St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians: A Practical Exposition

by Charles Gore

It is very strange, or at least would be strange if we were not acquainted with the historical circumstances that have accounted for it, that St. Paul has been, out of all proportion to the facts of the case, identified in popular estimation with only the earlier of the two great arguments described above, with that which has given the basis to Protestantism, and not that which is, in fact, the charter of the Catholic Church.

We are all familiar with the fact that St. Paul taught the doctrine of justification by faith, and insisted therefore on the necessity and privilege of personal acceptance on the part of each individual of the promises of God in Christ. We all know how, when this aspect of things has been ignored and over-ridden—when an almost Jewish doctrine of the merit of good works[[12]] has been current in Christendom—it has afforded a pretext for a Protestant reaction of the most individualistic kind, of the kind which pays no regard to outward unity or catholic authority. But certainly in St. Paul's own teaching there is nothing individualistic in justifying faith. It is that by which man wins admittance into the body of Christ; and the body of Christ is an organized society, a catholic brotherhood. Salvation, as we shall see, is as much social or ecclesiastical as it is individual; and perhaps there is nothing more wanted to correct our ideas of what St. Paul understood by justifying faith than an impartial study of the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is true that this great epistle only freely developes thoughts which were already unmistakably in St. Paul's mind when he wrote his epistles to the Corinthians, and even those to the Thessalonians. Already the social organization of the Church is a prominent topic, and the ethics of Christianity are social ethics. But now, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the idea of the Church has become the dominant idea, and the ethical teaching can be justly characterized in no other way than as a Christian socialism.

iii.

But it is time to examine somewhat more closely the circumstances under which St. Paul wrote this epistle and their bearing upon its contents. It was written by him during that imprisonment at Rome[[13]] the record of which brings to an end the Acts of the Apostles. He can therefore put into his appeals all the force which naturally belongs to one who has sacrificed himself for his principles. 'I, Paul,' he writes, 'the prisoner of Jesus Christ, on behalf of you Gentiles.' He speaks of himself as 'an ambassador in a chain' bound, as he was no doubt, to the soldier which kept him. But the fact that he is a prisoner does not occupy a great place in his mind. In part this is because his imprisonment was not of a highly restrictive character. The Acts conclude by telling us that he was allowed to dwell in his own hired dwelling and to receive all that came to him without let or hindrance to his preaching. And the tone of the 'epistles of the first captivity' is cheerful as to the present and hopeful for the future[[14]]. But it is more important to notice that the thought of being in prison is apparently swallowed up in St. Paul's imagination by other considerations. For, in the first place, St. Paul was, under whatever restraints, at Rome. He had reached his goal—a new centre of evangelization which was also the centre of the world. Step by step the centre of Christian evangelization had passed toward Rome as its goal. From Jerusalem, which told unmistakably that 'the salvation was of the Jews,' it had moved to Antioch, where in a Greek city Jew met Gentile on equal terms. From Antioch, under St. Paul's leadership, it had passed to Corinth and Ephesus. These were indeed thoroughly Gentile cities, and leading cities of the Empire, but they were provincial. No imperial movement could rest satisfied till it established itself at the centre of the great imperial organization—till it had got to Rome.

If we are to understand at all adequately the world in which St. Paul wrote, the thought of the Roman Empire and of the unity which it was giving the world must be clearly before our minds: and it will not be a digression if we pause to dwell upon it at this point when we are considering the significance of St. Paul's situation as at once a prisoner and an evangelist in the great capital.

The Roman Empire brought the world, that is the whole of the known world which was thought worth considering, into a great unity of government. What had once been independent kingdoms had now become provinces of the empire, and the whole of the Roman policy was directed towards drawing closer the unity, and educating the provinces in Roman ideas[[15]].

If we seek to define Roman unity a little more closely the following elements will be found perhaps the most important for our purpose. (1) It was a unity of government strongly centralized at Rome in the person of the emperor. The letters of a provincial governor like Pliny to his master Trajan at Rome reveal to us how even trivial matters, such as the formation of a guild of firemen in Pliny's province of Bithynia, were referred up to the emperor. Roman government was in fact personal and centralized in a very complete sense, and had the uniformity which accompanies such a condition. (2) This centralized personal government is, of course, only possible where there is a well-organized system of inter-communication between the widely-separated parts of a great empire. And there was this to an amazing extent in the Roman empire. We find evidence of it in the great roads representing a highly developed system of travelling. 'It is not too much to say that travelling was more highly developed and the dividing power of distance was weaker under the Empire than at any time before or since until we come down to the present century.' This is what gives such a modern and cosmopolitan flavour to the lives of men of the Empire as unlike one another in other respects as Strabo and Jerome. We find the evidence of such a system of inter-communication also, and not less impressively, in the multiplied proofs afforded to us that every movement of thought in the Empire must needs pass to Rome and establish itself there. The rapid arrival of all oriental tendencies or beliefs at Rome was, of course, what from the point of view of conservative Romans meant the destruction of all that they valued in character and ideals. 'The Orontes had poured itself into the Tiber.' But it was none the less a fact of the utmost significance for the world's progress. (3) The unity of the Empire depended largely on the use which was made of Greek civilization and Greek language. The Empire may be rightly described, if we are considering its eastern half, as Greek no less than Roman from the first. Everywhere it was the Greek language which was the instrument of Roman government, and Greek civilization, tempered by somewhat barbarous Roman 'games,' which was put into competition with local customs whether social or religious[[16]]. (4) Lastly, to a very real extent the Empire was aiming at the establishment of a universal religion. Independent local gods and local cults suited well enough a number of independent little tribes and kingdoms, but it was felt instinctively that the one empire involved also one religion, and with more or less of deliberate intention the one religion was provided in the worship of the emperor, or, perhaps we should say, of the Empire.

This worship of the emperor has been among us a very byword for what is monstrous and unintelligible. It bewilders us when we hear of something like it in our own Indian empire. And yet a little imagination ought to show us that where a pure monotheism has not taught men the moral purity and personal character of God—where religion is either pantheism, the deification of the one life, or idolatry, the deification of separate forms of life—the worship of the imperial authority is intelligible enough. Here was a vast power, universal in its range, mostly beneficent, and yet awful in its limitless and arbitrary power of chastisement; what should it be but divine, like nature, and an object to be appealed to, propitiated, worshipped? At any rate the cultus of the emperor spread in the Roman world, and particularly in the Asiatic provinces. It could ally itself with the current pantheistic philosophy and also with popular local cults: for it was tolerant of all and could embrace them all, or in some cases it could identify itself with them—the emperor being regarded as a special manifestation of the local god. And it made itself popular through games—wild beast shows and gladiatorial contests—which it was the business of its high priests or presidents to provide or to organize. Thus it was that the Roman world came to be organized by provinces for the purposes of the imperial religion, and the provincial presidents, whom we hear of in the Acts as 'Asiarchs' or 'chiefs of Asia,' and from other sources as existing in the other provinces—Galatarchs, Bithyniarchs, Syriarchs, and so on—were also the high priests of the worship of the Caesars, by which it was sought to make religion, like everything else, contribute to cement imperial unity[[17]].