CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 36
The Quintessence of Paulinism
“The quintessence of paulinism” was chosen by a. s. peake as the title of a lecture which he delivered in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, on October 11, 1916—a penetrating exposition of the thought and teaching of Paul.1 The same title is chosen for this chapter because it is a fitting description of the first-century document which has been preserved for us in the New Testament canon as the Epistle to the Ephesians. This document in large measure sums up the leading themes of the Pauline letters, and sets forth the cosmic implications of Paul’s ministry as apostle to the Gentiles.
1. Introductory questions
No fresh contribution is offered here to the problem of the authorship of Ephesians. Suffice it to say, with G. B. Caird, that the epistle, “if not by Paul, is a masterly summary of Paul’s theology by a disciple who was capable of thinking Paul’s thoughts after him”2—to which one may add a note of surprise that such a disciple has left no other trace, with the observation that Paul’s Roman imprisonment provides the most plausible dramatic life-setting for the letter.
Ephesians is not an easy document for New Testament students to come to terms with. Markus Barth calls it “a stranger at the door”3 of the Pauline corpus. E. J. Goodspeed speaks of it as “the Waterloo of commentators”4—an ambiguous expression. More promisingly, he describes the epistle as “a great rhapsody of the Christian salvation”.5 It reads, he says, “like a commentary on the Pauline letters”6—which is true, but a trifle odd in a work which, a few lines previously, has referred to it as “a mosaic of Pauline materials”.7 A mosaic made up of fragments of a man’s writings is not best calculated to provide a commentary on them.
In a book published in 1966 mention is made of an unnamed writer who, “anxious to preserve. Ephesians for Paul”, says that “Ephesians may look like a compilation of Pauline phrases, but if looked at as a whole it has a unity”. “So”, say the authors of the book, “has a pile of stones, no matter what kind or by whom brought together—if looked at as a unity.”8 The analogy is inexact: the structural unity of Ephesians is not like that of a pile of stones but much more like that of its own “building fitly framed together” (2:21). Such a careful literary structure, indeed, is no proof of Pauline authorship; one could well imagine its being used as an argument against Pauline authorship. But an elaborately constructed work like this, with its own inner unity, a work which Samuel Taylor Coleridge could characterize as “the divinest composition of man”,9 cannot properly be compared to a cairn, or even to a mosaic painstakingly pieced together with fragments from other Pauline epistles.
2. Relation to other Pauline letters
“In form”, says Goodspeed, “it is an encyclical.”10 This is a widely held view, and some support is given to it by the textual phenomena of the salutation with which it commences, which throw doubt on the originality of the words “at Ephesus”.11 Perhaps we may call it a general letter to Gentile Christians, more particularly in the province of Asia—Gentile Christians who (like the readers of 1 Peter) needed to be shown what was involved in their recent commitment to the way of Christ. The personal notes at the end of Ephesians link it with Colossians,12 and provide formal justification for considering the two epistles in the same historical context.
Even apart from these personal references, Ephesians has other close links with Colossians, material as well as verbal. If in Colossians the cosmic rôle of Christ has been unfolded, Ephesians considers the implications of this for the church as the body of Christ—what is the church’s relation to Christ’s cosmic rôle, to the principalities and powers, to God’s eternal purpose? This change of perspective from Christ to the church goes far to explain the different nuances with which such keywords as “fulness” (plērōma) and “mystery” (mystērion) are used in Ephesians as compared with Colossians.
Ephesians has manifest affinities also with 1 Corinthians; in particular, it universalizes the teaching about the church which in the earlier epistle is applied to the life of one local congregation.
Nor should its relation to certain parts of Romans be overlooked. If Paul in Romans emphasizes that “there is no difference” between Jew and Gentile (Romans 3:22; 10:12), either “in Adam” or “in Christ”, Ephesians emphasizes that all the spiritual blessings which are available to men “in the heavenly realm in Christ Jesus” are accessible on an equal footing to Jews and Gentiles alike (Ephesians 1:3, etc.). If Paul in Romans magnifies his office as apostle to the Gentiles (Romans 11:13)13 and tells how he has discharged this ministry, winning obedience from the Gentiles “from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum” (Romans 15:15–21), Ephesians presents him as “a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles” (Ephesians 3:1) and sees an astounding token of divine grace in the fact that Paul, of all people, has been chosen “to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8).14
In the light of such affinities between Ephesians and other outstanding letters in the Pauline corpus, it is not so easy to accept the view, expounded principally by Heinrich Schlier, that Ephesians is indebted for its dominant themes to gnostic sources and only in two or three instances to the common stock of primitive Christianity.15 This thesis calls for serious study and evaluation, but 1 find it much less cogent than the interpretation of Ephesians as an exposition of dominant themes of Paul’s ministry.
3. Salvation by grace through faith
Among dominant Pauline themes justification by faith is the one that comes most readily to many minds. Luther’s discovery of justification by faith in the writings of Paul, and his use of it as a touchstone to determine, if not the genuineness, at least the value of everything handed down as sacred scripture, has, I think, made it difficult for many of his followers to see much else in Paul, and has inclined them to dismiss as non–Pauline, or at best as deutero-Pauline, any document in the Pauline corpus in which justification by faith does not play the central part that it does in Galatians and Romans. How does Ephesians fare in this regard? Certainly justification by faith is not a central theme in Ephesians, but it underlies the argument of the epistle, so much so that it is assumed rather than expressed, apart from Ephesians 2:8 f.: “by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any one should boast.”
This salvation by grace through faith implies the justification of the ungodly, the more so as the readers who had experienced it, whether Gentiles or Jews by birth, were formerly “dead in their trespasses and sins” and “by nature children of wrath” (as truly as those whose moral bankruptcy is exposed in Romans 1:18–3:20). While Paul usually speaks of salvation in terms of its fulfilment at the parousia, he presents it as a past event in Romans 8:24. The emphasis in Ephesians 2:8 f. is precisely the point that Paul has made in Romans 3:27 (“Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On the principle of works? No, but on the principle of faith”) and in 1 Corinthians 1:30 f. (God “is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore, as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’ ”).
4. The parousia
Less prominence is given to the parousia, the manifestation of Christ in glory. This theme is plain enough in Colossians (cf. Colossians 3:4, “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory”), but in Ephesians it is present only by implication. When, for example, the purpose of the church’s hallowing and cleansing is said to be its presentation to Christ “in glory, without spot or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:26 f.), this presentation is most naturally contemplated as coinciding with the parousia, as it certainly does elsewhere in the Pauline corpus. The parousia is also “the day of redemption” against which, according to Ephesians 4:30, the people of Christ are sealed with the Holy Spirit.16
5. The Holy Spirit
This brings us to a major Pauline doctrine which is undoubtedly dominant in Ephesians—the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Central as it is to Paul’s teaching, this doctrine is practically absent from Colossians,17 and in view of the affinity between Colossians and Ephesians it is all the more striking to note its dominance in Ephesians.
In the New Testament in general the presence of the Holy Spirit is a sign that the last days have come, in accordance with the words of Joel 2:28 quoted by Peter in Jerusalem on the first Christian Pentecost: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh …” (Acts 2:16 ff.). The presence of the Spirit, moreover, is the witness that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the one who (in John the Baptist’s words) would baptize with the Holy Spirit; in other words, the new era which Jesus’ passion and triumph inaugurated is the age of the Spirit to which the prophets pointed forward. This emphasis on the Spirit’s vindicating witness to Jesus as Messiah and Lord pervades the New Testament; it is found in Acts,18 in the Johannine Gospel19 and Epistles,20 and in 1 Peter.21 It is found also in Paul, in whose eyes the age of the Spirit has superseded the age of the Torah.22
But in addition to the general early Christian teaching on the Spirit, which Paul had received, he makes at least two distinctive contributions: (a) the Holy Spirit is the present earnest of coming resurrection and glory23 and (b) it is in the Holy Spirit that the people of Christ have been baptized into one corporate entity.24 Both of these contributions, expounded in Paul’s “capital” epistles (those to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians), are emphasized in Ephesians.
(a) The earnest of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is called in Ephesians “the Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13). This does not mean, as the RSV and NEB render it, that he is “the promised Holy Spirit” (true though that is, as witness Acts 1:4 f.; 2:33); the context rather indicates that to those whom he indwells the Holy Spirit is himself the promise of resurrection life and all the heritage of glory associated with it. The locus classicus for this view of the Spirit is Romans 8:9 ff. There “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead” will “quicken” the mortal bodies of those who believe in Jesus. He is “the Spirit of adoption” in the sense that he enables believers to realize their privileges and responsibilities as sons of God against the day when they will be publicly revealed as such. This “revelation of the sons of God” (for which, as Paul says, all creation eagerly waits in order to share “the liberty of the glory of the children of God”) is called our “adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies”. And of this consummation believers here and now possess the “first fruits” in the form of the Spirit. To the same effect Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:5, where he speaks of believers’ coming investiture with their “heavenly dwelling”, says: “He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (arrhabōn).”
This insistence that the Spirit is for believers their “first fruits” or “guarantee” appears in Ephesians 1:13, where they are reminded—Gentiles as well as Jews—that on believing in Christ they were “sealed” with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is “the guarantee (arrhabōn) of our inheritance, pending God’s redemption of his own possession”. (This collocation of “seal” and “guarantee” in reference to the Spirit has already occurred in 2 Corinthians 1:22: “God has sealed us and set the guarantee of the Spirit in our hearts.”)25 Again, in Ephesians 4:30 the warning is given: “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption”—here, as in Ephesians 1:14, the “redemption” is identical with “the redemption of our bodies” mentioned in Romans 8:23.
When this sealing is regarded as taking place has been debated with some animation, but most probably it coincides with the occasion indicated in 1 Corinthians 12:13: “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were watered with one Spirit”.
(b) The unity of the Spirit. This quotation of 1 Corinthians 12:13 brings us to Paul’s other distinctive contribution to the doctrine of the Spirit, for it is summed up there. This baptism in the Spirit—Christ himself being the baptizer, in fulfilment of John the Baptist’s prophecy26—is not simply an individual experience; it is the divine act by which believers in Christ are incorporated into his body. Elsewhere Paul speaks of being “baptized into Christ” (Galatians 3:27; Romans 6:3) or “putting on Christ” (Galatians 3:27; Romans 13:14) with the plain implication that incorporation into Christ is involved, but it is in 1 Corinthians 12:13, quoted at the end of the foregoing paragraph, that the Spirit’s part in this experience finds expression. And the i’s of 1 Corinthians 12:13 are dotted and its t’s crossed in Ephesians 4:3, where the readers are enjoined to be sure to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”. This “unity of the Spirit” is the unity of the body of Christ into which the people of Christ are brought by his Spirit for, in the words which immediately follow, “there is one body and one Spirit” (Ephesians 4:4).27
In Ephesians 2:19 ff. the church is portrayed rather as a building than as a body (although, just as architectural language is used of the body in Ephesians 4:12–16, so biological language is used of the building in Ephesians 2:21); but here too it is “in the Spirit” that the building takes shape, as the individual components are bonded together by Christ the “corner-stone”. Here too it is in that same “one Spirit” that Jewish, and Gentile believers together have common access to the Father (cf. Romans 5:2), or (by a change of figure) constitute a holy dwelling-place or temple for God (an idea anticipated in 1 Corinthians 3:16 f.).
6. The new man
These concepts of the body of Christ and the temple of God are interwoven with the concept of the “new man”. In a mingling of the architectural and biological figures, we read in Ephesians 4:13 ff. of the full-grown man (anēr teleios), “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, which is the climax of the church’s development as the body of Christ is built up, growing up to match him who is its head. Christ as the second man, the last Adam, the head and embodiment of the new creation, meets us in Romans 5:12–19 and 1 Corinthians 15:20–28, 42–50. When believers’ putting on Christ is mentioned in Romans 13:14 and Galatians 3:27, this (as we have seen) is not so much a question of personal imitatio Christi as of incorporation into Christ. So, when Colossians and Ephesians speak of putting on the new man, “who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator” (Colossians 3:10), “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24),28 the new man is Christ himself—not Christ in isolation from his people, but Christ in his people, the same Christ as Paul has in mind when he tells his Galatian converts that he endures birth-pangs over them “until Christ be formed” in them (Galatians 4:19).
When we bear these earlier Pauline references in mind, there is no need to look to extraneous sources for the concept of the “new” or “perfect” man. Neither need we be surprised that the church in Ephesians is the church universal rather than the local congregation.
Ephesians, as has been said above, universalizes the church doctrine of 1 Corinthians, but the universal principle which finds clear expression in Ephesians is already latent in 1 Corinthians, which is addressed not only to “the church of God that is in Corinth” but also to “all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:1). The oneness of the church is bound up with the fact that there is one Spirit, one Lord and one God; it follows that there is one people of Christ, indwelt by the one Spirit, confessing the one Lord and through him worshipping the one God, and comprising indifferently those who were formerly separated as Jews on the one hand and Gentiles on the other.
There are plainly to be recognized in the New Testament elements of what our German colleagues call Frühkatholizismus—incipient catholicism. Chief among these elements is the conception of the church throughout the world as a unity, which characterizes Ephesians. But it has been too generally accepted as axiomatic that incipient catholicism has no place in authentic Paulinism, so that any document in which it appears, even if it bears Paul’s name, cannot be a genuine epistle of Paul.29
Like so many other theological axioms, this one calls for scrutiny, and under scrutiny it loses something of its plausibility. We might a priori have expected Paul to think of Christians throughout his mission field as forming a unity. “Israel after the flesh” did not exist only in local synagogues; it was an ecumenical reality. The synagogue in any place was the local manifestation of the whole “congregation of Israel”. The same situation governed the new Israel.
What we should have expected a priori is confirmed by the evidence in the “capital” epistles that Paul had a deep concern for Christian unity—not only the unity of his own Gentile mission but the unity which embraced his Gentile mission on the one hand with the Jerusalem church and the Jewish mission on the other.30
Moreover, all Christians, according to Paul, were baptized “into Christ”, not merely into a local fellowship. All who were baptized into Christ (and had thus “put on” Christ) inevitably formed part of one spiritual entity. In baptism they had been united with Christ in his death, to rise with him in the likeness of his resurrection and so “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3–5). They had, in other words, become members of the body of Christ, baptized into it “in one Spirit”. The Christians in Corinth are reminded that they are Christ’s body, and individually members thereof (1 Corinthians 12:27); similarly those in Rome are told that “we” (that is, not the Roman Christians alone but the Roman Christians in fellowship with Paul and others), “though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Romans 12:5).31 To Paul’s way of thinking Christ could no more be divided between the several congregations than he could be divided between the factions within the congregation at Corinth. The explicit appearance of the church universal in Colossians and more particularly in Ephesians is a corollary of Paul’s understanding of the phrase “in Christ” and all that goes with it.
Language such as Paul uses to the Corinthian and Roman Christians about membership in the body of Christ could not be locally restricted, even if the occasions that called forth the “capital” epistles directed its application to the requirements of local fellowship. All believers—in Corinth and Rome, in Jerusalem and Ephesus, and everywhere else—had together died with Christ and been raised with him; as participators in his risen life they could not but constitute one Christian fellowship.
7. From darkness to light
This experience of passing in Christ from death to life may also be expressed in terms of passing from darkness to light, and it is so expressed in Ephesians 5:7–14. “Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord”, the readers are told, in language which has affinities elsewhere in the Pauline corpus,32 as also in the Johannine writings33 and in the Qumran literature. The point is driven home by the quotation of the tristich:
Awake, O thou that sleepest,
And from the dead arouse thee,
And Christ shall dawn upon thee.
Although this is introduced by the phrase “Therefore it (he) says”, as though it were holy writ, it is no precise Old Testament quotation, and has often been regarded as part of an early Christian baptismal hymn. The rhythm, it has been said, is similar to that of initiation formulae used in various mystery cults,34 but the content is entirely Christian.35 In the context of Ephesians 5:14, where the light reveals all things as they truly are, these words constitute a call to the sinner to abandon his old course and embrace a new way of life; they express the experience which, according to Paul, is sacramentally realized in baptism: “we were buried with him through baptism into death, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead through the Father’s glory, so we too should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
8. The broken wall
Emphasizing the equal incorporation within the Christian community of Jews and Gentiles—two groups which had previously been estranged from each other—Ephesians says that Christ “has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of partition”—the breaking down of this wall being otherwise described as his removal of the hostility between the two groups, his annulling of “the law consisting of commandments, ordinances and all” (Ephesians 2:14 f.).36
It is a commonplace with British commentators on Ephesians to suppose that this “middle wall of partition” may have been suggested by the barrier which separated the inner courts of the Jerusalem temple from the court of the Gentiles, a barrier which Gentiles were forbidden to penetrate on pain of death.37 German commentators, on the other hand, are more inclined to think of the barrier which, in some gnostic texts, separates the world beneath from the upper world of light.38
Without examining the question whether this concept in its gnostic form was current as early as the first century A.D.,39 we may ask which of the two barriers provides the more apt analogy to the thought of Ephesians 2:14. The barrier in the temple was a vertical one; the “iron curtain” of the gnostic texts was horizontal. The division in view in Ephesians 2:14 is not a division between the upper and lower world; it is a division between two groups of people resident in this world, and is therefore more aptly represented by a vertical barrier than by a horizontal one—the more so as the two groups which were kept apart by this “middle wall of partition” are exactly the same two groups as were kept apart by the barrier in the Jerusalem temple.
It may indeed be asked, as it is by Martin Dibelius,40 if the readers of Ephesians 2:14 would have understood such an allusion. Perhaps not; but would they have understood a gnostic allusion any better? There is in any case no emphasis on a material barrier. But whatever the readers may or may not have understood, the writer may well have had at the back of his mind that temple barrier which played an important part in the chain of events through which Paul became (to quote Ephesians 3:1) “the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles”. For, according to Acts 21:27 ff., Paul’s arrest came about because he was charged with aiding and abetting illegal entry by a Gentile through the temple barrier. The charge could not be sustained when it came to court, as no witnesses were forthcoming, but Paul was not released; he remained in custody, first in Caesarea and then in Rome. That literal “middle wall of partition”, the outward and visible sign of the ancient cleavage between Jew and Gentile, could have come very readily to mind in this situation.
This is further suggested by the emphasis laid a few lines later on the common access to the Father which Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ now enjoy “in one Spirit”.41 The barrier which formerly kept Gentiles at a distance from the God of Israel has been abrogated, and even Jewish believers have now more unimpeded access to God in this “holy sanctuary” of living men and woman than was available to them in the earthly temple where, in accordance with their status, they had to maintain a respectful distance. For the barrier which excluded Gentiles from the inner courts was not the only barrier there. There was a further succession of barriers in the inner precincts, barring various groups of Israelites from nearer access. Beyond the court of the women Jewish women might not proceed; beyond the court of Israel Jewish laymen might not proceed. Into the court of the priests and the outer compartment of the holy house itself priests and Levites might enter in the performance of their prescribed duties, but the heavy veil which curtained off the inner compartment barred all access to the throne-room of God’s invisible presence except to the high priest when he entered it annually on the Day of Atonement with sacrificial blood. His direct access then was an occasion for soul-affliction; in the spiritual sanctuary of Ephesians 2:21 the direct access to God which all believers enjoy is an occasion for gladness and praise. This direct access is a major theme of the Epistle to the Ephesians and the Epistle to the Hebrews alike; but whereas the barrier which Hebrews uses as an illustration is the veil which hung before the holy of holies, that which is more probably envisaged in Ephesians is the one which forced Gentiles to keep their distance.
9. The heavenly ascent
Something more in the nature of the horizontal barrier may, however, be discerned in another passage in Ephesians. In Ephesians 4:8–10 there is a remarkable commentary in what we have now learned to call pesher style on the words of Psalm 68:18. “When he ascended on high”, the quotation runs (turning the second person of the original into the third), “he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men.”
The context of Psalm 68 seems to portray a triumphal procession ascending the sacred hill of Zion: the conquering hero is followed by a train of captives and his route is lined by his exultant fellow—citizens. The temple singers acclaim him as victor, and tell how he has “received gifts among men”—a reference, probably, to the tribute paid him by the vanquished. Or the leader of the triumphal procession may be no human conqueror but Yahweh himself, his invisible presence betokened by the ark of the covenant, safe home from leading Israel into battle and now being carried up to its shrine at the head of the procession. In this case the tribute of subject nations is paid direct to the God of Israel.
Whichever of these interpretations of the Psalm be preferred, it is not in terms of its historical setting that verse 18 is expounded in Ephesians 4:8–10. Even if the historical setting had been taken into account, an acclamation of the God of Israel or of his anointed king would have been equally appropriate for the present application of the words to the one who was “born of the seed of David according to the flesh but appointed Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:3 f.). What is most striking is that, instead of the Massoretic and Septuagint reading, “received gifts among men”, a reading is here chosen which agrees with the Aramaic Targum and the Syriac version: “gave gifts to men”. In the Targum this is interpreted of Moses ascending Mount Sinai to receive the tables of the law and deliver them as God’s gift to men. But in Ephesians it is interpreted of Christ’s ascent on high and his bestowal thence upon his church of the ministers or ministries necessary for its growth to maturity.
It is in the exposition of Psalm 68:18 that a horizontal barrier is possibly implied. This is the barrier between “the lower parts of the earth” and the upper world, “far above all the heavens”, which Christ broke when he ascended. But if it is implied, no particular stress is laid on it. On the verb “ascended” in the Psalm the comment is made:
What does this mean if not that he first of all descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same who ascended far above all the heavens, in order to fill the universe.
In this exposition the crucial question is whether by “the lower parts of the earth” the earth itself is indicated (as being “lower” in relation to the world above), or the underworld (as being “lower” in relation to the earth). It is not possible to reach complete certainty. Comparison with Romans 10:6 f., where (in a pesher exegesis of Deuteronomy 30:12–14) ascending into heaven is contrasted with descending into the abyss, suggests the latter interpretation; comparison with John 3:13 (and the Gospel of John has special affinities with the Epistle to the Ephesians) suggests the former, for in John 3:13 the Son of Man’s ascent into heaven is paralleled by his coming down from heaven (that is, to earth). Traditionally the passage has been interpreted of the descensus ad inferos and the harrowing of hell, and the “leading captivity captive” has been understood in this sense; but in Ephesians the “leading captivity captive” appears simply in the quotation from the psalm, playing no part in the following exegesis. If there is any implied significance in the quotation of the words, they might refer to the despoiling of principalities and powers described in Colossians 2:15. But this was effected on the cross, not in Hades. On the whole, “the earth” in the phrase “the lower parts of the earth” is best construed as genitive of definition—that is, earth itself is the “lower” realm into which Christ is here said to have descended. But the point of the reference to his successive descent and ascent, which is not affected by our resolution one way or another of this crux interpretum, is that by this twofold movement Christ fills the universe, upper and lower realms alike, with his presence.42
10. The divine mystery
One of the most interesting points of affinity between Ephesians and the Qumran texts lies in the idea of the “mysteries” of God. These “mysteries” are not arcana; they have been revealed, but even when they are revealed they remain mysteries until they are interpreted in terms of their fulfilment. The pattern of rāz (“mystery”) and pesher (“interpretation”) in the Aramaic sections of Daniel, where the former requires the latter to complete and explain it, reappears in the Qumran texts (pre-eminently in commentaries) and in the New Testament.43 Paul, for example, speaks of himself and his fellow-apostles as “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1)—servants of God called to proclaim that what had been “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures” (Romans 1:2) was now accomplished, and was made plain by the fact of that accomplishment, being embodied in Christ and the gospel.
But Paul speaks not only of the mysteries in the plural, but also (comprehensively) of “the mystery” in the singular, for all the revelation of God has been consummated in Christ. So in Colossians 2:2 f. he speaks of his desire that his readers and the other churches in the Lycus valley may attain “the knowledge of God’s mystery—that is, of Christ himself—in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden” (but no longer hidden from those who have attained this knowledge). This mystery is unfolded in the gospel; so the doxology at the end of Romans mentions “my gospel and the proclamation concerning Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was shrouded in silence in eternal ages but has now been made manifest, and through prophetic writings, according to the commandment of the eternal God, made known to all the nations for the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:25 f.).
As one called to make known among the Gentiles “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8) Paul might well appreciate the honour of being entrusted with the stewardship of such a “mystery”, nor is it surprising that at times he concentrates on some aspect of the gospel specially related to his own ministry and speaks of it as a mystery. In Colossians 1:26 f., for example, he calls the subject-matter of his ministry “the mystery which has been kept hidden from ages and generations but has now been made manifest to the people of God, to whom God has been well pleased to make known what is the glorious wealth of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you [even in you Gentiles], the hope of glory”. That Gentiles would come to worship the God of Israel was a theme of Old Testament expectation; in Romans 15:9–12 Paul reproduces a catena of passages from the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms to this effect. But that Gentiles should have the Messiah of Israel, now the exalted Lord, dwelling in their hearts by faith as the living hope of coming glory—this was something completely uncontemplated before: it was bound up with Paul’s own Gentile apostolate and was the subject of a new revelation. Similarly in Ephesians 3:9 the substance of this mystery now for the first time divulged is said to be “that the Gentiles should be joint heirs, fellow-members of the one body, sharers of the promise conveyed in Christ Jesus through the gospel”. Not the Gentiles without the Jews, or even in preference to the Jews, but the Gentiles on the same basis as the Jews—Gentiles and Jews alike being reconciled to God “in one body through the cross” (Ephesians 2:16).44
Moreover, the full unveiling of the mystery of God, in the Qumran texts and in the New Testament, illuminates his ultimate purpose. In Ephesians 3:9–11 the unfolding of the mystery hidden in God from ages past brings to light the purpose for which he has created the church, his “fellowship of reconciliation”—it is that through the church his many-coloured wisdom might be made known to all created beings, to “principalities and powers in the heavenly realm … according to the eternal purpose which he conceived in Christ Jesus our Lord”. And this eternal purpose, thus subserved by the church and due to be realized in the “fulness of the times”, is concisely stated in Ephesians 1:9 f.: it is to bring all things together under the headship of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 2:6 ff. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians that, for all their self-styled wisdom, he has to feed them with milk and not with solid food, because they are not yet spiritually mature. This immaturity was due not to deficiency in gnōsis (of which they had plenty of a kind), but to deficiency in agapē, “Nevertheless”, he goes on, “to those who are mature we do impart wisdom … God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom ordained before the world for our glory … as it is written:
What eye never saw, what ear never heard,
What never entered the heart of man,
What God prepared for those who love him—
these are the things which God has revealed to us by the Spirit.”45
If we ask where in the Pauline corpus this divine “wisdom in a mystery” is imparted, we should direct our attention to the letter to the Ephesians.46