[162] Luke xvi. 8, xviii. 6.
[163] Τὰ πνευματικὰ tῆs πονηρίας.
[164] Mr. Moule aptly observes, in his excellent and most useful Commentary on Ephesians in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges: St Paul’s “testimony to the real and objective existence” of evil spirits “gains in strength when it is remembered that the epistle was addressed (at least, among other designations) to Ephesus, and that Ephesus (see Acts xix.) was a peculiarly active scene of asserted magical and other dealings with the unseen darkness. Supposing that the right line to take in dealing with such beliefs and practices had been to say that the whole basis of them was a fiction of the human mind, not only would such a verse as this [vi. 12] not have been written, but, we may well assume, something would have been written strongly contradictory to the thought of it” (p. 176).
[165] See p. 103.
[166] The objection against the common rendering taken from the absence of the Greek article (τά) before the phrase ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις, required to link it to τὰ πνευματικὰ τῆς πονηρίας, is not decisive.
[167] Col. ii. 8–10, iii. 1–4; Phil. iii. 20, 21: comp. Eph. i. 3, ii. 6, 18, iv. 10, 15; Heb. vi. 19, 20, etc.