stoic joy are premised on entirely different ideological realities. For in the final analysis Paul derives his joy from his relationship with his Lord, and from his relationship with others who also call Christ Lord. True Christian joy will emerge when these relationships are what they should be.

569 _{Paul writes elsewhere that joy is a fruit of the Spirit and thus serves as evidence of the Spirit’s}