Have You Ever Read Ephesians?

How do you acknowledge vs. reply in this forum. That is not jumping out at me...

I had to read you post about 3 times and then it finally sunk in. That was not obvious to me. Thanks.

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... It gives the letter an air of legitimacy. ...

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These personal notes may be 'a technique of forgery' or an evidence of legitimacy. I guess it is a matter of faith which alternative you choose.Edited by Richh, : No reason given.

There is no conclusive proof - only some suppositions and hypotheses by some who hold a certain view.For example, personal verses could just as easily prove authenticity. They are certainly not inconsistent with that. Such notes are common in many Epistles.But if it is authentic, the next question is, 'Is it the word of God?' That is the bigger question. If it is, it raises many serious issues about man - both about Christians and about men who do not have a relationship with God. If it is authentic, but Paul does not speak for God’s Word, it can be safely ignored.

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But if a name and an identity be demanded for the author of Ephesians, the name of Onesimus of Ephesus comes at once to the mind. (from Goodspeed)

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Passion and inspiration are powerful tools. Just because Paul may not have written it, doesn't mean it wasn't inspired.

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I wanted to add some additional paragraphs from Farrar's book. It brings in another line of reasoning based on the similarities of Ephesians and Colossians (along with the dissimilarities). I think this has bearing on the authorship of Ephesians. It is likely that both were written by the same person.F.W. Farrar, The Life and Work of St. Paul starting at p. 485, Vol. 2.

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This is a technique that we often see in undisputed forgeries of the time.

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I wanted to add some more of a quote from Farrar's book, F.W. Farrar, The Life and Work of St. Paul, Vol. 2 starting at p. 486. It bears on the possibility of such an Epistle being a forgery. The definition of esemplastic is shaping or having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole (as per Merriam-Webster Free Online Dictionary.

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I keep going back to Acts and I don't think anyone has adequately responded to this point.

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The apostles were absolutely not shy about how bold they were in asking people to do things, to change their lives dramatically.

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I just noticed that I did not reply to this commendable post of yours. I think it is hard to reply some posts and because of that the response gets put off. Then eventually it never happens. I don't think I can do it justice in this short post, but I will at least make a start.I don't know if it is crucial to your argument (maybe it is), but - I don't see the Apostles asking anyone to do anything in Acts except repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. What happened after the day of Pentecost was the result of the spontaneous move of the Spirit of God. I am not saying that that spontaneous response was not amazing and wonderful. It was and there is certainly a need for more filling of the Holy Spirit and more manifestation of fruit of the Spirit. It does mention that those who believed continued in the Apostles fellowship teaching and fellowship, but it doesn’t say what that teaching was.You also overlooked some of the words in the verse from Philemon. It says ‘no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother’. The thought is that in the past Onesimus was not a ‘beloved brother’, but he had become one through Paul’s preaching the gospel to him. If it was only about slavery and nothing else Paul wouldn’t have spoken like this. He wouldn’t have spoken of Onesimus as ‘more than a slave’. He would have said something different. If the sole issue was slavery, Paul would not have spoken about something ‘more’, but about something being taken away.I don’t agree that Paul’s word to slaves in Ephesians is uninspiring. I think it is radical. I think it is humanly impossible to behave as Paul charges in that situation. But I know you and I do disagree on this topic.I don’t think I have adequately responded to your observation of the events in Acts. I hope to add more later.

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Paul suggests in Philemon that he could order Philemon to do the "right thing". There is a sense of the authority of the apostles to require certain things both from Paul and from acts. You are correct in saying that nowhere does it say that they required people to sell all their belongings. But when someone hesitated, the authority of the apostles was on deadly display:

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But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; with his wife's knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles' feet. "Ananias," Peter asked, "why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!" Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it. The young men came and wrapped up his body, then carried him out and buried him.

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And they do the same to his poor wife in the next verses. ...

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Does not the part of your quote I bolded indicate that the apostles had no expectation or requirement either of Ananias or of Saphira. The issue was not that they failed to give, but that they lied!

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Again, I cannot understand how you maintain these two conflicting ideas in your argument or how you can seemingly justify diminishing the moral relevance of these two situations, one by claiming that Paul was not demanding that Onesimus be free or that it only applied once Onesimus was saved and the other by claiming that Acts was just some brief spontaneous outburst of asceticism, in order for them to be slightly more harmonious with the mundane and worldly commands from Ephesians.

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You are lessening their scope in order to arrive at a lesser yet harmonious moral, all the while claiming that such behavior is "radical" and "humanly impossible". I know that you limited your description to the Ephesians advice to the slaves but lets just look at the few verses around it as we have thus far in this thread. It is not radical and humanly impossible to "not threaten" your slaves. It is not radical to tell women to obey their husbands. Its NOT EVEN radical to suggest that women are fully equal members of society. Its NOT EVEN radical to suggest that that slavery in its entirety is immoral. These are some of the barest, simplest ideas of morality that you could possibly form in the modern world even if they were hard fought to achieve NO THANKS to the Bible.

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That is a mouthful, but let me take a crack at it. I have to do this in drips and drabs as I mentioned before due to time limitations.I will try to give the reason why I 'diminish the moral relevance' (to use your term) of Acts and 'claim' the behavior mentioned in Ephesians is radical. I'll address the second first. I agree that most of the charges in Ephesians are not that radical (although it is pretty radical if you believe in Christ to charge someone to love their wife as Christ loved the church). We both know that you and I differ on the question of whether such charges could be of God or not, i.e., on what is the deep motivation of the writer (in deference to you, but who I believe to be Paul) of Ephesians. But the charge that was on my mind when I wrote that post is the one to slaves. That one seems pretty radical to me. I have highlighted the radical parts in bold. The writer asks slaves to serve ‘as to Christ’. Again, if you believe in Christ, to ask someone to serve someone else (possibly evil but maybe even not particularly evil) as to Christ - that is asking a lot. So, again, if you believe in Christ, the charge is radical in its scope. The writer adds in the next verse ‘as slaves to Christ’. That is kind of a reiteration of the previous verse - so it is not just a slip of the tongue. It is emphatic.Then the writer says that the ‘slavery service’ of the slave is the will of God! In Ephesians 1:1 the writer says, ‘Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God’ He is an apostle by the will of God and you are a slave by the will of God! That is pretty radical! I have never been that radical to say that to anyone.Then the writer says that the slave, for every ‘whatever good thing’ done by him, he will receive back from the Lord! Even that is radical. For good but mundane things I do in my slave service I will receive a reward from the Lord - that is too good to be true. Those good, but mundane, things (again if you believe in Christ) have eternal value! That is radical.Then the writer adds that this promise is not just for slaves, but also for free men. That means that the good things I do, even if I am free, have eternal value. This is confirmed by the next verse which seems really strange - ‘and masters, do the same things toward them’. How could masters do the same things toward slaves as slaves towards them unless there is an eternal, impartial Judge over all?As for why I seem to ‘diminish the moral relevance’ of Acts, I guess what I am saying is that, although there is what I called a spontaneous manifestation in Acts, there is no teaching in the epistles charging such practices as are seen in Acts. I do not diminish the ‘wonderfulness’ of it. But the absence of teachings and charges makes me think of it in the way I do.

I agree with your comments in this post. It seems like there is not much interest in things like God's selection before the foundation of the world, His predestinating to sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, redemption, forgiveness, the sealing and foretaste sealing of the Spirit, the hope of His calling and things like this and the other things you mentioned. I wish we could fellowship about the building up of the Body of Christ, etc. Edited by Richh, : No reason given.Edited by Richh, : No reason given.

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As you get into the disputed epistles, such as Ephesians, and then into the garbage that is the Pastoral epistles, you are looking at a very different Paul. This Paul is more concerned with durable institutions and the day to day mundane issues of life as a Christian. This Paul also just seems to have it in for women and really goes out of his way to make sure that their inferiority is established.

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I just wanted to add a note about the Pastoral Epistles. I agree that Paul's style and content changes as he ages. I mentioned that in a previous post. But I wanted to quote something I recently came across (as we are going through the Pastoral epistles in the church I attend). This is from The Expositor's Greek Testament, volume 4, page 75, 76: [with the exception of the order in]There is a case for the view that these epistles are genuine.BTW - I did not really change any of my positions with the exception of admitting that 'knowing you will do even beyond what I say,' while not changing Paul's entreaty merely to 'receive him as myself' leaves unspecified the nature of the 'beyond.' As such, manumission was a possibility.

Hi, Jaywill. I noticed I did not reply to this.I came across something relating to your post recently in our study of Thessalonians in our church meetings. The following is a quote from A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, volume 4, page 48: Lightfoot in Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul, page 110 says,