The Epistle to the Ephesians

Karl Barth, R. Nelson, Ross Wright

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780801030918
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493406692
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Karl Barth is widely acknowledged as one of the great theologians of the church. This masterful example of theological interpretation of the biblical text presents Barth's insights on an important Pauline epistle.

In 1921-22, Barth taught a course on the exposition of Ephesians at the University of Göttingen, lecturing from a detailed and carefully researched manuscript. The resulting lectures, now available in English for the first time, introduce theological and exegetical issues pertinent to the study of Ephesians. Introductory essays by world-renowned scholars Francis Watson and John Webster are included.

Exposition of Ephesians

Ephesians 1:1–2

Nov. 10, 1921

[1 Παυ̑λος ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν [ἐν Ἐφέσῳ] καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, 2 χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.]

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints and believers in Christ Jesus. 2 Grace be with you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 1:1–2 is the letter’s “preface” and consists of an identification and brief description of the author of the letter and its recipients.

Παῦλος. The first word of our epistle has attracted more attention and certainly more interest than all the other words in the letter put together during the era of historical-critical research of the Bible, which has certainly not yet run its course. The question is raised whether the apostle Paul is actually the author of the epistle or whether an unknown student of Paul placed the famous man’s name on his own work, a perfectly acceptable practice at the time. In contrast to the unanimity that still existed less than thirty years ago, when one camp of New Testament scholarship prevailed, the current consensus on the matter can be summarized as a cautious non liquet1 within which individual scholars defend a position, with more or less certainty, for or against the letter’s authenticity. The excursus that Martin Dibelius provides in his discussion of verse 4:16 reflects the current state of the debate.2 In addition to that discussion, I refer you to the clear accounts of the matter in the New Testament introductions by Adolf Jülicher3 and by Fritz Barth;4 and because I am not in a position to take up the cudgels in the controversy, which seems to have abated recently, I will limit myself to briefly identifying the main points in order to explain my own position on the matter, which is in no way original. The debate, if I am correct, can be reduced to two central points.

The first point concerns the close relationship between Ephesians and Colossians at the level of both vocabulary and ideas. Undoubtedly, this relationship is not merely accidental, as even a superficial comparison of the two letters reveals. It follows that if both letters are genuine, they belong to the same period of Paul’s life as Philippians, that is, the time of his Roman imprisonment. They form a closely related group and must be interpreted by continuously examining the parallel passages so that one serves as a commentary on the other. Now, it is claimed that because Ephesians appears to be dependent on Colossians, it could not possibly have been written by someone with a mind like Paul’s, but is the product of a redactor, who was a disciple of Paul. And because Colossians is shorter and its historical setting more certain, it has tended to overshadow Ephesians, which tends to be regarded with a certain suspicion or as less valuable. The decisive evidence against this view, in my opinion, is the impossibility of interpreting the alleged redactor without recourse to suspiciously complicated hypotheses, such as those advocated by Heinrich Holtzmann.5 Nothing is ruled out, resulting in an arbitrary configuring of the parallel passages, not to mention tendentiousness in the passages selected. It seems to me much more likely that one author wrote both letters, drawing from the same conceptual framework but expressing his ideas in different situations, freely adapting his own ideas the second time, repeating, paraphrasing, and occasionally modifying them, much as any of us might do today when we have lectured on or written about similar material to different audiences.6 The occasional use of the same term to express different ideas, a matter on which Dibelius places such great weight and which he demonstrates in reference to the terms σῶμα and μυστήριον, for example,7 does not seem to me to be sufficient evidence to refute this view, considering the extreme dialectical flexibility that Paul usually displays (for example, in his use of the term νόμος within Romans alone).

The second point is more difficult. It concerns the peculiar linguistic and conceptual material that is characteristic of Ephesians (some of which also appears in Philippians and Colossians and some of which is unique to Ephesians), compared to Paul’s so-called major letters. We must first examine the facts of the matter and then assess their significance. And in fact, if we come to Ephesians after reading the Corinthian correspondence, for example,8 we find material that differs in both style and content from the undisputed letters, while many of the normal Pauline features are conspicuously absent. In the very first paragraph (1:3–14), we encounter a variety of unusual terms, such as τὰ ἐπουράνια, καταβολὴ κόσμου, χαριτοῦν, and προελπίζειν; and in the same place, we are confronted with a sentence construction so convoluted that it is difficult to understand, let alone reflect upon. Closer scrutiny reveals a variety of curious gems in the same unusual, embellished, and ceremonial style (it has been called “solemn”),9 which is so characteristic of Ephesians; whereas we look in vain for the familiar, signature Pauline terms, such as δικαιοῦν, θάνατος, θέλειν, and φρονεῖν, just to name a few, as well as the short exclamatory phrases, such as τί οῦν and μὴ γένοιτο, and the edgy, agitated, and explicitly polemical style that we find in Romans and Galatians.

More importantly, we are confronted with significant material differences between Ephesians and the undisputed letters. Here, Christ is exalted to such a position or rank that interpreters describe recourse to the phrase “cosmic Christ”10 or to “metaphysical” language.11 Here, in curious juxtaposition with this so-called cosmic Christ, the theme of the church suddenly appears right at the center of things. Here, we catch a glimpse into the realm of good and evil spirits. Here, we see all of Christendom from the vantage point of the mystery, μυστήριον, which was long concealed but is now revealed, and thus in light of the characteristics of God, on the one hand, and the human characteristics necessary for salvation, on the other—the intellectual properties, the gnosis, which is related to them but exists on a higher plane.12 Here, in several passages the apostles are ranked with the prophets as historical personages, imbued with holiness—a particularly difficult point. Here, the great battle over the validity of the law has receded into the distance, now sounding like the rumbling of distant thunder. And where is the parousia expectation, which figures so prominently in Paul’s early epistles? Here, the church seems to attain perfection through a kind of natural evolution, without even a hint that a catastrophe of any kind is necessary to bring about its perfection.13 There is, to quote Holtzmann, “the notion of an assured and inexorable surging movement, which proceeds from Christ’s imbuing everything with the effects of his immanence.”14

Nevertheless, we should not overestimate the significance of these differences. They are striking but not unprecedented. The modified style that Paul uses here is understandable, given his new train of thought. Both his altered mode of expression and the partially new ideas can be explained by the letter’s different provenance, compared to the major letters. Ephesians is the product of the elderly Paul.15 I hope that you will not take this as a criticism, but if we consider the peculiar directions that, in their later years, Plato,16 Schelling,17 or even a contemporary like Paul Natorp18 developed their ideas, both formally and materially, we have a plausible analogy to the relationship of Ephesians to, say, Romans. There was truly a more astonishing evolution than we normally attribute to Paul if he was in fact the author of Ephesians. Even the scholars who currently regard the letter as unauthentic acknowledge that most of its vocabulary and contents is clearly Pauline.19 How we evaluate many of the things that at first glance strike us as either anomalous or conspicuously absent (here I am thinking expressly about parousia expectation) depends on the degree to which the reader or scholar is able to interpret dialectically and therefore not be thrown off course but to follow the thread from here to there and to discover the new in the old and rediscover the old in the new. How easily someone in a later century could mistake one of Natorp’s authentic writings as unauthentic. Such a mistake is possible if one merely reads the words and clinically establishes what is there rather than following the text and thinking along with it as it stands. Regrettably, even Holtzmann, such a profitable scholar in other respects, is slightly ponderous in this regard.

Personally, I would defend the authenticity of Ephesians. But frankly, I do not have any great interest in the question. As far as I am concerned, it could be otherwise. I have treated the matter this thoroughly in order to fulfill all righteousness (cf. Matt. 3:15). Bengel expresses my true opinion about it when he says, “Noli quaerere quis scripserit sed quid scriptum est.”20 Now that we have behind us this unavoidable matter of New Testament introduction, we can happily devote ourselves entirely to “quod scriptum est.” As for the authorship question, it is enough to know that someone, at any rate, wrote Ephesians (why not Paul?) thirty to sixty years after Christ’s death (hardly any later than that, since it is attested by Ignatius, Polycarp, and Justin),21 someone who understood Paul well and developed the apostle’s ideas with obvious loyalty as well as originality.

Ἀπόστολος, the author of the epistle calls himself. The literal meaning of ἀπόστολος is “ambassador.” Surprisingly, in classical Greek it was a technical term for “admiral,” according to Hans Lietzmann’s discussion of Romans 1:1.22 And even if this meaning of the word is not directly attested in the New Testament, we can certainly assume that at one time it had a military ring, which it no longer has for us. In the New Testament, initially only the twelve disciples were called “apostles.” Then Paul assumed the title, claiming God as his sole authority. It was used more generally for a while. Barnabas is so d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• Translating Barth’s Ephesians Lectures
• Barth, Ephesians, and the Practice of Theological Exegesis
• “A Relation beyond All Relations”
• Exposition of Ephesians
• For Further Reading
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover