Have You Ever Read Ephesians?

Who is they? The only person who has put any stipulations on the relevance of Ephesians has been me and I have time and time again said that parts of Ephesians could be useful on their own. You seemed to be making a point about the validity of it since you brought the issue up in the contex to jaywill about his disbelief about pseudepigraphia. TO justify Ephesians as such.Are you not in fact suggesting that Ephesians was valid because it was potentially ghostwritten? If not, why bring it up in context to what jaywill was concerned about? Why go further and say: You are making a value claim here and I am specifically challenging you on that claim. Pseudepigraphs are inherently deceptive. The authors are using the name of a more popular person to raise the status of their own words. It doesn't matter if you are able to justify the ends by some other avenue, they are lying for this purpose. THAT fact matters to people, it matters to me, it matters to jaywill, it likely matters to many others. THAT fact changes beliefs for the people it matters to. It is absolutly relevant and I think jaywill would obviously agree. We would not have the point of contention that we do if he believed it was irrelevant. He would not be so adamantly against the notion of pseudepigraphia if it were not important to his position that Paul actually wrote these. If these books are in fact forgeries it matters to people and to what they believe. And it is absolutly relevant to the interpretation of Ephesians to question the validity of it being in that canon. You completely gloss over the fact that in your ad-hoc deference to the canon builders that they either would be:1. Complicit in the pseudepigraphia if they knew of it
2. Ignorant of it and therefore not able to justify their decision with full informationAnd then to call that process what establishes the holiness of the forgeries, is frankly disingenuous. Like I said before, it is simply laundering of responsibility. You are being entirely dismissive. If that is all your position is, then I have no problem with it. Lots of writings have value in and of themselves especially for the pursuit of nobel causes such as history. But my being okay with this notion ends when you start to pretend that lying is okay just because you wraped it up in ancient orthodoxy. Well, yea, I do. And I am.

What the author intended bears upon the meaning and purpose. That the author of Ephesians felt it was necessary to lie to get his message across, to have the authority to evolve the theology of his predecessor, is fundamentally relevant to the meaning of the book.But if you want to hide behind an interpretation of a forum technicality, that's fine with me.

I keep going back to Acts and I don't think anyone has adequately responded to this point.The apostles were absolutely not shy about how bold they were in asking people to do things, to change their lives dramatically. Even in my apostasy, even though I do not think this is inspired in the same sense that others do, this is still very much inspiring. And more than that it is a reflection of just how unparochial, uncommon, and revolutionary the Christian faith was in its early days (at least as it is idealized in Acts).And to go back to Philemon: Again, how inspiring is this to take the plain reading. You can certainly pick who's opinion you use for support but I fundamentally feel that it takes significant intellectual effort in order to dumb this down into meaning something less than what the words actually say; that Onesimus should be "no longer as a slave". It becomes outrageously LESS inspiring to presume that all Paul is doing here is to save his friend from maltreatment as he is returning him into slavery; to his Christian master.And finally: How impressively uninspiring!How contrary to the idealization of the original sentiment of salvation and brotherhood as it is expressed in Acts!And for what? To protect the legacy of those who were deceived by the fraud? Why when there is so much potential good to hold on to in these other writings?To hold the entire Bible in esteem just because some bishops much much later (who unless you are Catholic you have already abandoned their legacy of apostolic authority) decided it would be the way it is.If there is anything holy in the Bible, if there is anything remaining to be inspired by, it is certainly tainted by the admission of these works such as Ephesians.

First of all, thank you sincerely for making a substantial reply instead of just dismissing me. I think that I have dealt with the intent and meaning. How is it possible to speak about differences between Ephesians and Acts or Ephesians and Philemon without reference to their intent and meaning? This criticism seems particularly vacuous but you perhaps make up for it when you quote me below.Also, I think there are two kinds of intent here. First what did the author intend with the particular words he wrote (perhaps limiting it to the verses that are causing the most controversy). Second, what did the author intend by lying about who he was. I believe that throughout this thread I have discussed both, more on this below. Proving intent is hard. That why I think this does belong in the Bible study forum. But what I have said I believe is compelling. I should be careful because it is possible that the author wasn't doing any evolving on purpose. So consider this a mea-culpa based on your criticism. To "prove" that the author intended to evolve Paul's theology I would need to know a lot more about the author. Allow me to explain my reasoning for saying what I did.I have made this point before but I don't mind repeating it. There is a change in theology throughout the Bible as you move from the books that were written in the early, expectant, oppressed, apocalyptic beginnings of Christianity to the formal, "authorized", combative with heresies, less expectant, ordered, hierarchical church of orthodoxy.What we do know about the author of Ephesians is that he was probably familiar with Paul's legitimate works because he copies quirks and language from those in order to raise the believability of his deception. I see two possibilities, that his intent was pious, that he really thought Paul believed as he did and was simply using the deception to sell this books which is somewhat of a summary of what he believed came from Paul. Alternatively, he use the deception to intentionally change the message from Paul. The intent of the author was to express what was written but the theology is in fact evolved as reflected in the writing of Ephesians and that fact is relevant to its meaning. We have in this thread a disagreement THAT the theology is even evolved. Current teachings yes. Current as in after Paul though. With a more sophisticated idea of salvation and with more emphasis on the parochial. I don't recall anyone having claimed that the books supports having slavery today. It has been used in the past to support slavery among other verses. The fact of its advice on slavery is not at issue here. It is the discrepancy about its advice about slavery that speaks to differences with the other parts of the bible. It seems obvious that the intent of the author was not to change the structural/authority relationships between christian masters and christian slaves if words on the page are to mean anything. Once again I'll refer you to my point that the fact of the forgery matters to how people accept or interpret the meaning of this book. The author intended to lie in order to raise the status of his words. The author went through a lot of effort to make it look like Paul rather than simply attributed to him, which entrenches the notion that this was intended as deception. Whether the author did that because he knew he was deviating from Paul or not is not necessarily relevant but it certainly would be an explanation for it. I don't mind giving the author the benefit of the doubt that he really believed that this is what Paul would have said.Why that is relevant to meaning seems very clear to me. People trust what is claimed to have written by Paul because they believe Paul was authorized by God to deliver his message. These writings represent the only temporally durable legacy of Paul. To learn that someone used Paul's name to express a different message is vitally important to accepting that message AND, more importantly, for properly understanding the things that Paul really did write. Absolutely. What we see on display in this thread is an attempt to massage this writing with others into a single coherent and durably relevant theology. That is how it is used today by some, perhaps even many. I believe that the best way to disabuse people of what I feel to be an erroneous interpretation is to point out that that Bible as a whole was never constructed to be a single coherent and durably relevant thing. These books not only have their own history but that history is sometimes in partial if not whole opposition to other books. They may or may not have even been written with knowledge of each other.I believe that the history of the Bible is relevant to its meaning and I hope that other people would think so to regardless of the status of their faith.

Yea. But I should have expressed my point better. It really is about what he did choose to say. He is going out of his way to talk about how Christians slave owners shouldn't abuse their Christian slaves and I happen to think it is really weird that Paul all of a sudden forgot that it was not okay for Christians to own other Christians. The only confusion I have is why you think your political points are relevant.In total, the real Paul's ideas applied to modernity are even stupider simply because he never believed that today would ever exist. So, uh, yea horray for him for being slightly enlightened while he waited for the impending doom of his barely civilized world.

Respectfully, no it doesn't. Paul is talking about the future here. There was no such thing as the church age in Paul's time. The church age is an invention of Christians more modern than Paul. I don't know you can so readily ignore the next part of that verse: Paul distinctly seperates the death and the resurrection in that verse, it is because he believes one has happened for us via baptism and the other has yet to come. Again no. Paul's concept of sin was primordial. That is why the real Paul preached so vehemently against the works of the law. Paul knew and spoke quite a lot about how it was impossible to serve the day to day agenda of the law. He goes as far to call it foolhardy. Galatians is an epic testament to this. Again, I don't know what you mean to prove about Paul's thoughts by appealing to non-Paulean and post-Paulean theology. John, the entire concept of the Logos, the high Christology is all post Paul.I am not disagreeing with you that these are interpretations that people made as Christianity evolved. But you can't quote John to me and expect that to be relevant to the interpretation of Romans. Some people believe that these two disparate theologies are connected as a matter of their faith. I do not.Moreover, as I explained to PD, the reason I do not make connections between, for example John and Romans, is that I have decided to incorporate the history of the bible and the early church in to my interpretation. When you look at the Christian timeline, you easily see that Paul had a fundamentally different conception of Jesus than what is expressed in John. Paul battled his entire life AGAINST other Christian sects using "his gospel" and he would not have fit in with what Christianity became even half a century after he was no longer there to fight.

That is a list of nonsense that I have never claimed.The issue with primordial sin was not to excuse common day sin, but to respond to the notion that the sin that Paul was talking about was anything other than the legacy of sin given by Adam.Paul's notion was that there is nothing you can act upon today to relieve yourself of that sin. Your are completely misinterpreting the concept of how believers should "no longer serve sin as slaves". It was not an exhortation for believers to be as if they were blameless under the law. Nor was it to serve the law as if they were Jews. If there was such a thing as a main theme throughout Pauls work it was exactly that although even that changed over time. He certainly softened his stance against the law by the time he got to writing Romans, likely his final writing.I am sorry jaywill, I am trying here but I get the feeling that instead of trying to have a conversation here, you read one thing in my post, saw red, and went on a tirade against a strawman.

Sin as an inherent property of the universe as he talks about at length. This sin is reflected in our actions which is why we received the law. Which is why Paul often talks about proper behavior for a believer.Paul obviously does NOT believe that people will be free from sin in their day to day lives but that they should try to be perfect. Otherwise he would not go through the trouble of detailing the minutia of proper Christian living. The sin that they are no longer slaves to is the primordial sin from Adam. That is the point I was making.You even say so yourself: I agree. But salvation and resurrection are different things to Paul here. Resurrection is the fulfillment of salvation which is why this does not jive with Ephesians. Lets remember where this discussion started. This would have upset Paul dearly. This in fact even upset OTHER FORGERS of Paul's works who were still trying to push back against the tempest of modern resurrection that was happening throughout the church. Look no further than 2 Thessalonians for proof of that.

There is a word for these kind of statements in forgeries and for the life of me I can't remember it. It is basically when the forger puts in little personal quirks, stories, or requests.This is a technique that we often see in undisputed forgeries of the time. I can probably dig up some examples but I am not home at the moment.An example from the Bible in a book where there is much more concensus that Paul did not write it, 2 Timothy, Paul asks for his cloak at the end of it. It makes you ask, "why would that be there if it wasn't really Paul asking for his cloak?" It gives the letter an air of legitimacy. But alas it was a well known technique of forgery at the time.

I have not seen anyone suggest that those are the sole indicators of forgery. There are other better indicators for forgery after which one has to say, "well what about these verses where he asks for his martini shaken and not stirred?" It is not a matter of faith. There is other evidence of forgery and this technique is known abundantly in other forgeries. What this is is much simpler than faith. This is a simple recognition that the evidences, including these personal verses, are consistent with the hypothesis of forgery.If it turns out the Ephesians is not a forgery, my faith will remain unchanged because I have not based my faith on the survival of a book throughout the ravages of history.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

This whole quote is nothing more than an editorial. This is simply, "I can't believe it to be so therefore it couldn't be" kind of reasoning.Moreover, it does so based on a WAY over inflated valuation of things. These writings are only so gloriously "pure and profound" when you contrast them against the barbarism that was those barely civilized societies. Paul's true writings are quaint and can be somewhat appreciated given the context. His disputed works range from the boring and barely scratching the surface of human dignity such as Ephesians to the downright atrocious, backwards, and damaging such as the books of Timothy.Spare us the idea that Ephesians can't be a forgery because it is too "good" and "passionate". Nobody has claimed that the forger could not have been pious, some even claim that he could have been inspiried!

That is a fine opinion for someone to have, but my point is that you cannot extrapolate from your opinion about how awesome it is to convincing evidence that it is legitimate.A forgery could have been made with passion and pious intent, perhaps even inspiration as PD seems to think.It is just a lazy argument, to say that we can either ignore evidence or ignore the call for evidence because we can't imagine such beauty (gag me) coming from a lie.

Paul suggests in Philemon that he could order Philemon to do the "right thing". There is a sense of the authority of the apostles to require certain things both from Paul and from acts. You are correct in saying that nowhere does it say that they required people to sell all their belongings. But when someone hesitated, the authority of the apostles was on deadly display: And they do the same to his poor wife in the next verses. Now you can somewhat weasel out of this by saying that this is an issue of lying but I think the point I was trying to make remains that the apostles claim, both in Acts and in Philemon, to have authority over the deeds of their followers.
Is Philemon not "keeping back" something against the example set in Acts by maintaining his lifestyle that requires slaves? Is it not MORE revealing to the truth of the common Christian experience of the time to note that Onesimus was a fellow Christian? Your right. It could be that Paul thinks it is ONLY bad to own other Christians as slaves. I think it is clear though that he is asking for Onesimus' status as slave to be lifted. I think you have rightly abandoned that non-starter of an interpretation of those words. But this new diminished inspiration of Philemon STILL conflicts with Ephesians which makes it clear that situations of both master and slave being Christian is somehow compatible with moral living. Again, I cannot understand how you maintain these two conflicting ideas in your argument or how you can seemingly justify diminishing the moral relevance of these two situations, one by claiming that Paul was not demanding that Onesimus be free or that it only applied once Onesimus was saved and the other by claiming that Acts was just some brief spontaneous outburst of asceticism, in order for them to be slightly more harmonious with the mundane and worldly commands from Ephesians.You are lessening their scope in order to arrive at a lesser yet harmonious moral, all the while claiming that such behavior is "radical" and "humanly impossible". I know that you limited your description to the Ephesians advice to the slaves but lets just look at the few verses around it as we have thus far in this thread. It is not radical and humanly impossible to "not threaten" your slaves. It is not radical to tell women to obey their husbands. Its NOT EVEN radical to suggest that women are fully equal members of society. Its NOT EVEN radical to suggest that that slavery in its entirety is immoral. These are some of the barest, simplest ideas of morality that you could possibly form in the modern world even if they were hard fought to achieve NO THANKS to the Bible.I find it totally and bewilderingly bizarre that you can zero in on that verse that is basically telling slaves to stay in line, a VERY worldly consideration playing dress up as a high minded ideal similar to the asceticism of Acts, while at the same time ignoring the remaining context of the obviously morally backward verses that surround it.Telling slaves to be good slaves, masters to be good masters, wives to be good wives, is NOT inspiring and radical. It is mundane and primitive if not totally immoral. I genuinely look forward to it as I have enjoyed our discussions so far.

Right, I talk about that right below the quote.

Take your time, I am in no hurry. Thanks for replying.To be clear, the reason I brought up Acts was to support Paul's authority to demand that Philemon release his slave. Paul was not shy in claiming he had that authority in the letter to Philemon itself and he is supported by the authority on display in Acts. Either I was not being clear about this or you are dancing around it or both.In the most simple reading of Philemon, the moral is the also the most high. Paul is saying he could in fact demand that Philemon act in a certain way but that he doesn't have to, because Philemon knows and will do more than what is right.It is this moral that must necessarily be diminished to make this writing of Paul compatible with what is supposedly by him in Ephesians. You have tried to do this in two ways, one is to claims that Paul is not even asking for Onesimus to be free (I really hope this ridiculous idea is behind us). The second was that this only applied because of the "beloved brother" clause of the letter. In other words that this only matters because Onesimus was now a Christian. This only FURTHER contradicts Ephesians which seems to suggest that it is perfectly okay for Christians to own other Christians.In all the other uncontroversial writings of Paul, nowhere does he give instructions on the proper way for a Christian to own people. Paul is vastly more concerned with other things. Then Ephesians comes along and all of a sudden he is worried about the "plight" of Christians who own other Christians. And how does he worry about this issue? It is not THAT these Christians own other Christians, it is that they threaten them from time to time (and presumably worse). This is what is diabolical about these verses. This is what, if you want to call it "radical" is not so in the sense that it is enlightened but rather simply counter-intuitive to our basic moral understanding. The idea that people's desperate lot in life is the will of God has been used by religionists since its invention to justify nearly every self-serving form of worldly and primitive human exploitation of other humans. That slaves should persist in their "fear and trembling" because that is what God meant for them to do is such a base moral. It is so obviously serving of humans, to call it divine, if it is to mean anything, is an insult to the word.This is the kind of thinking that has given us such wonderfully progressive ideas such as the divine right of kings and Manifest Destiny.So I guess again I'll concede in this thread. These ideas are in fact radical. But they are most certainly NOT moral. I suppose that what I meant by mundane is that it is the same old abuse of humans by other humans that we are used to. I failed to take into account that no, this should not be considered mundane just because it is common. What I really meant to say is that these ideas are not inspired for good.The one and only consolation in these verses is this notion that sometime later things will be equalized. This is an open faced admission that the situation as it is described is not okay! Paul is essentially saying that the situation is broken, we ALL know it is broken, but that we should accept it because justice will be had later. You should tone down the violence if you are a master, and you should lower your ambition if you are a slave, in expectation of that justice.In no other form of discourse that we use, would we accept this kind of reasoning. This is a moral Ponzi scheme and the only reason it is given any credence is because we are pious and afraid.