Ephesians 1:17

ἵνα ὁ Θεὸς τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ : that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the parallel passage in Colossians 1:9 the ἵνα is preceded immediately by αἰτούμενοι, and has the reduced or sub-telic force which it has after verbs of asking, expressing the content of the prayer, but that in the light of purport. Here the ἵνα relates to the general idea of the sentence, instead of being immediately dependent on any verb for asking. It has more of the idea of purpose, therefore, in it. It is to be admitted, however, that in NT Greek the proper telic sense of ἵνα is seen in the process of weakening and passing over into the force of ἵνα as the sign of the inf. in modern Greek. Yet, even when expressing simple result or event, it has behind it the Hebrew idea of events as the results of Divine purpose cf. Blass, Gram. of N.T. Greek, pp. 224, 225; Buttm., Gram. of N.T. Greek, pp. 236 241; Ell. on Philippians 1:9. It is most usual for Paul to speak of God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or as His God and Father. Here he speaks simply of “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The designation, though misunderstood and misapplied by the Arians and their successors in modern times, is entirely consistent with Christ's own words (Matthew 27:46; John 20:17) and with the highest view of His Person. In the Eternal Godhead the Son has His life from the Father, the One Fount of Deity, and is subordinate in the sense in which son is subordinate to father, while He has the same Divine being. In the ministry of redemption our Lord, while the Son of the Eternal Father, is the Christ of God, God being revealed in Him, sending Him (Galatians 4:4), exalting Him (Philippians 2:9), receiving back the kingdom from Him (1 Corinthians 15:24). In respect of His mission, His mediation, His official work and relations, He has God as His God, whose commission He bears and whose redeeming purpose He is to fulfil. ὁ πατὴρ τῆς δόξης : the Father of glory. This is not to be taken in the reduced sense of “the glorious Father”. On the other hand it is not to be dealt with as if the δόξα referred to Christ's divinity, as in the exigencies of the controversy with Arian views some were driven to interpret it, arguing that the one phrase, “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,” applied to His human nature and the other, “the Father of the glory,” to His divine nature (Athan., Greg. Naz.). Nor yet, again, is δόξα to be regarded as referring to Christ's glorified humanity (Stier). Taking the δόξης in its proper sense and with the full force of the gen. case, some give the πατήρ the sense of author or maker, understanding God to be designated as the Source of glory (Erasm., Grot., Olsh., etc.). For this some appeal to such instances as Job 38:28; James 1:17. But that is at the best a rare sense of πατήρ and one otherwise unknown to Paul. More is to be said in favour of the idea that the gen. designates God as the Father who gives glory, the glory bestowed on Christ Himself (cf. Acts 3:13) no less than that reserved for Christians. It is best, however, to take it as the gen. of characteristic quality the Father to whom glory belongs (Mey., Ell., etc.); cf. the same designation in Psalms 29:3; Acts 7:2; also “the King of glory,” Psalms 24:7; “the Lord of glory,” 1 Corinthians 2:8; “the cherubims of glory,” Hebrews 9:5, etc. The appropriateness of the title here lies in the preceding definition of the final end of God's counsel and grace εἰς ἔπαινον τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ. δῴη ὑμῖν : may give unto you. Lachm., Fritzsche (Rom., iii. 230) and Haupt (who refers to the confirmation furnished recently by two inscriptions of the second century given in Dittenb., Syll., 462 17, 4669) give the Ionic conj. δώῃ; WH give δώῃ vel δῷ in the margin, but δῴη in the text. The latter form is to be preferred, although opinion is still divided to some extent on the conj. and opt. forms. Blass, e.g., takes the δώῃ in the present passage to be really a conj. and to be best represented by the δῷ of Cod. B. He is inclined to regard the forms δοῖ, δώῃ as both conj. and opt. (Gram. of N.T. Greek, pp. 49, 211). As in the NT ἵνα in the vast majority of cases is followed by the conj. or the fut. indic. even after past tenses, it would be most natural to accept the conj. form here. But this Ionic form of the conj. appears to be strange to the NT and to be “without analogies in later Greek” (Butt., Gram. of N.T. Greek, p. 46). On the other hand, the form δῴη seems to be recognised as a later Greek equivalent to δοίη, and Winer accepts it as an opt. pres. in NT Greek, pointing to such passages as Romans 15:5; 2Ti 1:16; 2 Timothy 1:18 (Ephesians 2:7); John 15:16, as well as Ephesians 1:17; Ephesians 3:16, and the comp. ἀποδῴη of 2 Timothy 4:14 (Win.-Moult, Gram., p. 94. πνεῦμα σοφίας καὶ ἀποκαλύψεως : the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. The question here is whether the πνεῦμα is to be understood in the subjective sense of our spirit, or in the objective sense of the Holy Spirit. The former view is adopted by Chrys., Thdrt., Rückert, De Wette, Bleek, and more recently by Abbott and the Revisers, the RV rendering being “a spirit of wisdom and revelation”. This is urged on the analogy of such occurrences as Romans 8:15; Romans 11:8; Galatians 6:1; 2 Timothy 1:7. But there is much against this. As Meyer points out, it is doubtful whether in the NT there is any case in which, when the πνεῦμα is spoken of as given, it is not the objective πνεῦμα. But apart from this, the matter in view is what the Ephesians were themselves to be, not what they were to do for others, and although it is easy enough to suit the subjective view of the πνεῦμα σοφίας (“a wise spirit”) to this, the difficulty is to adjust to this the subjective view of the πνεῦμα ἀποκάλυψεως. The fatal objection, indeed, to the interpretation in question lies in the sense of the ἀποκάλυψις, which has the stated meaning not of understanding mysteries but of disclosing them; and the tenor of the paragraph makes it impossible to suppose that in the one case, that of the σοφία, Paul had in view a gift that was to make themselves wise, and in the other, the ἀποκάλυψις, a gift that was to render them capable of disclosing mysteries to others. How difficult it is to give ἀποκάλυψις its proper sense on the subjective view appears from the renderings proposed, e.g., De Wette's, Rückert's, or Abbott's. The first makes it = “the quality of mind which consists in wisdom (mediate knowledge) and revelation (susceptibility for the immediate knowledge of divine truth)”; the second takes it as = “a wise heart and open for His revelation”; the third gives “a spirit of wisdom,” but leaves the rest unattempted. But ἀποκάλυψις is not a susceptibility for knowledge, nor a mind open to revelation, nor anything like that. It is necessary, therefore, to take πνεῦμα as = the Holy Spirit, with Mey., Ell., Haupt. and most. The fact that the phrase is πνεῦμα and not τὸ πνεῦμα is no objection to that. The attempts made by Middleton, Harless, and others to make out an established distinction between the two forms, the one referring regularly to the personal Spirit of God and the other to the indwelling influence of the Spirit or the spirit of the believers as ruled by the Holy Spirit, cannot be regarded as successful; the terms πνεῦμα, πνεῦμα ἅγιον, πνεῦμα Θεοῦ being free to drop the article as proper names or terms of understood meaning. But what is the particular idea then in each of the two words σοφία and ἀποκάλυψις ? It cannot be that the latter refers specifically to the χάρισμα of prophecy (so Olsh., etc.). For that is presented as a gift bestowed only on some, whereas the prayer here contemplates gifts for all those addressed, and there is nothing to indicate that a gift for the time being only is in view. Nor can it well be that the second noun expresses the means by which the gift intimated by the first noun was to take effect, the gift of revelation bringing about the gift of wisdom (Harl.); for we should expect the order in that case to be reversed. The distinction between the terms is rather that of the gift of spiritual understanding generally and the gift of special revelations in particular, cf. 1 Corinthians 2:10; and so far the second is the higher idea. What Paul prays for on behalf of these Ephesian converts is that God might continue to bestow upon them the gift of His Holy Spirit already imparted to them, and that to the effect both of making them wise to understand the things of His grace and of disclosing to them more of the mysteries of His kingdom. ἐν ἐπιγνώσει αὐτοῦ : in the knowledge of him. The αὐτοῦ refers to God, as the context shows, not to Christ. The term ἐπίγνωσις occurs with special frequency in the Epistles of the Captivity and in 2 Peter with reference to the knowledge of God or of Christ, as in the Pastoral Epistles and Hebrews it is used of the knowledge of the truth. It means a knowledge that is true, accurate, thorough, and so might be rendered “full knowledge,” notwithstanding the fact that the simple γνῶσις may be used at times in much the same sense (as possibly in 1 Corinthians 12:8; 1 Corinthians 13:8). The use of γινώσκω and ἐπιγινώσκω in 1 Corinthians 13:12 points to the intensive sense of the compound form. The ἐν is not to be dealt with as = εἰς (Grot.) or διά (Beza), but must have either the instrumental sense or the local. It was by the knowledge of God Himself, or, as it may be better put, within the sphere of that knowledge that the gift of enlightenment and the reception of further disclosures of the Divine Counsel were to make themselves good. The only gifts desired for these converts were gifts of a spiritual order, meaning a better acquaintance with God Himself. The clause ἐν ἐπιγνώσει αὐτοῦ is connected by some (Chrys., Lachm., Olsh., etc.) with the sentence which follows, and by others only with the ἀποκαλύψεως. But the course of thought and the balance of the terms point to it as qualifying the two gifts specified in the preceding sentence.