An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 224: Women, Children and Servants Must Obey! Plus: After forty nine books, I begin to talk in parables (Ephesians 1-6)

Ephesians 1-6
Women, Children and Servants Must Obey! Plus: After forty nine books, I begin to talk in parables.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Ephesians 1

“Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places”

From what I remember in Acts, Paul was rebuffed at Ephesus but here he’s found a chapter of Christians to write to. Although, like previous epistles, this first chapter is largely composed of formulaic salutations, it does contain a few nuggets of interesting material.

Firstly, as suggested by the quoted text and also by the verse “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ”. You can see where Paul’s concept of the relationship between God and Christ could differ from the late Nicene Creed version. Here, Paul’s language would seem to suggest that he doesn’t see the Christ as an equal to God, or even as being God in another form, but as some kind of elevated entity – the pathfinder for resurrection, perhaps. If God is the God of Christ, i.e the God in whom Jesus believed, then Christ cannot also be God, that would just be a weird circular self-confirmatory thing.

Second, Paul speaks a few times in this chapter of predestination – “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will”. In other words, it was part of God’s plan for the Christians to become Christians. In which case, whither free will? If God has already decided, one assumes at the dawn of creation, that some people will believe the message of Christ and therefore be “saved” and others will not then … what’s the point? I suppose from an evangelical point of view, people can’t experience their destiny unless exposed to the message. Within a bag of seeds, some are dud and will never germinate, but until you plant and water them all you won’t know which ones will grow and which ones won’t. Hey, I just made a parable! This is starting to rub off on me.

Ephesians 2

“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God”

If Jesus is the pathfinder for the concept of resurrection, then according to this chapter He is also a pioneer of opening up the Jewish God to non-Jews. This is kind of an odd concept if you look at it – what Paul seems to be doing is trying to sell the Jewish God as being the best one, but at the same time he is brushing aside a lot of the traditional Jewish trappings that go alongside worship of that God – circumcision, for one, and the old laws – “Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances”. Christ, according to Paul, has given a kind of re-boot to the old Jewish God, turning Him into an expansive God that accepts all regardless of their heritage (in which case, why did God spend so long bothering with Abraham’s people and all that meddling with the wars between Israel, Judah and all the surrounding people? Why claim that these were His chosen people if He knew all along that at some point He was going to end that? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…)

So Paul is offering up the opportunity of a lifetime to worship the God of the Jews to the Gentiles, but also he points out that a person has little input into this – “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves”. Paul notes that “Not of works” is a person saved, rather that “it is the gift of God”, so no one should boast of doing good works. This, at face value, reads as if doing good is pointless since it is all pre-destined – all you need to do is be in the faith club - but in context rather it looks like Paul is saying that if a person receives God (through Christ) then they become a person through whom God does good work – it isn’t them being a good person on their own initiative, it’s God making them a good person. Which allows the separation of intent and deed so finely cut as to whether the goodness of a person’s intent is God or themselves that it becomes difficult to entangle. I can see now why many (particularly US) Christians find it impossible to accept that a person without God can do good. They must assume that if a person does good then they must “have God” and so therefore can’t possibly not believe. Or if they don’t “have God” then when they are seen to do good, it can’t really be good because how can it be without God behind it. How horribly complicated.

Ephesians 3

“And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ”

Much of this chapter is Paul explaining his mission to the Ephesians. Once again there’s that rather humorous mix of Paul discussing all of his woes and problems, but trying to downplay them – “I’ve been through all sorts of troubles for my faith, but I don’t want to talk about them. All sorts of abuse and suffering, you would not believe. But don’t you worry about me etc.”.

The rest is Paul explaining that his ministry is to bring the message to the Gentiles, and that the message is really, really great in some vague unspecified way – “And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God”. This thing I’m selling, it’s great. I can’t go into details, but you’ll really want it. Hm.

What quirks my eyebrow in this chapter is the quoted verse, where God has some pre-ordained plan for people to be redeemed (from a curse that He placed) at some … later date. Hm again.

Ephesians 4

“Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.”

More sales pitch from Paul, here his theme is one of unity – “One Lord, one faith, one baptism” leading to “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another”. So the Christians become brothers, and sisters, in one body in what Paul refers to as “the unity of the faith”. He speaks out about being angry, stealing, lying – “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice”, and instead “ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another”. It’s not clear here if Paul means only other Christians, or everyone else. If the former, it’s a nice sentiment as far as it goes, if the former it carries a bit more weight and difficulty.

Also of note here is that Paul refers to Christ as “the perfect man” – in context “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”. This fits with Jesus always referring to Himself as the “Son of Man” and very rarely the “Son of God”. It’s easy here to see how the Arian heresy, that there was no specific divinity to Christ, came about.

Ephesians 5

“Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.”

That’s official then – no joking around, people. You must be sober and sensible at all times – “Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord”. Sounds a bit dull and de-humanising to me. At least here we finally get to some instructions on how to Christian after all the sales pitch. It’s nothing particularly new, no fornication or drunkenness etc., but takes on a slightly more authoritarian pitch, what with the injunctions against frivolous behaviour, and a lengthy tract on the relationship between man and wife (which I think is one of those bible readings that gets dredged up for weddings – this or Song of Solomon. “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord” says Paul. Women, know your place. “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church”. Having then justified the patriarchy, Paul tries to leaven it a bit by saying that at least men should look after their meek and submissive womenfolk – “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself”.

Ephesians 6

“Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ”

Having used Christ to justify the subjection of women, Paul extends this to social hierarchy and to children. Servants, whether bond or free, should obey their masters, “Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers”, whatever that means. This is then metaphorical for people obeying Christ, but it’s still a justification for some people holding power over others which seems to go against the concepts of fraternal love and respect spoken of in Galatians.

Children, too must obey –“Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right”. “For this is right”? What kind of logical fallacy is that? Do it, because it’s right, because I said it’s right. Hm. Apparently it is “the first commandment with promise” – if we’re talking Mosaic Law then it’s about 7^th or 8^th commandment; but also, have we not been told that merely following the old laws is not a way to the Kingdom of Heaven? Again, both of these are meant to be ameliorated by Paul telling parents and masters to be kind in return to their children or their servants. I dunno. I’m torn on this. If the underlying theme is that all people should have respect for each other across gender, age and social status boundaries, sure, I can get behind that. There’s something underlying this that seeks to uphold those boundaries as well, though, which feels suspect to me.

There’s then some fun military metaphors, popular with the 19^th century kind of Christianity, of taking up the Sword of the Spirit and donning the Helm of Salvation, the Breastplate of Righteousness, the Shoes of Truth and the Armour of God in order to fight the wiles of the devil, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”. Yeah, Glory, Glory Hallelujah! I’ll give Paul this, it’s a fine use of metaphor here.

Finally the epistle ends with a relatively short sign-off sequence, whereby we learn that this one was written by (and delivered by) Tychicus, a brother from Rome.

And that’s it for the letter to the Ephesians. It was fairly light on guidelines and philosophy, mostly being a sales pitch. And then when we get to the meat of how to be a Christian it’s largely centred around troubling notions of obedience to a hierarchy, which seems counter to the egality and fraternity expressed in earlier epistles. I suspect Tychicus has some agenda of his own that he’s inserting, or perhaps Paul’s imprisonment in Rome has embittered him somewhat to his fellow man.