Ephesians: It's time to meet the audience
Contents:
1. Blessed in whom? The good news about the Jewish people (Ephesians 1:1-12 and Genesis)
2. You also. The role of the Spirit in the Gentiles’ inclusion (Ephesians 1:13-14 and Acts)
4. How far can you peace? The humbling inclusivity of God’s plan (Ephesians 2 and Isaiah)
I love the book of Ephesians. I have heard it taught at several key points in my Christian development and am really grateful to everyone who has taught it to me. Most recently, just over two years ago, I was taught Ephesians at the Cornhill Training Course by the lecturer Stephen Boon, who opened up the book to me in new ways, which are often underappreciated. Over the past two years, I have spent a lot of time in Ephesians and have gone down some exciting avenues of thought that I’d like to share with others.
The purposes of these blog posts
I have decided to write a series of blog posts for
two reasons:
Firstly, I want to share some of these ideas more
broadly in the hope that they might excite other people as they have me.
Secondly, I would love your feedback on them. Let
me know what is unpersuasive, what is boring, or better yet, what you think I should
look into for further research. I intend to keep studying Ephesians for the next
10+ years, and potentially to write some of this up as some kind of research project.
There is a lot of literature on Ephesians and the other topics I’m going to write
about, and while I have some clear ideas of where to look, there are so many things
I am bound to miss.
Please get in contact (either using the comments
or by another means if you have my contact details). Even if we haven’t spoken much,
I would love to know your thoughts. I’m really interested in the quality of your
ideas, even if you don’t have any “formal qualifications”.
Thesis 1: Ephesians is written
to Old Testament lovers
One of my main thoughts about Ephesians is that
it is so much richer for people who love the Old Testament – the people who spend
lots of time dwelling on the Old Testament and see its rich variety as one of their
favourite things to think and talk about.
The words of Ephesians in many places are quite
obviously exciting. Chapter 1 uses beautiful language about salvation, chapter 2
is wonderful on God’s grace and on faith, chapter 3 talks marvellously about God’s
love, and chapters 4-6 paint one of the most compelling pictures of the Christian
life in the whole Bible. These riches can be understood and enjoyed just by reading
the words, without any Old Testament knowledge. But there is much more that can
be gleaned by those who love the Old Testament.
The reason I think this is a defensible suggestion
is that I think the Ephesians themselves loved the Old Testament. Partly, this is
because of what Ephesians says itself (which is somewhat circular, but when you
read Ephesians in this way, there are so many data points that it feels unavoidable).
Partly though, this is also because of a basic hermeneutic of what life was like
for first-century Christians. With no political power to cling to, no long history,
no Christian books… what did they have? They had a message. And they had it from
the Bible. But! Their Bible was the Old Testament.* The Old Testament would have
been utterly central to their identity. And so, what for Christians from the second
century onwards might seem a bit of an odd obsession in the pre-Christ scriptures,
would for them have been a perfectly natural obsession in the complete canon of
Scripture as they had it at that point.
So firstly, the Ephesians loved the Old Testament,
and our understanding of the book of Ephesians is enriched if we see the ways Paul
uses Old Testament ideas.
Thesis 2: Ephesians is written
to Old-Testament-loving Gentiles
The second thing to note when we think about the
audience of Ephesians is that they were Gentiles. We can see that explicitly in
2:11 (“you Gentiles in the flesh”) and 3:1 (“you Gentiles”), and we see it implicitly
in many other places.
The Ephesians were Old-Testament-loving Gentiles.
Which presents us with a bit of tension. The Old Testament is a Jewish book, written
by Jewish people and almost exclusively expected to be read by Jewish people. This
creates an identity crisis: am I an Old Testament lover, or am I a Gentile?
Again, this is something that any Christian from
the second century onwards will struggle to empathise with. Christianity has for
so long been a Gentile-dominated religion, it seems almost bizarre that we would
feel tension between being a Christian and being a Gentile. In fact, I have heard
that many messianic Jews experience the opposite identity crisis: they think Christian
is virtually synonymous with Gentile, and are unsure whether they fit (or unfortunately,
sometimes, whether they are welcome) in the Christian community as a true member.
It may be hard for us to imagine a time when Gentiles felt they didn’t fit in
the church, but reflecting on this is worthwhile. If we really get in the head of
the Old-Testament-loving Gentiles to whom the book was written, the book of Ephesians
only becomes richer.
My thesis is that the book of Ephesians is written
to massively increase the expectations of Gentiles about how privileged they are
through believing in Christ, which is proven through careful use of Old Testament
ideas. If we read patiently in this way, while we may have to work harder to understand
the book, the results of our reading will be far more exciting.
I aim to show this by noting the influence of seven
Old Testament books (as well as a cheeky two New Testament books) on the composition
of Ephesians. Each of these other Bible books will be linked to a section of Ephesians
where its influence can be clearly seen.
Contents:
1. Blessed in whom? The good news about the Jewish people (Ephesians 1:1-12 and Genesis)
2. You also. The role of the Spirit in the Gentiles’ inclusion (Ephesians 1:13-14 and Acts)
4. How far can you peace? The humbling inclusivity of God’s plan (Ephesians 2 and Isaiah)
*The very phrase “Old Testament” is not ideal, as it might give the impression that it has been superseded by the “New”. Unfortunately, there is a lack of usable alternatives. I wish it were more normal to speak about “the first three quarters of the Bible” or something similar to that, which would then not imply that “the final quarter of the Bible” has rendered it obsolete. In academia, the term “Hebrew Bible” is sometimes used, however, this places the emphasis in the wrong place, as the Ephesians would have been reading what they would consider the “Greek Bible” (i.e. Greek Translation of the Old Testament) in direct contrast with the “Hebrew Bible”. Similar problems arise with the use of “Tanakh” or “Tanach”. Normally, I would feel more comfortable using this word, as it also generally implies the more canonical ordering of the books (Torah first, then Prophets, then Writings). In the case of Ephesians, however, there is again the problem that the original Ephesians probably did not consider that they were reading the Tanach, since they were most likely reading a Greek translation, which may well also have been in a different order. So, I will stick with the term “Old Testament” despite its many flaws.
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