That aspect of Judaism which was most conspicuous to the outsider in Paul's day was not the legalism of the scribes and the Palestinian synagogue, perpetually embalmed in the Talmud and orthodox rabbinism of to-day. It was the superstition and magic which excite the contempt of satirists like Horace, Juvenal, and Martial, and call forth descriptions like that of the letter of Hadrian to Servianus, characterizing the Samaritans, Jews and Christians dwelling in Egypt as "all astrologers, haruspices, and quacksalvers." It is this type of Jew who is most widely known in the contemporary Hellenistic world; whose spells and incantations, framed in Old Testament language, are perpetuated in the leaden incantation rolls and magic papyri of the Berlin collection; whose portrait is painted in the Simon Magus of Acts viii. 14-24, the Elymas the sorcerer of Acts xiii. 6-12, the "strolling Jews, exorcists," and the "seven sons of Sceva" of Acts xix. 13-20. A Christian writer early in the second century is so impressed with this characteristic of contemporary Judaism that he even distinguishes as the third type of religion, besides idolatry and Christianity, "the Jews, who fancy that they alone know God, but do not, worshipping angels and archangels, the moon and the month," and seeks to prove his case by citing the Old Testament festal system. Indeed this idea of Judaism is the predominant one among the second-century apologists. Jewish "superstition" is a notorious fact of the time. The transcendentalizing of Jewish theology after the Persian period had led inevitably to an elaborate angelology and demonology. When as part of this process a more and more supernatural character was attributed to the Law it could but have a two-fold effect. The learned and orthodox would treat it soberly as a revelation of the divine will. This is the legalistic development we see in the Talmud and the Palestinian synagogue. The ignorant and superstitious, especially in the Greek-speaking world, would use it as a book of magic. This is what we see among many Jewish sects, particularly in Samaria, Egypt and among the Greek-speaking Jews. The tendency was marked even in Galilee. Jesus Himself stigmatizes the morbid craving of His countrymen for miracles as the mark of an "adulterous" generation, because the power invoked was not divine, but always angelic, or even demonic. Paul alludes to the same trait (1st Cor. i. 22). But while there is a singular absence both from the Pauline and the Johannine writings of any reference to exorcism, the typical miracle of Synoptic story, it has been justly remarked that no element of Paul's thought has been so little affected by that of Jesus as his angelology and demonology. Paul's world-view, like that of the apocalypses of his time, is a perfect phantasmagoria of angels and demons, "gods many and lords many." His conception of the redemption conflict is not a wrestling against flesh and blood, but against "world-rulers of this (lower region of) darkness," against "archangels," "elements," "principalities," "powers." The one thing which takes away all harmful influence from this credulity (if we must apply an unfairly modern judgment to an ancient writer) is his doctrine of the Son ship and Lordship of Jesus, with whom the redeemed are "joint-heirs" of the entire creation and thus superior to angels. In this respect Paul has imbibed the mind of Christ. Jesus' remedy for superstition is not scientific but religious. It does not deny the popularly assumed relation to "spirits" good or evil, but affirms a direct relation to the Infinite Spirit, which reduces all angels and demons to insignificance save as "ministers." Paul's world-view starts with the creation of man to be lord and heir of the world (Gal. iv. 1; 1st Cor. iii. 22; cf. Gen. i. 28). The "purpose of God, which he purposed in Christ Jesus, before the creation, unto a dispensation of the fulness of the ages" is "to our glory." It would be frustrated if the "Second Adam" did not become the Heir, in whom the redeemed creation would find the goal of its long expectancy. Paul has a cosmology as well as "Enoch." He could not be a worthy follower of Jesus—he could not even be a loyal "son of the Law" without holding to the accepted doctrine of the Inheritance intended for Messiah and his obedient people. It did not make him less firm in this conviction when as a Christian he thought of Jesus as the Messiah, and of Jew and Gentile united in his kingdom; only the starting-point is not the subjection of the sons of Abraham under Gentiles, but the subjection of the sons of Adam under "world-rulers of this darkness." When he combines Ps. viii. and Ps. cx. in his depiction of the reign of Christ in 1st Cor. xv. 24-27, it is a sure indication of its scope as Paul understood it. He included in the lordship over creation, and the subjection of all "enemies" which the exalted Christ is awaiting "at the right hand of God," the subjection of "angels, and principalities, and powers and every name that is named, whether of beings in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth." Paul pursues, then, the method of the apocalyptic writers in making his doctrine of Redemption and the Kingdom transcendental. By making it cosmic he undermines its Jewish particularism. He avoids the superstition by holding firmly to Jesus' doctrine of Son ship by moral affinity with God.
In the Christological Epistles accordingly it is apparent that the Pauline churches are learning to think of the coming Kingdom in a widely different way from the 'apostolic.' The Greek doctrine of mystic union, not the rabbinic of a "share in the world to come," is the basis. In due time we shall see how difficult the process of reconciliation became between Greek and Semitic thought in this field also. For the present we can only note how in the great theme of the Unity of the Spirit in Eph. iv. 1—vi. 9 it is not the 'apostolic' ideal of a restoration of the kingdom to Israel according to the oath sworn to Abraham (Luke i. 68-75; cf. Acts i. 6) that dominates, but an enlargement of the figure of the body and members, a figure commonly employed by Stoic writers, to apply to the unity of the church in Corinthians and Romans. In the Epistles of the Captivity the doctrine of the Kingdom is a social organism permeated and vitalized by Christ's spirit of service. Personal immortality is union with the life of God.
In view of the notoriety of Ephesus as the very centre of the trade in magic (so much so that spells and incantations were technically known as "Ephesian letters") and of what Acts tells us of the enormous destruction there of "books of magic" effected by Paul's preaching, it is not surprising that Asia and Phrygia should appear a few years after Paul's departure as the hot-bed of a "philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the 'elements' of the world, and not after Christ." Acts xx. 29 makes Paul predict the heresy.
Such was especially the case at Colossæ, a little town long after notorious for its superstition, where Epaphras, now Paul's fellow-prisoner, had founded the church. Epaphras himself at the time of Paul's writing was in great anxiety both for this church and for the adjoining churches at Hierapolis and Laodicea. Colossians is written to meet this danger, and was sent by the same bearers as the note to Philemon. It was to be exchanged, after being read at Colossæ, for another epistle sent simultaneously to Laodicea. Whether our Ephesians is this companion letter or only a deutero-Pauline production framed on the basis of some genuine letter written on this occasion, is a disputed point among critics. In Marcion's canon our Ephesians was called "Laodiceans," and in our own oldest textual authorities it has no address. We may assume that Ephesians is really the companion letter, whose original address was for some reason cancelled;[15] or that it is but partially from Paul's own hand. Neither view will materially alter our conception of his teaching, or the special application of it to the circumstances of the churches of the Lycus Valley. The important thing to observe is that whereas the application in Colossians is specific, in Ephesians it is systematic and general. Colossians wages a direct polemic against those who are making believers the spoil of mere 'Elements' by introducing distinctions of "meats and drinks" (a step beyond Mosaism), with observance of "feast days, new moons and sabbaths." In Ephesians we have, either altogether at first hand, or to a greater or less extent at second, a general, affirmative presentation of Paul's doctrine of Lordship in Christ. It has only incidental allusion to being "deceived with empty words" (v. 6), and a warning not to be "children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men in craftiness, after the wiles of error" (iv. 14).
Colossians and Ephesians develop, accordingly, that (cosmological) wisdom of God conveyed to Paul by the Spirit of Christ in a "mystery," at which he had only hinted in 1st Cor. ii. 1-16. Paul's gnosis, or insight, concerns the purpose of God in creation, hidden even from the (angelic) "world-rulers," who are coming to nought. The Spirit of Christ, who as the divine Wisdom had been the agent of creation, is given to Christian apostles and prophets. It affords them in the revelation of this "mystery" a philosophy both of creation and redemption which puts to shame mere speculative reasoning. The Inheritance—the things God prepared for those that love Him—consists (as an apocalyptic writer had said) of "things which eye had not seen, nor ear heard, nor had entered into the heart of man to conceive." Paul had purposely refrained from unfolding this revealed cosmology and philosophy of history to the Corinthians, in order to avoid just the evils which the teaching of Apollos had apparently precipitated at the time when 1st Corinthians was written. Still, we can gain from this very epistle (1st Cor. viii. 6; xv. 24-28) a partial conception of his doctrine of Christ as the beginning and end of the creation, the Wisdom of God by whom and for whom as Heir, all things were created. From Romans i.-viii. and ix.-xi. we can easily see that as Second Adam the Messiah was to Paul the key to the world's development and to human history; for since the triumph of Satan in Eden the whole creation had waited, groaning, for the advent of the sons. Galatians makes it no less clear that he thought of the Cross as the epoch-making event, which marks the transition from the period of the control of the world by secondary agencies, to the rule of the Son. This "mystery" is simply brought out and developed now in the Epistles of the Captivity. The effort and prayer is that the readers may "have the eyes of their heart enlightened," obtain something of Paul's own insight into the riches of the inheritance they are to share with Christ, something of Paul's experience of the power of God in raising Christ from the dead and setting Him on the throne of glory. If they but realize what Son ship and heirship with Christ implies—if they but take in the fact that by the resurrection Spirit within them they have already in a sense shared in this deliverance and this exaltation, they will be forearmed against all the vain deceits of theosophy. It is in fact this resurrection Spirit which brings about the unity of the world as a single organism. It extends from the uppermost height to the nethermost abyss. And because it is the Spirit of Jesus, it fills all it touches with the disposition to loving service. It affords a new ethics and a new politics whose keynote is the law of love in imitation of God and Christ. All social relations are recreated by it, beginning with family and church. Hence we must think of our redemption as like Israel's from the bondage and darkness of Egypt. The principalities and powers of this world, spiritual hosts of wickedness in the super terrestrial regions, are vainly endeavouring to hold back the people of God, in "this darkness." We have only to wait like Israel at the Passover "with our loins girt, and our feet shod." The Deliverer will soon appear from heaven, clad in armour of salvation, as in the ancient passover songs, cleaving the darkness with his sword of light, and leading forth the captives.
In these themes, variously interwoven in Ephesians and Colossians, it is difficult to say whether it is the note of unity or the note of freedom which predominates. Certainly we can recognize the same great apostle of liberty who in the epistles of the earlier period had proved the power and value of his religious insight by seizing upon the doctrine of Son ship as the essential heart of the gospel. It is the same genius consciously taught of God who had demanded and obtained recognition on equal terms for his gospel of Grace and Son ship, a gospel given by revelation of God's Son "in" him, who now demands that the gift of the Spirit to Jew and Gentile be recognized as calling for reconstruction of the doctrine of the coming Kingdom. "He that ascended is the same also that descended to the lowest depths that he might fill all things." And he poured out the "gifts" in order that they might make one organism of the new social order, a new creation animated and vitalized by Jesus' spirit of loving service.
For just as in all the great earlier epistles the note of longing for peace and unity in love rings ever stronger and clearer above the strife, so in the later epistles, the note of triumph in liberty has a deep under-chord of thanksgiving for reconciliation achieved. The great pæan of reverent adoration for the glory of God's grace in Eph. i. 3-14, is a thanksgiving for the union of Jew and Gentile in one common redemption. The retrospect of the work of God in ii. 11-21 is the proclamation of "peace to him that was far off and peace to him that was nigh." It is described as the building of Jew and Gentile into one living temple, upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone. The exhortation to the unity of the Spirit in iv. 1—vi. 9 rests upon an exultant application of the figure of the "one new man" in whose body all are members, that would be inconceivable if at the time of writing the church which had received the gifts from the ascended Lord was not indeed one body, but two bodies standing apart in mutual distrust and jealousy.
In fact we may say not of Ephesians only, but of Colossians likewise, and indeed of all the group: Their keynote is not so much the conquest of all things by Christ as "the reconciliation of all things in Christ, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens" (Col. i. 20). It is not unreasonable to infer from such undertones as these that the prayer was answered in which Paul when he set out from Corinth had besought the Roman church by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit to strive together with him, that his ministration which he had for Jerusalem might be acceptable to the saints, that so his coming to them in Rome through the will of God might be in joy, and that together with them he might find rest.