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Eph_1:5. Love was the disposition of God, in which He through this our election predestined us to υἱοθεσία . Hence this divine motive, therefore, is prefixed with emphasis, quite in keeping with the character of ascription of praise marking the discourse. Consequently: in that He in love predestined us. Homberg has indeed conceived the relation of the time of προορίσας to ἐξελέξατο as: “postquam nos praedestinavit adoptandos, elegit etiam nos, ut simus sancti;” but the usual view correctly conceives προορίσας as coincident in point of time, and accomplished simultaneously with ἐξελέξατο , so that it is regarded as the modus of the latter (see on γνωρίσας , Eph_1:9). For the praedestinatio (the προορίζειν ) is never elsewhere distinguished from the election as something preceding it; it rather substantially coincides with it (hence at Rom_8:29 only the expression προώρισε is used, while in Rom_8:33 only ἐκλεκτοί are mentioned), and only the πρόγνωσις is prior, Rom. l.c. Comp. Lampsing, Pauli de praedestinat. decreta, Leovard. 1858, p. 70. See on this use of the aorist participle, Hermann, ad Viger. p. 774; Bernhardy, p. 383; Winer, p. 321 [E. T. 430]. It is, we may add, purely arbitrary to distinguish ἐξελέξατο and προορίσας , so that the former should apply to individuals, the latter to the whole (Schenkel). Both verbs have in fact the same objects ( ἡμᾶς , which denotes the persons); see on Rom_8:29.
The προ in προορίσας , beforehand, points to the future realization. Certainly the predestination has taken place before the creation of the world (Eph_1:4); but this is not expressed by προ , which rather looks always towards the future setting in of the thing predestined. See Rom_8:29; 1Co_2:7; Eph_1:11; Act_4:28; Heliod. p. 298, 14, p. 266, 15; Sopater in Walz, Rhet. V. p. 152, 20.
εἰς υἱοθεσίαν διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰς αὐτόν ] are to be taken closely together: unto adoption through Jesus Christ in reference to Him,—that is, He has destined us to stand in the relation of those assumed as children through mediation of Jesus Christ to Him (to God). Comp. Rom_8:29. That υἱοθωσία is nowhere merely childship (as Meier and Bleek still take it here, following Usteri), but adoption,[96] see on Rom_7:15; Gal_4:5. υἱοθεσία is never predicated of Christ Himself; for He is the born Son of God (Rom_8:3; Gal_4:4), who procured for His own the assumption into the place of children (whereby they became de jure His brethren, Rom_8:29). The pre-eminence of Christ is therefore essential, not merely prototypal, as of the head of humanity;[97] He is the μονογενής . Through adoption believers have passed out (comp. Rom_7:24 f.) of their natural state, in which they by sin were liable to the wrath of God (Eph_2:3), and have entered into the state of reconciliation, in which they, through the mediation of the reconciling death of Christ (Eph_1:6-7), by means of the faith in it which was counted to them for righteousness (Gal_3:26; Rom_4:5; Rom_4:23 f.), have forgiveness of sins, and are heirs of the Messianic blessedness (Eph_1:14; Gal_4:7; Rom_8:10-11; Rom_8:17), as a guarantee of which the Holy Spirit is given to them (Eph_1:14; Gal_4:6; Rom_8:16).
ΕἸς ΑὐΤΌΝ ] does not apply to Christ (Anselm, Thomas, Castalio, Vorstius, Menochius, Cornelius a Lapide, and others, including de Wette), since Christ is mediator of the adoption, and this is a relation to God. This simple sense of reference toward is to be maintained, and we must not import either ad gloriam gratiae suae (Piscator; comp. Schenkel) or τὴν εἰς αὐτὸν ἀνάγουσαν τὸ γένος ἡμῶν (Theophylact). At variance with linguistic usage, Beza, Calvin, and Calixtus take it for ἘΝ ἙΑΥΤῷ , and discover in it the independence of the divine ΠΡΟΟΡΙΣΜΌς ; and Grotius, Wolf, Baumgarten, Koppe, Holzhausen, Meier hold it as equivalent to sibi, ìåÉ (“as children, who rightly belong to Him as His own,” Meier). Comp. also on Col_1:20.
We may add that here, too, we must not write (with Beza, Stephanus, Mill, Griesbach, Knapp, Meier, and others) ΑὙΤΌΝ , but ΑὐΤΌΝ . Comp. above on ΚΑΤΕΝΏΠΙΟΝ ΑὐΤΟῦ .
ΚΑΤᾺ ΤῊΝ ΕὐΔΟΚΊΑΝ ΤΟῦ ΘΕΛΉΜΑΤΟς ΑὐΤΟῦ (not ΑὙΤΟῦ ): conformably to the pleasure of His will, just as it was the purpose of His will. Comp. Mat_11:26; Luk_10:21. So Vulgate, Erasmus, Calvin, Bengel, Flatt, and others, including Rückert, de Wette, Bleek. It may also signify: according to the benevolence of His will (see, generally, Fritzsche, ad Rom. II. p. 369 ff.). So Harless, Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius, following older expositors. But this notion is already and more strongly contained in ἘΝ ἈΓΆΠῌ ; and the element which is here meant, of free self-determination, independent of all human desert, as regulative of the προορίζειν , is clearly pointed to in the parallel by ἣν προέθετο ἐν αὑτῷ . Comp. also Eph_1:11; 2Ti_1:9.
[96] Even the old theocratic υἱοθεσία was adoption; for the Jews were as such, and not as men generally, the chosen and peculiar people to whom the Messiah was promised. See on Rom_9:4.
[97] In opposition to Beyschlag, Christol. d. N.T. p. 222 f.
REMARK.
Predestination is not made dependent on any sort of causa meritoria on the part of man (comp. Eph_1:11), but is simply an act of free divine kindness, whose determination has its causa impulsiva only in Christ; so that, in the case of the predestined subjects, faith is set forth as the causa apprehendens of the salvation destined for them κατὰ πρόγνωσιν (Rom_8:29); and with this Romans 9, when rightly apprehended, agrees. The conditions mentally supplied by expositors (as e.g. Grotius, who finds in our passage “decretum ejus, quod Deus facere vult, si et homines faciant, quod debent;” comp. already Jerome) remove the relation out of the sphere of the divine εὐδοκία τοῦ θελήματος into that of dependence on human self-choice, and consequently into the domain of the accidental. The notion of absolute decree, however, breaks down before the πρόγνωσις as the necessary premiss of the divine ἐκλογή —a premiss, which doubtless involves the necessity of morally restricting the truncus aut lapis of the Formula Concordiae (comp. Luthardt, Lehre vom freien Willen, p. 272).