Remember My Chains: New Testament Perspectives on Incarceration

Terminology

A Greek word commonly used to designate a prison structure (desmōtērion) appears infrequently in the New Testament (only in Matt 11:2; Acts 5:21, 23; 16:26). Much more common and less architecturally specific are references to “chains,” “restraining,” “guarding,” and “custody” (desmos, deō, tērēsis, and phylakē). ⁴ Popular English translations (e.g., CEB, NIV, NRSV) risk sowing misunderstanding when they usually translate those terms with specific reference to “prison” as opposed to a more general notion of “custody.” For example: the NRSV describes Peter telling Jesus, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!” instead of “into custody [eis phylakēn] and to death!” (Luke 22:33). In Phil 1:13 Paul tells his readers, according to the NRSV, “my imprisonment is for Christ” instead of “my chains [desmous] are for Christ” (cf. 2 Tim 1:16). As Acts 8:3 tells the story in the CEB, Saul would seize men and women and “throw them into prison” as opposed to the more generalized and perhaps less sensational translation “deliver them into custody [paredidou eis phylakēn].” The point is a minor one, but it bears noting: the New Testament ordinarily prefers to speak of custody and incarceration in an unspecific sense as opposed to keeping people in a specific building called a prison. The terminology’s vagueness makes references to restraint and chaining flexible. The terms encompass a wide range of possibilities that authorities had at their disposal when dealing with detainees. What the New Testament’s custody vocabulary shares in common is not reference to specific types of places and buildings as much as the conditions in which one is held against one’s will by authorities and sequestered from the general public.

Legal and Judicial Functions

Incarceration places a prisoner into a liminal existence because incarceration—by definition—is a means of enforced social quarantine. In the Roman world, prolonged incarceration also indicated a person’s liminal status from a legal point of view. For the most part, detainees who possessed relatively high social status could typically expect short-term incarceration (usually while awaiting a judicial hearing or sentencing) and lenient incarceration conditions such as house arrest or military custodianship. ⁵ Magistrates had other options for punishing influential and privileged criminals who had been convicted of crimes, including exile and financial penalties. For some prisoners, then, incarceration was meant primarily to restrict their freedom while they awaited the next phase of a judicial process. ⁶ This corresponds well to numerous passages in Acts, Philippians, and Philemon that offer indirect descriptions of what custody was like for Paul—a man whose status, connections, education, or wealth appear to have secured him certain freedoms within the circumstances of his incarceration. ⁷

For the majority of the Roman Empire’s population, who lacked the social prerogatives and legal advantages that belonged to those in the uppermost reaches of the Roman social hierarchy, incarceration might have lasted longer and served different purposes. Those who could not pay their way out of imprisonment or into better conditions with money or political capital had little recourse. Formal trials with legal advocates were for society’s elites. In most Roman provinces, such as Judea and the places where Paul traveled, local officials enjoyed broad discretion over legal matters, unless the accused possessed Roman citizenship or had friends and family in high places. ⁸ Imprisonment was therefore always a powerful resource for the state’s agents, if it was politically expedient to incarcerate an individual. Incarceration may not have been a formally decreed punishment for those who found themselves in legal trouble—such as imprisonment is in the modern world, where prison sentences are a primary tool of penal systems. In other words, the official reasons why people might have found themselves incarcerated might have been merely to await hearings or sentencing. Nevertheless, those in custody often found their circumstances to have punishing effects. Not much would have prevented a magistrate in a first-century Roman province from using the harsh conditions of imprisonment to alter an inmate’s behavior, coerce a confession, settle a score, or hasten death—whether or not that inmate had been formally convicted.

Physical Conditions

Ancient writings include several grisly accounts of the conditions incarceration entailed for those who were not elite, wealthy, or connected enough to enjoy comparatively humane forms of military custody, house arrest, or entrustment to a surety. Some sources describe torture and arbitrary corporeal punishment from savage guards. ⁹ Accounts of forced labor, painful chains, dark and unsanitary conditions, and overcrowding also characterize the literature; some prisoners opted for suicide to escape the misery. ¹⁰ To survive in such a setting, prisoners required a support network on the outside—people who could provide them with food, clothing, and other necessities.

Once again, the physical conditions of incarceration depended on who was detained, where, and why. Someone with debts (e.g., Matt 18:30) might be stripped of freedoms until an advocate could pay or an equivalent amount of labor was completed. Ancient sources refer to some prisoners being able to read, plan legal strategies, and play games. ¹¹ Bishop Ignatius of Antioch composed at least seven letters while held and transferred as a prisoner at the beginning of the second century CE. Oblique references to incarceration in biblical texts therefore require that interpreters avoid importing too many assumptions about physical conditions. Instead, interpreters should take note of clues in relevant passages. Acts paints a rather dire portrait of Paul and Silas’s conditions, for example, in part because the people in Philippi, a Roman colony, perceive the missionaries’ lack of status: both of the detainees are stripped of their clothing and endure beatings, and fetters prevent them from moving (Acts 16:22–24; cf. 22:24–25). During a very different experience late in his career, Paul describes a less restrictive environment with attention to the material and moral support he received from Epaphroditus in conditions that allowed him to write to fellow believers (Phil 2:25; 4:18) and apparently converse with his guards (Phil 1:12–13).

Honor and Shame

Second Timothy expresses misgiving that incarceration had the potential to make other believers ashamed of Paul and his situation (2 Tim 1:8, 16). That was a reasonable concern in light of standard attitudes about incarceration and prisoners. Incarceration commonly brought shame—not simply because of a presumption of guilt or the disgrace of indebtedness—but because detention undermined Greco-Roman norms of personal agency and self-control as marks of virtue. Values concerning honor and masculinity expected a man to exercise mastery over his circumstances and others. Incarceration, by its very definition, involves loss of mastery. Being in custody evoked associations of enslavement and submission, which generally triggered contempt among Roman freemen. Accordingly, prisoners’ families, friends, and associates could suffer shame or ostracism and in some cases might be inclined to dissociate themselves from the incarcerated person. Some ancient sources suggest that physical constraints, such as manacles and fetters, intensified the degree of shame. ¹² Incarceration usually exacted a social cost, although some figures that navigated unjust judicial treatment with dignity or faithfulness—including Socrates, Jesus, the apostle Paul, and Christian martyrs of later centuries—could accrue even greater honor in the estimation of their admirers. ¹³

Observations

This brief overview of the historical context demonstrates that there was no single way of experiencing incarceration during the apostolic era. Despite the variety and ambiguity in the New Testament’s references to custody—whether a text has in mind a dedicated prison building in an urban area or instead any kind of a secure room within in a military barracks or a governor’s residence (like Herod’s praitōrion in Acts 23:35)—some basic observations about incarceration and its functions are nevertheless possible.

First, there was nothing like a “prison system” in the modern sense. In other words, during the early imperial period, before Roman legal foundations and practices were widely codified, custody was one tool among many that provincial officials could use to curb crime, maintain social stability, stifle dissent, and protect Roman values. Second, as is true also for most aspects of Roman society, social status and class made a tremendous difference for how confined people would be treated and what privileges they could expect. Those nearer the bottom of the scale tended to experience the cruelest aspects of custody and the most limited legal recourse. ¹⁴ Third, incarceration usually meant risk, especially for those who endured harsher conditions and locations. For the most part, governing officials had no obligation to care for those held in custody. Imprisonment, even for the least offence, could end up being a virtual death sentence for those who lacked sufficient health, strength, prestige, or support networks. Fourth, those in custody found themselves dependent. Stripped of their own personal and social agency to one degree or another, prisoners relied on other people to meet their material needs and conduct business on their behalf. This dependence could strain a detainee’s circle of family and associates, especially if they found themselves targets of derision and distrust on account of their relationship with the person in custody.

Providing Compassion and Care

Knowing about the magnitude of risk, dependence, and shame that incarceration could generate for most prisoners allows interpreters to detect greater urgency in passages that encourage believers to show concern for prisoners. Probably the best known passage in this regard is Jesus’s description of judgment before “the throne of glory,” when “the king” identifies and separates sheep and goats (Matt 25:31–46). Among the praiseworthy things the sheep have done (and the goats have neglected to do) is to visit the Lord when he was “in custody” (author’s translation of en phylakē in Matt 25:36, 39, 43, 44). Jesus speaks about his presence within any of “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” (Matt 25:40, NIV) who resides in custody and thus experiences all of the associated jeopardy. Given Matthew’s wider context, this passage may have incarcerated Christian disciples in mind when it speaks of “brothers” (and sisters), although Christian ethicists have persuasively argued that the whole passage exhorts readers to serve all the disadvantaged people of the world and to find Christ present in doing so. ¹⁵

The book of Hebrews offers similar exhortations when it tells its audience, as an expression of “mutual love” (Heb 13:1), to “be mindful of prisoners [desmiōn] as though you were held in bonds with them [sundedemenoi]” (Heb 13:3, author’s translation). ¹⁶ The audience had done so in the past as an expression of co-suffering with prisoners (Heb 10:34). Hebrews probably envisions fellow members of the Christian community here, perhaps those whose incarceration was meant to intimidate them, but the book does not limit compassion only to detainees who were church members. These verses commend more than lukewarm charity; they ask the audience to commit themselves to prisoners, acting out concern that expresses solidarity with prisoners in their sufferings.

If there is urgency and necessity in those two passages’ exhortations, there is also an implicit call to holistic care. To visit and be mindful of prisoners in the ancient context, in which shame and disrepute could spread from prisoners to their caregivers, extends beyond social calls or prayerful supplications. The passages suggest taking responsibility for prisoners’ physical and nutritional needs and risking the cost of whatever might result, be it loss of honor or guilt by association.

It is not difficult to derive from those passages imperatives for today’s Christian communities to care for prisoners as a means of sharing in Christ’s self-giving presence and a means of expressing love. The holistic nature of that care and the personal risk that caregivers would have assumed in the ancient setting might also inform contemporary notions of what it means to visit and be mindful of prisoners. The church’s practices can extend to contributing toward prisoners’ physical, medical, spiritual, vocational, and educational needs; promoting the well-being of prisoners’ families; training, encouraging, healing, and employing those who have earned their release; and engaging in political advocacy for penal policies and prison environments that are humane, just, and merciful. Such ministry and advocacy occasionally sparks backlash. The social costs of extending active compassion toward prisoners are not merely an ancient phenomenon.

Dismantling Shame

Several Pauline letters (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 2 Timothy, and Philemon) refer to Paul conducting ministry as a prisoner. Paul’s passing mentions of his imprisonments in 2 Corinthians are nevertheless the most productive places to begin an examination of his legacy as a prisoner. With two verses (2 Cor 6:5; 11:23) that name incarcerations among numerous other hardships such as beatings, hunger, torture, and shipwrecks, Paul interprets his experiences in custody as yet another way in which the gospel manifests itself. In short, Paul refuses to regard his incarcerations as tokens of ignominy. He regards the vulnerability he experienced and the public humiliation he faced as confirmations of his identity as an apostle. ¹⁷

More than any other Pauline letter, 2 Corinthians dwells on the diverse sufferings that the apostle and his associates had to endure. When Paul moves from general summaries of his characteristic hardships (2 Cor 1:3–11; 4:7–10) to two specific lists of his travails (2 Cor 6:3–10; 11:23–28), in both instances the lists mention his “incarcerations [en phylakais]” (2 Cor 6:5; 11:23). Although he provides no additional details about how often he was held in custody, for how long, where, why, or in what specific conditions, the mere mention of these hardships reinforces Paul’s positive assessment of situations that might otherwise have been shameful and debilitating.

The two catalogs of troubles contribute to Paul’s overarching effort to confirm himself and Timothy as faithful ministers in contrast to rumblings among the Corinthians that the missionaries were ineffective or duplicitous. ¹⁸ In citing his incarcerations alongside the beatings, hunger, and shipwrecks he endured, Paul denies that being in custody should paint him and his ministry in any shameful or discreditable colors. Instead, he regards the hardships—because they arise from his work as an apostle—as representative of Jesus’s own weakness and sufferings (2 Cor 1:5; 4:7–11; 13:4). Paul does not try to garner sympathy from the Corinthians; he illustrates what it means to participate with Christ. As a person “in Christ,” Paul shares fully in all of Christ’s experiences and benefits from Christ’s blessings (e.g., 2 Cor 2:14–16; 4:10). God brings life from death. Paul’s times in custody confirm it.

Given incarceration’s associations with subjugation, shame, and weakness, Paul’s eagerness to “boast of the things that show [his] weakness” (2 Cor 11:30) could have backfired, especially if his opponents in Corinth mocked him for being such an apparently unmanly spokesperson for Jesus Christ. His claims can appear precarious for other reasons as well, if interpreters assume the apostle was valorizing injuries, embracing victimization, or championing suffering as a purifying force in and of itself. But Paul’s point is hardly perverse. Rather, he rejects incarceration’s power to define him or the authenticity of the ministry that led to his arrests. He refuses to allow social mores about strength and honor to impose limits on his theological understanding. Paul knew that Jesus’s crucifixion has a peculiar ability to declare divine affirmation of human worth. No incarceration for Christ’s sake—and, presumably, no other kind of incarceration—can ultimately thwart God’s willingness to enter sites of degradation and oppression and create something new. Paul refused to be defined by the stigmas that his society attached to incarceration. Christians who stand in Paul’s theological legacy might also reassert that the basic human dignity God bestows must not be sullied or called into question by a chain, a prison cell, or a rap sheet.

Subverting Imperial Pretensions

The book of Acts is a story about the spread of Christian witness throughout Roman-controlled territory, but it also is a story about custody. Custody serves as one of the tools officials employ to stem—ultimately unsuccessfully—the growth of Christian communities in Acts. The narrative treats incarceration as an obstacle for God to overcome. No other New Testament writing gives such attention—nearly breathless attention, in fact—to prisoners and the authorities that purport to control their movements. Ancient authors knew the dramatic potential of incarceration; when prisons are part of the story, they ratchet up the pathos in tales of separated lovers and persecuted truth-tellers. ¹⁹

Interpreters should see the incarceration scenes in Acts as more than an exciting plot device, however. Along with the narrative’s tales about courtroom drama, confused or outraged officials, and the perseverance of those who proclaim the gospel in the face of opposition, stories about incarceration allow Acts to depict the Christian faith’s means of interacting with Roman values and assumptions. In any setting incarceration is an element of discourse about power. Prisons, fortified rooms, military barracks, and even settings of house arrest are means by which the state seeks “to control the borders of dissent within their territorial domain.” ²⁰ Or, to put the matter more starkly: “The prison has never been about criminals but about societies.… [T]he prison is a tool for control and containment.” ²¹ The stories about incarceration in Acts therefore challenge imperial presumptions that the Christian message can be contained, even as those stories also insinuate that imperial strength is vulnerable to subversion and manipulation, so that God might advance God’s purposes.

Among the most spectacular scenes in Acts are three miraculous prison-escapes. In the first (Acts 5:17–42), temple authorities seize the apostles and hold them in some kind of gated public space. ²² When an angel frees them, they immediately return to the temple to resume teaching before the flustered authorities re-arrest them. Neither the incarceration nor the escape have a lasting effect; the events frame the issue as a question of whether the apostles will obey God or Jerusalem’s priestly elites. The events also question whether the authorities will recognize God’s will at work in Jesus’s followers. The second scene, (Acts 12:1–19), involves greater jeopardy, as Peter’s escape from custody requires him to flee, lest Herod Agrippa I fulfill his plan to execute the apostle. Following the angelic intervention into Peter’s incarceration and Herod’s death by the hand of an angel, “the word of God continued to advance and gain adherents” (Acts 12:24). In the last scene of the trio (Acts 16:19–40), Paul and Silas are in no hurry to leave the earthquake-damaged prison in Philippi. They demand a reversal. Just as the jailer who previously chained them eventually washes their wounds and hosts them for a meal, the magistrates who ordered their beating and incarceration have to apologize and publically vindicate the missionaries. In doing so, the authorities offer an implicit acknowledgement of God’s superior power and the baseless nature of their attempt to criminalize Paul and Silas. All told, through these three scenes, the authorities’ efforts to intimidate, overwhelm, harm, or discredit God’s representatives fail. The accounts in Acts do not promise deliverance from all threat and persecution; rather, they signify “the breaking of resistant authority” by a God whose intentions will prevail (cf. Acts 5:38–39). ²³

When the narrative reaches Paul’s extended custody, which occupies about a quarter of the book, the focus is different. The most noteworthy feature is that Paul remains in custody; the pattern of prison-escapes ends. Yet the narrative continues to pronounce defeats of officials’ attempts to quarantine representatives of the gospel, even as in Acts 21–28 the depiction of incarceration and its effects takes on a new function in the story’s theological outlook. ²⁴ First, Paul displays an almost incredible mastery over his circumstances. The account in Acts gives hardly any attention to the degradation and suffering that characterized the experience of most prisoners of that time. Repeatedly Paul experiences rescue from the threat of violence or the machinations of his enemies, surviving with apparently little effort. Second, he finds repeated opportunities to bear witness about Jesus to audiences of elite figures such as provincial governors and Herod Agrippa II. Even if Paul’s preaching does not generate converts, still the good news spreads within and because of the settings where Paul is detained (cf. Eph 6:19–20; Phil 1:14). Third, and perhaps most incongruous with Paul’s status as a man in custody, he performs actions that require degrees of agency and leverage that defy his status as an isolated or vulnerable captive. For example, he issues orders to a Roman centurion (Acts 23:17) and acts more like a captain of an imperiled ship than anyone else on board (Acts 27:9–11, 21–38).

On the whole, the narrative of Acts 21–28 dramatizes the word of God—which Paul bears and represents—as able to frustrate the Roman Empire’s power to impede its influence. If custody cannot accomplish the empire’s will, and if Paul’s incarceration actually allows him to commandeer his circumstances to persist in his vocation as one who will bear witness “before Gentiles and kings” (Acts 9:15) and “also in Rome” (Acts 23:11), then the contours of the sociopolitical order are not what they appear to be. The Christian message, propelled forward by divine intention, proves capable of “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6), even by destabilizing Rome’s means of confining Paul’s movement and message. Even incarceration, one of the empire’s mechanisms for controlling its population and their ideas, proves unable to halt Paul’s witness and influence. In light of Paul’s experiences as a prisoner (according to Acts), Rome’s authority appears to be only provisional, if not illusory.

Acts depicts a power struggle between God and domineering expressions of Roman authority that provokes many questions for interpreters. For one, claims about God overwhelming or subverting imperial muscle may uncomfortably imply that divine power looks much like Caesar’s. In addition, interpreters need to consider in what ways Acts criticizes the Roman Empire in particular and how those criticisms might extend to imperial systems more generally, beyond the first-century context. But our interpretation of Acts, in any generation, cannot overlook the narrative’s efforts to declare imperial pretense and power as far from absolute. The word of God refuses to let the empire’s values speak the last, definitive word.

Tending to all of the nuances involved in how Acts stages interaction between church and empire proves to be a massive task, which exceeds the scope of this essay. The criteria for characterizing imperialism and resistance are complex. This investigation focuses instead on the moral power of incarceration as a tool that states employ to make value judgments and accomplish their ends. Given that “the problem with prisons is that they remain an addiction for those who wish to silence voices, destroy bodies, and maintain hegemonies of all kind, political, social, sexual, economic, and religious,” ²⁵ a study of New Testament portrayals of incarceration should consider the question of how it might inform contemporary discipleship and Christian discourse about power and dominance.