infinite powers." Accordingly, in our passage the words TO TrAr/pw/za
TOV Ta TrdvTa iv ndm TrX^pov^vov might be translated conformably to
Paul's usage : " the Divine fulness of him who filleth all in all ;" so
that Christ would be described in them as he in whom nav TO ?rA^-
pwpa rfjs deorrjTog KaroiKel, dwells all the fulness of the Godhead,
and who, as such, is able to fill the universe in all its forms with
his powers. But this in itself admissible interpretation of the
words fails when we come to the grammatical connexion ; TO TrA^-
pw/za forms an apposition to otipa ; a retrospective reference of it
to Christ is entirely inadmissible. For, if we would make it de-
pend on t-dw/ce in the sense, "God made him to be the fulness
of him that filleth all in all," the sense would be directly opposed
to Paul's tenets, as Christ possesses the fulness of the Godhead,
not through any act of the will of the Father, but by the ne-
cessity of his nature. It is only what is predicated of his human
nature, as the setting him to be head of the church, that can be re-
ferred to acts of the Divine will. If we, therefore, understand rb
rrA^a of the church, inasmuch as Christ, who fills all, fills it also,
we find another stumbling-block in the participle Tr^povfievov, which,
it seems, must be taken passively. The interpretation of Chrysos-
tom, Theophylact, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Beza, Calvin, who
understand rb ff^pqpa of the church, as complementum, the com-
plement of the rc^aXr,, by which the body is made complete, is so
utterly unsustained as to need no serious notice. For n^p^a can
certainly mean "complement," but there only, where mention is
made, as in Rom. xi. 12, of a deficiency (//TT^a), which is filled up,



EPHESIANS II. 1. 53

made good. And, besides, Christ is never called the head in such a
way that the church forms the complement of it, and that thus he
without the church, would be a mere head without a body, but so
that he, inseparably united with the body of the church, fills it with
his Spirit, and therefore is one with it, needs no complement. But
as to -n^poviisvoq it is certainly true that -n^rjpovadai occurs elsewhere
only as a passive, for which reason Chrysostom, Theophylact, Je-
rome, would so take it here; but the rd -ndvra iv -naat by no means
permits it, as Harless has convincingly shewn, and Winer (Gr. 38,
6) acknowledges ; wherefore it only remains to recognize here a so-
lecism in the use of TT^rjpovaOai in the middle form with an active
meaning. With this view there is no objection to our referring these
words to the church, as the body of our Lord ; it is called " the full-
ness of him who filleth all in all," in order to bring its high dignity
prominently out, and set it in contrast to everything else. Christ is
exalted above all power and might ; all adversaries God hath put
under his feet ; but the church is his body, he fills it with his holy
element of life.

Chap. ii. 1.' What has already been briefly observed above, with
respect to the construction of this verse and its connexion with what
precedes and what follows, must here first receive a more extended
demonstration. We must, above all, separate the purely grammat-
ical connexion from the connexion of the ideas, which here do not
run entirely parallel. According as the attention was fixed on the
one or the other alone, different interpretations were arrived at,
which in themselves could not satisfy. True, the connecting the
ace., Kal vfidg, K. T. A., with the immediately preceding 7rA?7poi;/m>ov
(which Calovius and Koppe recommended), or with vTrera^e at the
beginning of ver. 22, sufficiently refutes itself, and can make no
pretensions to correctness. On the other hand, the connecting of
ii. 1 with ver. 19, as also that of ii. 1 with ii. 4, 5, have both a
degree of correctness ; and what is true in both must be com-
bined. That is to say, the ace., teal vpdg ovrag veKpovg, K - r - ^-,
connects itself with ver. 19, not, indeed, by the grammatical co-
herence of the clauses, but certainly by the connexion of ideas.
For, beginning with ver. 15, this was as follows : " I pray God
that he may give you spiritual gifts of wisdom and revelation,
the eyes of your heart being enlightened in the knowledge of
him, to understand how great is the hope of the Divine calling,
and the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and the
greatness of his power to us-ward who believe." But with the
words Kara rrjv vKpyeiav } K. T. /L, Paul turns aside from the direct
address to his readers, and dwells upon what God has done in Christ.
So far as the power of God in Christ is the measure of the great-
ness of the working of his power upon the faithful (who, according



54 EPHESIANS II. 2.

to ii. 5, 6, are partakers in all that God does in Christ), this di-
gression has, to be sure, nothing heterogeneous in it ; but still it
carries us away from the immediate train of ideas. In ii. 1, on
the other hand, Paul again resumes in its main thread the chain
of ideas which he had pursued down to i. 19, except that instead
of the previous fjneig he again says fyi?, as in i. 13, thus making
the reference to the Gentile Christians prominent, though 7/jieZ?
recurs directly at ver. 5, after the topic touched on in vers. 2, 3 has
been discussed. If, therefore, ii. 1 is thus connected with i. 19, in the
main course of thought, we find on the other hand, no rhetorical
connexion at all with this verse ; but Paul permits himself to be
determined by the construction in vers. 20, 23, KOI inddioe KCU vne-
T-atje ical <Jw;e (which, in reference to the main course of thought
form subordinate clauses only}, to proceed with the main idea also
in this form of construction ; we can only, therefore, at KOI v/id^,
*. r. A., supply Oeof, with which ovve^orcoiijae (ii. 5), as the chief
verb, is connected. But, as the subject of the principal verb had
become uncertain, through the subordinate remarks again introduced
in ii. 2, 3, Paul repeats it (ii. 4), resuming with 6e the thread of his
discourse, and so does not regularly continue the discourse, which he
had begun at ii. 1, till ver. 5, when he pursues it down to ii. 7.

Paul here (ii. 1-5) begins by depicting man in general (ver. 5),
but primarily (ver. 2) the Gentiles, among whom sin had manifested
itself in the most startling forms (see Rom. i.), as dead, but after-
wards as quickened and raised up by God together with Christ. At
the basis of this lies the typical conception of the events of Christ's
life, which often appears in the New Testament, and especially in
Paul. (See the remarks on Rom. vi. 1, seq.) There seem accord-
ingly, as has been already observed, to be good reasons for the pre-
ceding digression concerning the person of Christ (i. 20-23). Men
are of course here called dead through transgressions, inasmuch as
the higher life of the spirit is vanished ; though alive physically,
man is dead spiritually, &v rkQvi\Ke, 1 Tim. v. 6. (The plural dpapTiai
of course denotes also workings of sin, not, however, sinful acts, so
definitely as TrapaTrrwjuara, but rather inward sinful movements of the
soul in desires and words. The article before the two words is to be
taken : the transgressions, the sin, which you are conscious of having
committed. In the parallel passage, Col. ii. 13, finally, venpoi, is
construed, not with the mere dative, but with iv TrapaTTTu^an. Here
sin is conceived as that which kills, but in the Epistle to the Co-
lossians as the element in which the deadness of the natural man
shews itself continually.)

Ver. 2. After this, Paul, with the words iv al$ TTOTK irepteTraTTJ-
nare, K. T. A., in which ye once walked, etc., begins a new digression,
which describes the state of sinfulness before conversion more accu-



EPHESIANS II. 2. 55

rately, but at the same time as one that has passed away. This
state is described by the phrase neonrarelv, walk, as a continued and
permanent one (see Eom. vi. 4 ; 2 Cor. iv. 2), in opposition to single,
isolated transgressions, and that, too, as a walking in accordance, not
with the heavenly world, with the kingdom of God, but with the
spirit of this world. Both phrases, Koa^ioq ovroq, and al&v ovrog, are,
it is well known, often found in the New Testament dialect, but the
conjunction of the two phrases, Kara rbv al&va rov Kua^ov rovrov } in
this passage, is singular. We cannot suppose a reference to the
Gnostic use of the word, for the reason that Paul here characterizes
no special error, and therefore not the doctrine of the jEons ; but
describes the position of the Gentiles in a way entirely general.
Riickert's idea, that the pronoun is to be joined with aluv in this
way, tcard rov ai&va rovrov rov Koofwv, can make no claim to be re-
ceived, besides that the combination aluv ovrog rov KOO^OV is also quite
unusual. We might, perhaps, however, starting from the generally
received meaning of al6v, " time," take the phrase in the sense of
" course of time, tendency of the age," unless, with Harless, accord-
ing to the original meaning of the word in Homer and Pindar, vital
power., we determined more accurately its meaning, as not denoting
the abstract idea " time" at all, but " movement and development
in time," which gives us, as its natural sense, " Genius, spirit of the
age." But what was first expressed impersonally, is now, in what
follows, conceived personally. As he that lives in accordance with
the heavenly world, walks " according to God," so he who lives in
accordance with the aluv rov noaftov rovrov, walks according to the
devil. But this "accordance" expresses, at the same time, the
being determined or governed by the devil ; for he knows how to
lead men in accordance with his wishes through his influence. Paul
describes, in his peculiar way, the prince of darkness as ap%uv rf}$
i^ovoia^ rov depog, prince of the power of the air. The name p%wv,
prince, used of the devil, is, it is true, by no means surprising, and
particularly in John he is often called so. (John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi.
11.) But at the outset, the import of rrjg K^ovoiag is obscure ; for
the genitive cannot, as might at first sight be thought, be taken as
an apposition, qui est potestas, or cui est potestas, but must express
the object of the dominion. Neither can we by any means suppose
a reference to Gnostic false doctrines, as they prevailed among the
Colossians, because, as has been already observed in the Introduc-
tion, this epistle is quite free from polemics, nor can it even be shewn,
that K^ovaia was in use as a Gnostic terminus teclinicus, least of all
in the age of the apostles. According to Col. i. 13 (t^ovaia rov OKO-
TO?;^), and Eph. vi. 12, where evil spirits are called Koa^ioKpdropeg rov
OKorovg, world-rulers of darkness, igovaia here is surely nothing more
than the power of darkness in general, the kingdom of evil spirits con-



56 EPHESIANS II. 2.

ceived as a unity which Satan governs. But the most obscure of all
is the second genitive, rov dfyo?, of the air, which has much employed
the interpreters, and has in some cases called forth the most start-
ling views. Tov depot is not to be taken as a predicate of Ifrvoia, thus
representing evil spirits as of an airy nature, as Chrysostom, Grotius,
Cornelius a lapide, Calixtus, and others, have fancied ; the last two
indeed, adding as a subordinate consideration, that the evil spirits
caused storms, and other meteoric phenomena disastrous to man.
Paul considers demons as spiritual beings (vi. 12), not material
ones, however subtle, which they would be if they were airy beings.
The genitive, rov depot, denotes not their substantial nature, but the
region of their sojourn, the place of their activity ; in that all the
better interpreters are unanimous. We can also at once repudi-
ate the purely figurative or metaphorical acceptation of the phrase,
as worthy of no further investigation. Thus Calvin and Beza in-
sisted on finding in it a figurative designation of the great danger
which evil spirits prepared for man, as if, for instance, they hov-
ered in the air over their heads. Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, and
others, insisted, on the contrary, on the air being taken metonymi-
cally, continens pro contento, for the earth itself, surrounded by it.
The conjecture of Harless is very probable, that the reading of the
MS8. F.G., of the Vulgate, and, of several Fathers, dtpog rovrov,
rests on that interpretation, which would accordingly be very ancient.
But the acceptation of the phrase which recommends itself at first
sight seems to be that which takes di]p as synonymous with OKOTOC,
darkness. Evil spirits are very commonly represented in biblical
phraseology as belonging to the element of darkness, and it is like-
wise undoubted that drip, i. e., "the lower cloudy region," is used in
the classics as synonymous with darkness. (See Homer, Iliad, v.
776, xii. 240, xvii. 645 ; Hesiod, Theog. vv. 119, 252 ; Wisd., xvil
9.) That the meaning does not occur again in the New Testament
should not surprise us, as dr]p occurs altogether only at 1 Thess. iv.
17 besides. But the use of that meaning for the elucidation of this
passage is, according to Harless' remark, made inadmissible by the
circumstance that drjo means " darkness" but in a physical sense,
never in the figurative one " spiritual obscurity," for which onorog
always stands as the opposite of light. We are thus thrown back
upon the proper meaning of drip. But now, that Paul should have
assigned the atmospherical air as an abode for the evil angels, is both
striking in itself, and seems to contradict other passages, e. g., Eph.
vi. 12, where they are described as existing KV rolf t-rrovpaviois, in the
heavenly places. The reference to platonizing and gnosticising ideas,
which place evil spirits in the region of the air, is here inadmissible,
because those speculations of philosophy could scarcely be known to
the apostle, and he would not have used them as such even if they



EPHESIANS II. 2. 57

had been. He had but one s<5tirce of knowledge, illumination by the
Holy Ghost. Whatever in his communications coincides with the
views of other nations, or other schools, Paul has not borrowed from
the latter, but the rays of truth which are to be found in those
views appear allied with his doctrine in a manner independent of
that Divine illumination which filled the apostle. The parallel
passages which have been quoted from Jewish writers seem of more
importance, because among the people of Israel, even where the Old
Testament is silent, opinions may have been transmitted by tradi-
tion even from the age of the prophets, which find a corroboration in
the New Testament, and especially because Paul had, as a born Jew
and a scholar of the Kabbis, from his early youth forward, imbibed
the opinions of Jewish sages, and, as it were, breathed in their spir-
itual atmosphere. But the Holy Spirit filling Paul, enabled him,
even in his Jewish circle of ideas, to separate with accuracy truth
and error ; hence he never adopted an idea merely because it was
of Jewish origin, and had been familiar to him from childhood ; but
whatever Jewish opinions known to him he retained and made use of,
he adhered to because the Spirit in him guaranteed them. But now
we must add that the careful inquiry which Harless (pp. 154-6)
has instituted into the Rabbinical passages on which the assertion
that the Jews supposed the evil spirits lived in the air is founded,
shews them to be far from proving this as a prevailing opinion among
the people. On the contrary, there appears in this respect such ob-
scurity, confusion, and gross superstition, in the Rabbinical writings,
that the above-named interpreter justly considers " such quagmires"
as wholly unadapted to furnish anything for the elucidation of our
passage. We therefore confine ourselves to Divine revelation, and
seek to determine the meaning of the words egovaia rov depog by
the intimations contained in that revelation itself, in the following
way. According to Job i. 6, Satan, too, appears along with the '.sa
BT'^r! plainly in heaven. In like manner at Eph. vi. 12, compared
with iii. 10, the angels, good and bad, are represented as to be found
iv Tolg K-rrovpaviou; , which, according to Eph. ii. 6 is equivalent to ev r<3
ovpavti, in heaven. As spiritual beings they are separated from the
earth, the material world, and assigned to the heavenly world, as the
spiritual one. If the words are not expressly " in the heaven," the
cause is to be sought for in the circumstance that " heaven" is not a
mere description of the spiritual world, but also of the holy and blessed
region, the abode of God. Still in Luke x. 18 ; Rev. xii. 8, 9, 12, the
devil is also represented as to be found v ovpavti, and as not degraded
to the earth till after his subjugation, though, no doubt, the figura-
tive colouring in these passages is not to be overlooked. Now, if we
compare the only other passage in the New Testament in which drjp
occurs, viz., 1 Thess. iv. 17, it appears (see the Comm. on that passage)



58 EPHESIANS II. 2.

that etg depa is put there for d<; ovpavov, in that the sensible concep-
tion of being " caught up" (apna&oQaC) is expressed by the phrase
elg aepa. In like manner we find in Matth. vi. 26 the phrase ovpavo?
used ; the birds are there called " the birds of heaven," because they
seem to the view of sense to fly in heaven. Accordingly, we believe
we are fully justified in understanding drip in our passage, not
of the atmospherical air, but of the higher regions generally, which
we are wont to call heaven. Paul here chose for the idea that phrase
instead of e-ovpaviuv, with the object, perhaps, of characterizing by
it the powers to which the readers of the epistle had been subject
before their conversion, as not earthly ones, it is true, but certainly
not heavenly ones either.

But, further, the concluding words also of this difficult second
verse, rov -nvev^arog, K. r. A., require a closer investigation. The sup-
position of Flatt, that rov irvevfjtaros stands parallel to Kara rbv dp-
Xpvra, consequently for Kara TO rrvevpa, according to the Spirit, as
also the opinion of several of the Fathers, that rov depof rov nvevua-
ro$ are to be connected in the sense of Tvevjuarof depiov, need no refu-
tation. Riickert maintains that Paul has departed from the
construction ; but that hypothesis is rendered unnecessary by our
pointing out a proper construction. Such a one arises if we put
TO* TTvevparog as equivalent to TT/? %ovoia<;, and make both genitives
depend on Kara rbv dp%ovra. That is to say, while the objective
power of evil, the kingdom of darkness, is denoted by tt-ovoia,
TTvev^a relates to its subjective side, to the spirit of evil, working in
the souls of men. This proceeds from the devil and the evil spirits,
and has, therefore, the spiritual nature which they themselves bear
within them ; but of course it is only the created spirit. The effi-
cacy of this evil principle begets in the children of disobedience the
trespasses and sins of which mention was made in ver. 1. As now,
in those words, the state of sinners is described altogether generally,
apart from their relation to redemption, we have no reason to inter-
pret the dTreieeia of unbelief in the gospel ; the expression denotes
disobedience in general, which is the essence of sin, in whatever form
it may shew itself. From the vvv we are not to infer that the
Spirit worked thus in the children of unbelief then only when Paul
wrote ; on the contrary, it continually works in the very same way ;
Paul rather means by the vvv to contrast earthly conditions in
general with the aluv ^Uuv of the kingdom of God, and by that
means to make the working of the devil appear as confined, in con-
tradistinction to the eternal Divine working of the Holy Ghost.
Meyer's explanation of vvv, "which even now, when the gospel is
working so powerfully counter to it, still continues to reign in
the children of unbelief," is justified by nothing in the context.
On the contrary, the contrast with TTOTK gives the vvv clearly enough



EPHESIANS II. 3. 59

its reference to the state of man without Christ, i. e., the aluv ovrog.
(See Col. iii. 7.)

Ver. 3. While vers. 1 and 2 were addressed to the Gentile
Christians, Paul in verse 3 makes a transition to the Jewish Chris-
tians, and says the same of them. Before their conversion (nors) they
too walked among the children of disobedience in the wicked lusts
of the flesh. In the same way, in the second chapter of Romans,
the state of the Jews is paralleled with that of the Gentiles de-
scribed in Rom. i. Further, the dvaaTQKfaoBai ev emdvpiaig r?/f aapnog,
just as the Trepnrarelv Kara of ver. 2, portrays the enduring mode
(plan, direction) of life in opposition to isolated sinful acts. From
evil lusts proceeds the accomplishing of the desires of the flesh 3
and of sinful thoughts. Although it is well known that in Paul's
usual language, as already shewn at Rom. vii. 14, flesh denotes not
sensuality or fleshly lust alone, but the whole God-averted tendency
of man and of the V )U % ? ?, yet Paul ascribes no didvoicu to the odp%.
The collocation of the words is therefore very suitably chosen ; rrjs
aapKog could not have stood after diavoitiv. The de^^ara oapKo^ stand
in relation to the above-mentioned imdvfiiais as the single actual lusts,
which are developed according to circumstances from the state of
concupiscentia, but didvotai denotes sinful thoughts, which have no
sensual desire for their basis. As didvoiat here, so in Matth. xv. 19
Aa/loytc^of, but with the addition Trovrjpog, is used of sinful thoughts ;
but in Luke xi. 17 diavoima by itself denotes wicked thoughts. If
any one, however, should conclude from this description that all Jew-
ish Christians, and consequently all the apostles likewise, had actually
committed the grossest carnal sins, he would be greatly mistaken.
Paul, entirely in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, contemplates
internal sinful aberrations as already actual sins before God. But
now at length by the w? teal ol ^onroi, which has a retrospective refer-
ence to verse 2, Paul comprises the whole picture of the sinfulness
of men in the sentence : r^ev (scil. TTOTE, before our conversion to
Christ) reKva Qvoet opyfjg, we were by nature children of wrath, or, as
Lachrnann after A.D.E.F.G. reads, tyvaei -rmva 6py%, but which looks
more like a correction to facilitate the understanding of the passage,
than like the original reading. That in these words the expression
tpyrj, put absolutely, is the Divine anger, cannot be doubtful, whether
by itself, or after the parallel passage Col. iii. 6. But as to the reality
of that anger we have already at Matth. xviii. 34, 35, John iii. 35,
36, expressed ourselves at sufficient length. Certainly in God anger
is no passion (so far as the expression is anthropopathic), but the real
displeasure of God's holiness at what is evil. Now men as sinners
are the objects of this divine displeasure, i. e., rinva I>pj7^. For the
context must determine the sort of dependence which is always ex-
pressed by vloq or TKKVOV. The interpretation of TKK.VOV by



60 EPHESIANS II. 3.

which Calvin, Grotius, and other interpreters defend, is not the
proper meaning of the word, hut only a derivative one ; the object of
the Divine anger is, under all circumstances, such a one as deserves
punishment. But Qvaei, by nature, is here in a dogmatic point of
view extremely important lor the doctrine of original sin ; that is
to say, if " we were children of wrath," stood alone, one might think
that every single person had by his individual fault alone made
himself the object of the Divine anger, as the Pelagian-rationalistic
mode of interpretation is wont to maintain. This view of man's
sinful nature, as produced in every individual by personal guilt, is
refuted by (frvaei. True, many subtleties have been introduced into
the interpretation of it (see Haiiess on this passage, p. 171, seq.);
but (j>vms cannot, without violence, be understood otherwise than as
the Latin natura, of what is original, innate, in opposition to what
has been acquired by practice. True, a thing may by custom be-
come <f>vai<;, but the habitual always forms a contrast with what is
<j>vaei. Now, that Paul does not mean original, innate, to be here
taken as, created by God, cannot indeed be deduced from this pas-
sage itself; we see from the chief passage (Rom. v. 12, seq.) on
the doctrine of original siu that Paul derives the sinful nature,
born in all individuals without exception, from the original sin of