To what does “in all wisdom and insight” refer?

Explanation:

The nouns wisdom and understanding (ESV, insight) are both aspects of a prepositional phrase that is part of a relative clause. The relative clause is introduced by a relative pronoun which that stands in for an antecedent nominative. One can detect the nominative that the relative pronoun stands in for based on the relative pronoun’s gender and number. In the case of Ephesians 1:8, the relative pronoun is, in the Greek, in the feminine singular, which means that we look for a nominative in the previous clause that is in the feminine singular to determine the antecedent. When we do this, we find that the nominative in the feminine singular of the previous clause is χάρις (grace). In other words, it is grace that God lavished upon us. But how should we understand the prepositional phrase in…wisdom and understanding? Does God lavish grace upon us along with wisdom and understanding, or does God lavish grace by means of his own wisdom and understanding?

The construction of the relative clause might give us a clue, because when we look to Ephesians 1:6b we find the same construction. There, Paul mentions God’s grace, before introducing the relative clause “with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” Compare this construction with the relative clause of Ephesians 1:8 and notice the similarities in bold: “which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and understanding.” In both cases, Paul uses a relative clause to stand in for God’s grace, and in both cases, he adds a prepositional phrase to bring more clarity. In the case of Ephesians 1:6b, Paul seems to be using the prepositional phrase adverbially to modify the verb to favour/bless. In other words, he seems to be saying that God blessed us with his grace, and the sphere in which God blessed us was in the Beloved. When we apply the prepositional phrase adverbially to Ephesians 1:8, it modifies the verb to lavish/abound, giving clarity to the manner by which God lavished us. God lavished us with his grace by the sphere of his wisdom and understanding.¹

Counterargument:

The fact that Paul uses a relative clause with a similar construction to Ephesians 1:8 in Ephesians 1:6b does not mean we should take the prepositional phrases the same way. The relative clause is a common feature of ancient Greek, so we should expect to find them in quantity. Added to this, the preposition in is the most common preposition in the New Testament, and more often than not, it is paired with the dative case (as it is in Ephesians 1:6b and Ephesians 1:8).² The preposition ἐν (in) with the dative can carry the sense of time, association, space, or cause. Given the frequency of both the relative clause and the preposition ἐν with the dative, coupled with the flexibility of ἐν with the dative, we should prioritize the context of each passage, and not the proximity of other cases of the relative clause with ἐν, to get at the meaning.

Response to counterargument:

While it might be true that, given the frequency of the preposition ἐν (in) with the dative in the New Testament, each instance of ἐν plus the dative should be considered in its own context, this does not exclude looking for clues from outside a verse when there is ambiguity. Based on the ambiguity of the punctuation and grammar, there are at least three ways to take the ἐν plus date phrase without doing damage to the passage. The ambiguity motivates us to look elsewhere for clues, and in this case, we find a strong clue in the preceding verses. There Paul uses the same relative construction, with the same nominative (χάρις, grace), followed by a prepositional phrase (ἐν plus dative). Since there is little ambiguity in Ephesians 1:6b that Paul is referring to the means by which God blessed us with grace, the fact that he uses the same construction in Ephesians 1:8 gives us confidence that Paul has a similar sense in mind. God blessed us with his grace by means of the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6b), and he lavished his grace on us by means of his wisdom and understanding (Ephesians 1:8).

Explanation:

It was not uncommon for the Israelites to ground the works of God in his wisdom and understanding.³ For example, the prophet Jeremiah warns Israel not to be like the nations who serve gods other than the Lord God. He explains that the gods did not make the heavens and the earth, but that God established the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding (Jeremiah 10:12). We find a similar comment in the books of Proverbs where the author states, The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens (Proverbs 3:19). As a Hebrew, Paul would have been familiar with this manner of describing God, and in Ephesians 1:8, he follows this convention.

Counterargument:

While it is surely the case that God has wisdom and understanding, the adjective πάς (all) seems to undercut the notion that our passage refers to God’s wisdom and understanding. The adjective πάς can be used to denote extension or intensity.⁴ If the adjective is being used in the sense of extension, it might be translated every. This implies that there is more than one kind of a thing, and when the adjective is used, every kind of that thing is included. When the adjective πάς is taken to denote intensity, it might be translated with all. This implies that there is one thing, and that one thing is being used to its maximum; for example, the man used all of his power, that is, every bit of the power that he had. According to some, when the adjective πάς is used with an anarthrous noun (a noun without the definite article), it denotes extension rather than intensity.⁵ If this is true, then Paul is referring to all the different kinds of wisdom and understanding. It is hard to see how God could have different kinds of wisdom and understanding, because God is simple. Humans, on the other hand, might be endowed with a variety of wisdom and understanding. Some have practical wisdom, others spiritual, others social and political, and the same goes for understanding. Given the implied extensionality of πάς, it is hard to see how it could apply to God.

Response to counterargument:

First, it is not clear why, when the adjective πάς (all) modifies an anarthrous noun, the meaning is best taken as extension rather than intensity. When πάς is used with an anarthrous noun it can be taken in a number of ways including, extension or intensity.⁶ This alone should be enough to undermine the objection. Further, it is not clear what it means for there to be different kinds of wisdom and understanding. It may be the case that wisdom is applied differently to varying situations, but arguably it is the same property of wisdom that is applied from one situation to another. What changes is the situation, not the wisdom. Further, even if there were different kinds of wisdom and understanding, since God is the greatest conceivable being, would he not possess every kind? In other words, if there were different kinds of wisdom (which there arguably is not), could we say that God lacks one or more of them? No. The notion that God is simple is a complex theological concept that is irrelevant to our passage. Whether Paul is referring to every kind of wisdom, or all of the one kind of wisdom, as the greatest being God would endow either.

Explanation:

There are at least three ways to correctly translate Ephesians 1:7–9, depending on how one takes the prepositional phrase in all wisdom and understanding, and each translation could result in a different interpretation. The phrase could apply to the wisdom God used to decide that he would lavish the believers with his grace, it could apply to the wisdom God used to make known his will to believers, or it could refer to the wisdom God lavished on believers.⁹

The content of Ephesians 1:9 offers us a way to get at the meaning. There we learn that God made known to us the mystery of his will. We also learn from Ephesians 2:1–7 and other letters of Paul (Colossians 2:13) that believers were dead in their sins before God made them alive through Christ. Finally, we know from 1 Corinthians 2:11–16, that those who are dead in their sin are unable to discern spiritual realities unless God grants them his Spirit of illumination. Taken together, this means that until God lavished his grace, along with wisdom and understanding, it would be impossible for a dead sinner to comprehend the mystery of God’s will. Since God has lavished grace, along with wisdom and understanding, there is no problem. Once the Spirit enlivens the believer with wisdom and understanding, he can comprehend at least something of the mysteries that God has revealed to him.¹⁰

Counterargument:

It might be technically true that for one who is dead in their sin to understand the mystery of God’s will, God first must enliven that person through the Holy Spirit. But Paul’s point here is not to offer a doctrinal statement. Rather Ephesians 1:8 falls somewhere in the middle of a well-known Hebrew formula known as a berakah, where an author offers praises to God for the blessings that God has bestowed. We know from the oldest Greek manuscripts that Paul’s berakah is composed of one abnormally long sentence beginning at Ephesians 1:3 and not ending until Ephesians 1:14. The length of the sentence suggests that Paul is more interested in offering his enthusiastic praise for God than a careful doctrinal exposition. This is not to say that the prepositional phrase in all wisdom and understanding does not refer to the believer’s wisdom and understanding, but only that if it does, we should not press Paul for precise theological formulations that are not intended. While Paul’s letters have many of the elements for developing a systematic theology, the letters are also occasional, and ought to be approached as such.¹¹

Response to counterargument:

The genre of Paul’s writing does not exclude precise theological formulas. In fact, the very purpose of the theologian is to study Scripture carefully in order to develop biblically robust theologies. This is not to imply that the authors of a certain letter, Paul for instance, are always conscious of their theological statements (although Paul often is; take Romans, for example), but that the Holy Spirit is working through the human author to reveal the mind of God.¹²

Response to response to counterargument:

Most exegetes accept that there is an element of spiritual mystery in the composition of Scripture, in that the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with the human author to produce the text. Still, an important principle of the grammatical-historical hermeneutic is that the meaning of the text is the same as the author’s intention.¹³ This means that even if the text presents us with a meaning that is theologically valid and consistent with the rest of Scripture, we need to offer some argument to support whether that meaning was intended by the author. If this cannot be done, while the meaning might be biblically consistent, it is not the meaning intended by the author, and on the grammatical-historical hermeneutic, not the meaning of the text.

Explanation:

If there is ambiguity as to whether the prepositional phrase in all wisdom and understanding refers to God’s wisdom or the believer’s wisdom, Ephesians 1:17 offers clarity. There we find Paul using a nearly identical remark when he states that he prays that God will give the believer spiritual wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God. The theological concepts between Ephesians 1:8 and Ephesians 1:17 share a proximity that cannot be easily overlooked. In both cases Paul offers the notion that the believer relies on spiritual wisdom which originates from God, to gain knowledge of God.

We find a similar statement in Colossians 1:9 where Paul writes that he prays the church at Colossae will be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. There is no doubt that in both Ephesians 1:17 and Colossians 1:9, Paul is referring to the believer’s wisdom and understanding, which makes a good case for interpreting Ephesians 1:8 similarly.^14,15,16,17

Counterargument:

It is counterproductive to suggest that Ephesians 1:17 proves that Paul is talking about the believer’s wisdom and understanding in Ephesians 1:8. This is because, if Paul is stating that God has lavished the believers with wisdom and understanding in Ephesians 1:8, why would he, only a small number of verses later (Ephesians 1:17), state that he prays that God would give wisdom to the believers? In other words, if Paul states in Ephesians 1:8 how lavishly God has poured wisdom on the believers, there is no need for him to pray for God to pour wisdom on the believers, because presumably they already have it. The same argument can be said about Colossians 1:9, where once again Paul is praying that God would fill the believers with wisdom and understanding. Since Paul is asking that they be filled, this implies that they are currently not filled, and so require God’s provision.

Reply to counterargument:

The fact that Paul is stating that the believers have been lavished with wisdom and understanding and yet require wisdom and revelation has not been lost on some authors. Bruce, for example, refers to the theological concept of the already, not yet to make sense of this discrepancy.¹⁸ The notion of the already, not yet is that the believer participates in the fullness of God’s plan through Jesus Christ already now, but not yet entirely. For example, believers can begin shedding their sinful nature by the Holy Spirit’s recreating their desires, but this does not mean that the believer will never sin again in this lifetime. This is because, while the process of recreation begins in this life, it will not be completed until Christ returns a second time to judge the world. Similarly, Paul refers in our passage to the already, not yet gift of spiritual wisdom and understanding. God has lavished this wisdom and understanding on believers now (Ephesians 1:8) but not yet fully (Ephesians 1:17; Colossians 1:9). Therefore, Paul prays that God would continue to give spiritual wisdom and understanding to believers.

A possible weakness of this view is that it detracts from the focus of this section, which seems to be God’s grace. Paul is jubilantly praising God because he has predestined believers to be his sons and daughters because of the work of Christ. This extraordinary blessing is a gift of grace, and Paul will go on to characterize that grace in the following chapter (Ephesians 2:1). All of this is to say that there is a sense in which Paul is focused on God’s grand redemptive plan that is lavished on us in grace. The notion that God also offers wisdom and understanding through the Holy Spirit seems more like a detail, compared with the otherwise broad strokes that Paul seems to be painting.

Explanation:

One of the difficulties of the Greek text in Ephesians 1:3–14 is that Paul deploys one long sentence. Since there is a lack of punctuation in the Greek, it is difficult to know how prepositional phrases such as in all wisdom and understanding are being used. This is especially the case in Ephesians 1:8 because it is not only unclear whether the phrase refers to God’s or believers’ wisdom and understanding, but it is also not even clear which verb the prepositional phrase modifies. This is because the phrase is between two verbs, περισσεύω (to lavish/abound) and the participle form of γνωρίξω (to make known). Given the prepositional phrase’s position between these verbs, and the lack of punctuation, it is not clear whether Paul is referring to the means by which God lavished his grace or to the means by which God decided to make known the mystery of his will.

We find a similar problem in Ephesians 1:4, where it is not clear whether the preposition in love modifies the preceding or following verse. A case can be made for either. But if one takes the prepositional phrase to modify what follows, it modifies he predestined us, indicating the virtue that motivated God to predestine believers. In other words, Paul uses the phrase to clarify something about God’s action. Since we see a similar pattern in Ephesians 1:8, in the sense that a prepositional phrase immediately precedes a participle which has to do with God’s action, we have good reason to apply this concept. This means that Paul is pointing to the faculties with which God decided to make known the mystery of his will. In other words, that he decided to make the mystery of his will known is grounded in his knowledge and understanding.

Counterargument:

There are similarities between the construction of Ephesians 1:4 and Ephesians 1:8 in the sense that both passages have a prepositional phrase that could be used to modify the preceding or following clause. Still, not all authors agree that in love should modify what follows it (he predestined us). Further, they argue that in the present context, the qualifying prepositional phases always follow the verbs and participles they modify.¹⁹ It is hard to see why Paul would alter the rhythm of the Greek when this could confuse the reader.