A tale of two Philips?

Reading the Church Fathers is always a richly rewarding, although sometimes frustrating, experience. For all their wisdom, these early saints and doctors of the church were not without their quirks. Irenaeus, for instance, taught that Jesus lived well into his fifties. Origen espoused numerous novel doctrines, particularly in his later years. Papias was repudiated by Eusebius for claiming to have received directly from the apostles "certain strange parables and teachings of the Saviour, and some other more mythical things" including "his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth." Commenting on such teachings, Eusebius observes, "I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures."

Maybe some of these aberrations are more than mere quirks, but we must always be charitable when considering the nascent theology of the early Fathers, keeping in mind that many of them sealed their testimony with the blood of martyrdom. Still, reading some of their exegetical works can be somewhat amusing at times. In reading from John Chrysostom's Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, I came across this rather dubious exegetical stretch.

Why were these [the believers in Samaria] not in receipt of the Holy Spirit? It may be that Philip kept this honor for the apostles, or that the did not have this gift or that he was one of the seven. The last is most likely. Thus, I take it, this Philip was one of the seven, the one after Stephen, while the Philip in the story of the eunuch was one of the apostles.

This "two Philips" theory does not hold up under even the most rudimentary of exegetical scrutiny. "Philip" is named among the eleven in the Upper Room prior to Pentecost (Acts 1.13), but that very fact itself means he would have been in Jerusalem with the other apostles (who, except for Peter and John's brief follow-up visit to Samaria, were the only ones among the disciples who were not scattered following the death of Stephen, Acts 8.1), not on the road to Gaza at the time of the encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8.26-40). Furthermore, the wider context makes it clear that the Philip who first proclaimed Christ to the Samaritans and the Philip who met the Ethiopian eunuch are one and the same. Luke structures the narrative in such a way as to demonstrate the important evangelistic role this Philip began to take on in the immediate aftermath of the death of his fellow deacon Stephen. The encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch came immediately after Peter and John completed the work he began in Samaria. Immediately after baptizing the eunuch, he wound up in Azotus and continued his evangelistic work throughout "all the towns until he came to Caesarea," further suggesting that this Philip is one of the seven, not one of the twelve. The apostles, even after the death of James and the imprisonment of Peter, were still holding down the fort in Jerusalem as late as the Jerusalem Council, recorded in Acts 15.

The baptism of the eunuch, Rembrandt, 1626

It is difficult to understand why Chrysostom found it necessary to presume the Philip who preached Christ to the Samaritans and the Philip who preached Christ to the Ethiopian eunuch were two different people. He seems concerned over the fact that the Samaritans did not receive the Holy Spirit until the arrival of Peter and John. By assuming the Philip who met the eunuch was an apostle, Chrysostom removes any lingering question about how the eunuch might have received the Spirit, as well. Yet, the Holy Spirit does not seem to be the exclusive property of the apostles, even before Philip's visit to Samaria. Stephen was "a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 6.5). Moreover, it is "the Spirit" who prompts Philip to engage the eunuch in conversation. Perhaps, between his initial visit to Samaria and his subsequent travels down the road to Gaza, Philip received additional instruction with regard to the Holy Spirit from the apostles (which would have been easy, since Peter and John soon arrived on the scene). His hasty departure from Jerusalem after the outbreak of persecution may have left him with an adequate, yet incomplete, understanding of the gift of salvation. This would be the case later with Apollos (Acts 18.24-28), who "was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John." It fell to Priscilla and Aquila to "[explain] to him the way of God more accurately." It is only speculation that this would have also been the case with Philip. Nevertheless, there is no need to try to explain away a relatively minor quibble over early church order by splitting one Philip into two.