Methodological Approach 22

It remains for me to outline how this study is laid out; but first, some general comments concerning the theoretical underpinnings of my approach are in order.

In line with what is now the mainstream understanding of emotion in current scholarship, this study adopts a cognitive approach to emotion, which involves, at its

core, a judgement or appraisal of an object’s value that gives rise to some form of action tendency. At the same time, as mine is a historical study of emotion, I take also the view, prevalent in emotions theories in the social sciences and humanities, that it is socially constructed and culturally conditioned. As I see it, an approach to emotion that deliberately incorporates the interplay of these two ideas—that emotion is a cognitive as well as a social phenomenon—holds much promise for my inquiry because it

recognizes the personal dimensions of affective response while also being attentive to the impact on emotion of social dynamics and cultural influences since, after all, Paul’s letters are written to, and for, communities.

If, as we say, emotion is socially constructed, then it is vital that we are familiar with thinking concerning emotion in the first century Greco-Roman world, so that our reflection on Paul’s treatment of emotion is firmly tethered to its historical and

sociocultural context. Accordingly, in the chapter to follow (ch. 2), I will provide a comprehensive discussion of the Stoic understanding of emotion and its therapy. We will allow the Stoics to speak for themselves (so to speak!), to ensure that we are not anachronistically importing modern conceptions of emotion into ancient texts. And in the course of our work on Paul in the subsequent chapters of this thesis, we will return to this material on Stoicism and interact with it by highlighting points of similarity and difference and drawing out their implications. I have chosen to focus my attention on the Stoics—and only the Stoics—for several reasons. First, it is commonly held that Stoicism was the most important philosophical influence in that era;118 Anthony Long notes that “[i]n the Roman world of the first two Christian centuries Stoicism was the dominant philosophy among educated pagans.”119Second, the Stoics were known for their explicit emphasis on philosophy as a way of life;120 by any reading, Pauline Christianity, too, was at least also a way of life.121 Third, and related to the foregoing, there is an astonishingly long-established scholarly tradition of using Stoicism as a conversation partner for Christianity, which suggests that juxtaposing the two traditions is, as Kavin Rowe elegantly puts it, “a particularly promising way of eliciting creative thought about complex cases in which rival traditions negotiate each other’s claims to

118 _{So e.g. Anthony A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California}

Press, 1986), 107; F. H. Sandbach, The Stoics, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 16.

119 _{Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 232.}

120 _{See John Sellars, The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy, 2nd ed.}

(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009), 55–85.

121 _{A very recent and intelligently provocative reading of the relationship between emergent}

Christianity and Stoicism as rival traditions of life is C. Kavin Rowe’s One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).

truth through time.”122 Fourth, the Stoics had by far the most fully developed account of emotion of the day, which is helpful in terms of constructing comparisons with Paul’s views.

In chs. 3 and 4 of my study I investigate joy in Philippians and grief in 1 Thessalonians respectively: though both emotions occur across a number of Paul’s letters, joy is an especially significant theme in Philippians, and grief in 1

Thessalonians. Admittedly, due to the constraints of space, I have had to be very

selective as to which emotions to focus on. Joy and grief have been chosen because they are powerful, contrasting emotions that Paul categorically deals with, and at some length; in Philippians he expressly commands joy, while in 1 Thessalonians he forbids a certain type of grief. The prominence of joy and grief in these letters suggests that they have something to do with the thrust of Paul’s theological thinking; and it would therefore seem that a careful study of these emotions can help to take us to the heart of Paul’s pastoral agenda. In terms of specifics: both chs. 3 (Joy in Philippians) and 4 (Grief in 1 Thessalonians) will be prefaced by a discussion of the background of the letter in question, its genre, and its distinctives—all of which help us to have a sense of Paul’s purposes for writing. Moreover, since our study proceeds on the assumption of the unity of the letter, this fact will have to be established. In regard to my approach to the texts themselves: here in chs. 3 and 4, like in ch. 2, I will not deploy modern emotions theories in my reading of Paul beyond their general role in alerting us to the cognitive and social dimensions of emotion. Instead, we will endeavour to “hear” him on his own terms and in his own historical context through a rigorous exegetical analysis of what he has to say. At the same time, we will keep an eye also on what he might be trying to do to shape Christian community. Where appropriate, I will introduce Stoic thinking as a foil for Paul’s views, so as to make his understanding of joy and grief come into even sharper focus.

Finally, in ch. 5, I bring modern emotions theory to bear on my study. The understanding that emotion is related to cognition and that it is not only personal, but has also a social cast, suggests that the use of Riis and Woodhead’s sociological model of the emotional regime (see section 1.3.2) might be a particularly fruitful means of heuristic engagement with how Paul deals with joy and grief. Accordingly, Riis and Woodhead’s framework will be discussed in detail, and then used to elucidate how

desired emotional patterns are produced and reinforced, and how their strength and longevity are sustained. I will then correlate these findings to my proposals concerning how Paul is using emotion in his letters. To end, I will contrast the Pauline emotional regime with Stoic thinking on emotion by bringing together the key findings from this and earlier chapters of my study, and in so doing, also highlight the distinctiveness of Paul’s account of emotion.