Who Turned Off the Lights?

So I say this, and affirm in the Lord, that you are to no longer walk just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their minds, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;  Ephesians 4:17-18 NASB

Being darkened – Who made me make so many mistakes?  Does that seem like an odd question?  You decided to believe something that turned out to be false.  No one forced you to believe it.  You made a choice.  It may have been for the wrong reasons, or for lack of understanding, or something else, but no one put a gun to your head and told you, “Believe this or else!”  In fact, it’s hard to imagine that anyone could force you to believe.  You could be forced to comply, but not to believe.  All of this means that the verb here, skotóō, as a perfect passive, seems a bit odd.  A perfect passive is a state that resulted from a completed past action and has present relevance, indicating that the subject has been acted upon.  It’s not reflexive.  These Gentiles did not darken their own mind.  Someone, or something, brought this situation upon them, and according to Paul, whatever brought this about was finished in the past even though it continues to have present consequences.  What do you suppose Paul has in mind?  Adam?  Maybe.

When did humanity become darkened in its understanding of God’s sovereignty?  Well, if we’re looking at this from Scripture, we probably have to go back to the Garden.  The serpent (nāḥāš) was a walking, talking, duplicitous creature who somehow ended up in the pristine enclosure with the man and the woman.  The nāḥāš isn’t like any snake we’ve ever heard of, but that might be because the nāḥāš represents something other than a literal snake.[1]  Nevertheless, in another letter Paul suggests that this creature deceived the woman and subsequently caused the man to sin.[2]  If this is what Paul believed, then the completed act in the past, that is, the Fall, brought about a spiritual and moral darkness that has affected humanity ever since.  Perfect passive.

Does this mean men are not responsible for their defective understanding?  If you believe the doctrine of the Federal Headship of Adam (and the origin of Original Sin), then you will have a hard time maintaining subsequent human culpability, but if you treat the story as an indicator of the consequences of choice (Adam chooses not to follow God’s direction), then you could agree that the completed act in the distant past had spin cycle results for all the rest of us even if it didn’t make us all ontologically guilty.  The summation of human history, passed to each of us in both personal and cultural DNA, pushes us into a world that has systematically excommunicated its Creator—with dire consequences—so much so that men don’t even realize the tragic error of their ways.  Paul’s opening paragraph in his letter to the Romans says as much.  Ignorance plus arrogance equals deceptive destruction.  But no matter how we got here, this is where we are—drowning in a world that exiled God from daily existence.

Notice that Paul does not say, “darkened in their behavior.”  We could argue that the behavior of the world is the problem.  Just look at the world stage.  Everywhere dissention, violence, corruption, hatred.  Behaviors that destroy.  But Paul is more fundamental than just behavioral therapy.  He focuses on dianoia, “understanding.”  What does this mean?

A derivative of noéō (“to perceive mentally, to think”), dianoia is not common in the apostolic writings.  In the Greek culture it has “varied senses as (1) thought as a function, (2) the power of thought, the thinking consciousness, (3) the way of thought, (4) the result of thought, e.g., thought, idea, opinion, or judgment, (5) resolve or intention, and (6) the meaning of words or statements.”^[3]  But Paul uses Jewish Greek, that is, Greek influenced by the LXX, where this word is used as an equivalent of kardía (heart), and that takes us to the Hebrew idea of the center of a man’s cognitive, moral, and volitional being.  It is moral and spiritual darkness that has come over men.  Perhaps we could say that the yetzer ha’ra in its collective form (i.e., as a constituent element of being human) has achieved the upper hand and convinced humanity that life is possible without God.  Paul would tell us that this level of hubris is behind the decay of existence and results in certain death.  The lie of the serpent continues to attract.

The end of Paul’s statement jars us: “ . . . the ignorance that is in them.”  How can agnóēma (ignorance) be the cause of all this tragedy?  More importantly, how can men be held accountable for their ignorance?  We will have to take a much closer look at agnóēma before we finish examining this verse.

Topical Index: dianoia, thought, skotóō, perfect passive, darkened, Ephesians 4:17-18

[1] For a discussion of the alternatives, see TWOT 1347 נחשׁ (nḥš)

[2] 1 Timothy 2:14

^[3] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 638). W.B. Eerdmans.