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CHAPTER XII
is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit at all seasons (6:17, 18). The pneumatology of Ephesians resembles that of John, as the christology of Colossians resembles the christology of John. It is the Spirit who takes out of the “fulness” of Christ, and shows it to the believer, who glorifies the Son and guides into the truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13–15, etc.). Great prominence is given to the Spirit also in Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, and the Acts of the Apostles. John does not speak of the church and its outward organization (except in the Apocalypse), but he brings Christ in as close and vital a contact with the individual disciples as Paul with the whole body. Both teach the unity of the church as a fact, and as an aim to be realized more and more by the effort of Christians, and both put the centre of unity in the Holy Spirit. Encyclical Intent Ephesians was intended not only for the church at Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia Minor, but for all the leading churches of that district. Hence the omission of the words “in Ephesus” (Eph. 1:1) in some of the oldest and best MSS.1120 Hence, also, the absence of personal and local intelligence. The encyclical destination may be inferred also from the reference in Col. 4:16 to the Epistle to the church of Laodicea, which the Colossians were to procure and to read, and which is probably identical with our canonical Epistle to the Ephesians.”1121 Character and Value of the Epistle. Ephesians is the most churchly book of the New Testament. But it presupposes Colossians, the most Christly of Paul’s Epistles. Its churchliness is rooted and grounded in Christliness, and has no sense whatever if 1120 ἐν Εφέσω is omitted in the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. Marcion retained the Epistle under the title “To the Laodicenes,” as Tertullian reports. Dr. Hort says: “Transcriptional evidence strongly supports the testimony of documents against ἐν̓Εφέσω.” The arguments of Meyer and of Woldemar Schmidt (in the fifth ed. of Meyer on Colossians) in favor of the words are not conclusive. 1121 This was already the view of Marcion in the second century. Meyer, however, in loc., insists that another letter is meant, which was lost, like one to the Corinthians. The apocryphal Ep. to the Laodiceans (in Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T., I. 873 sqq.), consisting of twenty verses, is a mere fabrication from the other Epistles of Paul. It was forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea (787).
THE NEW TESTAMENT
separated from this root. A church without Christ would be, at best, a praying corpse (and there are such churches). Paul was at once the highest of high churchmen, the most evangelical of evangelicals, and the broadest of the broad, because most comprehensive in his grasp and furthest removed from all pedantry and bigotry of sect or party.1122 Ephesians is, in some respects, the most profound and difficult (though not the most important) of his Epistles. It certainly is the most spiritual and devout, composed in an exalted and transcendent state of mind, where theology rises into worship, and meditation into oration. It is the Epistle of the Heavenlies (τὰ ἐπουράνια), a solemn liturgy, an ode to Christ and his spotless bride, the Song of Songs in the New Testament. The aged apostle soared high above all earthly things to the invisible and eternal realities in heaven. From his gloomy confinement he ascended for a season to the mount of transfiguration. The prisoner of Christ, chained to a heathen soldier, was transformed into a conqueror, clad in the panoply of God, and singing a paean of victory. The style has a corresponding rhythmical flow and overflow, and sounds at times like the swell of a majestic organ.1123 It is very involved and presents unusual combinations, but this is owing to the pressure and grandeur of ideas; besides, we must remember that it was written in Greek, which admits of long periods and parentheses. In Eph. 1:3–14 we have one sentence with no less than seven relative clauses, which rise like a thick cloud of incense higher and higher to the very throne of God.1124 1122 But the very reverse of churchy. Nothing can be further removed from the genius of Paul than that narrow, mechanical, and pedantic churchiness which sticks to the shell of outward forms and ceremonies, and mistakes them for the kernel within. 1123 Eph. 5:14 may be a part of a primitive hymn after the type of Hebrew parallelism: “Awake thou that sleepest, Arise thou from the dead And Christ will shine upon thee.” 1124 In literal English translation such a sentence is unquestionably heavy and cumbrous. Unsympathetic critics, like De Wette, Baur, Renan, Holtzmann, characterize the style of Ephesians as verbose, diffuse, overloaded, monotonous, and repetitious. But Grotius, a first-class classical scholar, describes it (in his Preface) as “rerum sublimitatem adaequans verbis sublimioribus quam ulla habuit unquam lingua humana.” Harless asserts that not a single word in the Epistle is
