The idea of the Church is not, however, independently developed. Ephesians and Colossians are companion letters,--the complement and explanation of each other. Both "speak with regard to Christ and the Church"; both reveal the Divine "glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus."[10] The emphasis of Ephesians falls on the former, of Colossians on the latter of these objects. The doctrine of the Person of Christ and that of the nature of the Church proceed with equal step. The two epistles form one process of thought.
Criticism has attempted to derive first one and then the other of the two from its fellow,--thus, in effect, stultifying itself. Finally Dr. Holtzmann, in his _Kritik der Epheser-und Kolosserbriefe_,[11] undertook to show that each epistle was in turn dependent on the other. There is, Holtzmann says, a Pauline nucleus hidden in Colossians, which he has himself extracted. By its aid some ecclesiastic of genius in the second century composed the Ephesian epistle. He then returned to the brief Colossian writing of St Paul, and worked it up, with his own Ephesian composition lying before him, into our existing epistle to the Colossians. This complicated and too ingenious hypothesis has not satisfied any one except its author, and need not detain us here. But Holtzmann has at any rate made good, against his predecessors on the negative side, the unity of origin of the two canonical epistles, the fact that they proceed from one mint and coinage. They are _twin_ epistles, the offspring of a single birth in the apostle's mind. Much of their subject-matter, especially in the ethical section, is common to both. The glory of the Christ and the greatness of the Church are truths inseparable in the nature of things, wedded to each other. To the confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," His response ever is, "_I will build my Church_."[12] The same correspondence exists between these two epistles in the dialectic movement of the apostle's thought.
At the same time, there is a considerable difference between the two writings in point of style. M. Renan, who accepts Colossians from Paul's hand, and who admits that "among all the epistles bearing the name of Paul the epistle to the Ephesians is perhaps that which has been most anciently cited as a composition of the apostle of the Gentiles," yet speaks of this epistle as a "verbose amplification" of the other, "a commonplace letter, diffuse and pointless, loaded with useless words and repetitions, entangled and overgrown with irrelevancies, full of pleonasms and obscurities."[13]
In this instance, Renan's literary sense has deserted him. While Colossians is quick in movement, terse and pointed, in some places so sparing of words as to be almost hopelessly obscure,[14] Ephesians from beginning to end is measured and deliberate, exuberant in language, and obscure, where it is so, not from the brevity, but from the length and involution of its periods. It is occupied with a few great ideas, which the author strives to set forth in all their amplitude and significance. Colossians is a letter of discussion; Ephesians of reflection. The whole difference of style lies in this. In the reflective passages of Colossians, as indeed in the earlier epistles,[15] we find the stateliness of movement and rhythmical fulness of expression which in this epistle are sustained throughout. Both epistles are marked by those unfinished sentences and _anacolutha_, the grammatical inconsequence associated with close continuity of thought, which is a main characteristic of St Paul's style.[16] The epistle to the Colossians is like a mountain stream forcing its way through some rugged defile; that to the Ephesians is the smooth lake below, in which its chafed waters restfully expand. These sister epistles represent the moods of conflict and repose which alternated in St Paul's mobile nature.
In general, the writings of this group, belonging to the time of the apostle's imprisonment and advancing age,[17] display less passion and energy, but a more tranquil spirit than those of the Jewish controversy. They are prison letters, the fruit of a time when the author's mind had been much thrown in upon itself. They have been well styled "the afternoon epistles," being marked by the subdued and reflective temper natural to this period of life. Ephesians is, in truth, the typical representative of the third group of Paul's epistles, as Galatians is of the second. There is abundant reason to be satisfied that this letter came, as it purports to do, from _Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through God's will_.