(PlatoRehu αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ *ouvéornxer, 18. καὶ
Arist., de Mun., vi.
αὐτός ἐστιν ἡ κεφαλὴ τοῦ σώματος τῆς ἐκκλησίας " ὅς ἐστιν ἀρχή,ὶ
471; Philo, πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, ἵνα γένηται ἐν πᾶσιν αὐτὸς © πρωτεύων,
de Plant., Noe 2, 4 Quis rer. div. haer. 12.
g Class.; LXX; only here in N.T.; cf. φιλοπρωτ., 3 John ϱ.
1 So Ln., T., Tr., Lft., Ws. with nearly all ancient authorities. η αρχη: [W.H.] with B 47, under influence of εστιν η κεφαλη.
(i. 2 compared with ii. το, xi. 3). _Ifthese writers did not find the two views incom- patible, why should Paul have done so ? In reply to (2) it may be urged that Paul's hold on the personal identity of the Son in the states through which He passed was strong enough to enable Him to glide from one to the other without any sense of incongruity. As to (3), the change in the form of sentence is probably to pre- pare for δι᾽ αὐτοῦ κ. εἰς αὐτὸν. There is a similar change at ver. 19, where ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ corresponds to ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ (ver. 16). His own view is open to fatal objections. It is not clear that the creation of the angels who did not fall would be condi- tional on provision being made for Re- demption, nor yet how this would prove the superiority of the Redeemer to these angels. The insuperable difficulty, how- ever, is that the thought is so far-fetched and not naturally suggested by the words. ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα can hardly be consistent with the creation of the uni- verse long before the Son came into existence. Nor can δι αὐτοῦ mean merely that the Son was an indispensable condition for the creation of the universe, it implies active agency. Nor is any adequate explanation of τ᾿ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν given. Besides, Phil. ii, 5-8 sufficiently proves that Paul believed in the pre-existence of Christ, and that makes it less than ever justifiable to take the passage in other than its plain sense. —Gess, it may be added, explains that the firstborn is the one who opens for those who follow the path of life, and by his consecration to God must purchase for them the Divine good pleasure, Exod. xiii. 2, 12 sq. and Num, iii. 12 sq. are quoted to prove this, but neither says anything of the purchase of Divine favour for those born after. Exod. iv. 22 and Ps. Ixxxix. 27 are explained to mean, accordingly, that Israel and David, not the nations and their kings, are objects of God’s good pleasure and mediators of it to the world. πρωτότ. π. xr. is there- fore explained as the opener of the path of life and mediator of God's love to every creature. But this is to overlook
the fact that in Ps. lxxxix. the firstborn is further defined as the highest of the kings of the earth.
Ver. 18. The false teachers not only wrongly represented the relation of the angel powers to the universe, but they assigned them a false position in the work of redemption and a false relation to the Church. Hence Paul passes from the pre-eminence of the Son in the universe to speak of Him as Head of the Body. He is thus supreme alike in the universe and the Church.— κεφαλὴ τ. σώ- ματος (cf. ii. το, Eph. i. 22, 23, iv. 15, 16, v. 23). For Christ as Head mee SS 1 Cor, xi. 3. For the Church as the body of Christ, ver. 24, Eph. iv. 2, 1 Cor. xii. 27, Rom. xii. 5. For Christians as the mem- bers of Christ’s body, Eph. v. 30, 1 Cor. xii. 37. For Christians as “ severally members one of another,” Rom, xii. 5. By this metaphor of “τῆς head of the body" is meant that Christ is the Lord and Ruler of His Church, its directing brain, probably also that its life depends on continued union with Him. The Church is a body in the sense that itis a living organism, composed of members vitally united to each other, each mem- ber with his own place and function, each essential to the body's perfect health, each dependent on the rest of the body for its life and well-being, while the whole organism and all the individual members derive all their life from the Head and act under His guidance. And as the body needs the Head, to be the source of its life and the controller of its activities, and to unify the members into an organic whole, so the Head needs the y to be His instrument in carrying out His designs. It is only in Colossians and Ephesians that Christ appears as Head of the Church, but the emphasis in Colos- sians is on the Headship, in Ephesians on the Church.—r 4s ἐκκλησίας: often taken as in apposition to σώματος. For this we should have expected τ, σώμ. αὐτοῦ, τ. ἐκκλ. (cf. ver. 24). It may also be taken as epexegetical of σώματος (so Weiss and Haupt, who quotes 1 Cor. v. 8, 2 Cor. v. 5, Rom, iv, 11, viii, 21, xv. 16