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 EPHESIANS

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EPHESIANS

not begin with an act of thanksgiving but with a hymn similar, even in its wording, to that which opens I Peter. Besides, both letters agree in certain typical expressions and in the description of the duties of the domestic life, which terminates in both with the same exhortation to comliat the devil. With the majority of critics, we maintain the relationship between these letters to be literary. But I Peter was written last and consequently depends on the Epistle to the Ephe- sians; for instance, it alludes already to the persecu- tion, at least as impending. Sylvanus, the Apostle's faithful companion, was St. Peter's secretary (I Peter, V, 12), and it is but natural that he should make use of a letter, recently written by St. Paul, on questions an- alogous to those which he himself had to treat, espe- cially as according to us, those addressed in both of these Epistles are, for the greater part, identical (cf . I Peter, i, 1).

The attacks made upon the authenticity of the Epistle to the Ephesians have been based mainly on its similarity to the Epistle to the Colossians, although some have maintained that the latter depends upon the former (MayerhofT). In the opinion of Hitzig and Holtzmann, a forger living early in the second century and already imbued with Gnosticism used an authen- tic letter, written by Paul to the Colossians against the Judeo-Christians of the Apostohc Age, in composing the Epistle to the Ephesians, in conformity to which he himself subsequently revised the letter to the Co- lossians, giving it the form it has in the canon. De Wette and Ewald looked upon the Epistle to the Ephe- sians as a verbose amplification of the uncontroversial parts of the letter to the Colossians. However, it is only necessary to read first one of these documents and then the other, in order to see how exaggerated is this view. Von Soden finds a great difference between the two letters but nevertheless holds that several sections of the Epistle to the Ephesians are but a servile para- phrase of passages from the letter to the Colossians (Eph., iii, 1-9 and Col., i, 23-27; Eph., v, 21-vi, 9 and Col., iii, 18-iv, 1) and that still more frequently the later author follows a purely mechanical process by taking a single verse from the letter to the Colossians and using it to introduce and conclude, and serve as a frame, so to speak, for a statement of his own. Thus, he maintains that in Eph., iv, 25-31, the first words of verse S of Col., iii, have served as an introduction (Eph., iv, 25) and the last words of the same verse as a conclusion (Eph., iv, 31). Evidently such methods could not be attributed to the Apostle himself. But, neither are we justified in ascribing them to the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians. For instance, the tluties of husband and wife are well set forth in Col., iii, 18, 19, but in these verses there is no comparison whatever between Christian marriage and that union of Christ with His Church such as characterizes the same exhortation in Eph., v, 22 sq.; consequently, it would be very arbitrary to maintain the latter text to be a vulgar paraphrase of the former. In comparing the texts f|uoted, the phenomenon of framing, to which von Soden called attention, can be verified in a single passage (Eph., iv, 2-16, where verse 2 resembles Col., iii, 12 sq. and where verses 15, 16, are like Col., ii, 19). In fact, throughout his entire exposition, the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians is constantly repeating ideas anrl even particular expressions that occur in the letter to the Colossians, and yet neither a servile imita- tion nor any one of the well-known offences to which plagiarists are liable, can be proved against him.

Moreover, it is chiefly in their hortatory part that these two letters are so remarkably alike and this is only natural if, at intervals of a few days or hours, the same author had to remind two distinct circles of readers of the same common duties of the Christian life. In the dogmatic part of these two Epistles there is a change of subject, treated with a different inten- tion and in another tone. In the one instance we have

a hymn running through three chapters and celebrat- ing the call of both Jews and Gentiles and the union of all in the Church of Christ; and in the other, an ex- position of Christ's dignity and of the adequacy of the means He vouchsafes us for the obtaining of our salva- tion, as also thanksgiving and especially prayers for those readers who are liable to misunderstand this doctrine. However, these two objects, Christ and the Church, are closely akin. Besides, if in his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul reproduces the ideas set forth in that to the Colossians, it is certainly less astonishing than to find a like phenomenon in the Epistles to the Galatians and to the Romans, as it is very natural tliat the characteristic expressions used by the Apostle in the Epistle to the Colossians should appear in the letter to the Ephesians, since both were written at the same time. In fact it has been remarked that he is prone to repeat typical expressions he has once coined (cf. Zahn, Einleitung, I, p. 363 sq.). Briefly, we conclude with Sabatier that: " These two letters come to us from one and the same author who, when writing the one, had the other in mind and, when composing the second, had not forgotten the first." Tlie vague allusions made in the Epistle to the Ephesians to some of the doctrinal questions treated in the Epistle to the Colossians, can be accounted for in this manner, even though these questions were never proposed by those to whom the former Epistle was addressed.

(2) Difficulties Arising from the Form and Doc- trines. — The denial of the Pauline authenticity of the Epistle to the Ephesians is based on the special char- acteristics of the Epistle from the viewpoint of style as well as of doctrine, and, while differing from those of the great Pauline Epistles, these characteristics al- though more marked, resemble those of the letter to the Colossians. But we have already dwelt upon them at sufficient length.

The circumstances under which the Apostle must have written the Epistle to the Ephesians seem to ac- count for the development of tlie doctrine and the remarkable change of style. During his two years' captivity in Caisarea, Paul could not exercise his Apostolic functions, and in Rome, although allowed more liberty, he could not preach the Gospel outside of the house in which he was held prisoner. Hence he must have made up for his want of external activity by a more profound meditation on " his Gospel ". The theology of justification, of the Law, and of the condi- tions essential to salvation, he had already brought to perfection, having systematized it in the Epistle to the Romans and, although keeping it in view, he did not require to develop it any further. In his Epistle to the Romans (viii-xi, xvi, 25-27) he had come to the investigation of the eternal counsels of Providence concerning the salvation of men and had expounded, as it were, a philosophy of the religious history of mankind of which Christ was the centre, as indeed He had always been the central object of St. Paul's faith. Thus, it was on Christ Himself that the solitary medi- tations of the Apostle were concentrated; in the quiet of his prison he was to develop, by dint of personal in- tellectual labour and with the aid of new revelations, this first revelation received when "it pleased God to reveal His Son in him". He was, moreover, urged by the news brought him from time to time by some of his disciples, as, for instance, by Epaphras, that, in cer- tain churches, errors were being propagated which tended to lessen the role and the dignity of Christ, by setting up against Him other intermediaries in the work of salvation. On the other hand, separated from the faithful and having no longer to travel constantly from one church to another, the Apostle was able to embrace in one sweeping glance all the Christians scattered throughout the world. While he resided in the centre of the immense Roman Empire which, in its unity, comprised the world, it was the one