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Eph_3:14-15.[182] Τούτου χάριν ] on this account, in order that ye may not become disheartened, Eph_3:13. Against the view that there is here a resumption of Eph_3:1, see on that verse.
κάμπτω κ . τ . λ .] τὴν κατανενυγμένην δέησιν ἐδήλωσεν , Chrysostom. See on Php_2:10. “A signo rem denotat,” Calvin; so that we have not, with Calovius and others, to think of an actual falling on his knees during the writing. Comp. Jerome, who makes reference to the genua mentis.
πρός ] direction of the activity: before the Father.
ἐξ οὗ πᾶσα πατριὰ κ . τ . λ .] Instead of saying: before the Father of all angels and men (a designation of God which naturally suggested itself to him as an echo of the great thoughts, Eph_3:10 and Eph_3:6), Paul expresses himself more graphically by an ingenious paronomasia, which cannot be reproduced in German ( πατέρα … πατριά ): from whom every family in heaven and upon earth bears the name, namely, the name πατριά , because God is πατήρ of all these πατριαί . Less simple and exact, because not rendering justice to the purposely chosen expression employed by Paul only here, is the view of de Wette: “every race, i.e. every class of beings which have arisen (?), bears the name of God as its Creator and Father, just as human races bear the name from their ancestor, e.g. the race of David from David.”
ἐξ οὗ ] forth from whom; origin of the name, which is derived from God as πατήρ . On ὀνομάζεσθαι ἐκ , comp. Hom. Il. x. 68: πατρόθεν ἐκ γενεῆς ὀνομάζων ἄνδρα ἕκαστον . Xen. Mem. iv. 5. 12: ἔφη δὲ καὶ τὸ διαλέγεσθαι ὀνομασθῆναι ἐκ τοῦ συνιόντας κοινῇ βουλεύεσθαι . Soph. Oed. R. 1036.
πᾶσα πατριά ] πατριά , with classical writers ordinarily πάτρα , is equivalent to gens, a body belonging to a common stock, whether it be meant in the narrower sense of a family,[183] or in the wider, national sense of a tribe (Act_3:25; 1Ch_16:28; Psa_22:27; Herod. i. 200). In the latter sense here; for every gens in the heavens can only apply to the various classes of angels (which are called πατριαί , not as though there were propagation among them, Mat_22:30, but because they have God as their Creator and Lord for a Father); as a suitable analogue, however, to the classes of angels, appear on earth not the particular families, but the nationalities. Rightly Chrysostom and his successors explain the word by γενεαί or γένη . The Vulgate has paternitas, a sense indicated also by Jerome, Theodoret, and others. Theodoret says: ὃς ἀληθῶς ὑπάρχει πατὴρ , ὃς οὐ παρʼ ἄλλου τοῦτο λοβὼν ἔχει , ἀλλʼ αὐτὸς τοῖς ἄλλοις μεταδέδωκε τοῦτο . This view (comp. Goth.: “all fadreinis”) is expressed by Luther (approved in the main by Harless): Who is the true Father over all that are called children, etc. But πατριά never means fathership or fatherliness ( πατρότης ), and what could be the meaning of that. fathership in heaven?[184] ΠᾶΣΑ , every, shows that Paul did not think only of two πατριαί , the totality of the angels and the totality of men (Calvin, Grotius, Wetstein, Koppe, and others), or of the blessed in heaven and the elect on earth (Calovius, Wolf), but of a plurality, as well of angelic as of human πατριαί ; and to this extent his conception is, as regards the numerical form, though not as regards the idea of πατριά , different from that of the Rabbins, according to which the angels (with the Cabbalists, the Sephiroth) are designated as familia superior (see Wetstein, p. 247 f.; Buxtorf, Lex. Talm. p. 1753; Schoettgen, Horae, p. 1237 f.). Some have even explained πᾶσα πατριά as the whole family, in which case likewise either the angels and men (Michaelis, Zachariae, Morus, Meier, Olshausen, and earlier expositors), or the blessed in heaven and Christians on earth (Beza), have been thought of: but this is on the ground of linguistic usage erroneous. Comp. on Eph_2:21.
ὀνομάζεται ] bears the name, namely, the name πατριά ; see above. The text does not yield anything else;[185] and if many (Beza, Piscator, Grotius, Wolf, Bengel, Michaelis, Zachariae, Morus, Koppe, and others, including Flatt and Olshausen) have understood the name children of God, this is purely imported. Others have taken “nomen pro re” (Zanchius, Menochius, Estius, et al.), so that ὀνομάζεσθαι would denote existere. So, too, Rückert, according to whom Paul designs to express the thought that God is called the Father, inasmuch as all that lives in heaven and upon earth has from Him existence and name (i.e. dignity and peculiarity of nature). Contrary to linguistic usage; εἶναι ὀνομάζεται must at least have been used in that case instead of ὀνομάζεται (comp. Isaeus, de Menecl. her. 41: τὸν πατέρα , οὗ εἶναι ὠνομάσθην , Plat. Pol. iv. p. 428 E: ὀνομάζονταί τινες εἶναι ). Incorrectly also Holzhausen: ὀνομάζειν means to call into existence. Reiche takes ἐξ οὗ ὀνομάζεται (of whom it bears the name) as the expression of the highest dominion and of the befitting reverence due, and refers πᾶσα πατριὰ ἐν οὐρ . to the pairings of the Aeons. The former without linguistic evidence: the latter a hysteroproteron.
[182] On ver. 15, see Reiche, Comm. Crit. p. 156 ff.
[183] To this head belongs also the Jewish-genealogical distinction from φυλή , according to which πατριά denotes a branch of one of the twelve tribes ( φυλῶν ). See on Luk_2:4. Similarly in the sense of a family-association often with Pindar. On the relation of the word to the kindred φρατρία , see Boeckh, ad Pind. Nem. V. L. iv. 47; Dissen, p. 387; Hermann, Staatsalterth. § 5. 4, 10.
[184] Jerome finds it in the archangels, and Theodoret says: οὐρανίους πατέρας τοὺς πνευματικοὺς καλεῖ , and cites 1Co_4:15.
[185] For the very reason that Paul does not put any defining addition to ὀνομάζεται (in opposition to Reiche’s objection). Nor is it to be objected, with Reiche, that the human πατριά bears the name not from God, but from the human ancestor. This historical relation remains entirely unaffected by the higher thought, that they are called πατριά from the universal, heavenly Father.
REMARK 1.
In ἐξ οὗ … ὀνομάζεται God is certainly characterized as universal Father, as Father of all angel-classes in heaven and all peoples upon earth. Comp. Luther’s gloss: “All angels, all Christians, yea, all men, are God’s children, for He created them all.” But it is not at all meant by the apostle in the bare sense of creation, nor in the rationalistic conception of the all-fatherhood, when he says that every πατριά derives this name ἐκ Θεοῦ , as from its father; but in the higher spiritual sense of the divine Fatherhood and the sonship of God. He thinks, in connection with the ἐξ οὗ , of a higher πατρόθεν than that of the mere creation. For πατριαί , so termed from God as their πατήρ , are not merely all the communities of angels, since these were indeed υἱοὶ Θεοῦ from the beginning, and have not fallen from this υἱότης ; but also all nationalities among men, inasmuch as not only the Jews, but also all Gentile nations, have obtained part in the Christian υἱοθεσία , and the latter are συγκληρονόμα καὶ σύσσωμα καὶ συμμέτοχα τῆς ἐπαγγελίας ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ (Eph_3:6). If this has not yet become completely realized, it has at any rate already been so partially, while Paul writes; and in God’s counsel it stands ideally as an accomplished fact. On that account Paul says with reason also of every nationality upon earth, that it bears the name πατριά , because God is its Father. Without cause, therefore, Harless has taken offence at the notion of the All-fatherhood, which is here withal clearly though ideally expressed, and given to the passage a limitation to which the all-embracing mode of expression is entirely opposed: “whose name every child [i.e. every true child] in heaven and upon earth bears.” Consequently, as though Paul had written something like: ἐξ οὗ πᾶσα ἀληθινὴ πατριὰ κ . τ . λ . With a like imported limitation Erasmus, Paraphr.: “omnis cognatio spiritualis, qua conglutinantur sive angeli in coelis, sive fideles in terris.”
REMARK 2.
With the non-genuineness of τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ι . Χ . (see the critical remarks) falls also the possibility of referring ἐξ οὗ to Christ (Beza, although with hesitation, Calvin, Zanchius, Hammond, Cramer, Reiche, and others). But if those words were genuine (de Wette, among others, defends them), ἐξ οὗ would still apply to God, because ἐξ οὗ κ . τ . λ . characterizes the fatherly relation, and ἵνα δῷ κ . τ . λ . applies to the Father.
Lastly, polemic references, whether in opposition to the particularism of the Jews (Chrysostom, Calvin, Zanchius, and others), or even in opposition to “scholam Simonis, qui plura principia velut plures Deos introducebat” (Estius), or in opposition to the worship of angels (Michaelis), or in opposition to the Gnostic doctrine of Syzygies (Reiche), are to be utterly dismissed, because arbitrary in themselves and inappropriate to the character and contents of the prayer before us.