1
Introduction
1.1 The problem
One of the crucial but almost neglected questions in New Testament research is that of the Jewish attitudes toward the Gentiles in the epistle to the Ephesians. The main reason for the neglect of this ethnic factor, unfortunately, has been the uncritical reading of some of the statements about the Gentiles in Ephesians itself, which I hope to rectify in the present study. Still more importantly, the neglect of the factor is closely associated with the hermeneutical ‘grid’ through which Pauline Christianity was portrayed. A brief comment on the framework mentioned above is appropriate.
New Testament scholarship on Pauline Christianity since the second quarter of the nineteenth century, as widely recognised, has been dominated largely by the philosophy of dialectics, epitomised by the works of Hegel. The founder of the Tübingen School, F. C. Baur, and a chorus of scholars who depended upon this philosophy, had read the history of earl- iest Christianity in dialectic terms.1 Baur and his followers, as we shall see, have had a continuing sway in subsequent New Testament scholarship not only in the area of Paul’s earlier letters but also in such letters as Ephesians. The heritage of the dialectic philosophy with which Baur was associated may also account for the tendency to interpret Pauline Christianity in terms of conflict between Jews and Gentiles or between Jewish Christianity and Hellenistic Christianity (see my review of Percy and Fischer below).2 Suffice it to say that works of the proponents of this school of thought reveal a fundamental problem of the paradigm. With its emphasis on ‘conflict’ or ecclesiastical polemic, the paradigm mentioned above has led in no small degree to the underestimation of other factors which are germane to our understanding of Pauline Christianity. Indeed the major deficiency of the foregoing paradigm is its failure to penetrate more fully into the historical context within which the Pauline letters were written and to which these letters were addressed. But with the introduction to New Testament studies of the ‘new perspective on Paul’, it has now become quite clear that an opportunity to reconsider the question of Pauline Christianity, and more importantly to set the epistle to the Ephesians within the ‘new perspective’, can now be undertaken. The works of E. Sanders (1977) and J. Dunn (1988, 1990)3 in particular have been valuable contributions in this direction.
Sanders has built up a different presentation of Palestinian Judaism at the time of Paul from a massive analysis of much of the relevant Jewish literature for that period. His main contention is that Judaism during the Second Temple period has always been first and foremost a religion of grace, with human obedience understood as response to that grace. He has shown with sufficient weight of evidence that for the first-century Jew, Israel’s covenant relation with God was fundamental: God had chosen Israel to be his peculiar people, to enjoy a special relationship under his rule. The covenant had been given by divine initiative. The law had been given as an expression of this covenant and provided the framework for life within it (thus, ‘covenantal nomism’).4 The perspective-shifting work of Sanders is hailed by Dunn, who has made a fresh assessment of Paul’s earlier letters (Romans and Galatians) and theology with the ‘new perspective’.5 One of the values of the ‘new perspective’ is that it allowed the fundamental problem of the relationship of Christianity to Judaism to re-emerge on centre stage.6 It also allowed exegetes to penetrate inside the historical context, a major part of which is the self-understanding of Jews and Judaism in the first century, and the life setting in which Paul’s letters were first read and heard.7 We may add that one of the benefits we can gain from fresh insights provided by the ‘new perspective’ is that of a greater critical distance from the methodological presuppositions of Baur and his successors.
The present study seeks to bring the significance of the ‘new perspective’ to bear on Ephesians, in the hope of being able to read Ephesians within the context which it provides (see my discussion in Chapter 2 below). It is my contention that previous work on Ephesians has seriously undermined the degree of continuity between Israel and the church which it expresses. The ‘new perspective’ mentioned above has given us an opportunity to look at some of the old issues afresh. What is the relation of the author’s theology to that of first-century Jews and Judaism? What picture of Judaism can we draw from the writing of Ephesians? Was Judaism simply the foil of the author’s theology of the church? How does he relate the church to Israel’s heritage in terms of continuity and discontinuity? To what extent do we see a distinctively Jewish view of the Gentiles? Do we easily see Jewish atitudes toward the Gentiles in Ephesians? What was at issue between Jews and Gentiles? It is my conviction that these questions can be understood only if the historical context of first-century Jews and Judaism is fully appreciated.
1.2 The justification of the present study
Despite the fact that Ephesians has been the locus of intense scholarly interest and, with reference to 2.11–22 in particular, a lively arena of debate, no full-scale treatment of the theme of Jewish attitudes toward the Gentiles and ethnic reconciliation in Ephesians 2 against the backdrop of the Jewish perspective has yet been undertaken. The present study is thus an endeavour to fill that gap. Before proceeding with an account of the Jewish attitudes toward the Gentiles, which takes into account the ethnic factors and the issue of ethnic reconciliation closely associated with it, a review of some of the major contributions of previous scholars would be appropriate.
The scholarly investigation of our letter is quite vast, and an adequate treatment of its history would require a sizeable monograph.8 For our present purposes only the studies of representatives of the major hypotheses will be reviewed. In addition to this, most of the arguments and counter-arguments advanced in these hypotheses do not concern us except in three respects, in the hope that this will help us to gain some orientation in what is otherwise a baffling mass of conflicting theories. First, we are interested in what has already been said in these studies about the Gentiles and Jews in Ephesians. Secondly, we are also interested in the virtual absence of reference in such studies to the purpose of Ephesians against the backcloth of the Jewish perception of the Gentiles which is the chief concern of this study. Thirdly, we are concerned with the virtual absence of reference in such studies to the connections between Jewish attitudes toward Gentiles and ethnic reconciliation.
1.2.1 A ‘Gentile Christianity’ drifted from its mooring in the Jewish tradition?
There is an influential school of thought which suggests that Ephesians addressed a concrete crisis created by the success of ‘Gentile Christianity’ and its drift from its moorings in the Jewish tradition. The influence of this is well illustrated in the works of E. Käsemann and a chorus of scholars who followed this theory.
Käsemann9 assumed that the specific historical situation addressed by the author of Ephesians is disclosed in Ephesians 2.11ff. He argues that the letter/tractate was written to urge the Gentile Christian majority to accept a Jewish Christian minority and to retain its ties with the ancient Hebrew tradition. What was mentioned as a possibility by Paul in his earlier letter (i.e. Rom. 11.17ff.) has now become an actuality: Gentile Christians are looking with disdain upon Jewish Christians. The thought-provoking thesis of Käsemann thus envisages a situation in which Gentile Christians were feeling a certain unease about the historical linkage of their faith with Israel and were rejecting the Jewish Christians’ emphasis on salvation history. He thus theorises that the Gentiles were looking to some timeless Gnostic myths about creation and redemption to fill the vacuum created by this rejection of the Old Testament. The net result of this move was not only a severance of Gentile Christianity from its historical moorings but an effective dissolving of Christian community, since, according to Käsemann, Gnosticism is a religion which had little room for the notion of a church/community.10 This accounts for the author’s insistence on the place of the church as the new creation, and his bringing Jews and Gentiles into one body where each needs the other not only in the cosmos but in history. The author of Ephesians therefore offers a sustained apologetic for the necessity of the church as a historical entity in which the Gentiles in particular have their place as part of redeemed creation with links connecting them to Israel.11
Käsemann also sees the ecclesiology of Ephesians as typical of an institutionalised Christianity which had subordinated christology to a ‘high’ view of the church.12 In this way, he is able to acknowledge an important development of Pauline theology in the ecclesiology of Ephesians, and relegates Ephesians to a post-Pauline era when a degenerated form of the apostle’s theology set in.
It must be said that Käsemann’s assertion, presumably driven along by the force of his internal dialogue (i.e. between his reading of Ephesians and himself), despite its increasing detachment from the author’s own emphases, is made with no exegetical backing. His thesis that at the time when Ephesians was written the ‘concrete situation’ was that ‘the Gentile Christians were pushing the Jewish Christians aside’ is difficult to prove.13 The reasons why the continuity of the people of God (Israel) was thwarted and therefore needed to be energetically stressed must be sought elsewhere.
P. Sampley also contends that Gentile Christianity was threatening to lose its connection with Jewish Christianity.14 He concludes that the use of the OT in the letter reflects the author’s intention to reply to Gentile Christians who were in danger of divorcing themselves from their Jewish Christian heritage.15 R. Martin argues that in a church predominantly made up of Gentile Christians the danger presented a new face: it was not that Gentile believers would succumb to Judaising practices (such as circumcision). Rather, the threat was that Gentile Christians would want to cast off all association with the Old Testament faith and disown their origins in Israel’s salvation history. Thus, the Gentiles need a salutary reminder that ‘salvation is of the Jews’ and that Paul’s ‘salvation history’ theology never displaced the significance of Israel as the people of God who have now come to full realisation in the ‘one body’ of a world-wide church in the author’s day. For Martin, ‘the separation of Christianity and Judaism is recognised; Jewish Christianity has passed into history as a once-posed threat to the audience of Ephesians’;16 and the ‘recall’ to that continuity is the main theme in Ephesians 2.11–22.17 D. Smith, like Martin, finds in Ephesians a Gentile Christianity which was threatening to lose its connection with Jewish Christianity, but he argues that the author refers to certain ‘Gentile-Jewish-Christians’ who displayed contempt toward natural Jews who have become Christians.18 These Christians were syncretistic in disposition, representing ‘a fascinating synthesis of esoteric elements drawn from Judaism, Christianity and Hellenistic religion in general’.19
It may fairly be claimed that Käsemann and others depend too heavily upon the theory pioneered by Baur, who contends that the history of ‘primitive’ Christianity, like all human history, was determined by the interplay of human conflict and actually took place within the nexus of such an interplay.20 It has become quite obvious that the ‘conflict’ theory outlined above has exerted enormous influence on subsequent studies and spawned multiple permutations and hybrids. Nevertheless, the common deficiency of the studies outlined above is its failure to move beyond speculation about the negative attitude of Gentile Christians toward Jewish Christianity. Baur, Käsemann and others who followed in their footsteps have ignored the presence of obvious Jewish features which provide clues concerning the Jewish attitudes toward the Gentiles, let alone the author’s representation of these attitudes.
1.2.2 The equalising of the Gentiles with the Jews?
Moving in a rather different direction from the theses outlined above, E. Percy has proposed a different kind of crisis which gave rise to the writing of Ephesians.21 Like Käsemann, Percy also insists that Ephesians 2.11–22 is the centre of the epistle, but he argues (contra Käsemann) that the passage in Ephesians 2.11–22 is primarily a proclamation of Gentiles who participate in the promise of salvation in the same way as the Jews (‘daß die Heiden in gleicher Weise wie die Juden am Heil teilnehmen’).22 The prerequisite of the equal partnership is based on the Christ-event described in vv. 14–15. Percy, who wrote in a pre-Sanders era, contends that the Law as the means of salvation is the sole obstacle which separated Jews from the Gentiles. Once this stumbling block is removed, their equal share in salvation will be gained.23 Yet Percy has given no real attention to the ethnic factor by which one may account for Jewish attitudes toward the Gentiles. More importantly, the connections between ethnocentrism and the need to stress the motif of equal partnership between Jew and Gentile are not adequately dealt with in Percy’s monograph.
1.2.3 Israel, Gentiles and the Church: continuity or discontinuity?
A new stage in the discussion of Ephesians is marked by the well-known hypothesis of M. Barth, who contends that the theme in Ephesians 2 (especially vv. 11–22) is the ‘naturalisation of the Gentiles’. He has argued in a very straightforward manner in a number of publications that there is only one people of God, Israel, of which Gentile Christians are members.24 He however maintained that the statement in Ephesians 2.12 describes ‘a status of strangership’ rather than ‘an event leading to estrangement’. The expression ‘strangers and sojourners’ (v. 19) is the authentic interpretation of Gentiles being ‘excluded’ from Israel. These terms prove that the Gentiles had not been ‘naturalised’; the author does not intend to say that at an earlier moment they were ‘expatriated’. Never before have the Gentiles been fellow-citizens and members of Israel.25 The naturalisation and adoption of Gentiles, according to Barth, presupposes the destruction of the wall, built up by an interpretation of the law ‘in statutory ordinances’, which separates the people of God from the nations.26
Barth’s approach is different from those studies mentioned in the foregoing section and begins to take the Jew–Gentile problem seriously. His basic concern is the identity of Israel as the one people of God, and the identity of Christianity which is to be defined in that light. However, the one significant issue that Barth has failed to clarify in his study of Ephesians is whether Israel could become so entangled with a particular ethnic identity that one can only speak of the ‘naturalisation of the Gentiles’ as tantamount to turning them into proselytes or an ethnically based Judaism. Suffice it to say that Barth has given no real attention to the ethnic factors that had led to Gentiles being ‘excluded’ from the Israel of God.
Barth’s ‘laology’, however, has come under severe attack in studies which opt for the theories of substitution in which Israel is replaced by the church. The church, according to some scholars, is the ‘true Israel’.27 M. Rese, for example, has raised the issue of Israel and the ‘relationship of church and Israel’ in his essay entitled ‘Die Vorzüge Israels in Röm 9,4f. und Eph 2,12: Exegetische Anmerkungen zum Thema Kirche und Israel’ (1975).28 He advances his study with the assumption that the views of ‘Israel’ in Romans 9.4f. and Ephesians 2.12 are very different and that the writers of these letters have opposite views about the relationship between the church and Israel: ‘While the advantages of Israel are spoken of directly in Rom. 9.4f., they are in view only indirectly in Eph. 2.12 and then in such a way that the Gentile Christians are reminded of their relationship to Israel in their pre-Christian heathen past.’29 Rese then argues that the dark description of the Gentile Christians’ past is nothing else than the dark background against which the bright present stands out all the more. In this bright salutary present there is no room for any thought about the unbelieving Israel. Something like the unbelieving and hardened Israel, whose existence and fate bothered and moved Paul in Romans 9–11, does not exist for the author of Ephesians. He concludes that Israel has found her genuine prolongation exclusively in the church of Jewish and Gentile Christians: ‘The peculiarity of Israel is thereby transferred to the Church of Jesus Christ and therefore only mentioned indirectly. After Christ the Church and Israel are one and the same thing; the unbelieving Israel is outside the horizon of the Church, is simply unimportant.’30 For Rese, the differences between Romans and Ephesians go beyond anything that might be explained simply as a result of differences between times and audiences addressed in these letters.31
Rese’s thesis so much hinges on his interpretation of the tiny phrase in Ephesians 2.12 (ὅτι ⃞τε τῷ καιρῷ ἐκείν⃞ χωρὶς ⃞ριστο⃞) that Christ is understood as ‘not yet in his flesh’ (‘der Zeit vor Christus’).32 It is at this point that it becomes clear that Rese’s thesis is inadequate as an explanation of the ‘opposite views about the relationship between the church and Israel’ in Romans and Ephesians. It is less than clear that the author’s concern is the ‘salvation-historical difference between Jews and Gentiles that was in force in the time before Christ’.33 It is also far from true that the alleged ‘opposite views’ necessarily reflect the different viewpoints of the writers of the two letters (according to Rese, Paul and his pupil). Rese has taken Ephesians 2.12 out of its original context (esp. v. 11!) and more importantly he has failed to ask whether the statements about the Gentiles in Ephesians 2.12 consist of ‘echoic utterances’ or the perception of other Jews about the Gentiles. What we miss in Rese’s work, therefore, is a careful analysis of the Jewish perspective (or Judaism), on which our explanation of ‘Israel’s privileges which make up the past deficiencies of the Gentiles’ (and the ‘differences’ between Romans and Ephesians) ought to be based.
A major challenge to Barth’s notion of ‘laology’ is that of A. Lincoln. Writing on the church and Israel in Ephesians,34 Lincoln has rightly observed that the pericope in Ephesians 2.11–22 stands parallel to 2.1–10. This is confirmed by a formal analysis of the contrast schema of ‘then’ and ‘now’ which provides a major structural element for the pericopes of 2.1–10 and 2.11–22, respectively, and shapes also the key summarising verse later (v. 19).35 He argues that the primary purpose of the ‘then–now’ schema (and therefore of the pericope of vv. 11–22) is not a general depiction of the relationship between Gentiles and Jews, nor is it primarily an answer to the question, ‘How can Jews and Christians (sc. Gentiles) be the eschatological people of God?’ (contra Merklein),36 nor is it even a discussion of the place of the Gentiles in the history of salvation. Instead, Ephesians 2 involves a comparison between these particular Gentile readers’ pre-Christian past in its relation to Israel’s privileges, and their Christian present in the church, on which attention is focused at the end of the chapter in vv. 19–22. The mention of Israel, then, only functions as part of this comparison and serves the purpose of bringing home to the readers the greatness of their salvation.37 The irony in Lincoln’s proposal, however, is that the more he speaks about the deprived status of the Gentiles against the backdrop of Israel’s privileges,38 the more distant/estranged the Gentiles and Israel have become. Lincoln also overstates the discontinuity of Israel and the church.39 His proposal gives very little attention to the question of whether the author’s statements about the Gentiles’ past also tell us as much about the Jews as about the Gentiles. He has failed to ask whether the author of Ephesians also reveals the Jewish attitudes toward the Gentiles by means of the ‘then–now’ schema, i.e. the mindset that is not necessarily that of the author himself, but which forms the basis of his argument, let alone some of the pertinent issues which are concealed in these attitudes.40 These issues, significant as they must be for our understanding of the purpose of Ephesians 2, are not adequately dealt with in Lincoln’s work. What appears to be most important for Lincoln is that the author of Ephesians has underlined the discontinuity in the relationship of Israel and the church.41