Eph 4: 22-24

Dale M. Wheeler dalemw at teleport.com
Wed Apr 5 17:49:12 EDT 2000


Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:

Dear Dale, You bring out an
 >important emphasis in stressing the relevance of Eph 2:15 to Eph 4:22-24. I
 >recently studied Colossians with Darrell Bock, who brings out the same truth
 >concerning Col 3:10: Col. 3:10 and have put on the new man, that is being
 >renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him: This idea
 >also appears in some commentaries. You seem to consider the "new humanity"
 >of Ephesians 2:15 solely in terms of Gentile-Jew relations. But it is a new
 >creation (2 Cor 5:17), with implications for every aspect of life. The
 >relations between Jew and Gentile are one element of the "new humanity."
 >Yours, Harold Holmyard

As a rule of thumb I assume that there are no such things as technical 
terms in the NT, so "new/old man" used in various places by Paul may OR may 
not be referring to the same thing. I'd say that it is one of the great 
fallacies of "Bible Study Methods" books and classes is when they teach 
that you can automatically go to Romans to find out what James meant, or 
you can find out what Paul means in one place by going to another place 
where he uses the same word/phrase, as if SWZW always means "justification 
by faith."

In the case of Eph, I'm not the one who predefined the term in 2:15, Paul 
did.  And the way I look at it hermeneutically is that if he hasn't made it 
clear that he's using the term in some other way than he used it in 2:15, 
then I should read it as he's predefined it.  A corollary to my belief that 
there aren't any technical terms, is that the Ephesians are reading the 
letter to the Eph's, not Romans, 2Cor, or Col, so there would be no way for 
them to know how Paul uses a term elsewhere...unless of course he tells 
them, which I'd say it appears to me, he hasn't.  As I tell my exegesis 
students all the time, in the 1st century there were no "Theological 
Dictionaries," Cell Phones, WWW, or even great theology conferences where 
everyone got together and decided on how everyone was going to use certain 
terms.  My expectation of NT writers (which I've found to be true in 
practice) is that they either predefine a term early in a letter, or they 
give contextual clues as to what they mean.


***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Research Professor in Biblical Languages        Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street                               Portland, OR  97220
Voice: 503-251-6416    FAX:503-254-1268     E-Mail: dalemw at teleport.com
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