The life and work of St. Paul

THE EPISTLE TO "THE EPHESIANS." 631
observed) to furnish a decisive proof that the latter, to some extent, sprang
out of the former, and that it was written because the Apostle desired to
utilise the departure of Tychicus with the letter which had been evoked by
the heresies of Colossae.
Of the genuineness of the Epistle, in spite of all the arguments which have
been brought against it, I cannot entertain the shadow of a doubt. I examine
the question without any conscious bias. If the arguments against its Pauline
authorship appeared valid, I am aware of no prepossession which would lead
me to struggle against their force, nor would the deepest truths of the Epistle
appear to me the less profound or sacred from the fact that tradition had erred
in assigning its authorship. 1
To the arguments which endeavoured to show that the Phaedo had not
been written by Plato it was thought almost sufficient to reply
el fj.f fl\dra>y ov ypdtye 5t5o> tjfvovro H\drtaves.
Certainly if St. Paul did not write the Epistle to " the Ephesians," there must
have been two St. Pauls. Banr speaks contemptuously of such 2
an objection ;
but can any one seriously believe that a forger capable of producing the
Epistle to the Ephesians could have lived and died unheard of among the
men and mediocre writers who attracted
holy, but otherwise very ordinary,
notice in the Church of the first century ? It is true that De Wette, and his
followers, 3 treat the Epistle de haut en bos as a verbose and colourless repro-
duction, quite inferior to St. Paul's genuine writings, and marked by poverty
of ideas and redundance of words. We can only reply that this is a matter of
taste. The colour red makes no impression on the colour-blind ; and to some
readers this Epistle has seemed as little colourless as is the body of heaven in
or omsson, an oun em ome, v TO? naXaios TUV avnypaav, as aso arcon,
Tcrtullian, and Jerome, we are led to the unhesitating conclusion that the letter was not
addressed exclusively to the Ephesians. The view which regards it as an encyclical, sent,
among other places, to Laodicea, is highly prohable (Col. iv. 16). In Eph. vi. 21, /cal
v^f?? is most easily explicable, on the supposition that the letter was to go to different
cities. In any case, the absence of greetings, &c., is a clear mark of genuineness, for a
forger would certainly have put them in. The Epistle is by no means deficient in external
evidence. Irenaeus (Hatr. v. 2, 3), Clement of Alexandria (Strom, iv. 8), Polycarp (ad
Phil. L, xii.), Tertullian (adv. Marc. v. 1, 17), and perhaps even Ignatius (ad Eph. vi.),
have either quoted or alluded to it ; and it is mentioned in the Muratorian Canon. Impugners
of its authenticity must account for its wide and early acceptance, no less than
for the difficulty of its forgery. It is a simple fact that the Epistle was accepted as
unquestionably Pauline from the days of Ignatius to those of Schleiermacher. Renan
sums up the objections to its authenticity under the heads of (i.) Recurrent phrases and
an-af \ey6iJLf-va. ', (ii.) style weak, diffused, embarrassed ; (iii. ) traces of advanced Gnosticism ;
developed conception of the Church as a living organism ; (v.) un-Pauline exegesis ;
!iv.) vi.) the expression "holy Apostles;" (vii.) un-Pauline views of marriage. I hope to
show that these objections are untenable.
1 That the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by the Apostle is now almost
universally believed, yet this conviction has never led the Church to underrate its value
as a part of the sacred canon of the New Testament Scriptures.
"
Paul. ii. 2.
8 Dr. Davidson, Introd. ii. 388. In his earlier edition, Dr. Davidson thought
"
"nothing more groundless than such assertions, and he then said, "The language is
rich and copious, but it is everywhere pregnant with meaning." (See Gloag, Introd..
p. 313,)