6 - The background of the theology of Ephesians

Summary

Of all the letters in the Pauline Corpus Ephesians is the most general in its scope, leading one scholar to designate it ‘an epistle in search of a life-setting’. Unlike Colossians, in this letter there is no specific false teaching in view, in the light of which the writer develops his own message. In fact, Ephesians is devoid of virtually all reference to particular circumstances which would enable the contemporary reader to reconstruct with any precision the setting of its addressees. As is well known, one cannot even be sure of their geographical location. In all probability, the words ‘in Ephesus’ were not part of the original text of 1.1 but were inserted later after a collection of Pauline letters had come into being and it was felt necessary to associate a letter, which at this stage had no place name in the address, with a city in which Paul had worked. Not only are there problems about identifying the original readers, but, as we shall discuss below, because of serious doubts about the letter's authenticity, there can be no certainty about who exactly was its author. Rather than attempting the impossible by searching for a specific life-setting, the interpreter of Ephesians would therefore do well to respect the letter's generality and focus on some of its overall features which may be of help in sketching the background against which its theology can be appreciated.