To Unite All Things in Him

To Unite All Things in Him Comparative commentary by Clover Xuesong Zhou and John Camden Cite Share Show Bible Passage Who is the implied audience of the letter to the Ephesians? The overt address, ‘to the saints who are in Ephesus’, would present an absolute answer here (at least in spatial dimensions), were it not for the fact that the phrase ‘in Ephesus’ is missing from some of the most important and earliest manuscripts (e.g. Sinaiticus, Vaticanus) and the fact that the earliest known canon lists instead an epistle ‘to the Laodecians’ (Muratorian Fragment). Tertullian contests this conclusion, which he describes as the result of Marcion’s would-be detective work, on the basis of a reliable tradition that the letter was indeed sent to Ephesus. But perhaps more importantly, Tertullian finally asks: ‘of what consequence are the titles, since, in writing to a certain church, the apostle did, in fact, write to all?’ (Against Marcion, 4.17). A poststructuralist might even go further: ‘of what consequence is the artist’s intent?’. In any case, an abundance of textual and theoretical ambiguity means that none who read the epistle’s words are excluded from its audience. On the contrary, like the mirrors in Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde tanks, Ephesians involves the present audience, including you who now read these words, in ‘a plan for the fullness of time’ (v.10). The letter confidently asserts your qualification for the role: ‘[i]n him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit’ (v.13). You may doubt yourself, but the writer does not ‘cease to give thanks for you’ (v.16; all ESV). What is he so excited about? All three of the artworks presented above exhibit the quintessentially Christian tendency to unite signifiers of doom and hope. Each work confronts us with the staggering cost of positing a divine command to subdue the earth as a licence to extract rather than a mandate to harmonize. Fung Chunlan’s ginkgo-clad boy presents the heart-breaking endangerment of past traditions and future generations as the price of an industrial economy. Damien Hirst displays the hidden gore which underlies the pristine curations of modern accomplishment. Gao Lei confronts us with the astonishing self-obliteration that we reap with the ancient bounties of all of Creation. But on the other sides of these same coins, Fung’s ginkgo-clad boy embodies a hope for the preservation of humanity, ‘holy and blameless’ (v.4). Hirst’s three ‘crosses’ declare the revelation of God’s plan, predestined ‘before the foundation of the world’ (v.4) as well as ‘revelation in the knowledge of him’ (v.17; all ESV) previously known only to God. Gao Lei’s identification of our perverse, extinction-Christmas points us instead to the infinitely superior spiritual gifts made available by the resurrection of an extinct Messiah. The unity of the present audience and the text of Ephesians, on the one hand, and the unification of signifiers of humanity’s doom and hope, on the other, are both facets of God’s ‘plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth’ (v.10 ESV). The unity of heaven and earth fully justifies the hopeful element in the ‘hopeful terror’ of these artists’ work: the restoration of harmony and security for the innocent and beloved, the supplanting of hidden crimes and allegedly necessary evils with the revelation of God’s self-sacrificial love, and the endless Christmas of ancient gifts, the spiritual and superior gifts of rebirth in Christ, no longer purchased with the cost of extinction but rather accompanied with the benefit of eternal life. Ephesians declares that ‘we who were the first to hope in Christ’ are the early adopters of this teleological unity: ‘the Holy Spirit of Promise … is the down-payment of our inheritance towards the redemption of the full-possession’ (v.13, own translation). The Holy Spirit which you ‘were sealed with’, Paul insists, is the sign and the guarantee of the eventual fulfilment of these hopes. References Metzger, Bruce. 1987. The Canon of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 191–201, 305–07 Roberts, Alexander, and James Donaldson (eds). 1885. ‘Against Marcion’, in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3 (New York: Christian Literature Publishing)