Quest for the Historical Apostles by W. Brian Shelton

Author:W. Brian Shelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Early Christianity;Apostles (Church history—Primitive and early church ca. 30–600);REL015000;REL006040;REL006220
ISBN: 9781493413195
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-02T05:00:00+00:00

Palestine Discipleship

The discipleship of Philip receives little attention in the Gospels. However, there are episodes in which he finds challenges to his faith that provide slight insight.

Discipleship Calling

The biblical text relates this apostle’s calling as a simple event. Somewhere in Galilee, Jesus calls Philip: “The next day He purposed to go forth into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me’” (John 1:43). Nothing else besides his hometown of Bethsaida is provided about the call or background of Philip in the Gospels.

Philip is also believed to have been the other disciple of John the Baptist who accompanied Andrew in following Jesus, after the Baptist declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God (John 1:35–42). The reason for this association is the chronology of Philip’s call, which precedes the calling of Nathanael. However, John does not mention the other disciple’s name and Philip is introduced in the verses immediately thereafter, which suggests that he may not be that unnamed disciple.

Philip is straightaway presented in the Gospel of John as engaging in a form of evangelism that might make him the first to have spread the word of Jesus to another person. While the episode goes on to describe Bartholomew’s calling, Philip is instrumental in bridging the relationship between the Messiah and another future apostle: “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ And Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see’” (John 1:45–46).

Philip perseveres in inviting Bartholomew to come and see for himself. While any Jew would have anticipated the coming of the Messiah, Bartholomew’s dismissive remark about Jesus’s upbringing requires Philip to persist.

Discipleship Episodes

Beyond the lists, Philip appears in four episodes in the Gospels, and all are exclusively in John. Three of these scenes involve encountering Jesus, twice by the instrumentality of Philip and once by the economic plan of the Son of God. The first episode is the introduction of Bartholomew to Jesus, described above.

The second episode involves not an individual encounter but rather one of the greatest miracles of Christ: the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1–15). At times Jesus seems to employ a Socratic method of engaging disciples by posing questions that require thought, reflection, and realization. This story is one example, even explicitly saying that Jesus’s question is an intellectual and spiritual examination, and Philip is the disciple of choice. “Where are we to buy bread?” Jesus asks Philip in the opening quotation of the chapter. The testing of Philip is an unusual event, one of many characteristic of the ministry of Christ in training his disciples. F. F. Bruce says: “He put the question to Philip to see what he would say, since he already had a plan of his own.”4 This miracle of feeding the crowds is in all four Gospels, but only in John is Philip named in the preceding dialogue.

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