George Findlay - The Expositor's Bible - The Epistle to the Ephesians

At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Paul’s hand, and who admits that “among all the epistles bearing the name of Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles,” yet speaks of this epistle as a “verbose amplification” of the other, “a commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevancies, full of pleonasms and obscurities.” 13 13 See his Saint Paul , Introduction, pp. xii.–xxiii.

In this instance, Renan’s literary sense has deserted him. While Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure, 14 14 See Col. ii. 15, 18, 20–23. Ephesians from beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance. Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles, 15 15 E.g. , in Rom. i. 1–7, viii. 28–30, xi. 33–36, xvi. 25–27. we find the stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those unfinished sentences and anacolutha , the grammatical inconsequence associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main characteristic of St Paul’s style. 16 16 See the Winer-Moulton N. T. Grammar , p. 709: “It is in writers of great mental vivacity – more taken up with the thought than with the mode of its expression – that we may expect to find anacolutha most frequently. Hence they are especially numerous in the epistolary style of the apostle Paul.” The epistle to the Colossians is like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict and repose which alternated in St Paul’s mobile nature.

In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the apostle’s imprisonment and advancing age, 17 17 Eph. iii. 1; Phil. i. 13; Philem. 9. display less passion and energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy. They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the author’s mind had been much thrown in upon itself. They have been well styled “the afternoon epistles,” being marked by the subdued and reflective temper natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical representative of the third group of Paul’s epistles, as Galatians is of the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter came, as it purports to do, from Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through God’s will .

But that it was addressed to “the saints which are in Ephesus ” is more difficult to believe. The apostle has “heard of the faith which prevails amongst” his readers; he presumes that they “have heard of the Christ, and were taught in Him according as truth is in Jesus.” 18 18 Ch. i. 15, iv. 20, 21. He hopes that by “reading” this epistle they will “perceive his understanding in the mystery of Christ” (iii. 2–4). He writes somewhat thus to the Colossians and Romans, whom he had never seen; 19 19 Col. i. 4, ii. 1; Rom. xv. 15, 16. but can we imagine Paul addressing in this distant and uncertain fashion his children in the faith? In Ephesus he had laboured “for the space of three whole years” (Acts xx. 31), longer than in any other city of the Gentile mission, except Antioch. His speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus, delivered four years ago, was surcharged with personal feeling, full of pathetic reminiscence and the signs of interested acquaintance with the individual membership of the Ephesian Church. In the epistle such signs are altogether wanting. The absence of greetings and messages we could understand; these Tychicus might convey by word of mouth. But how the man who wrote the epistles to the Philippians and Corinthians could have composed this long and careful letter to his own Ephesian people without a single word of endearment or familiarity, 20 20 “My brethren” in ch. vi. 10 is an insertion of the copyists. Even the closing benediction, ch. vi. 23, 24, is in the third person – a thing unexampled in St Paul’s epistles. and without the least allusion to his past intercourse with them, we cannot understand. It is in the destination that the only serious difficulty lies touching the authorship. Nowhere do we see more of the apostle and less of the man in St Paul; nowhere more of the Church, and less of this or that particular church.

It agrees with these internal indications that the local designation is wanting in the oldest Greek copies of the letter that are extant. The two great manuscripts of the fourth century, the Vatican and Sinaitic codices, omit the words “in Ephesus.” Basil in the fourth century did not accept them, and says that “the old copies” were without them. Origen, in the beginning of the third century, seems to have known nothing of them. And Tertullian, at the end of the second century, while he condemns the heretic Marcion (who lived about fifty years earlier) for entitling the epistle “To the Laodiceans,” quotes only the title against him, and not the text of the address, which he would presumably have done, had he read it in the form familiar to us. We are compelled to suppose, with Westcott and Hort and the textual critics generally, that these words form no part of the original address.

Here the circular hypothesis of Beza and Ussher comes to our aid. It is supposed that the letter was destined for a number of Churches in Asia Minor, which Tychicus was directed to visit in the course of the journey which took him to Colossæ. 21 21 Ch. vi. 21, 22; Col. iv. 7–9. Along with the letters for the Colossians and Philemon, he was entrusted with this more general epistle, intended for the Gentile Christian communities of the neighbouring region at large. During St Paul’s ministry at Ephesus, we are told that “all those that dwell in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts xix. 10). In so large and populous an area, amongst the Churches founded at this time there were doubtless others beside those of the Lycus valley “which had not seen Paul’s face in the flesh,” some about which the apostle had less precise knowledge than he had of these through Epaphras and Onesimus, but for whom he was no less desirous that their “hearts should be comforted, and brought into all the wealth of the full assurance of the understanding in the knowledge of the mystery of God” (Col. ii. 1, 2).

To which or how many of the Asian Churches Tychicus would be able to communicate the letter was, presumably, uncertain when it was written at Rome; and the designation was left open. Its conveyance by Tychicus (vi. 21, 22) supplied the only limit to its distribution. Proconsular Asia was the richest and most peaceful province of the Empire, so populous that it was called “the province of five hundred cities.” Ephesus was only the largest of many flourishing commercial and manufacturing towns.

At the close of his epistle to the Colossians St Paul directs this Church to procure “from Laodicea,” in exchange for their own, a letter which he is sending there (iv. 16). Is it possible that we have the lost Laodicean document in the epistle before us? So Ussher suggested; and though the assumption is not essential to his theory, it falls in with it very aptly. Marcion may, after all, have preserved a reminiscence of the fact that Laodicea, as well as Ephesus, shared in this letter. The conjecture is endorsed by Lightfoot, who says, writing on Colossians iv. 16: “There are good reasons for the belief that St Paul here alludes to the so-called epistle to the Ephesians, which was in fact a circular letter, addressed to the principal Churches of proconsular Asia. Tychicus was obliged to pass through Laodicea on his way to Colossæ, and would leave a copy there before the Colossian letter was delivered.” 22 22 Compare Maclaren on Colossians and Philemon , p. 406, in this series. The two epistles admirably supplement each other. The Apocalyptic letter “to the seven churches which are in Asia,” ranging from Ephesus to Laodicea (Rev. ii., iii.), shows how much the Christian communities of this region had in common and how natural it would be to address them collectively. For the same region, with a yet wider scope, the “first catholic epistle of Peter” was destined, a writing that has many points of contact with this. Ephesus being the metropolis of the Asian Churches, and claiming a special interest in St Paul, came to regard the epistle as specially her own. Through Ephesus, moreover, it was communicated to the Church in other provinces. Hence it came to pass that when Paul’s epistles were gathered into a single volume and a title was needed for this along with the rest, “To the Ephesians” was written over it; and this reference standing in the title, in course of time found its way into the text of the address. We propose to read this letter as the general epistle of Paul to the Churches of Asia , or to Ephesus and its daughter Churches .