most evangelical of evangelicals, and the broadest of the broad, because most comprehensive in
his grasp and furthest removed from all pedantry and bigotry of sect or party.^1163
Ephesians is, in some respects, the most profound and difficult (though not the most
important) of his Epistles. It certainly is the most spiritual and devout, composed in an exalted and
transcendent state of mind, where theology rises into worship, and meditation into oration. It is the
Epistle of the Heavenlies (τὰ ἐπουράνια), a solemn liturgy, an ode to Christ and his spotless bride,
the Song of Songs in the New Testament. The aged apostle soared high above all earthly things to
the invisible and eternal realities in heaven. From his gloomy confinement he ascended for a season
to the mount of transfiguration. The prisoner of Christ, chained to a heathen soldier, was transformed
into a conqueror, clad in the panoply of God, and singing a paean of victory.
The style has a corresponding rhythmical flow and overflow, and sounds at times like the
swell of a majestic organ.^1164 It is very involved and presents unusual combinations, but this is
owing to the pressure and grandeur of ideas; besides, we must remember that it was written in
Greek, which admits of long periods and parentheses. In Eph. 1:3–14 we have one sentence with
no less than seven relative clauses, which rise like a thick cloud of incense higher and higher to the
very throne of God.^1165
Luther reckoned Ephesians among "the best and noblest books of the New Testament."
Witsius characterized it as a divine Epistle glowing with the flame of Christian love and the splendor
of holy light. Braune says: "The exalted significance of the Epistle for all time lies in its fundamental
idea: the church of Jesus Christ a creation of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, decreed
from eternity, destined for eternity; it is the ethical cosmos; the family of God gathered in the world
and in history and still further to be gathered, the object of his nurture and care in time and in
eternity."
These are Continental judgments. English divines are equally strong in praise of this Epistle.
Coleridge calls it "the sublimest composition of man;" Alford: "the greatest and most heavenly
work of one whose very imagination is peopled with things in the heavens;" Farrar: "the Epistle of
the Ascension, the most sublime, the most profound, and the most advanced and final utterance of(^1163) But the very reverse of churchy. Nothing can be further removed from the genius of Paul than that narrow, mechanical,
and pedantic churchiness which sticks to the shell of outward forms and ceremonies, and mistakes them for the kernel within.
(^1164) Eph. 5:14 may be a part of a primitive hymn after the type of Hebrew parallelism:
"Awake thou that sleepest,
Arise thou from the dead
And Christ will shine upon thee."
(^1165) In literal English translation such a sentence is unquestionably heavy and cumbrous. Unsympathetic critics, like De Wette,
Baur, Renan, Holtzmann, characterize the style of Ephesians as verbose, diffuse, overloaded, monotonous, and repetitious. But
Grotius, a first-class classical scholar, describes it (in his Preface) as "rerum sublimitatem adaequans verbis sublimioribus quam
ulla habuit unquam lingua humana." Harless asserts that not a single word in the Epistle is superfluous, and has proved it in his
very able commentary. Alford (III. 25) remarks: "As the wonderful effect of the Spirit of inspiration on the mind of man is
nowhere in Scripture more evident than in this Epistle, so, to discern those things of the Spirit, is the spiritual mind here more
than anywhere required." He contrasts, under this view, the commentaries of De Wette and Stier, putting rather too high an
estimate on the latter. Maurice (Unity of the N. T., p. 535): "Every one must be conscious of an overflowing fulness in the style
of this Epistle, as if the apostle’s mind could not contain the thoughts that were at work in him, as if each one that he uttered had
a luminous train before it and behind it, from which it could not disengage itself." Bishop Ellicott says that the difficulties of
the first chapter are "so great and so deep that the most exact language and the most discriminating analysis are too poor and
too weak to convey the force or connection of expressions so august, and thoughts so unspeakably profound." Dr. Riddle: "It is
the greatness of the Epistle which makes it so difficult; the thought seems to struggle with the words, which seem insufficient
to convey the transcendent idea."
A.D. 1-100.