They must stand or fall together. But they will stand. They represent, indeed, an advanced
state of christological and ecclesiological knowledge in the apostolic age, but they have their roots
in the older Epistles of Paul, and are brimful of his spirit. They were called forth by a new phase
of error, and brought out new statements of truth with new words and phrases adapted to the case.
They contain nothing that Paul could not have written consistently with his older Epistles, and there
is no known pupil of Paul who could have forged such highly intellectual and spiritual letters in
his name and equalled, if not out-Pauled Paul.^1169 The external testimonies are unanimous in favor
of the Pauline authorship, and go as far back as Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Ignatius, and the heretical
Marcion (about 140), who included both Epistles in his mutilated canon.^1170
The difficulties which have been urged against their Pauline origin, especially of Ephesians,
are as follows:- The striking resemblance of the two Epistles, and the apparent repetitiousness and
dependence of Ephesians on Colossians, which seem to be unworthy of such an original thinker as
Paul.^1171 But this resemblance, which is more striking in the practical than in the doctrinal part, is
not the resemblance between an author and an imitator, but of two compositions of the same author,
written about the same time on two closely connected topics; and it is accompanied by an equally
marked variety in thought and language. - The absence of personal and local references in Ephesians. This is, as already remarked,
sufficiently explained by the encyclical character of that Epistle. - A number of peculiar words not found elsewhere in the Pauline Epistles.^1172 But they are
admirably adapted to the new ideas, and must be expected from a mind so rich as Paul’s. Every
Epistle contains some hapaxlegomena. The only thing which is somewhat startling is that an apostle
should speak of "holy apostles and prophets" (Eph. 3:5), but the term "holy" (ἅγιοι) is applied in
the New Testament to all Christians, as being consecrated to God (ἁγιασμένοι, John 17:17), and
not in the later ecclesiastical sense of a spiritual nobility. It implies no contradiction to Eph. 3:8,
where the author calls himself "the least of all saints" (comp. 1 Cor. 15:9, "I am the least of the
apostles").
tendency to drunken excesses, but rather to ascetic abstinence from wine; and the advice given to Timothy might perhaps have
been more suitable: ’Drink a little wine’" (p. 213). But what then becomes of the Epistle to the Corinthians who tolerated an
incestuous person in their midst and disgraced the love feasts by intemperance? What of the Epistle to the Romans which contains
a similar warning against drunkenness (Rom. 13:13)? And what could induce a pseudo-Paul to slander the church at Ephesus,
if it was exceptionally pure?(^1169) Farrar (II. 602): "We might well be amazed if the first hundred years after the death of Christ produced a totally unknown
writer who, assuming the name of Paul, treats the mystery which it was given him to reveal with a masterly power which the
apostle himself rarely equalled, and most certainly never surpassed. Let any one study the remains of the Apostolic Fathers, and
he may well be surprised at the facility with which writers of the Tübingen school, and their successors, assume the existence
of Pauls who lived unheard of and died unknown, though they were intellectually and spiritually the equals, if not the superiors,
of St. Paul himself!"
(^1170) See the quotations in Charteris’s Canonicity, pp. 237 sqq and 247 sqq.
(^1171) This is DeWette’s chief argument. See his table of parallel passages in Einleitung, § 146 a (pp. 313-318 of the sixth ed.).
(^1172) Such as αίσχρολογία (Col. 3:8), ἀνταναπληρόω (1:24), εἰπήοποιέω (1:20), ἐθελοθρησκεία (2:23), πιθανολογία (2:4); τὰ
ἐπουράνια (Eph. 1:3, 20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12),τὰ π́ευματικά (6:12), κοσμοκράτορες (6:12), πολυποίκιλος σοφία (3:10). Even the
word ἄφεσις (Col. 1:14 and Eph. 1:7) for πάρεσις (Rom. 3:25) has been counted among the strange terms, as if Paul had not
known before of the remission of sins. Holtzmann has most carefully elaborated the philological argument. But the veteran Reuss
(I. 112) treats it as futile, and even Davidson must admit (II 219) that "the sentiments (of Ephesians) are generally Pauline, as
well as the diction," though he adds that "both betray marks of another writer."
A.D. 1-100.