EPHESIANS, EPISTLE TO THE. The Epistle to the Ephesians was the favourite epistle of Calvin, and was described by Coleridge as one of the divinest composi tions of man. Dean Armitage Robinson describes it as the crown of St. Paul's writings. It is one of the four epistles now known as the Epistles of the Captivity, because in them Paul describes himself as a prisoner. Originally, it would seem, it was not addressed ex clusively to the Church at Ephesus. This is suggested by a number of considerations. The words "in Ephesus" (i. 1) are wanting in our two best Manuscripts, and were not found in a number of ancient manuscripts known to Basil (360 A.D.). In spite of the fact that Paul had worked with success in Ephesus this Epistle contains no greetings to friends there (cp. Acts xx. 17-33). The author (to use the words of M'Clymont) " writes as if the Christian graces of his readers were only known to him by report, and as if his apostleship to the Gentiles were only known to them by hearsay (I. 15-19; iii. 1-4; iv. 17-22; cf. Col. I. 3-9)." The autograph of the Apostle is not added. The Epistle would seem to have been written not for a particular Church but for a number of Churches in Asia Minor. It was intended as a circular letter, an encyclical. " The capital of the Roman province of Asia was Ephesus. To Ephesus such a letter would naturally go first of all : and when in later times a title was sought for it, to correspond with the titles of other epistles, no name would offer itself so readily and so reasonably as the name of Ephesus. Accordingly the title to the Ephesians' was prefixed to it. And if, as seems not improbable, the opening sen tence contained a space into which the name of each Church in turn might be read—' to the saints which are . . . and the faithful in Christ Jesus '—it was certain that in many copies the words in Ephesus' would come to be filled in " (Armitage Robinson). As a matter of fact, Tertullian says that the Epistle was also known by the title " to the Laodiceans." As regards the authenticity of the Epistle, the external evidence seems to be quite adequate. It seems to have been used by
Ignatius and Polycarp. It is included in the Canon of Marelon and in the Muratorian Canon. It is ascribed to Paul by Irenaeus. It is more especially the internal evidence that has raised doubts in the minds of a num ber of scholars. It has been urged that it is un-Pauline in style and thought. But it is only un-Pauline in com parison with something that has arbitrarily been set up as a fixed standard of Paulinism. Scholars too often think of Paul as being an ordinary man like themselves. He was a genius. More than that, he was a man who had profound spiritual experiences, and, like the prophets, was from time to time possessed by a new spirit. A man of this kind never stands still. ' He never sees things in quite the same way yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. His thought changes, his language changes under the impulse of divine intuitions. He may be lifted in a moment on to a different plane and use the language of that plane without having studied it in the ordinary way. This is not merely a supposition; it is a fact proved by experience. We must expect to find difficulties in the Epistles of Paul. And we need not expect to explain them all. The Epistle was probably written from Rome. It is catholic in nature. That does not militate against its Pauline origin. " We have no ground for the assumption that the conception of the Catholic Church must have been later than Paul, indeed it is quite in a line both with his thought and action. His attempt to keep the Churches together expressed in the collection for the saints at Jerusalem, his feeling that local idiosyncrasies must be curbed by the general practice of the Church (I. Cor. xiv. 33, 36), his im perialist instincts which had controlled his missionary activity and which were nowhere so likely to find ex pression as in Rome, all urged him in this direction " (A. S. Peake). See J. Armitage Robinson, St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, 1904; J. A. M'Clymont; G. Currie Martin; Arthur S. Peake; J. Moffatt.