Abstract
On the opening page, Wright vividly compares Ephesians to a room in his former home in St. Andrews that offered staggering views of the Firth of Forth and Lammermuir Hills, of the North Sea and the moon over the Loman Hills. Ephesians, he writes, is a ‘letter of vision,’ a letter that opens onto the panorama of the Christian gospel and the thought of St. Paul.
By no means a commentary, Wright concisely offers a high-level view of the entire epistle, thought unit by thought unit. Chapter 1 is devoted to introductory matters, including authorship (Wright regards the epistle as authentically Pauline), as well as providing a summary of its two-part structure as emphasizing ‘worship’ (1-3) and then ‘mission’ (4-6). Next are two chapters on Eph 1:3-14 and Eph 1:15-23, respectively. In the former, Wright returns to his familiar theme that Paul is ‘retelling the story of Israel,’ and especially the exodus, through the lens of ‘being in the Messiah’, denouncing any theology of ‘going to heaven’ as only so much Platonism. In the latter, Wright interprets the prayer of Eph 1:15-23 in light of its OT allusions, especially to Ps 8, Ps 110, and Isa 11, finding in this prayer a microcosm of Jewish Messianic expectation fulfilled in Jesus. Chapter 4 interprets the pivotal Eph 2 as marrying the ‘old perspective’s’ emphasis on salvation from sin with the ‘new perspective’s’ focus on the inclusion of the Gentiles into God’s people. In Chapter 5 he interprets Eph 3, highlighting its function in concluding the lines of thought pursued especially in Eph 2. Chapters 6 and 7 address the ecclesiological and ethical implications of the preceding chapters in 4:1-24 and 4:25-5:20 respectively. Chapter 8 offers a reading of the household code of Eph 5:21-6:9 that is historically contextualized and grounded in a hermeneutic of trust, before concluding the book with a chapter on the spiritual warfare described in Eph 6:10-20. Like the above summary, Wright moves quickly over the letter, and touches on a great many issues (exegetical, historical, theological and pastoral) along the way.
This book is full of Wright’s longstanding emphases—being ‘in the Messiah’, the new exodus, the church as ‘small working models of new creation,’ the ‘works of the law’ as Jewish ethnic boundary markers, etc. It is also marked by his commitment to integrating both historical and biblical (i.e., Old Testament) contexts into the exegesis of the letter and any subsequent theological reflection. These are substantial strengths, counterbalanced by some weaknesses—a too hasty rejection of Platonism (both in exegesis and in Christian theology generally), separating the moral from the merely ethnic in the Law, and too sharp a distinction between Graeco-Roman and Jewish thought in the first century. These are quibbles, however, in comparison to the profundity of Wright’s theological exegesis and the loveliness of his prose. The ideal audience of this book is very broad; students, church small groups, and individual Christians will find time spent in this room with a view richly rewarded.