“Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:”
They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts — the pagan condition: the nous ('mind') is eskotemenos ('darkened,' morally blinded), apoallotriōō ('separated,' alienated) from the zōē tou theou ('life of God'), dia tēn agnoian ('because of ignorance'), the pōrōsis ('hardening,' callousness) of the kardia ('heart').
Church Fathers on Ephesians 4:18
These words are not addressed to the Ephesians only, but are now addressed also to you; and that, not from me, but from Paul; or rather, neither from me nor from Paul, but from the grace of the Spirit. And we then ought so to feel, as though that grace itself were uttering them. And now hear what it says. “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding,…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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