Being At Home or Taking Up Habitation? A Verbal Aspectual Analysis of Christ's Habitation in Ephesians 3:17

Abstract

Abstract:The prayer in Ephesians 3:16–19 is filled with syntactical oddities and the portrayal of Christ's habitation in the readers' hearts (3:17) is also quite enigmatic. Does it describe the inception of Christ's habitation or his durative habitation? The grammar seems to imply it is a request for Christ to take up habitation (inceptive), while the context (e.g., 2:22) suggests they are already indwelt by Christ (durative). Many commentators favour the latter, though a minority favours the former. This article contributes to the literature on Ephesians 3:17 by employing verbal aspect theory to evaluate the cogency of the inceptive interpretation so as to shed some light on the enigma of Christ's habitation in this verse.We begin with a study of the structural and theological background to the problem. After that, we show the significance of verbal aspect for the Greek verbal system and demonstrate its operation with the tense-mood combinations found in this pericope. Through this, we show that the inceptive interpretation cannot be avoided. Last, we do a theological synthesis to establish the author's communicative purpose and in so doing shed light on the apparent contradiction between the context and grammar of Ephesians 3:17.