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Author | Topic: Have You Ever Read Ephesians? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
How do you acknowledge vs. reply in this forum. That is not jumping out at me...
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
I had to read you post about 3 times and then it finally sunk in. That was not obvious to me. Thanks.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
quote: These personal notes may be 'a technique of forgery' or an evidence of legitimacy. I guess it is a matter of faith which alternative you choose. Edited by Richh, : No reason given.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
There is no conclusive proof - only some suppositions and hypotheses by some who hold a certain view.
For example, personal verses could just as easily prove authenticity. They are certainly not inconsistent with that. Such notes are common in many Epistles. But if it is authentic, the next question is, 'Is it the word of God?' That is the bigger question. If it is, it raises many serious issues about man - both about Christians and about men who do not have a relationship with God. If it is authentic, but Paul does not speak for God’s Word, it can be safely ignored.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
quote: I wanted to add some additional paragraphs from Farrar's book. It brings in another line of reasoning based on the similarities of Ephesians and Colossians (along with the dissimilarities). I think this has bearing on the authorship of Ephesians. It is likely that both were written by the same person. F.W. Farrar, The Life and Work of St. Paul starting at p. 485, Vol. 2.
The close resemblance of expression, and in many thoughts, to the Epistle to the Colossians, when combined with the radical differences which separate the two Epistles, appears to me an absolutely irresistible proof in favour of the authenticity of both, even if the external evidence were weaker than it is. Roughly speaking, we may say that the style of Colossians shows a rich brevity; that of Ephesians a diffuser fullness. Colossians is definite and logical; Ephesians is lyrical and Asiatic. In Colossians he is the soldier; in Ephesians the builder. In Colossians he is arguing against a vain and deceitful philosophy; in Ephesians he is revealing a heavenly wisdom. Colossians is his caution, his argument, his process, and his work-day toil; Ephesians is instruction passing into prayer, a creed soaring into the loftiest of Evangelic Psalms. Alike the differences and the resemblances are stamped with an individuality of style which is completely beyond the reach of imitation. [There is a footnote on this sentence: Hence the critics are quite unable to make up their minds whether the Epistles are written by two authors or one author; whether St. Paul was in part the author of either or of neither; and whether the Colossians was an abstract of the Ephesians, or the Ephesians a simplification of the Colossians.] A forger might indeed have sat down with the deliberate purpose of borrowing words and phrases and thoughts from the Epistle to the Colossians, but in that case it would have been wholly beyond his power to produce a letter which, in the midst of such resemblances, conveyed so different an impression in a style so characteristic and so intensely emotional. [Part of a footnote on this sentence: The similarity of expressions (Davidson, Introd. i 384) often throws into marked relief the dissimilarity in fundamental ideas]
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined:
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quote: I wanted to add some more of a quote from Farrar's book, F.W. Farrar, The Life and Work of St. Paul, Vol. 2 starting at p. 486. It bears on the possibility of such an Epistle being a forgery.
Even if we could regard it as probable that anyone could have poured forth truths so exalted, and moral teaching so pure and profound, in an Epistle by which he deliberately intended to deceive the Church and the world, it is not possible that one actuated by such a purpose should successfully imitate the glow and rush of feeling which marks the other writings of the Apostle, and expresses itself in the to-and-fro-conflicting eddies of thought, in the one great flow of utterance and purpose. The style of St. Paul may be compared to a great tide ever advancing irresistibly towards the destined shoreIf we make the difficult concession that any other mind that that of St. Paul could have originated the majestic statement of Christian truth which is enshrined in the doctrinal part of the Epistle, we may safely assert on literary grounds alone, that no writer, desirous to gain a hearing for such high revelations, could have so completely merged his own individuality in that of another so as to imitate the involutions of parentheses, the digressions at a word, the superimposition of a minor current of feeling over another that is flowing steadily beneath it, the unconscious recurrence of haunting expressions, the struggle and strain to find a worthy utterance for thoughts and feelings which burst through the feeble bands of language, the dominance of the syllogism of emotion over the syllogism of grammar - the many other minute characteristics which stamp so ineffaceable an impress on the Apostle’s undisputed works. This may, I think, be pronounced with some confidence to be a psychological impossibility. The intensity of the writer’s feelings is betrayed in every sentence by the manner in which great truths interlace each other, and yet are subordinated to one main and grand perception. Mannerisms of style may be reproduced; but let anyone attempt to simulate the language of genuine passion, and every reader will tell him how ludicrously he fails The spirit in which a forger would have sat down to write is not the spirit which could have poured forth so grand a Eucharistic hymn as the Epistle to the Ephesians. Fervour, intensity, sublimity, the unifying - or, if I may use the expression, esemplastic - power of the imagination over the many subordinate truths which strive for utterance; the eagerness which hurries the Apostle to his main end in spite of deeply important thoughts which intrude themselves into long parentheses and almost interminable paragraphs - all must, from the very nature of literary composition, have been far beyond the reach of one who could deliberately sit down with a lie in his right hand to write a false superscription, and boast with trembling humility of unparalleled spiritual privileges entrusted to him as Apostle of the Gentiles. The definition of esemplastic is shaping or having the power to shape disparate things into a unified whole (as per Merriam-Webster Free Online Dictionary.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
quote:I just noticed that I did not reply to this commendable post of yours. I think it is hard to reply some posts and because of that the response gets put off. Then eventually it never happens. I don't think I can do it justice in this short post, but I will at least make a start. I don't know if it is crucial to your argument (maybe it is), but - I don't see the Apostles asking anyone to do anything in Acts except repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. What happened after the day of Pentecost was the result of the spontaneous move of the Spirit of God. I am not saying that that spontaneous response was not amazing and wonderful. It was and there is certainly a need for more filling of the Holy Spirit and more manifestation of fruit of the Spirit. It does mention that those who believed continued in the Apostles fellowship teaching and fellowship, but it doesn’t say what that teaching was. You also overlooked some of the words in the verse from Philemon. It says ‘no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother’. The thought is that in the past Onesimus was not a ‘beloved brother’, but he had become one through Paul’s preaching the gospel to him. If it was only about slavery and nothing else Paul wouldn’t have spoken like this. He wouldn’t have spoken of Onesimus as ‘more than a slave’. He would have said something different. If the sole issue was slavery, Paul would not have spoken about something ‘more’, but about something being taken away. I don’t agree that Paul’s word to slaves in Ephesians is uninspiring. I think it is radical. I think it is humanly impossible to behave as Paul charges in that situation. But I know you and I do disagree on this topic. I don’t think I have adequately responded to your observation of the events in Acts. I hope to add more later.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
quote: Does not the part of your quote I bolded indicate that the apostles had no expectation or requirement either of Ananias or of Saphira. The issue was not that they failed to give, but that they lied!
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined:
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quote: That is a mouthful, but let me take a crack at it. I have to do this in drips and drabs as I mentioned before due to time limitations. I will try to give the reason why I 'diminish the moral relevance' (to use your term) of Acts and 'claim' the behavior mentioned in Ephesians is radical. I'll address the second first. I agree that most of the charges in Ephesians are not that radical (although it is pretty radical if you believe in Christ to charge someone to love their wife as Christ loved the church). We both know that you and I differ on the question of whether such charges could be of God or not, i.e., on what is the deep motivation of the writer (in deference to you, but who I believe to be Paul) of Ephesians. But the charge that was on my mind when I wrote that post is the one to slaves. That one seems pretty radical to me. I have highlighted the radical parts in bold.
Eph. 6:5 Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as to Christ; 6:6 Not with eye-service as amen-pleasers but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul; 6:7 With good will serving as slaves, as serving the Lord and not men; 6:8 Knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a slave or a free man. 6:9 And masters, do the same things toward them The writer asks slaves to serve ‘as to Christ’. Again, if you believe in Christ, to ask someone to serve someone else (possibly evil but maybe even not particularly evil) as to Christ - that is asking a lot. So, again, if you believe in Christ, the charge is radical in its scope. The writer adds in the next verse ‘as slaves to Christ’. That is kind of a reiteration of the previous verse - so it is not just a slip of the tongue. It is emphatic. Then the writer says that the ‘slavery service’ of the slave is the will of God! In Ephesians 1:1 the writer says, ‘Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God’ He is an apostle by the will of God and you are a slave by the will of God! That is pretty radical! I have never been that radical to say that to anyone. Then the writer says that the slave, for every ‘whatever good thing’ done by him, he will receive back from the Lord! Even that is radical. For good but mundane things I do in my slave service I will receive a reward from the Lord - that is too good to be true. Those good, but mundane, things (again if you believe in Christ) have eternal value! That is radical. Then the writer adds that this promise is not just for slaves, but also for free men. That means that the good things I do, even if I am free, have eternal value. This is confirmed by the next verse which seems really strange - ‘and masters, do the same things toward them’. How could masters do the same things toward slaves as slaves towards them unless there is an eternal, impartial Judge over all? As for why I seem to ‘diminish the moral relevance’ of Acts, I guess what I am saying is that, although there is what I called a spontaneous manifestation in Acts, there is no teaching in the epistles charging such practices as are seen in Acts. I do not diminish the ‘wonderfulness’ of it. But the absence of teachings and charges makes me think of it in the way I do.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
I agree with your comments in this post. It seems like there is not much interest in things like God's selection before the foundation of the world, His predestinating to sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, redemption, forgiveness, the sealing and foretaste sealing of the Spirit, the hope of His calling and things like this and the other things you mentioned. I wish we could fellowship about the building up of the Body of Christ, etc.
Edited by Richh, : No reason given. Edited by Richh, : No reason given.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
quote:I just wanted to add a note about the Pastoral Epistles. I agree that Paul's style and content changes as he ages. I mentioned that in a previous post. But I wanted to quote something I recently came across (as we are going through the Pastoral epistles in the church I attend). This is from The Expositor's Greek Testament, volume 4, page 75, 76: From the time of Irenaeus, Clement of Al. and Tertullian - that is practically from the time that N.T. books were quoted by their author's names - until the year 1804...no one, Christian or non-Christian, doubed that the Pastoral Epistles were genuine letters of the apostle Paul. They are included in all MSS., Versions and Lists of the Pauline Epistles without exception, and in the same order... [with the exception of the order in] the Muratorian Fragment... ...it must be acknowledged that some early heretics, who acknowledged the genuineness of other letters attributed to St. Paul, rejected these. ... In any case, the fact that the rejection of the Pastorals by some heretics was noted amounts to a positive testimony in their favor by the contemporary church.
There is a case for the view that these epistles are genuine. BTW - I did not really change any of my positions with the exception of admitting that 'knowing you will do even beyond what I say,' while not changing Paul's entreaty merely to 'receive him as myself' leaves unspecified the nature of the 'beyond.' As such, manumission was a possibility.
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Richh Member (Idle past 3769 days) Posts: 94 From: Long Island, New York Joined: |
Hi, Jaywill. I noticed I did not reply to this.
I came across something relating to your post recently in our study of Thessalonians in our church meetings.
2 Th2:2That you be not quickly shaken in mind nor alarmed, neither by a spirit nor by word nor by a letter as if by us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
The following is a quote from A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, volume 4, page 48:
It is enough to give one pause to note Paul's indignation over the use of his name by the over-zealous advocates of the view that Christ was coming at once. It is true that Paul was still alive, but, if such a 'pious fraud' was so common and easily condoned as some today argue, it is difficult to explain Paul's evident anger. Moreover, Paul's words should make us hesitate to affirm that Paul definitely proclaimed the early return of Jesus. He hoped for it undoubtedly, but he did not specifically proclaim it as so many today assert and accuse him of misleading the early Christians with a false presentation. Lightfoot in Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul, page 110 says,
But he must have had some reasons for believing that an illicit use had been made of his authority in some way or other: and the suspicion of a possible forgery seems to have crossed his mind at an earlier date, when he wrote the first epistle (see the note on I Thes. 5:27); and he guards against it at the close of this epistle also (II Thes 3:17). 2 Th3:17The greeting in my own hand Paul which is the mark in every letter; so I write.
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