THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF EPHESIANS

THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF EPHESIANS surveys the modern debate on the authenticity of the letter. Attention is focus ed on the hypothesis of E. J. Goodspeed and on subsequent Ephesian studies which again point in the direction of Pauline authorship.

}AMES J. COOK

Ephesians provides one of the most baffling chapters in the story of modern research. Although the date, destination, and place of writing are naturally related questions, the essential problem is the question of authenticity. From the standpoint of chronology the debate on this question is relatively brief, for it was not necessary to speak of an Ephesian problem until about the middle of the nineteenth century. 1 Although Erasmus was struck by the stylistic peculiarity of Ephesians in comparison with the other letters of Paul, and an Englishman, Edward Evanson, disputed its authenticity in 1792, the modern history of the problem begins with W. M. L. deWette. DeWette first published his doubt about the authenticity of Ephesians in 1826. Less than twenty years later that doubt had grown to certainty. His reasons for denying the letter to Paul included the letter's Ephesian address, the relationship of Ephesians to Colossians, the verboseness and peculiarity of grammatical construction, and the presence of elements suggestive of a post-apostolic period. Inde­ pendently, Schleiermacher came to the opinion that Tychichus had written Ephesians on behalf of Paul. His judgment against authenticity was based upon the relationship of Ephesians to Colossians. From the time of the Tiibingen school to the end of the century, the criterion was the content of the letter. Baur and Schwegler saw indications of a post­ apostolic period in the emphasis on the unity of the church, in the ap­ parent reconciliation of Jew and , and in traces of Montanism. Baur detected some connection with as well. In the sixth and seventh decades of the century, the question of the relationship of Ephesians to Colossians moved into the foreground. The man chiefly responsible for this emphasis was H. J. Boltzmann. As a solution to the question of priority he offered a complex theory of inter­ dependence. The Ephesian letter, he argued, was composed by an author

1Much of the following sketch is dependent upon the summary of the history of the problem in Ernst Percy, Die Probleme der Kolosser-rmd Epheserbriefe (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1946), pp. 1-5. An earlier summary is in H. ]. Holtzmann, K1·itik der Epheser-1111d Kolosserbriefe (Leipzig : Wilhelm Engel­ mann, 1872), pp. 2-7.

3 living in the second century in imitation of a primitive Pauline Letter to the Colossians. Later, either this same author or another, expanded the small, primitive Colossians by an extensive interpolation of the non­ Pauline Ephesians. Although this view found little acceptance, Holtz­ mann' s analysis of the affinities between the two letters, and of their stylistic peculiarities commanded a lasting respect. Subsequently, the authenticity of Ephesians was denied by Wrede, Johannes Weiss, Bousset, Norden, Wendland, Reitzenstein, Moffatt, Goguel, Hans von Soden, Weinel, and Dibelius. Thus, by the third decade of the twentieth century, a substantial list of objections to the authenticity of Ephesians could be compiled. The most significant among them were these: ( 1) Ephesians differs from all admittedly Pauline letters in that it reflects no definite historical situation which it was intended to meet. Its detached tone suggests a treatise rather than a letter. (2) The doctrinal content of Ephesians differs substantially from that of any one of Paul's earlier letters, or from all of them taken together. In Galatians and Romans, e.g., Paul is struggling to gain an equal status with Jewish Christians for his Gentile converts. In Ephesians the status of the latter is not only taken for granted, but is deduced from the eternal purpose of God rather than from the abrogation of the law. Moreover, the doctrine of the church encountered in Ephesians is too developed to fit Paul's day. Paul writes to churches, not to the church. Yet, here Christians throughout the world are described as together making up the body of a single ecdesia, of which is the Head. Suggestive of the same later period is the use of such terms as pleroma and aiones. (3) The writer's apparent veneration of apostles and as the foundation of the church (Eph. 2: 20) and the holy recipients of revelation (Eph. 3:5) is not only inconsistent with Paul's expressed atti­ tude (I Cor. 3: 11), but also echoes a post-apostolic period. ( 4) The style of the letter with its unusually long sentences is unlike anything else that is recognized as from the pen of Paul. Ephesians seems hopelessly remote from the characteristically rapid, terse, and incisive manner of Paul. ( 5) A vocabulary analysis reveals an unusually high percentage of words which are not found elsewhere in Paul's . For example, ho diabolos is used twice in Ephesians ( 4: 27; 6: 11), whereas the pre· ferred Pauline word for this meaning is satanas. ( 6) The literary relationship between Colossians and Ephesians is absolutely unique among Paul's letters. While the numerous parallel passages suggest a common authorship, the fact that the similarities often convey very different ideas points to another author for Ephesians.

4 (7) If the Ephesian address is maintained, Pauline authorship is incredible. Not only is there an inexplicable absence of personal warmth and greeting for this cherished congregation, but it is also apparent that the letter's writer and recipients are personal strangers (Eph. 1:15). This critical offensive against Ephesians did not go unanswered. Bernhard Weiss replied to the arguments of deWette, von Soden, Holtz­ mann, and Schwegler. F. J. A. Hort contributed what was to become a classic defense of the Pauline authorship. These defenders, fortified by the unanimous testimony of the external evidence, met the internal argu­ ments point by point. They were subsequently joined by Abbott, Lock, Zahn, and Harnack. Somewhere between the offense and the defense was the position held by Adolf Jiilicher. He admitted that on the whole, there was no serious objection to the hypothesis that about A.D. 90, a Pauline Christian, inti­ mately familiar with the (especially Colossians), wrote Ephesians in Paul's name as a plea for true catholicism. Yet, he refrained from going beyond the conclusion that in view of the difficulty of the decision, the question ought to be left open as not yet ripe for settlement. Jiilicher was representative of a group of scholars who were aware of the strength of the arguments against the Pauline authorship, but were restrained by certain factors from a complete break with authenticity. These restraining factors have been summarized as follows: 1. No set of circumstances has yet been suggested into which the production of Ephesians by a disciple of Paul after his death can convincingly be placed. 2. No sufficient motive has been proposed to account for the produc­ tion of such a letter in the name of Paul, yet written by a disciple of Paul. 3. We have already noted the curious relationship of Ephesians to Colossians - its very close dependence on Colossians, and yet, in comparison, its neglect of other Pauline epistles; its strangely pli­ able use of phrases borrowed from Colossians, and the absence of considerable verbatim borrowings. This relationship is very hard to explain on the assumption that Ephesians is an imitative work based on Colossians by some non-Pauline author. 4. No adequate explanation is forthcoming of the recognition from earliest times of Ephesians as a Pauline , and of its un­ disputed place in the Pauline Corpus, except on the assumption of Pauline authorship. 2 This, then, was the situation as the twentieth century entered its second quarter. New Testament students were divided into three groups over Ephesians: one maintaining its traditional authorship; a second holding

2c. L. Mitton, The Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 43.

5 it to be the work of a Paulinist; and a third contending that the unsolved problems on either side demanded an open verdict. It was at this juncture that the American New Testament scholar Edgar J. Goodspeed entered the debate. Joining himself to the second group, he offered to the third a reconstruction designed to remove each restraining factor. Goodspeed took as his starting point what he termed a series of ob­ jective considerations generally accepted by modern learning, namely: that Ephesians is not by Paul; that it was not addressed to the Ephesians, but to Christians everywhere; that it comes from about A. D. 90 or a little later; that it deals with Christian unity, against the rising sects; that it shows acquaintance with other Pauline letters; and that it has certain ideas of its own to bring forward and emphasize. The segment of New Testament scholarship which had accepted these considerations was no more able to provide an occasion for the writing of Ephesians than were the Pauline defenders. Representative of those who found this critical failure to be decisive for authenticity was, as we have seen, Ji.ilicher who climaxed his discussion of the problem with the observation: "Nor has a clear hypothesis of the circumstances under which a Paulus redivivus might have composed the Epistle to the Ephesians ever been provided, for it is impossible to see what purpose he could have served or why he made such a particularly thorough use of Colossians, when he himself did not lack independent ideas and was also acquainted with other Pauline Epistles." While others simply noted this gap, Goodspeed set himself to .fill it. To his mind the lack lay not in the adequacy of the facts at hand, but in their use. Declaring his intention by printing Jiilicher's challenge at the front of The Meaning of Ephesians (1933), he advanced just such a "clear hypothesis." The Goodspeed reconstruction presupposes a well-de.fined historical setting. The time is A. D. 80-90. Paul has passed from the scene and in the years since his death, has been all but forgotten. His letters, most often composed swiftly in the daily press of mission labors, and intended to meet a specific need in the time and place of their recipients, lie dusty in the church chests of his scattered flocks. The of Mark and Matthew have been written, but betray no knowledge of Paul's letters. More significantly still, the author of Luke-Acts, with his obvious interest in Paul, appears equally ignorant of this rich primary source. The theory next pictures a Christian, most probably an Asian, who is in close relationship to the church at Colossae. In his possession is a copy of Paul's letter to that congregation which he has read and reread until he knows it almost by heart. Perhaps he is also familiar with the little letter to Philemon. These two documents are sufficient to make this man

6 a Paulinist through and through. One day there comes into his hands a copy of the recently published Acts. As the drama of the mission journeys unfolds before his mind's eye, a whole new dimension is added to his devotion to the man he had previously known only as a writer. It occurs to him that just as Paul wrote to the congregation at Colossae, so also he might have written letters to the congregations mentioned in the Acts. What a magnificent thing it would be if some of these letters had survived and could be assembled. It would be like returning Paul to the center of the Christian scene once more. The churches of the Acts are hopefully contacted, and with glorious results. Five different churches proved to have letters from Paul: Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Galatia. His efforts have been richly rewarded for he is the first man ever to read the collected letters of Paul ! Having been stirred by Colossians alone, the spiritual heights and depths of the collection overwhelm the Paulinist with the force of a revelation. Naturally, this treasure must be shared. The time is ripe, for the Acts has awakened the church at large to its massive indebtedness to Paul. But, would Christians everywhere trouble to perceive the permanent riches so thoroughly intertwined with the apostolic word for specific situations long since past? What better guaran­ tee could be devised than to preface the collection with a letter of intro­ duction? Thus it was that this unknown Christian, fired by the inspiration of his master, unconsciously leaning most upon Colossians, but drawing upon the riches of the entire corpus, weaving through his work the call to Christian unity needful for his day, composed the untitled covering letter of commendation destined to be misnamed in future years: The Letter to the Ephesians. Naturally, he put Paul's name at the head of it, for it was his intention that what he wrote should be Paul speaking through him. If he had put his own name to the document, he would have been properly branded a plagiarist. Instead, he is the first Christian pseudepigrapher. In later statements of the hypothesis, Goodspeed yielded to the temptation to identify this unknown collector-author. He drew attention to the suggestion that Paul's young protege and the bishop of in Ignatius' day (A. D. 110-17) bore the name Onesimus. By assuming that these two are in fact the same person, Onesimus becomes both the collector of the Pauline corpus and the author of Ephesians. While conceding that this identification was in the realm of conjecture, he claimed for it no small degree of probability. Such, in brief, is Goodspeed's theory. He presented it to the world of scholarship as an inclusive solution of the very problems that from the first had vexed the critics of Ephesians. Here are the answers to the questions of why the letter is so Pauline without being Paul's; why Colos­ sians is used so extensively amid the echoes of Paul's other letters; why

7 a Paulinist would write the first Christian encyclical in the eighties; why the author chose to write in the name of Paul; and why a non-Pauline document was integral to the Pauline corpus from its day of publication. It was inevitable that this hypothesis would encounter the problem of the sequence of the original corpus. If Ephesians was composed as an introduction to it, it would naturally appear at its head. An immediate difficulty lay in the fact that there is no evidence to substantiate this posi­ tion for Ephesians. Marcion's list (ca. A. D. 140) begins with Galatians, and the Muratorian list (ca. A. D. 200) begins with Corinthians, followed by Ephesians. A solution to this problem was proposed by Goodspeed's former student, John Knox. Knox accepted Marcion's list as being nearest the original, noting that it appears to be based on an order of decreasing length. According to the traditional stichometry of the New Testament as deduced by J. Rendel Harris, a strict order of the letters by decreasing length would be this: Corinthians (I and II) Romans Ephesians Thessalonians (I and II) Galatians Colossians Philippians Philemon Marcion's order was this: Galatians Corinthians (I and II) Romans Thessalonians (I and II) Laodiceans ( = Ephesians) Colossians Philippians Philemon A comparison of the strict order by length with Marci on' s list will show that after Galatians (which Marcion presumably placed first as his favor­ ite) Marci on deviates at just one point: Ephesians follows Thessalonians when it should precede it. Knox offers this explanation for the variation: "May it not be that Ephesians follows Thessalonians because it takes the place left vacant, so to speak, by Marcion's putting of Galatians in first position, the position which Ephesians itself previously occupied. If the original list was strictly in order of length, it began with Corinthians, and . Ephesians preceded, and Galatians followed, Thessalonians. But in that

8 case, why should Marcion's lifting of Galatians out of its place disturb the position of Ephesians? If, however, Ephesians headed the first list and Marcion merely transposed it and Galatians, the position of Ephesians in Marcion's canon is naturally accounted for." 8 The Goodspeed-Knox hypothesis was given international stature when it was championed by the English scholar, C. Leslie Mitton. Examining it in the pages of the Expository Times in 1948, Mitton concluded that it fits the facts of the case better than any known alternative. A few years later Mitton published The Epistle to the Ephesians ( 1951), in which he advanced Goodspeed's theory of origin and purpose. This was followed in 1955 by The Formation of the Pattline Canon in which key Goodspeed­ Knox suggestions regarding the origin of the corpus are regarded as falling just short of certainty. Perhaps as a result of Mitton's publications, the Goodspeed-Knox hypothesis has won considerable acceptance in the English-speaking world. F. W. Beare, author of the commentary on Ephesians in volume ten of the Interpreters , devotes most of his section on origin and purpose to a discussion of this reconstruction. He criticizes it in various details, but concludes that "there remains a substantial element of truth in the Goodspeed hypothesis. Ephesians, is, and is meant by the author to be, a commendation of Paul's theology to the church of another generation." Equally enthusiastic is J. A. Allan, author of the volume on Ephesians in the Torch Bible Commentaries (1959) . To him the most appealing modern theory regarding the purpose of the letter is that of Goodspeed and Mitton. He concludes his discussion with a list of some of the British scholars who accept the non-Pauline authorship of Ephesians, and in several cases, at least some part of Goodspeed's theory as well. The list includes the names of W. L. Knox, A. D. Nock, S. A. Cook, P. N. Harrison, R. Heard, S. G. F. Brandon, D. E. Nineham, H . F. D. Sparks, A. J. Grieve, and C. S. C. Williams. Impressive as this reception appears, it is far short of being unanimous. A reconstruction as complex as that of Goodspeed, Knox, and Mitton, attempting to incorporate almost every facet of the formation of the New Testament, may be, and has been attacked at many points. Without seek­ ing to reproduce the full spectrum of critical response, a few significant reactions may be mentioned. Issue has been taken with Goodspeed' s as­ sumption that the letters of Paul remained in relative obscurity until an Asian collector, after the publication of Acts, gave to the church this large group of documents that hitherto had been virtually unknown. "It is difficult to see," Lucetta Mowry argues, "how letters as valuable, for

BPhilemon Among the Letters of Paul (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935)' p. 41£. 9 practical purposes, as those of Paul could remain in the possession of an individual church without coming to the attention of other churches in the neighborhood. Such a circulation of Christian documents before the collection of Paul's letters is known from the . Both Mark and the Second Source were available to the authors of Matthew and Luke, not because these authors were antiquarians, nor because both consulted the same manuscripts, but because these sources, being of prac­ tical value, had begun to circulate and were thus accessible at more than one place and to more than one writer as early as the seventies and eighties of the first century. If materials had begun to circulate at this time, why not the individual letters of Paul ?" 4 If they were being read locally in a number of districts and regions, the weight of the silence of the Acts argument would be limited by the extent to which the author had immediate personal contact with the districts in question. Mowry contends that the author had no direct contact with these areas. Thus, the fact that the Acts does not use the epistles is irrelevant to the argu­ ment. Far from being forgotten, regional collections of Paul's letters circulated in the Asian hinterland (Galatians, Colossians, and Philemon), Macedonia (I Thessalonians and Philippians), and Achaea (I Corinthians and Romans). Since Goodspeed's case for the neglect of Paul's letters is built upon the absence of their influence in the Synoptic Gospels and the Acts, it is not surprising that criticism has pointed out the weakness of this argu­ ment from silence. "One can hardly talk of neglect of Paul by the Evangelists:" writes T. W. Manson, "they had plenty of other matters to attend to. And so far as the Acts is concerned with Paul, it is his adventures rather than his special theological views that are described." 5 Objections even more damaging may be raised against Goodspeed's view of the purpose of Ephesians, and his corresponding assumption that it must have stood at the head of the original corpus. For one thing, the text history of the letter suggests that Ephesians, like the other epistles, had its own period of transmission. For another, it is difficult to conceive that an author, capable of producing Ephesians, seeking to introduce the entire corpus, would permit Colossians to so dominate his work. And most problematical of all for the introduction theory, is the fact that an introduction should stand first. Many who voice this objection make no mention of the Knox argument that Ephesians did indeed stand first until Marcion transposed it with Galatians. C. H. Buck, Jr., however, has pointed out that upon examination, the Knox hypothesis presents serious

4 "The Early Circulation of Paul's Letters," Jo11rnal of Biblical Literat11re, LXIII ( 1944)' 75ff. 5Jo11rnal of Theological St11dies, VII (1956), 287. 10 difficulties. The latter's argument depends upon the so-called "false" position of Ephesians in Marcion's list. This position is "false" however, only if the corpus which Marcion adopted was originally arranged by decreasing length, and Marcion did not disturb the arrangement of the other letters. Buck found reason to believe that neither of these assump­ tions is valid. Proceeding from the probability that the Pauline corpus was originally published on two rolls, he argues that the only possible way of dividing the corpus in half is by putting Corinthians first with a smaller letter on one roll, and the remaining letters on the other. On the basis of length, the companion letters with Corinthians would be Ephesians, Thessalonians, or Galatians. There is no evidence that Thes­ salonians ever occupied that position, but the and Origen list Ephesians immediately after Corinthians, while Tertullian seems to have had Galatians in that place. Marcion's order, rather than being a reflection of the original sequence, is probably secondary. Just as he altered the text freely for doctrinal reasons, so he may have altered the order of the corpus. Thus, Galatians was put first as his favorite. For reasons of length, Corinthians had to come next. His next choice, then, was between Romans and Thessalonians. One of these would have to be first in the second roll. Marcion chose Romans, not because it was long, but because it deserved that position in the second roll which Galatians occupied in the first. In short, of all the considerations affecting Marcion's order, length was probably the least important. It is likely that an order of decreasing length first appeared with the adoption of the codex, probably not long before the beginning of the third century. 0 Thus, at almost every point, the Goodspeed hypothesis encounters demands for solid evidence - evidence that it is unable to supply. Too frequently the arguments offered to substantiate such points as the thirty year neglect of Paul and his letters, the role of Luke-Acts in Paul's sup­ posed revival, the character and purpose of Ephesians, its priority in the original corpus, fall short of being convincing. The appeal of the recon­ struction has always resided in its ingenious ability to provide an answer to every troublesome question raised by Ephesians. But it cannot overcome the doubt inherent in a method which constructs an historical situation out of unsolved difficulties, and then offers it as their solution. Supporters of the Goodspeed-Knox-Mitton position, however, may point out that because of the complexity of the hypothesis, it can modify, or even concede individual parts, and still survive. There is, however, one point which is absolutely essential to its existence: the non-authentic­ ity of Ephesians. If Paul is the letter's author, everything the hypothesis

G"The Early Order of the Pauline Corpus," Jo11mal of Biblical Literat11re, LXVIII (1949) , 351-57.

11 maintains falls to the ground. What, then, is the present state of the continuing debate on authenticity? First, let it be said that , so often the object of suspicion and hostility, has proved to be a powerful ally to those main­ taining the Pauline authorship. The traditional view of an Ephesian address, based upon a majority of textual witnesses, is a major obstacle to Pauline authorship. It is embarrassing to the extreme to explain how Paul could have written so impersonal a letter to a church with which he had labored for three years; and it is virtually impossible to explain the implication of the letter that the readers ( 3: 1) and the writer ( 1 : 15) have only a hearsay acquaintance. relieves the problem with the evidence that the phrase en Epheso was, on the authority of the most ancient witnesses, not a part of the original letter. Second, we may note that the authenticity of Ephesians has not been without recent defenders in the point by point method of Hort. In response to an article by Mitton, C. F. D. Moule singled out several linguistic and doctrinal points that militate against the Goodspeed-Mitton view. 7 The hypothesis contends that the terms soma, musterion, and pleroma are used differently in Colossians and Ephesians, but Moule thinks the case has been overstated. Concerning the claim that the doc­ trinal relationship requires a considerable interval of time between the composition of the two letters, he asks: "Vocabulary, style, and tone apart, can any doctrine be found in Ephesians ·which is incompatible with the outlook of Colossians." And as for the striking identity of parts of the passages of the two letters, it is far harder to imagine Good­ speed' s editor laboriously maintaining his pseudonymity by this device than to conceive of Paul himself repeating, in a circular letter, words about a messenger which he had recently written to one particular church. Far more comprehensive are the major defenses offered by J. N. Sanders8 and Donald Guthrie.9 The former prefaces his presentation with an appeal for caution in view of the limitation inherent in all critical inquiries, and the resulting uncertainty of the solutions of all critical questions. Such caution is particularly necessary in the case of Ephesians where the burden of proof lies upon those who deny the Pauline author­ ship. In view of the external evidence in favor of authenticity, the case against it requires, in his opinion, "a proof amounting to demonstration," the very thing that is so difficult to get from any critical investigation.

7"E. ]. Goodspeed's Theory Regarding the Origin of Ephesians," Expository Times, LX (1949), 224-25. BSt11dies in Ephesians (ed. by F. L. Cross, London: A. R. Mowbray & Co ., 1956), pp. 9-20. ONew Testament Introd11ction : The Pa11line Epistles (London: Tyndale Press, 1961)' pp. 110-28. 12 The linguistic, stylistic, and doctrinal differences between Colossians and Ephesians may be laid to the difference in circumstances, purpose, and mood of the apostle. Sanders regards Ephesians as Paul's spiritual testa­ ment to the church, a compendium of the truth he lived by, written with a serenity and calm brought on by his approaching death. The striking relationship between Ephesians and Colossians is taken as evidence of identical authorship. If, for example, the literary relationship between Ephesians and Colossians is compared with that between II Peter and Jude, the difference is "that between the same man re-stating, developing and modifying ideas that were originally his own, and an adapter doing his best to utilize another man's ideas." In fact, the Pastorals are an example of what a man, faithful in intention to Paul, could produce - a mere travesty of Paulinism compared to Ephesians. Sanders argues that although he cannot demonstrate Pauline authorship, the case against it cannot be demonstrated either. Therefore, Ephesians remains Pauline until it is proved non-Pauline. Guthrie represents the same general position, but makes several addi­ tional points. Mitton's plea for cumulative consideration of the evidence for unauthenticity, rather than a point by point examination, is rejected. Guthrie feels this is tantamount to saying: ignore the weakness of my evidence, but accept my conclusions. Moreover, he is puzzled by the fact that the Pauline echoes in Ephesians should be used against its Pauline authorship. In dealing with the Pastorals, for example, the critical pre­ supposition is that the absence of such parallels with the Pauline letters indicates that they are non-Pauline. Here their presence is used to draw the same conclusion. Guthrie also includes a special section on epistolary pseudepigraphy in which he asks whether it is ever valid to argue, for example, that peculiarities in Ephesians must be Pauline because an imitator would have avoided anything un-Pauline. Admitting that this argument must be used with reserve, there is no doubt that an imitator would try to avoid dissimilarities with his model. Yet, Mitton challenges this position on the grounds that no imitator then would ever fear detec­ tion, for his every slip would be further proof that his work is genuine. However, argues Guthrie, if this view is valid, the converse is also true. A genuine author must always live in fear lest his work be regarded as an imitation, for if he deviates in any way from his former style and vocabulary, or lets more of his personality shine through than before, his work cannot be genuine. Such a state of affairs would be intolerable, for its logical conclusion would be that an imitator would have full literary freedom, while a genuine author would be hamstrung within the limits of his previous work. In Guthrie's judgment, "to maintain tnat the Paulinist out of his sheer love for Paul and through his own self-efface-

13 ment composed the letter, attributed it to Paul and found an astonishing and immediate readiness on the part of the Church to recognize it as such is considerably less credible than the simple alternative of regarding it as Paul's own work." Other recent defenders suggest that the peculiar­ ities in Ephesians are due to Paul's amanuensis. The employment of a writer with a more classical style than the transcriber of Colossians could satisfy the problem, or perhaps, in the case of Ephesians, the apostle may have given all the doctrine and perhaps even dictated certain passages, but left to another the trouble of making the final edition with the help of Colossians and his earlier epistles. In that case, Ephesians would not have received its final form from the apostle, but it would be no less his work, determined and approved by him, the expansion and synthesis of all his thought. The highly subjective nature of decisions made on the grounds of style is illustrated by an incident - perhaps apocryphal - reported by H. J. Cadbury: Many years ago there was in an English school a much beloved bachelor master whom the boys called Puddles. He had, how­ ever, decided mannerisms of speech, which showed among other occasions whenever he recit~d a favourite poem on the prehistoric animal called Eohippus. Once in holiday-time when a large group of his old boys was gathered together at Woodbrooke College to share again his leadership, they arranged to have a little competition to see which of them could most perfectly imitate him in the recitation of his well-known selection. In order to ensure the impartiality of the judges chosen for the contest they were seated in the audience, while the contestants spoke in turn from the stage, but behind the curtain. Unknown to judges and audience Puddles himself slipped in backstage as one of the contestants and when the merits of each were scored by the judges and the winners announced, it was found that Puddles was himself awarded third place in the competition.10 In the light of this kind of uncertainty, Cadbury selects arbitrary propor­ tions and sets the dilemma of Ephesians in this form: "Which is more likely - that an imitator of Paul in the first century composed a writing ninety or ninety-five per cent in accordance with Paul's style or that Paul himself wrote a letter diverging five or ten per cent from his usual style"? Third, perhaps the most significant feature of current Ephesian studies is that, without the formal intention of offering a defense, new interpre­ tations of those very internal elements - address, content, and purpose - once judged to be fatal to authenticity have begun to reassert the probabil­ ity that Paul wrote Ephesians. To Ernst Percy, for example, the letter as a whole appears to be entirely understandable if it was written by the lO"The Dilemma of Ephesians," N ew T estament St11dies, V (1958-5 9), 101. 14 apostle to the congregations within his mission-sphere, with whom, how­ ever, he had had no personal contact to that time. In this regard Ephesians has certain affinities with Romans, while its purpose can be no other than that expressed in Col. 2: 2: "that their hearts may be encouraged as they are knit together in love, to have all the riches of assured understanding." Just as in Colossians, so also in the Ephesian letter, the apostle wishes to help his readers to be strong in the faith and to have a deeper understand­ ing of that secret of salvation proclaimed by him. Percy concedes that the assumption of the letter's authenticity means that one must put up with certain difficulties, but they are not so great as those involved in assigning it to a post-Pauline origin. Friedrich Cornelius has discovered a link between Ephesians and I Peter, and from this argues for the authenticity of I Peter and the cur­ rency of the Ephesian letter at Rome during Paul's lifetime. The latter was written by Paul in Rome, writes Cornelius, not to be sent off around Asia Minor, but to circulate in Rome itself. Its address is feigned, for its real purpose is to open up a way of approach to the hostile Peter-circle. This explains both the humility in Paul's self description and the moral rigor injected into the Christian domestic duties. J. Coutts and Gottfried Schille have suggested that the relationship between Ephesians and Colos­ sians is best understood as a dependence upon a common liturgical tradi­ tion related to . "If the baptismal connexion of Ephesians is considered to have some degree of probability," concludes Coutts, "the way will be open for considering the problems connected with Ephesians in the light of the supposition that it is a pastoral letter, possibly by St. Paul himself, written not to one Church alone, perhaps at Easter, but at any rate on an occasion when converts were to be baptized, reminding them and those who had been previously baptized of the privileges and obligations of the new life upon which they will have entered when the Epistle is actually read." Schille raises the question as to whether Ephesians has been denied authenticity only because its catechetical aim has been largely unrecognized, thus opening up a new possibility of maintaining Pauline authorship. From the time of Baur, Ephesians was accused of betraying a second century origin by revealing traces of Gnosticism. Heinrich Schlier however, using the available late Jewish, early Christian, and Gnostic sources, comes to a different conclusion. He regards all "Gnostic" ideas and views as merely forms which the missionary to the filled with genuine Christian content. The mood of Ephesians is less polemical than Colos­ sians, but no less bold and free in the subservience of all thought-categories to the Christian faith. In short, Paul himself encountered the Gnostics and refuted them by replying in their own terms. As to purpose and 15 author, Schlier rejects the Goodspeed-Mitton view as pure hypothesis. Ephesians itself permits neither a direct or indirect recognition that it was written as an introduction to, or commendation of, the other Pauline letters. To manufacture a Paulinist who seeks to save his master from oblivion with a falsified letter which not only does not permit the recog­ nition of this purpose, but also does not serve it, is both absurd and hope­ less. It is obviously and historically most suitable to accept the letter's own witness to its authorship and then concentrate on its purpose. Ephe­ sians may be described as a "mystery-discourse," but Schlier prefers to call it a "-discourse" using a mode of expression drawn from the apostle himself. Henry Chadwick has advanced the suggestion that the real purpose of Ephesians is apologetic. In Colossians, the basic question concerns the dignity of the person of Christ and his glory in the cosmic hierarchy. In Ephesians it is a matter of the catholicity and the divine origin of the church. The glory of the head is now transferred to the body. The church is the new act of God in history, but, at the same time it belongs to God's eternal plan. In this regard, Chadwick feels that Ephesians is connected less with Colossians than with the long statement concerning the unfolding plan of God in Rom. 9-11. In Ephesians we discover the same attempt to confirm a continuity with the Jewish part of the church, only in another direction. There is now an apologetic necessity for the church to claim this continuity, for in religion, there is no greater asset than age, no greater liability than newness. In the ancient world it was a recognized truth that nothing new could be true. Therefore, in Ephe­ sians, there is nothing said of the provincialism of Christianity, but rather, the church is represented as being for all mankind. It is the new creation of God, where Jew and Gentile are made one, united in Christ by his reconciling death, having access to the Father by one Spirit. If this portrayal of the universal theological standpoint of the letter is correct, then it is closely related to a broad apologetic discussion whose continuation we find in the Christian literature of the second century. The theology of the letter is an answer to this question: If the church is in­ deed the company established by God for the proclamation to all mankind of the redemption in Christ, why did it appear so late on the stage of history? The core of the letter, therefore, is an attempt to establish that the church is not simply a local thing happening once in time, but is universal and boundless. The church belongs more to heaven than to earth; it is a metaphysical entity. It is not only a recently discovered society in the world's history. Its message is valid for all generations. The Creator had its coming in mind from eternity, and called it into being in the fullness of time. In its theology and ideas, then, Ephesians

16 is a logical continuation of Colossians. The personal allusions to Paul in chapter three are now seen to bear on the occasion of the letter. Great stress is laid on the role of Paul in this unfolding plan of God, for he was the apostle to the Gentiles. There was one church - not two - but within that one church the Gentile congregations looked particularly to Paul, their unique representative, the one on whom falls the anxiety for all the churches, whose grief supplements that of the Lord himself. In other words, the Ephesian letter is directed to a situation in which the many Gentile congregations must have had a feeling of oneness and per­ sonal towards Paul, even if they were entirely independent of him in origin. To these recent theories of purpose which are compatible with a Pauline origin, we may venture to add another. It is apparent that unity is a major emphasis if not the theme of Ephesians. The mystery of God's will which has been made known in Christ is described as "a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him" ( 1: 10). There is no con­ sensus on the exact meaning of the verb aiutkephalaiosasthai, but there is agreement that it is an expression of the cosmic unity in Christ. The world is in chaos because it is the victim of the endless disintegration caused by sin. It is the purpose of God to reunite that which is now characterized by strife, hostility, and alienation. The primary agent of the new unity is Christ Jesus who "is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end" (2:14-16). The secondary agent of the new unity is the church: All men are now to see "what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places" (3:10). The first stage in the operation of this mighty plan was the most diffi­ cult and demanding of all: the reconciliation of Jew to Gentile and Gentile to Jew. Once that was achieved, the new community thus created was to be the embodiment and demonstration before the world of God's great purpose of reconciliation. This is the vision that shines so clearly in Ephesians. Is there any­ thing about it which would deny it to Paul; or, on the contrary, are there some elements in his experience which would tend to open his eyes to receive it? Two factors suggest themselves at once. If Ephesians is from the pen of Paul it belongs to his closing years. From the first his ministry

17 had been weakened, hindered, and endangered by the hostility between Jew and Gentile. In one of the earliest self-descriptions of his work Paul recalls that he had declared the Gospel of God to .the Thessalonians en polio agoni, under a great strain, or, in the face of great opposition (I Thess. 2: 2). One of the last words from his pen places his entire ministry in a capsule which is dominated by the same word: ton kalo1i agona egonismai, I have fought the good fight (II Tim. 4:7). How Paul must have yearned for a realization of the very things of which Ephesians speaks with such eloquence: the death of hostility, and the birth of the peace which Christ had brought. Moreover, this was a yearning whid1 could have been only intensified throughout a career of missionary effort. We shall never know to what extent disunity and strife contributed to what Paul once described as "the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches" (II Cor. 11 :28). We do know that the modern quest for a more perfect Christian unity was born in the historic world missionary conference at Edinburgh in 1910 where the discussion of the missionary task of the church raised the question of why the churches are divided. What is more natural than to believe that the great pioneer mis­ sionary, whose labors had been so scarred by strife, set down this magnifi­ cent letter as his spiritual testament to the church of Jesus Christ.

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