Notes

1. Please note that when the author discusses words in the original biblical languages, this series uses the general rather than the scholarly method of transliteration.

1. Ernest Best, “The Reading and Writing of Commentaries,” ExpTim 107 (1996): 358.

2. David Lodge, Changing Places (London: Penguin, 1975), 44.

1. Bo Reicke, “The Historical Setting of Colossians,” RevExp 70 (1973): 430.

2. See W. H. Mare, “Archaeological Prospects at Colossae,” NEASB 7 (1976): 39–59.

3. Walter Bujard, Stilanalytische Untersuchungen zum Kolosserbrief als Beitrag zur Methodik von Sprachvergleichen, SUNT 11 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), challenges as inadequate the earlier stylistic analysis of Ernst Percy, Die Probleme der Kolosser-und Epheserbriefe (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1946), who defended Pauline authorship. Bujard investigates the language print in Colossians, found in such things as the connectives, sentence structure, and progression of thought, and concludes that it is not Paul’s. Mark Kiley, Colossians as Pseudepigraphy, The Biblical Seminar (Sheffield: JSOT, 1986) adds a new criterion. All seven undisputed letters from Paul discuss financial transactions on behalf of his mission. Such discussion, he claims, does not appear in the letters that are disputed.

4. Eduard Lohse, “Pauline Theology in the Letter to the Colossians,” NTS 15 (1969): 217–18.

5. Lohse, ibid., 218, concludes that the unknown author “composed the letter with the intention of making the apostle’s word heard in the situation which had arisen with the appearance of the so-called philosophy in the Asia Minor churches. Just as Paul had ties with the churches through letters, so also for his students the letter was the appropriate form for making known to the churches the binding positions and statements.” The list of coworkers in 4:7–17 certifies them as the legitimate bearers of the Pauline tradition.

6. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 144, also ask, “If the author with the means to falsify the manuscript attempted to deceive the readers about its true authorship, then it is incomprehensible that he would have neglected the ‘best’ possibilities, for example imitating the typical Pauline style, especially in the preface.”

7. Pokorný, Colossians, 191. He does not answer why it is that only Epaphras receives a full commendation. Epaphras, not Tychicus or Onesimus, is identified as a servant of Christ who labors on Paul’s behalf (1:7) and as a servant of Christ Jesus (4:12).

8. The small sample of Pauline vocabulary from his letters is not exhaustive. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 7, comments, “When one takes into consideration the Apostle Paul’s ability for varied manners of expression, the arguments against the authenticity of the letter based on stylistic matters and hapax legomena are somewhat blunted.” Cannon, The Use of Traditional Materials in Colossians, argues for Pauline authorship since Colossians contains a high percentage of pre-Pauline material.

9. See also the conclusions of Stanley E. Porter and Kent D. Clarke, “Canonical-Critical Perspectives and the Relationship of Colossians and Ephesians,” Bib 78 (1997): 57–86.

10. Andrew Lincoln, Paradise Now and Not Yet: Studies in the Role of the Heavenly Dimension in Paul’s Thought with Special Reference to His Theology, SNTSMS 43 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981). Erich Grässer, “Kol. 3,1–4 als Beispiel einer Interpretation secundum homines recipientes,” ZTK 64 (1967): 139–46, makes this kind of argument.

11. Lincoln, Paradise Now and Not Yet, 122–23.

12. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 266. Colossians’ affinities with the undisputed letters are significant: Paul’s view of his calling (1:1, 25) as servant and apostle to the Gentiles (1:27; cf. Gal. 1:15–16; 2:7); his view of his suffering on behalf of the church (Col. 1:24; cf. 2 Cor. 1:1–7); his preaching on the basis of the revelation of a mystery (Col. 1:26; cf. 1 Cor. 2:1); his goal to bring his churches to maturity (Col. 1:28; cf. 1 Cor. 1:26; 14:20; Phil. 3:15); his understanding of the cross and redemption (Col. 1:14, 20, 22; 2:14); his understanding of Christ’s exaltation (2:10, 15; cf. Phil. 2:10–11); his understanding of Christ’s role in creation (Col. 1:15–16; cf. 1 Cor. 8:6); his understanding of baptism (Col. 3:12; cf. Rom. 6:1–14); his comparison of the church with a body and Christ’s identity with it (Col. 1:18; 3:15; cf. 1 Cor. 12). Parallels in vocabulary and ideas with Philippians, another prison letter, are also striking.

13. The letter follows the Pauline pattern. Terence Y. Mullins, “The Thanksgivings of Philemon and Colossians,” NTS 30 (1984): 288–93, shows that the Colossian thanksgiving section was not patterned on Philemon and expanded, as some have assumed. By charting the themes in the thanksgiving sections, he shows that Colossians has ten themes and includes only five of the nine themes in Philemon, whereas Philippians contains six of the nine themes found in Philemon. He also shows that the Colossian thanksgiving manifests the characteristic features of the Pauline thanksgiving by announcing basic themes to be dealt with in the letter. He concludes: “Structurally Colossians is a unit with thematic relationships appearing in a manner typical of Paul.”

14. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 44. On Paul’s use of a secretary, see E. R. Richards, The Secretary in the Letters of Paul, WUNT 2/42 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1991).

15. On the complex question of the relationship between Colossians and Ephesians, see John B. Polhill, “The Relationship Between Ephesians and Colossians,” RevExp 70 (1973): 439–50; and for a more recent and different view, see Ernest Best, “Who Used Whom? The Relationship of Ephesians and Colossians,” NTS 43 (1997): 72–96.

16. Paul has not had a direct, personal connection to the church (2:1), and the parallels with Romans, a church that Paul also did not know personally, are significant. In both letters, he opens with a Christological confession (Rom. 1:3–4; Col. 1:15–20). He refers to his apostolic commission to proclaim the gospel among Gentiles (Rom. 1:8–15; Col. 1:5–8, 24–29). He emphasizes that the Christian is joined to Christ’s death in baptism (Rom. 6:1–11; Col. 2:11–13). The ethical exhortation follows a similar pattern (Rom. 12:1–15:6; Col. 3:1–4:6). Paul concludes both letters with a list of greetings from friends to reinforce his ties to the congregation (Rom. 16; Col. 4:7–18). See Lohse, “Pauline Theology,” 219.

17. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 352.

18. See, for example, Johannes Lähnemann, Der Kolosserbrief, Komposition, Situation, and Argumentation, SNT 3 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1971), 174–77.

19. This conclusion presupposes that the letter to the Colossians is intended for churches other than those of Colosse and Laodicea. One would expect that the more general letter to the Ephesians would do the same, but except for the mention of Tychicus, the bearer of the letter, no other coworker is mentioned. Johnson, Writings, 352, asks a probing question, “Why should imitation of random biographical details from an obscure private note, which was not likely to have had wide circulation, have been expected to mark the letter as Pauline?”

20. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 144. Johnson, Writings, 357, points out that pseudonymity most often was “a transparent fiction, employing the name of a person long dead and known to be so (Enoch, for example, in Apocalypses, or Socrates in the Cynic letters). Here, in contrast, we have a school producing a letter shortly after Paul’s death, deliberately using signals—his autograph, the network of names—that make the enterprise more like a deliberate forgery.”

21. The same verb “told us” (deloo) in 1:8 appears in 1 Cor. 1:11, where Paul says that Chloe’s people gave him oral reports about the problems in Corinth. Conceivably, Tychicus or Onesimus relayed news about the church to Paul.

22. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, xiii, n. 1.

23. Most have assumed that Paul writes a rejoinder to false teaching that has invaded or challenged the church. Morna Hooker, “Were There False Teachers in Colossae?” in Christ and Spirit in the New Testament, ed. Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973), 315–31, however, argues strongly against this scenario. She claims that since there is no clear reference to the supposed error and no sign of distress on Paul’s part (no angry outbursts, no hint of rejection), there is no false teaching pervading the community. She claims: “The teaching in Col. 1 is entirely positive, and it is only the assumption of some kind of situation such as has been outlined that leads commentators to assume that what Paul affirms, others have been denying” (316). Paul’s description of the preeminence of Christ in creation and redemption in 1:15–20, for example, does not require that Paul is opposing some false teaching that believes otherwise.

24. J. J. Gunther, St. Paul’s Opponents and Their Background, NovTSup 35 (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 3–4, lists 44 different suggestions, and more have been proposed since. Four recent major monographs in English on this topic arrive at four quite different conclusions. Sappington, Revelation and Redemption at Colossae (1991), contends the error is “an ascetical mystical piety from Jewish apocalypticism.” DeMaris, The Colossian Controversy (1994), argues that it is “a distinctive blend of Middle Platonic, Jewish, and Christian elements that cohere around a pursuit for wisdom.” Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism (1995), makes a strong case for a “syncretistic folk religion.” Martin, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit (1996), contends that wandering Cynics are behind the error. The problem is compounded by the fact that the city of Colosse has never been excavated. The possibilities are abundant; our specific knowledge is limited.

25. Fred O. Francis, “The Christological Argument of Colossians,” in God’s Christ and His People: Studies in Honor of Nils Alstrup Dahl, ed. Jacob Jervell and Wayne Meeks (Oslo/Bergen/Tromsö: Unversitetsforlaget, 1977), 193.

26. J. Gewiess, “Die apologetische Methode des Apostels Paulus im Kampf gegen die Irrlehre in Kolossä,” BibLeb 3 (1962): 264, argues that Paul often presents caricatures of his opponents and draws out the consequences from their teaching that they did not imagine in order to present them in the worst light possible.

27. Hooker, “Were There False Teachers in Colossae?” 319, reminds us of the inevitable danger of circularity in this process: “It is all too easy to use what hints there are in a letter to build a false picture of events, and then read this back into what is said.”

28. Colin J. A. Hickling, “Is the Second Epistle to the Corinthians a Source for Early Church History?” ZNW 66 (1975): 284–87, offers a helpful caution. “We should not assume that Paul’s choice of subjects and of phraseology [is] dictated by the arguments of his competitors” (285). Paul more frequently gives an exposition of the truth than a refutation of error. See also Jerry Sumney, “Those Who Pass Judgment: The Identity of the Opponents in Colossians,” Bib 74 (1993): 377–78. The letter’s emphasis on the sufficiency of Christ, for example, does not offer much guidance in identifying the opponents. We can only infer that someone in or out of the church neglected this truth, misunderstood it, or rejected it.

29. The future tense in 2:8 translated literally (“Beware lest there will be someone who will take you captive”) indicates that this is a danger, not something that has already happened.

30. We must decide if Paul quotes their demands or lampoons their position. Clearly the opponents’ position is related to some kind of abstinence. Some measure of asceticism is confirmed in 2:23, where “humility” and “harsh treatment of the body” are connected to checking “sensual indulgence.”

31. These powers are referred to as the evil “dominion of darkness” (1:13), “the invisible … thrones or powers or rulers or authorities” (1:16; cf. 2:10, 15), and ta stoicheia tou kosmou (2:8, 20), and perhaps “angels” in 2:18.

32. The following general categories have been proposed for the opponents: An incipient gnostic Judaism; a gnostic mystery religion; an ascetic, mystical Judaism; a form of Hellenistic philosophy; a syncretistic amalgam from the Hellenistic culture and religion.

33. When we say Judaism, we must recognize that first-century Jews expressed their faith in a variety of ways, particularly in the Diaspora. The Dura-Europa synagogue provides ample evidence of how variegated Judaism was.

34. See Titus 1:13–14: “This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the commands of those who reject the truth.”

35. N. T. Wright, “Poetry and Theology in Colossians 1.15–20,” in The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 118, concludes that “the writer is not opposing an actual heresy in the church, but is writing to warn a young church against the blandishments of the synagogue which had proved so devastating to the young church in Galatia.” Daniel J. Harrington, “Christians and Jews in Colossians,” in Diaspora Jews and Judaism. Essays in Honor of, and in Dialogue with A. Thomas Kraabel, South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism, ed. J. Andrew Overman and Robert S. MacLennan (Atlanta: Scholars, 1992), 154, writes: “There is no indication that these Gentile Christians knew much about Judaism before becoming Christians. There is no debate about the interpretation of biblical texts…. It appears that they had come to know about Judaism after their conversion to Christianity and are attracted to it.” Paul identifies the Colossians as having been “dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh [NIV, sinful nature]” in 2:13. This judgment derives from the customary Jewish estimation of Gentiles without the law and outside God’s covenant (see Eph. 2:12). Such a charge would have unsettled new, uncertain Gentile Christians.

36. Dunn, “Colossian Philosophy,” 156, also envisages “a Jewish synagogue community or representative, conscious of the Jewish community’s age and respectability, thus speaking dismissively of a (quasi-) Jewish sect so recently arrived on the scene.” He concludes (179):

If indeed there were Jews in Colossae confident in their religion (2:18) through faithfulness to what were traditional (Jewish) observances (2:16, 21–23), we should not be surprised if they professed such claims in dialogue and debate with other Colossians. And if there then grew up in their midst a new version of their own teaching, proclaiming a Jewish Messiah and the fulfilment of ancient Jewish hopes (1:12 and 3:12), but intended for Gentiles, despite “the uncircumcision of the flesh” and their ignorance of Jewish law and tradition, then, again, it would hardly be a surprise if some of the more outspoken and religiously confident members of the synagogues spoke dismissively of the beliefs, devotion and praxis of the new movement as compared with their own.

37. See Acts 9:22–23; 13:45, 50 (Antioch of Pisidia); 14:2 (Iconium); 14:19 (Lystra and Derbe); 17:5, 13 (Thessalonica); 18:4, 12 (Corinth); 18:19; 19:33 (Ephesus); 20:3 (Greece); 20:19. See also Rev. 2:9 and 3:9 for a reference to the synagogue of Satan in Smyrna and Philadelphia.

38. This explains the noticeable lack of urgency in the letter. The opponents did not seek to make the Christians into Jewish proselytes but simply dismissed and denigrated the Christians claims.

39. To appreciate their reaction, we might compare the indignity of modern Christians with new sects or cults that adopt Christian features but reject orthodox Christian faith.

40. DeMaris, Colossian Controversy, 48, cites Philo’s stress on the correspondence between Jewish piety and Greek philosophy and argues that the Sabbath allows for pursuit of philosophy (The Life of Moses 2.39 §§211–16). See further Philo, On the Change of Names 39, 223; On the Contemplative Life 26; Embassy to Gaius 23, 33, 156, 245; On Dreams 2.18, 127. See also The Epistle of Aristeas 256. Josephus used the word to classify the major “philosophies” of Judaism (Jewish War 2.8.2 § 119; Antiquities 18.2.2 §§1, 11, 23). The dismissal of Judaism by the tyrant Antiochus in 4 Macc. 5:11 sounds like Paul’s: “Will you not awaken from your foolish philosophy, dispel your futile reasonings, adopt a mind appropriate to your years, philosophize according to the truth of what is beneficial?” To which Eleazar replies:

“You scoff at our philosophy as though living by it were irrational, but it teaches us self-control, so that we master all pleasures and desires, and it also trains us in courage, so that we endure any suffering willingly; it instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we act impartially, and it teaches us piety, so that with proper reverence we worship the only living God” (4 Macc. 5:22–24, NRSV).

41. Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 8.4. Rabbi Trypho expresses amazement at the Christians’ way of life in the world: “But this is what we are most at a loss about: that you professing to be pious, and supposing yourselves better than others, are not in any particular separated from them, and do not alter your mode of living from the nations, in that you observe no festivals or sabbaths, and do not have the rite of circumcision” (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 10).

42. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 340. See Gal. 3:19–26.

43. See Dan. 1:3–16; 1 Macc. 1:62–63; 10:3; Tobit 1:10–12; Judith 12:2, 19; Add. Esth. 14:17; Joseph and Asenath 7:1; 8:5; Josephus, Against Apion 2.31 §282. Some argue that the reference to food and drink does not make reference to Jewish food laws since the Old Testament does not contain any prohibitions regarding drink. But Rom. 14:17, 21 refer to drink along with food (see also Letter of Aristeas 142, quoted below).

44. 1 Chron. 23:31; 2 Chron. 2:4; 31:3; Isa. 1:13–14; Ezek. 45:17; 46:4–6; Hos. 2:11 (in reverse order, as in Col. 2:16); 1 Macc. 10:23; 005052; Judith 8:6; 1 Enoch 82:7–10; Jubilees 1:10, 14; 2:9–10; 6:34–38; 23:19. Numbers 28–29 lists sacrifices to be performed at the new moon, the first of every month. See also CD 3:14–15; 1QM 2:4–6; and 1QS 9:26–10:8, which refers to special revelation concerning “the holy sabbaths and glorious feasts.” T. C. G. Thornton, “Jewish New Moon Festivals: Galatians 4:3–11 and Colossians 2:16,” JTS 40 (1989): 97–100, suggests that the Christians at Colosse may be criticized for failing to keep the Jewish calendar.

45. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 339.

46. Dunn, “Colossians Philosophy,” 166.

47. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 199.

48. In addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 13:6; 1 Enoch 48:5; 62:6, 9; Apocalypse of Zephaniah 6:16; Apocalypse of Abraham 17:2; Ascension of Isaiah 7:21; Adam and Eve 13–15; Philo, On Flight and Finding 212; On Dreams 1.232, 238. Warnings against too great a veneration of angels in rabbinic literature may provide evidence that it was done (t. Hul. 2:18). Later Christians accused Jews of worshiping angels; see the evidence in Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 179.

49. The term ta stoicheia tou kosmou (“basic principles [or elemental spirits] of the world”) in 2:8, 23, is linked to Judaism in Gal. 4:3, 9.

50. James S. Stewart, “A First-Century Heresy and Its Modern Counterpart,” SJT 23 (1970): 420.

51. Ibid., 423, mentions the danger of substituting “immanence for incarnation, evolution for redemption, psychological subjectivity for the Holy Spirit, progress for the Kingdom of God.”

1. See Schweizer, Colossians, 28. Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 34, makes the statement without a shred of evidence: “While he has not yet met with his Colossian readers, no doubt there is opposition to his ministry and teaching among them.” Paul is not trying to defend his apostleship to the Colossians because in 1:23 he simply designates himself as a “servant” (diakonos) of the gospel (like Epaphras, 1:7). He identifies himself as a “fellow servant” with others (1:7; 4:7). A later copyist apparently did not think Paul’s status as a mere servant grand enough; the text of * reads “preacher and apostle” (kerux kai apostolos) and reflects a later preoccupation with titles and authority.

2. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, 16.

3. That imagery echoes the calling of prophets in the Old Testament (see Isa. 49:1; Jer. 1:5).

4. Other persons Paul designates as “brothers” are Quartus (Rom. 16:23), Sosthenes (1 Cor. 1:1), and Apollos (1 Cor. 16:12). See also 2 Cor. 8:18; 9:3, 5; 12:18.

5. The NIV takes the word “holy” as an adjective. It could also be rendered as a substantive, “saints” (NRSV). Paul uses the word as a substantive in addressing the churches in his letters to the Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Ephesians, and it has this meaning in 1:4. Since one definite article governs both “holy” and “faithful,” it is likely that he intends an adjectival meaning; but it could be a careless usage that simply omits the article.

6. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 48.

7. The exception is Eph. 1:1.

8. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 130, suggests that Paul called them faithful in hopes of warding off any more unfaithfulness. He contends that by calling them faithful, Paul “obliquely hints at the defection” that has already occurred among some whose allegiance has been shaken (132). Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 38, concurs with this view: “In stressing faithful brothers, Paul may very well have the audience’s religious confusion in mind.”

9. Peace appears in all the greetings of letters attributed to Paul (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3; Eph. 1:2; Phil. 1:2; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2; Titus 1:4; Philem. 4) and in many of his closing benedictions (Rom. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 6:16; Eph. 6:23; Col. 1:2; 2 Thess. 3:16; see Phil. 4:9).

10. Buttrick, “Philemon,” 563, comments: “The grace is God’s free unmerited favor to sinful men through the forgiving Cross and the enabling resurrection of his Son, and the peace is the consequent reconciliation of men with God.”

11. See Rom. 12:18; 14:17, 19; 1 Cor. 7:15; 14:33; 2 Cor. 13:11; Eph. 4:3; 1 Thess. 5:13; 2 Tim. 2:22; see also Rom. 3:17; 8:6; Eph. 2:14–17; Col. 1:20.

12. See Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; 11:31; Gal. 1:3; Eph. 1:2; 6:23; Phil. 1:2; 2 Thess. 1:2; Philem. 3. It may well be that Paul omits mention of Jesus Christ here because he wants to affirm his monotheism prior to the Christological hymn.

13. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 168.

14. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 165, insightfully observes that when Paul begins with a thanksgiving, he can inform the readers how he is pleased with them “yet protect them from smugness by a reminder that their Christian faith and life are the product of God’s unmerited grace.”

15. The traditional verse division puts “joyfully” (literally “with joy”) in 1:11 and connects it with what precedes, “so that you may have great endurance and patience with joy.” The NIV correctly renders the prepositional phrase with the participle that follows. It matches a syntactic pattern in 1:10–11: (lit.) “in every good work bearing fruit,” “growing in the knowledge of God,” “with all power being strengthened,” and “joyfully giving thanks.”

16. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 33; and Yates, The Epistle to the Colossians, 10.

17. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 48.

18. The “we” in 1:9 may be a literary plural, a royal “we,” which would mean that Paul has only himself in mind. Since he switches from the plural to the singular in 1:24, it is more likely that the “we” refers also to his coworkers (see Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 166–68). The “always” may go with “we give thanks” to God (NIV) or “praying for you” (so KJV). The NIV translation implies that every time Paul prayed for the Colossians he gave thanks for them (see 1 Cor. 1:4; Eph. 1:16; 1 Thess. 1:2). Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 50, argues, however, that “always” should go with “praying.” Paul wants to convey that he “does not pray haphazardly only when the mood strikes him, but keeps regular hours of prayer (probably morning, noon, and evening), and the church in Colosse is always mentioned.” Dunn, The Epistles of Colossians and to Philemon, 56, imagines that Paul prayed during his travel or long hours of stitching. Paul may also have continued in his Jewish tradition of praying at the three hours of prayer (see Dan. 6:11; Acts 3:1; 10:3).

19. Paul gives thanks for the same thing in Philem. 5.

20. See Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 134.

21. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 57, points out that Paul does not normally use the noun “faith” followed by the preposition en plus the dative, “faith in Jesus Christ,” but instead uses the phrase “faith of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 3:22, 26; Gal. 2:16, 20; 3:22; Phil. 3:9). Paul uses the verb “to believe” followed by the phrase “in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 10:14; Gal. 2:16; Phil. 1:29). The phrase “faith in Jesus Christ” appears in letters that many scholars claim are post-Pauline (Eph. 1:15; 1 Tim. 3:13; 2 Tim. 1:13; 3:15). W. H. P. Hatch, The Pauline Idea of Faith (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1917) 46, argues that “faith of Christ,” “faith in [en] Christ,” and “faith in [eis] Christ” all mean essentially the same thing (noted by Harris, Colossians and Philemon, 16).

22. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 169. Love heads the list of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22; see Rom. 5:5). This reference to the Spirit in 1:8 is the only one in the letter. Schweizer, Colossians, 38–39, offers an engaging explanation:

The Spirit is extremely difficult to control by the use of objective criteria. Appeal is made to the Spirit in every kind of sectarian movement for which Christ has become incidental or nothing more that a cipher for something altogether different. In Christology, by contrast, the criteria for distinguishing between true and false teaching are more readily available.

23. Paul shows his own love for others by risking imprisonment as he seeks to spread the gospel and perfect others’ faith so that they might stand faultless before the Lord. We find a clear illustration of what Paul means by love from his letter to Philemon. He expects Philemon to ignore social conventions and economic self-interest and respond to his appeal for Onesimus on the basis of love (Philem. 8–9).

24. The NIV paraphrases well the Greek phrase “because of the hope” by translating it “the faith and love that spring from the hope.”

25. See 2 Cor. 3:12; Gal. 5:5; Eph. 1:18; 4:4; 2 Thess. 2:16; see also Titus 1:2; 3:7.

26. “Stored up in heaven” may connote both a spatial idea and a temporal idea: It is laid up for future use.

27. Paul’s vision is all-embracing; the word “all” appears in the Greek text in 1:4, 6, 9, 10, 11.

28. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 168.

29. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 51, comments that Paul presents the gospel “almost as a personified force”; it comes, and it bears fruit as a plant.

30. Ibid., 53. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 134–35, contends that by contrast, “the false gospels are the outgrowths of local circumstances, of special idiosyncrasies; the true Gospel is the same everywhere. The false gospels address themselves to limited circles; the true Gospel proclaims itself boldly throughout the world. Heresies are at best ethnic: the truth is essentially catholic.”

31. Schweizer, The Letter to the Colossians, 37.

32. The order of bearing and increasing is found in the parable of the sower (see Mark 4:8). Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 53–54, connects the imagery of a growing plant to Gen. 1:22, 28, where the animal kingdom and the man and woman are to be fruitful and increase. He writes:

This theme from the creation account is picked up at several key points in the story of the creation of Israel, the family of Abraham, highlighting the Jewish belief that in the call of Israel God was fulfilling his purposes for the whole world, undoing the sin of Adam by creating for himself a holy people. It is completely in line with Paul’s rethinking of Jewish belief in the light of the gospel that he should transfer to that gospel ideas belonging to creation, and the divinely intended recreation, of the world. Paul gives us an advance glimpse of the theological position soon to be stated in full (1:15–20). God is doing through the gospel what he always intended to do. He is sowing good seed in the world and preparing to reap a harvest of human lives recreated to reflect his glory.

The image of a growing tree could also match that of Wisdom taking root and flourishing in Sir. 24:13–17.

33. Our word “deacon” derives from the Greek noun diakonos, used here to describe Epaphras, but it does not describe a formal office here. A textual variant has faithful servant of Christ “in behalf of you.” The two words “your” and “our” would have been pronounced identically, which explains the many variants confusing the two. The NIV reflects the reading in the best textual witnesses (p⁴⁶, , A B, D^gr, G it^g, Ambrosiaster).

34. Paul may have commissioned Epaphras to evangelize the outlying areas while he concentrated on the major cities.

35. See, for example, Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 42–43. C. Masson, L’Épître de Saint Paul aux Colossiens (CNT 10; Neuchâtel: Delachaux, 1950), 156, went even further by saying that Epaphras had a reputation for incompetence and laziness, which allowed the false teachers to succeed. There is no evidence to support such speculation.

36. John Chrysostom, “Epistle to the Romans,” in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 11:562.

37. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The First Christian,” in The Writings of St. Paul, ed. Wayne A Meeks (New York/London: W. W. Norton, 1972), 289.

38. George Bernard Shaw, “The Monstrous Imposition Upon Jesus, “in The Writings of St. Paul, 300.

39. Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (New York: Free Press, 1996).

40. Pokorný, Colossians, 33. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 169, notes that Paul mentions fourteen fellow workers in his letters, four fellow prisoners of war, two fellow soldiers, two fellow slaves, and one yokefellow. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 54, reminds us, “In an individualistic age we do well to remind ourselves how often Paul’s you is plural—and that not merely referring to a collection of individuals, but indicating a corporate unity, the Body of Christ.”

41. Robert Wuthnow, “Small Groups Forge New Notions of Community and the Sacred,” The Christian Century 110 (Dec. 8, 1993): 1239–40. Wuthnow’s book, Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community (New York: The Free Press, 1994), shows that people in Bible study groups tended to use the Bible as a self-help book. The Bible is considered true because it has helped one get whatever it was that one wanted.

42. Wade Clark Roof, A Generation of Seekers (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), 195.

43. Malcolm Bradbury, Eating People Is Wrong (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 133.

44. John Hick, The Rainbow of Faiths (London: SCM, 1995), ix–x.

45. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “How to Think About Secularism,” First Things 64 (June/July 1996): 27.

46. Ibid.

47. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, “Religions,” in Dud and Peter: The Dagenheim Dialogues (London: Methuen, 1971), 139, cited by Brian J. Dodd, The Problem with Paul (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996), 10.

48. Pannenberg, “How to Think About Secularism,” 27.

49. Ibid., 27–28.

50. Theodore Caplow, Howard M. Bahr, Bruce A. Chadwick (et al.), All Faithful People: Change and Continuity in Middletown’s Religion (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1983), 98.

51. In one papyrus fragment, the writer says: “I pray to all gods” (P. Oxy. 1766 [18]); an inscription reads: “We magnify every god” (SIG 1153). S. Angus, The Mystery-Religions and Christianity (New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1925), 192, cites the private chapel of the Emperor Alexander Severus, which contained shrines of Orpheus, Abraham, Apollonius of Tyana, and Jesus.

52. Pokorný, Colossians, 37.

53. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 50, comments: “Though Judaism knew God as Father, the precise nature of his paternal love could not be conceived until it had been revealed in the cross of the Messiah. Nor could that cross be understood, conversely, until it became clear that it was the climax of the saving plan of the God of Israel, and that therefore this God had now exalted the crucified one and given him the title ‘Lord’….”

54. James S. Stewart, “A First-Century Heresy and Its Modern Counterpart,” SJT 23 (1970): 424.

55. Pannenberg, “How to Think About Secularism,” 28.

56. J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1995), deal with the problem of claiming truth in a postmodern setting. Alister McGrath, A Passion for Truth (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996) sets forth the ground on which evangelicalism can constructively engage the world with its vision of the truth.

57. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 79. He adds that Christianity “does not commit Christians to the proposition that there is no truth to be found in others religions.” They may reflect some truth, but they are at best “doorways” into the one truth, which is Christ.

58. Ibid., 108. Schweizer, Colossians, 35, reminds us that truth in this context does not pertain to something that can be shown from “empirical proof or logical deduction”; it refers to “reliability.” The truth believers place their faith in does not disappoint or fail.

59. Vincent J. Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered (2d ed.; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1982), 63.

60. William Blake, “Songs of Experience,” in The Complete Writings of William Blake (New York: Random House, 1957), 211.

61. Pokorný, Colossians, 100, observes that one of the problems is that willful, sinful humanity does not want to accept that it must rely completely “upon a gift from the outside.”

62. Schweizer, Colossians, 34.

63. Moule, Colossians and Philemon, 84.

64. Richard B. Hayes, “Salvation By Trust? Reading the Bible Faithfully,” Christian Century 114/7 (Feb. 26, 1997): 219.

1. Paul put into practice what he tells the Colossians to do, “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful” (4:2). Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 57, comments: “He will not offer teaching, advice, and encouragement except in the context of prayer.”

2. The idea of a person being filled by God prepares for the concept of fullness in 1:19 and 2:9, and Paul is probably not introducing the language of the false teachers here. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 170, notes that the three terms knowledge, wisdom, and understanding occur together in the Old Testament (Ex. 31:3; 35:31; Isa. 11:2; see also Sir. 1:19; 1QS 4:4; 10:9, 12; 1QSb 5:21; 1QH 2:18; 11:17–18; 12:11–12). Similar prayers occur in Eph. 1:17; Phil. 1:9; Philem. 6, where there is no hint of false teachers.

3. In the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QS 11:18–19), God’s plan of salvation lies hidden; for Paul, it has been fully revealed in Christ (Col. 1:15–20).

4. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 170, comments: “In the spiritual realm there is no knowledge without commitment.”

5. The word epignosis (“knowledge”) may also refer to “moral and religious insight, recognition, acknowledgment.” The adjective “spiritual” governs the two nouns “wisdom” and “understanding” and refers to something given by the Spirit, which contrasts with what emerges from an unspiritual mind (2:18).

6. The phrase translated in the NIV “growing in the knowledge of God” can also be rendered, “growing by the knowledge of God.” The growth is not in knowledge but comes as the result of the knowledge of God. As Patzia, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, 23, explains, “Moral and spiritual growth comes from knowing and doing the will of God.”

7. The passive voice indicates that the strength comes entirely from God. Pokorný, Colossians, 49, comments that Paul refers to the redeeming power by which God is able to bring about the transformation of the situation of sinful humanity, and it is expressed in words such as “deliver,” “transfer into the kingdom of his Son” (1:13), “reconcile,” and “present before him” (1:22).

8. The phrase “his glorious might” reads literally, “according to the power of his glory.” See the power of God in Eph. 1:19; 3:7, 16, 20; 6:10.

9. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 34, points out that the word “thanks” does not appear often in the LXX and is often interchanged with the word for confession. He cites Origen’s remarks, “To say ‘I confess’ is the same as saying ‘I give thanks’ ” (Orat. 6).

10. Paul uses the verb hikanoo and its cognates to describe God “making him fit” (2 Cor. 2:16, “equal,” NIV; 2 Cor. 3:5–6, “competent,” NIV) for a ministry for which he felt “unfit” (1 Cor. 15:9, “do not even deserve,” NIV).

11. See Num. 18:20; Deut. 10:9; 12:12; 14:27, 29; 18:1; Josh. 13:1–19:51.

12. James D. G. Dunn, “The Colossian Philosophy: A Confident Jewish Apologia,” Bib 76 (1995): 158, citing Dan. 12:13; Wis. 5:5; 1 Enoch 48:7; 1 QS 11:7–8; 1QH 11:10–12.

13. Some claim that “the saints” (1:12) refers to angels, “holy ones in the light” (see Dan. 7:18, 22; Wis. 5:5; 1QH 11:7–8), and that Paul begins here to undermine the Colossians’ mistaken veneration of angels by affirming that they are joint heirs with them. Elsewhere in Colossians, however, the word “saints” (hagioi) refers to believers (1:2, 4, 26; 3:12); and Paul always uses this word to refer to human saints (including 1 Thess. 3:13; 2 Thess. 1:10). In Eph. 1:18; 2:19, hagioi refers to the Jews who believe. The passage matches Paul’s speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:32 and to Agrippa in 26:15–18, which refers to humans sanctified in Christ.

14. The translation accords with the interpretation of Abbott, Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, 207.

15. The phrase “dominion of darkness” (exousia tou skotous) refers to a sphere in which the power is exercised (see Eph. 2:2).

16. Paul applies the image to himself (2 Cor. 4:6). He lived in a theological darkness before the veil was lifted so that he could see Christ clearly. In the Old Testament, darkness represents death (Job 10:22; Ps. 143:3), Sheol (Ps. 88:12), and God’s judgment (Ps. 105:28; Jer. 23:12; Ezek. 32:8; Amos 5:18, 20; Zeph. 1:15).

17. Many have noted that Josephus uses the verb methistemi for relating how Tiglath-Pileser, the Assyrian king, took captive the conquered population, “transferring them to his own kingdom” (Antiquities 9.11.1 § 235).

18. Some may find it surprising that Paul rarely refers specifically to the forgiveness of sins (see Eph. 1:7).

19. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 63. See also 1QS 3:6–12; 11:2–5.

20. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 172.

21. In my opinion, the Exodus imagery is particularly apt because Paul wishes to counter Jewish objections to the inclusion of Gentiles in salvation. From the Jewish perspective, Gentile Christians were usurping their hopes, which they interpreted as rights and privileges belonging solely to them.

22. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:545.

23. Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary,” in The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce (New York: Citadel, 1946), 237.

24. On “good work” in Paul, see Rom. 2:7; 13:3; 1 Cor. 3:14; 2 Cor. 9:8; Gal. 6:10; Eph. 2:10; Phil. 1:6; 2:12; 1 Thess. 1:3; 2 Thess. 2:17; Titus 1:16.

25. E. D. Martin, Colossians and Philemon, 46.

26. Ibid., 56.

27. W. H. Lewis, ed., Letters of C. S. Lewis (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), 232.

28. Robertson, Paul and the Intellectuals, 33.

29. Marva J. Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the Turn-of-the-Century Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 21.

30. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 58.

31. E. D. Martin, Colossians and Philemon, 47.

32. Michael Specter, “In Modern Russia, a Medieval Witch Hunt,” in The New York Times, 146 (Apr. 5, 1997): 1, 4.

33. Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 51–52.

34. E. D. Martin, Colossians and Philemon, 299.

35. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 171.

36. Pokorný, Colossians, 49.

37. Robert Coles, The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 3–4.

38. Ibid., 5.

39. Augustine, On Patience 2; cited by E. D. Martin, Colossians and Philemon, 287.

40. Henri J. M. Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting: Being Alert to God’s Presence in Our Lives,” Weavings 1 (1986): 9.

41. M. Scott Peck, What Return Can I Make? (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 162.

42. G. K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions (London: Collins, 1919), 24.

43. Henri J. M. Nouwen, “All Is Grace,” Weavings 7 (1992): 39.

44. Eugene O’Neill, The Plays of Eugene O’Neill (New York: Random House, 1955), 1:277.

45. Diane M. Komp, “Hearts Untroubled,” TToday 45 (1988): 278.

1. Jones, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Colossians, 73.

2. They base this conclusion on the use of the relative clause, which begins with “who is,” as a common opening for Christological hymns, the rhythmically balanced units, the quantity of unusual vocabulary in such a short space (“visible,” “thrones,” “hold together,” “beginning,” “supremacy,” “making peace,” “his blood, shed on the cross” [lit., “the blood of the cross”]), and the self-contained content that can stand alone apart from its context in the letter.

3. See, for example, J. C. O’Neill, “The Source of the Christology in Colossians,” NTS 26 (1979): 87–100; Seyoon Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 144–47; John F. Balchin, “Colossians 1:15–20: An Early Christian Hymn? The Arguments from Style,” Vox Evangelica 15 (1985): 65–93; Steven M. Baugh, “The Poetic Form of Col 1:15–20,” WTJ 47 (1985): 227–44; and N. T. Wright, “Poetry and Theology in Colossians 1.15–20,” in The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 99–119. Just because the subject is Christological does not mean it derives from a previously formed liturgical tradition. Balchin, “Colossians 1:15–20,” 76, comments that such a conclusion “would be tantamount to saying that the New Testament writers were incapable of making statements about Christ as occasion demanded without quoting liturgical material.”

4. R. P. Martin, “Aspects of Worship in the New Testament,” Vox Evangelica 2 (1963): 21.

5. Edgar Krentz, “Epideiktik and Hymnody: The New Testament and Its World,” Biblical Research 40 (1995): 52, 83. Described as a work in progress, Krentz provides the most useful treatment in English of the hymn form and its use in the New Testament.

6. See Rom. 8:31–39; 11:33–36; 16:25–27; 1 Cor. 1:18–31; 13:1–13; 2 Cor. 4:7–10; 6:3–10; 11:33–36; Gal. 5:16–26; Phil. 2:5–11; 1 Thess. 5:14–22. On Phil. 2:5–11, see Gordon D. Fee, “Philippians 2:5–11: Hymn or Exalted Pauline Prose?” BBR 2 (1992): 29–46. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 83–84, admits that “it can never be finally proved that preformed material has been taken up here. It is always possible that Paul himself became lyrical at the thought of all that Christians owed Christ (1:13–14) or simply struck a purple passage.” Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, rev. ed., trans. Howard Clark Kee (Nashville: Abingdon: 1975), 343, concludes that it is far more likely “that the author of Col himself formed the hymn utilizing traditional material.” Basic expressions from the passage can be found elsewhere in Paul’s letters; see Rom. 5:1; 8:29; 11:36; 1 Cor. 2:8; 8:6; 2 Cor. 4:4.

7. Adolf Deissmann, The New Testament in Modern Research (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1929), 98.

8. Balchin, “Colossians 1:15–20,” 69, points out that if a traditional hymn has been inserted into the context, the introductory line “who is” omits the antecedent; and it therefore must begin with the hymn’s second line. In the context, however, the relative pronoun does not mark a syntactical break but follows naturally what precedes.

9. Balchin (ibid., 78) lists twenty-five differing proposals. Pierre Benoit, “L’hymne christologique de Col 1, 15–20,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, ed. Jacob Neusner, SJLA 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 1:226–63, graphs twenty reconstructions. Wright, “Poetry,” 106, n. 25, comments that few scholars ever raise the question about “what sort of rhythm one might have a right to expect.” Balchin (“Colossians 1:15–20,” 68) argues that the careful parallel structure is best explained as coming from one who was “steeped in the poetic background of the Old Testament, where not only hymns but also prophetic productions were cast in parallel form…. It should not be surprising that he expressed himself in those forms which he had been reared to associate with the divine message.”

10. Schweizer, Colossians, 57, for example, deletes four phrases—“thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities,” “the church,” “that in everything he may be pre-eminent,” “making peace by the blood of his cross”—to get back to the original hymn. See most recently, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Tradition and Redaction in Col 1:15–20,” RB 102 (1995): 231–41. That Paul would take over a pre-Christian, heretical hymn to make his theological case with a few alterations seems highly unlikely (see Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 244). Why cite a tradition whose theology one feels compelled to correct?

11. Larry R. Helyer, “Recent Research on Col 1:15–20,” GTJ 12 (1992): 67, puts it more forcefully: “Enormous time and energy have been expended in the vain attempt to recover, rearrange and explain the original hymn and its background.” O’Neill, “The Source of the Christology in Colossians,” 89, exposes the fallacy behind proposing hypotheses upon hypotheses and “pretending that the additional theories actually render the first hypothesis more likely rather than less likely.”

12. Wright “Poetry,” 100. An attempt to change the familiar phrase “that saved a wretch like me” in the first stanza of the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace” to a more updated, higher self-esteem version, “who saved and strengthened me,” raised a hue and cry of protest in some churches.

13. Helyer, “Recent Research,” 66, concludes that “Paul’s cosmic Christology is rooted in the OT teaching of a creator-redeemer God and Paul’s personal encounter with Jesus the Lord on the Damascus Road.” Wright (“Poetry,” 108) contends that the poem should be read in light of the entire Jewish worldview: “There is one God; he made the world, and is neither identified with it (as in pantheism and its various pagan cousins) nor detached from it (as in dualism); he is in covenant with Israel; and he will, in fulfilling that covenant, reclaim and redeem his whole creation from that which at present corrupts or threatens it.” It makes far more sense that Old Testament traditions lie behind this poem than superficial parallels in Gnosticism, Stoicism, or other Hellenistic literature. Paul was more at home with Palestinian Jewish exegetical techniques and traditions than many commentators acknowledge. Wright goes on to argue that while the poem may contain “verbal echoes of ideas current in other world views, its overall emphasis belongs within the broad and rich tradition of Jewish psalmody.”

14. C. F. Burney, “Christ as the ΑΡΧΗ of Creation: Pr 8, 22, Col 1,15.18, Rev 3, 14,” JTS 27 (1925–26): 160–77. See also W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London: SPCK, 1948), 150–52; Frederic Manns, “Col 1, 15–20: Midrash Chrétien de Gen. 1, 1,” RSR 53 (1979): 100–10; T. E. Pollard, “Colossians 1,12–20: A Reconsideration,” NTS 27 (1981): 572–75; and Wright, “Poetry,” 107–13.

15. Wisdom is connected to creation in Prov. 8:22–30; Sir. 1:4; 24:9; Wis. 9:9; but nowhere is it claimed that “all things were created in her,” as is affirmed about Christ (1:16, “for in him [NIV, by him] all things were created”). Nowhere do we find it said of Wisdom that “all things hold together in her,” as is affirmed about Christ in 1:17. According to Wis. 1:7, the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world and holds all things together, not Wisdom. See Sappington, Revelation and Redemption at Colossae, 174.

16. The parallelism has been adapted from Wright, “Poetry,” 104.

17. Ephesians emphasizes the reconciliation between Jew and Gentile; Colossians, the reconciliation of the cosmos.

18. Hermann Kleinknecht, “εἰκών,” TDNT, 2:389.

19. Harris, Colossians and Philemon, 43.

20. We find this core belief expressed in different ways elsewhere in the New Testament (John 1:14, 18; 6:46; 8:19; 12:45; 14:9; Heb. 1:1–3). Divine Wisdom was also regarded as the image of God: “For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (Wis. 7:26). Philo regarded the Logos as the image of God and the firstborn of creation (Allegorical Interpretation 1.43; On the Confusion of Tongues 97). In Paul’s thinking, Christ has taken over all the functions of divine Wisdom.

21. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians, 150.

22. In the letter to the Laodiceans in Rev. 3:14, Christ is called the “ruler of God’s creation” (arche, “the origin of God’s creation,” NRSV).

23. See Philo’s discussion of Logos in On the Confusion of Tongues 62–63; On Husbandry 51; Who Is the Heir? 205–6; Allegorical Interpretation 3.175; Questions and Answers on Exodus 2.117.

24. Grammar is important. Arius, who denied Christ’s divinity, misinterpreted the phrase as a partitive genitive, “firstborn out of creation,” reducing Christ to the status of a created being. Paul does not think of Christ as “the first” of the Lord’s works in creation, as was said of Wisdom in Prov. 8:22. See Larry R. Helyer, “Arius Revisited: The Firstborn Over All Creation (Col 1:15),” JETS 31 (1988): 59–67.

25. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 90.

26. One can compare this to the Stoic hymn of praise to all nature in Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.23.2: “O nature, from you all things, in you all things, unto you all things.” See Philo On the Cherubim 125–26. Though similar words appear, they express quite different ideas.

27. H. Wayne House, “The Doctrine of Christ in Colossians,” BSac 149 (1992): 182. See also Harris, Colossians and Philemon, 44–45. Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 68, contends that “in Christ/in him” is a “metaphor for restored relationships or, even more specifically, the spiritual home of those who belong to Christ, where he (rather than the evil one) rules over them (v. 13).” In 1:17, it “presumes that the destiny of the whole created order—both its spiritual and physical realms—is linked to the Christ’s destiny.”

28. Jewish texts use the same terms for angelic powers. See the references in Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 253. We find in Jubilees 2:2 the belief that on the first day God not only created the heavens and the earth and the waters but also “all of the spirits which minister before him”:

the angels of the presence, the angels of sanctification, and the angels of the spirit of fire, and the angels of the spirit of the clouds and darkness and snow and hail and frost, and the angels of resounding and thunder and lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and heat and winter and springtime and harvest and summer, and all the spirits of his creatures which are in heaven and on earth.

The “thrones” refer to the angelic potentates sitting on heavenly thrones. The “powers … rulers … authorities” are those supernatural viceroys who exercise lordship, rule, and control in heavenly realms. The same roster of powers appears in 2 Enoch 20:1 (plus “cherubim” and “seraphim”), and the differing order suggests that Paul does not list them in any hierarchical order.

29. This idea has a parallel in Stoic philosophy and makes its appearance also in Jewish writers. Sirach concludes a long poem of praise for the natural order (Sir. 42:22–43:26) with a reference to the Logos: “By his word all things hold together” (43:26; see Wis. 1:7). Fred B. Craddock, “ ‘All Things in Him’: A Critical Note on Col. I. 15–20,” NTS 12 (1965): 79, points out, however, that the similarity is deceiving because Christ is pictured as preexisting:

He is not in all things but all things are in him. The Logos of the Stoics gave unity, order, and meaning to all things because it permeated all things as dia-existent principle; the Colossian hymn praises him in whom all things begin, continue, and conclude because they are in, through, and unto him as a pre-existent being.

30. H. C. G. Moule, Colossians Studies (London: Doran, 1898), 78. Schweizer, Colossians, 129–30, points to evidence that some Jews believed that the whole cosmos would fly apart were it not for the Jewish New Year Festival, which reconciled the elements to one another each year and maintained the harmony of the upper and lower world. The high priest’s holy vestments had embroidered symbols of the cosmos, which served to remember the universe to God whenever he entered the temple. Christ makes the high priest and the temple passé.

31. Walter Wink, Naming the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 115.

32. We might compare it to the motherboard of a computer, the operating system that makes it work. No program can be run on the computer without interfacing with that operating system.

33. Harris, Colossians and Philemon, 45, argues that uses of the perfect tense “has been created” (ektistai, “were created,” NIV)

emphasizes the state resulting from the past event of creation, pointing not to continuous acts of creation (true though such an idea may be in a limited sense) but to the permanent “createdness” of creation. All things have been created, and remain in their created existence, through Christ and for him. Thus the universe (τὰ πάντα) has an ongoing relationship to Christ.

34. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 94.

35. See Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 53–55; Best, One Body in Christ, 123.

36. Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 57. He comments that “the new creation has erupted in the midst of a fallen creation, and the promised blessings of the new age are now being realized within the history of the church” (70).

37. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 74.

38. This meaning for the term head has prompted much debate. See Stephen Bedale, “The Meaning of Kephale in the Pauline Epistles,” JTS 5 (1954): 211–15; Wayne A. Grudem, “Does Kephale Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority over’ in Greek? A Survey of 2,336 Examples,” TrinJ 6 NS (1985): 38–59; Richard. S. Cervin, “Does Kephale Mean ‘Source’ or ‘Authority’ in Greek Literature? A Rebuttal,” TrinJ 10 NS (1989): 85–112; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Another Look at KEPHALE in 1 Corinthians 11.3,” NTS 35 (1989): 503–11; Clinton E. Arnold, “Jesus Christ: ‘Head of the Church,’ ” in Jesus of Nazareth: Lord and Christ, eds. M. M. B. Turner and J. B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 346–66.

39. Best, One Body, 129–30.

40. Christ is not born from the dead but raised from the dead, and the term firstborn means that he is the first one raised from the dead (Acts 26:23; 1 Cor. 15:20, 23; Rev. 1:5).

41. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 74–75.

42. Ibid., 75. Christ’s Sonship is demonstrated on the cross and in the resurrection (Rom. 1:3–4).

43. We need to turn to the early chapters of Genesis to read about the fallout from human sin—enmity between husband and wife, between humans and animals, between humans and the earth (Gen. 3:15–19), and between brothers (4:1–16).

44. The NIV translation, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,” supplies “God” as the implied subject of the verb. The word “God” does not appear in the Greek text, and “all the fullness” is the subject in the Greek. Translating it literally, “all the fullness was pleased to dwell,” makes God the unexpressed agent working his will on creation. It preserves the parallel of this hoti clause to the one in the first strophe (1:16), which expresses God’s agency with a divine passive, “in him [not by him, NIV] all things were created.” The verb “pleased” is in the aorist tense but is timeless, referring to God’s purpose, and should not be pressed to refer to some particular moment in Jesus’ life. The verb expresses God’s will in the Old Testament (see Ps. 44:3; 147:11; 149:4). When God is said to be “well pleased” or expresses “good pleasure,” it refers to an “inscrutable decree,” in the sovereignty and mystery of God’s choice (B. W. Bacon, “Notes on New Testament Passages,” JBL 16 [1897]: 136–39; “Supplementary Note on the Aorist εὐδόκησα, Mark i. 11,” JBL 20 [1901]: 28–30). See Luke 12:32; Eph. 1:4–9; 1 Cor. 1:21; Gal. 1:15; 2 Peter 1:17.

45. See Deut. 12:5, 11; 14:23; 16:2, 6, 11; 26:2; Jer. 7:7; 2 Macc. 14:35; 3 Macc. 2:16; Acts 7:48–50.

46. Sir. 24:3–12 refers to Zion, where Wisdom pleased to dwell.

47. Note the emphatic position of “in him” (en auto): God dwells in him. The Epistle to Diognetus from the late second century provides an apt commentary of what this affirmation would mean in the ancient world. God did not establish his truth on earth by sending

an angel or ruler, or one of those who direct earthly things, or one of those who are entrusted with the dispensations in heaven, but the very artificer and Creator of the universe himself, by whom he made the heavens, by whom he enclosed the sea in its own bounds, whose mysteries all the elements [ta stoicheia] guard faithfully; from whom the sun received the measure of the courses of the day, to whose command the moon is obedient to give light by night, whom the stars obey, following the course of the moon, by whom all things were ordered, and ordained, and placed in subjection, the heavens and the things in the heavens, the earth and the things in the earth, the sea and the things in the sea, fire, air, abyss, the things in the heights, the things in the depths, the things between them—him he sent to them (7:2).

48. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, Philemon and to the Ephesians, 207.

49. H. Wayne House, “The Doctrine of Christ in Colossians,” 186, comments: “God the Father was pleased to have all redemptive power dwelling in Christ.”

50. Note that the NIV has omitted the extra “through him” after “his cross.” Even though it may sound awkward, “it reemphasizes the fact that reconciliation was achieved through Christ alone” (Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 76).

51. God’s patience and persistence is captured by the lament in Ezek. 33:11: “Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’ ”

52. I am attracted by the interpretation in the Epistle to Diognetus 7:3–5, which says that God did not send the Creator of the universe “in sovereignty, fear and terror” but “in gentleness and meekness,” “saving and persuading,” not “compelling,” “calling, not pursuing,” “loving, not judging.”

53. Rom. 3:25; 5:9; Eph. 1:7; 2:13; see also Heb. 9:14; 10:29; 13:12; 1 Peter 1:19; 1 John 1:7; Rev. 1:5.

54. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 103.

55. Lars Hartman, “Universal Reconciliation (Col 1, 20),” SNTU 10 (1985): 120.

56. Verses 21–22a are another way of saying that believers have been delivered from the dominion of darkness (see 1:13) and have received forgiveness of sins (see 1:14). Verse 22b is another way of saying that God has qualified them to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light (1:12–13).

57. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 66, comments, “The cosmic scope of the Christ-event, as it was developed in the hymn, is thereby applied to the gospel that is directed to the whole world.”

58. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 182.

59. Moule, Colossians and Philemon, 73.

60. “Faith” could refer to the fixed tenets of faith as outlined, for example, in the prose hymn (see Gal. 1:23), that Christ makes the invisible God visible, is the agent, center, and crown of God’s creation, and accomplishes God’s objectives to reconcile the world through his cross. It also could refer to the Colossians’ personal faith (see NIV). The latter is more likely. Paul is talking about something that should bear fruit and grow, not something fixed in a creed. The Colossians must accept by faith God’s act of reconciliation in the death and resurrection of Christ, persevere in their convictions, and grow in their discernment of God’s purposes.

61. Paul understands himself to be a servant of this reconciling gospel, and no more so than when he tries to reconcile a runaway slave to his master in the letter to Philemon. In using such a generic term as servant, Paul emphasizes the hard service as opposed to the high status of his calling.

62. See Gen. 1:9; 6:17; 7:19; Ex. 17:4; Deut. 2:25; 4:19; 9:14; 25:19; see Luke 17:24; Acts 2:5; 4:12.

63. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 175.

64. Ibid., 179.

65. See Balchin, “Paul, Wisdom and Christ,” 208.

66. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 177.

67. Fred B. Craddock, The Pre-Existence of Christ in the New Testament (Nashville/New York: Abingdon, 1968), 97–98, 166.

68. John Ziesler, Pauline Christianity (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 124.

69. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 68–69.

70. Bo Reicke, “προ,” TDNT, 6:687, argues that “preexistence” is not related to “an abstract idea of timelessness, but to God’s dominion over the world and history.” It affirms “that God foreordained ‘before all times’ or ‘before the foundation of the world.’ ”

71. Wright, “Poetry,” 116.

72. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 66.

73. Ibid., 67.

74. Wright, “Poetry,” 118.

75. Ibid.

76. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 175.

77. James S. Stewart, “A First-Century Heresy and Its Modern Counterpart,” SJT 23 (1970): 432–33.

78. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 134.

79. Shirley C. Guthrie, Jr., “The Nearness and Distance of God,” International Documentation 71 (1976): 41–42.

80. Artemio M. Zabala, “Advent Reflections on Colossians 1:15–20 in the Philippine Setting,” Asian Journal of Theology 3 (1989): 316.

81. The Corpus Hermeticum 7.2b, in Walter Scott, ed., Hermetica (Oxford: Clarendon: 1924), 1:173.

82. Markus Barth, “Christ and All Things,” Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honor of C. K. Barrett, ed. M. D. Hooker and S. G. Wilson (London: SPCK, 1982), 160.

83. C. S. Lewis, “Religion and Rocketry,” in The World’s Last Night (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), 86.

84. Eduard Schweizer, “Christ in the Letter to the Colossians,” RevExp 70 (1973): 457.

85. Patrick D. Miller, Jr., “In Praise and Thanksgiving,” TToday 45 (1988): 186.

86. Stewart, “A First-Century Heresy and Its Modern Counterpart,” 421.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid.

89. Walter Wink, “The Hymn of the Cosmic Christ,” in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John, ed. R. T. Fortna and B. R. Gaventa (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), 242.

90. Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 138. I am grateful to C. Ben Mitchell for this reference.

91. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (London: W. W. Norton, 1978; repr. 1992), 107; cited by Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, 97.

92. Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, 97.

93. Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York/London: John Lane, 1909), 18.

94. C. S. Lewis, “The Laws of Nature,” in Undeceptions: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1971), 53–54.

95. Stockhausen, Letters in the Pauline Tradition, 61.

96. Wink, “The Hymn of the Cosmic Christ,” 242.

97. Cited by Gary Commins, “Woody Allen’s Theological Imagination,” TToday 44 (1987): 236.

98. Stewart, “First-Century Heresy,” 420.

99. Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 64–65.

100. O’Brien, Colossians and Philemon, 56.

101. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (London: William Heinemann, 1912), 332.

102. David A. Pailin, “On the Significance of the Sovereignty of God,” TToday 53 (1996): 35.

103. Carol Travis, “After Great Pain,” New York Times Book Review (May 12, 1996), 20.

104. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960), 37.

105. Ibid., 38.

106. Robert C. Roberts, “Review of Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.” Int 50 (1996): 324.

1. Jerry Sumney, “Those Who Pass Judgment: The Identity of the Opponents in Colossians,” Bib 74 (1993): 368, among many, contends that Paul establishes his authority in preparation for his attack on the opponents.

2. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 114.

3. See F. Zeilinger, Der Erstgeborene der Schöpfung. Untersuchungen zur Formalstruktur und Theologie des Kolosserbriefes (Vienna: Herder, 1974), 44–46.

4. The phrase “I say this” in 2:4 does not start a new paragraph but refers to what has been said. The sentence anticipates the topic of the next section, 2:6–23, as 1:23 (“of which I, Paul, have become a servant”) prepared for the next section, 1:24–2:5.

5. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 253, cites 1 Cor. 5:11; 12:20; 2 Cor. 7:9.

6. Moule, Colossians and Philemon, 78–79; O’Brien, Colossians and Philemon, 80.

7. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 162–63; see Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 215. W. R. G. Moir, “Colossians 1,24,” ExpTim 42 (1930–31): 480, contends that the prefix means “one after another,” “in quick succession.”

8. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 255–56.

9. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 163.

10. See, for example, Best, One Body in Christ, 132–36; R. J. Bauckham, “Colossians 1:24 Again: The Apocalyptic Motif,” EvQ 47 (1975): 168–70.

11. Scholars argue that Paul’s choice of words for “afflictions” (thlipsis) is not the normal word to describe the sufferings Jesus endured in his Passion (pathemata). But Heinrich Schlier, “θλίβω, θλίψις,” TDNT, 3:143–44, and Wilhelm Michaelis, “πάσχω, κτλ,” TDNT, 5:933, show that the two words are synonymous; see 2 Cor. 1:5. Andrew Perriman, “The Pattern of Christ’s Sufferings: Colossians 1:24 and Philippians 3:10–11,” TynB 42 (1991): 67, n. 15, also points out that the “sufferings have been transferred from Christ to Paul; he is referring to his sufferings, not Christ’s.”

12. See Dan. 7:21–22, 25–27; 12:1; Jubilees 23:13; 013016; 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 25–30; Mark 13:20; Rev. 7:14; 12:13–17. Later rabbinic texts refer to the woes of the Messiah (Mekilta Vayassa 5 to Exod. 16:25; b. Šabb. 118a; b. Pesah. 118a; b. Sanh. 97a).

13. Unlike modern scholars, the Colossians did not have the advantage of having the relevant texts collected in a compendium of apocalyptic expectations and were probably not even familiar with Jesus’ eschatological discourse recorded in the Gospels.

14. Perriman, “Program,” 64–65. If this interpretation were correct, Paul would more likely say that he “fills up the measure of the afflictions of Christ” (see Rev. 6:11), not “fills up what is lacking.”

15. Michaelis, “πάσχω,” 933, n. 20, argues that “the idea of a foreordained amount of suffering which has yet to be met is present neither in Paul … nor elsewhere in the NT, nor is it suggested by contemporary assumptions.” The New Testament contains references to a quota of wickedness (Matt. 23:32; 1 Thess. 2:16), a quota of Gentiles (Rom. 11:25), and a quota of martyrs (Rev. 6:11), but not a quota of sufferings.

16. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 86.

17. Houlden, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 180. So also Edwyn C. Hoskyns and Noel Davey, The Riddle of the New Testament (London: Faber and Faber, 1958), 158; L. P. Trudinger, “Further Brief Note on Colossians 1:24,” EvQ 45 (1973): 36–38; W. F. Flemington, “On the Interpretation of Colossians 1:24,” in Suffering and Martyrdom in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), 84–90; Perriman, “Pattern,” 62–79.

18. C. H. Dodd, The Epistle to the Romans, Moffat New Testament Commentary (New York: Harper & Row, 1932), 86, attests that Christ is the inclusive Representative of redeemed humanity. “That which Christ did and suffered on behalf of mankind is the experience of the people of God as concentrated in Him.” Noted by Henry Gustafson, “The Afflictions of Christ: What Is Lacking?” BibRes 8 (1963): 29.

19. Paul also insists that if one member of the body suffers, all members suffer with it (1 Cor. 12:26).

20. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 88. To use imagery from the Synoptic Gospels, Paul drinks the same cup and is baptized with the same baptism of suffering that engulfed Jesus (Mark 10:38–39).

21. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 171, points us in the right direction: “If St Paul had been content to preach an exclusive Gospel, he might have saved himself from more than half the troubles of his life.”

22. “The commission God gave me” can refer to the office of administrator (steward, see Luke 16:1–3) or to the activity of administrating. See 1 Cor. 4:1–2; 9:17; Gal. 2:9 (the “grace” given to me); Eph. 3:2, 9. On the term commission see John Reumann, “OIKONOMIA ‘Covenant’—Terms for Heilsgeschichte in Early Christian Usage,” NovT 3 (1959): 282–92; “OIKONOMIA—Terms in Paul in Comparison with Lucan Heilsgeschichte,” NTS 13 (1966–67): 147–67.

23. In the Greek Paul uses cognates: “according to his energy that is energized in me in power.” Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 187, comments: “The toil is Paul’s, but the energy is Christ’s. He is most himself when least reliant on his own resources.”

24. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 78.

25. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 87.

26. The English words “encourage” and “comfort” are both used to translate the same verb in Greek, parakaleo; see Rom. 15:4–5; 2 Cor. 1:4, 6; 13:11; 1 Thess. 3:2; 4:18.

27. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 94–95. The verb translated “united” (symbibazo) can also mean “taught” or “instructed” (see 1 Cor. 2:16). Beare, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 184, comments that “Paul instructs them in love, not as a spiritual dictator, but as a friend and partner (cf. 2 Cor. 1:24); and he trusts that they will receive his instruction in the spirit in which it is offered, not in resentment at his intervention.”

28. The fifteen textual variants to 2:2 attest to the awkwardness of the last phrase, literally, “the mystery of God, of Christ,” which has given rise to attempts to clarify it. The NIV correctly opts to render Christou as an epexegetic genitive, “the mystery of God, namely, Christ.” See 1:27, where the mystery is explained with a relative clause, “which is Christ in you.”

29. Radford, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 203, helps us to understand why the mystery was hidden. “Human experiences and historical processes must first develop and converge upon the point in time and space at which the revelation would be appropriate and apprehensible, and from which it could travel over the whole range of civilization.”

30. Paul grapples with this issue in Romans (esp. Rom. 9–11).

31. Best, One Body in Christ, 134.

32. Noted by Beare, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 177.

33. William H. Willimon, Sighing for Eden: Sin, Evil and the Christian Faith (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985), 161.

34. Barnabas Mary Ahern, “The Fellowship of His Sufferings (Phil 3,10): A Study of St. Paul’s Doctrine on Christian Suffering,” CBQ 22 (1960): 28.

35. Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion, and the Search for God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 244.

36. C. C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 160–76. See, for example, Dan. 2:18, 19, 27, 28, 29, 30, 47; 4:9; 1QpHab 7:4–14; 014005; 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 81:4. Pokorný (Colossians, 102) comments: “In apocalypticism the revelation of the mystery of God does not occur until the eschatological cataclysm (1 Enoch 104:11–13). In this age the mysteries are only known to the wise (014026).” According to the New Testament, that eschatological cataclysm has already occurred in Christ, and the new age has broken into the present so that the mystery, hidden from eternity past, is now being proclaimed.

37. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 91.

38. Paul refers to “hope” a third time in Col. 1:27 (“the hope of glory,” see 1:5, 23). Here it clearly refers to the glorious destiny God plans for human beings despite their falling short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).

39. We may take this for granted today, but for a first-century Jew, the glory of God’s revelation stood out most clearly in the transformation of pagans. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 186, comments: “If the indwelling Christ can transcend the deepest social, political, and religious divisions which split mankind, no limits can be set to his ultimate accomplishment.”

40. Beare, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 186.

41. W. D. Chamberlain, The Meaning of Repentance (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1943), 104.

42. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 89.

43. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 183.

44. Cited by Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988), 263.

45. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 88.

46. Holmes Roston III, “Does Nature Need to Be Redeemed?” Zygon 29 (1994): 220.

47. Paul House, “Suffering and the Purpose of Acts,” JETS 33 (1990): 321.

48. Timothy B. Savage, Power Through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians, SNTSMS 86 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 175.

49. Ana Carrigan, Salvador Witness (New York: Ballantine, 1984), 212, cited by James McGinnis, “Living the Vulnerability of Jesus,” Weavings 8 (1993): 40.

50. Savage, Power Through Weakness, 181.

51. Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 89.

52. Paul D. Hanson, “The Identity and Purpose of the Church,” TToday 42 (1985): 342–52.

53. “Families and Faith Development,” sponsored by the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

54. George A. Buttrick, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973), 253.

55. The issue of admonishing and teaching will resurface in 3:16 and will be dealt with again in the Contemporary Significance section there.

56. Eugene C. Roehlkepartain, The Teaching Church: Moving Christian Education to Center Stage (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), 45.

1. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 96–97; Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 136. Each step in the letter’s continuing argument begins with the inferential particle (oun): 2:6 (“so then”); 2:16 (“therefore”); 3:1 (“since”); 3:5 (“therefore”); 3:12 (“therefore”).

2. The NIV translates the “in him” (en auto) in 2:15 as “by the cross” and gives “in him” as an alternative rendering. See below.

3. The foundation of Paul’s argument, the Lordship of Christ and the theme of dying and rising with Christ in baptism, is picked up again in 2:20 and 3:1.

4. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 49, comments are apropos: Christ is “no mere empty cipher: it is the Christ of 1:15–20, in whom is true maturity (1:28), who is himself ‘the mystery of God’ (2:2), God’s eternal secret plan for creating and redeeming the world.”

5. By contrast, the mystery cults were only concerned with ceremonial activities, not moral behavior.

6. The NIV translation, “continue to live,” translates the Greek verb peripateo (lit., “walk”), which has to do with ethical conduct. The use of “continue” captures the force of the present tense in this imperative. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 140, contends that this phrase is “equivalent” to “walk in the Spirit” in Gal. 5:16. Against this interpretation, see Pokorný, Colossians, 111.

7. Harris, Colossians and Philemon, 89.

8. Beare, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 189.

9. “See to it lest” (blepete me) implies that the Colossians have not succumbed. The use of the singular indefinite pronoun, “no one” (tis), does not mean that Paul has some ring leader in mind (contrast Gal. 1:7). It is truly indefinite.

10. Literally, the text reads “through philosophy and empty deceit”; the NIV correctly takes the second phrase as modifying “philosophy.” See also the warning in 1 Tim. 6:20–21.

11. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 94. Günther Bornkamm, “The Heresy of the Colossians,” in Conflict at Colossae, ed. Fred O Francis and Wayne A Meeks, 126, asserts, “For syncretistic thought it has long since ceased to designate rational learning, but has become equivalent to revealed doctrine and magic.” In the introduction we argue that the “philosophy” Paul has in his sights is the Judaism of a rival synagogue in Colosse. Some Hellenistic Jewish writers presented Judaism to the Greco-Roman world as a “philosophy,” as Lohse says, “to woo and attract the surrounding world around them” (“Pauline Theology in the Letter to the Colossians,” NTS 15 [1969]: 211).

12. The picture is that of marauding slave traders carrying off their victims as booty (Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 189). Such imagery would send shivers up the spines of those in Paul’s day who lived in fear of the possibility, although remote, of being abducted and sold into slavery. Today, people still fear being abducted and cruelly violated. The rare word sylagogeo (“take captive”) occurs only here in the New Testament; and Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 100, proposes that Paul uses it because it “makes a contemptuous pun with the word synagogue.” The noun syla was used for booty or plunder, but the verb does not appear in the LXX or in contemporary literature. Its rarity adds credence to the possibility that Paul resorts to a bitter wordplay to undermine the claims of a rival synagogue.

13. 1 Cor. 11:23; 15:1, 3; Gal. 1:9, 12; Phil. 4:9; 1 Thess. 2:13; 4:1; 2 Thess. 3:6; see Mark 7:4.

14. Against Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 99, who claims that “ ‘elements of the universe’ must have played a special role in the teaching of the ‘philosophers.’ ”

15. Francis, “Christology,” 206, 208, n. 43; see Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 190. In Gal. 4:3 and Col. 2:8, 20, the genitive tou kosmou (“of the world”) qualifies the stoicheia. In Gal. 4:9 it is absent. Stoicheia tou kosmou is, therefore, not a technical term but Paul’s characterization of the stoicheia. Note that if the South Galatia theory for Galatians is to be accepted, the term only occurs in Paul’s letters to churches in interior Asia Minor in relative proximity to one another (Col. 2:8, 20; Gal. 4:3, 9).

16. Josef Blinzler, “Lexicalisches zu dem Terminus ta stoicheia tou kosmou,” in Studiorum Paulinorum Congressus Internationalis Catholicus II (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1963), 427–43. The varied range of meanings appear in the New Testament: the elements of the physical universe (2 Peter 3:10, 12), elementary teaching (Heb. 5:12), and a connection with Jewish and pagan religious practices (Gal. 4:3, 9).

17. Philo recognized that these could be personified as spirits and given names of deities (On the Contemplative Life 3; On the Decalogue 53; On the Eternity of the World 107–9). Wisdom 13:2 condemns such idolatry:

but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air,

or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water,

or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world.

See also Judg. 5:20; Job 38:7; Dan. 8:10; 1 Enoch 80:7; 86; Philo, On the Creation 73; Noah’s Work as Planter 12; see Rev. 1:20; 9:1; Hermas, Visions 3.1.3.3. Moreover, Jewish texts refer to angels who controlled the elements (see Jubilees 2:2; 1 Enoch 75:1; 43:1–2; 2 Enoch 4:1; 19:1–4; Testament of Abraham 13:11).

18. This view has been criticized as anachronistic, but Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism 158–94, and “Returning to the Domain of the Powers: Stoicheia as Evil Spirits in Galatians 4:3, 9,” NovT 38 (1996): 57–59, compiles evidence that this term was applied to astrological spirits during the time of Paul. The Greek Magical Papyri use the term for “personalized spiritual forces that have significant influence over day-to-day existence” (The Colossian Syncretism, 173). The Testament of Solomon reflects a Judaism influenced by magic, and it provides recipes for invoking angels to thwart hostile demons. In 18:1, 2 (see 8:2; 15:5), the term stoicheia is used to refer to the astral decans, which ruled over 10° of the 360° zodiac and caused physical and mental diseases. They are reduced from deities to evil demons, which can be thwarted through special knowledge and rites. Another Jewish work refers to angels who govern creation by regulating the order of the stars and seasons. They keep watch for evil activity and restore order and harmony to the cosmic order (2 Enoch 19:1–5).

19. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 150. He argues: “It is quite possible, then, to conceive of an essentially Jewish ‘philosophy’ in Colossae that drew on such traditions as a way of commending their religious practices to their fellow citizens.”

20. According to Gen. 1:14–18, God created the heavenly bodies to rule over night and day and to regulate the calendar. T. C. G. Thornton, “Jewish New Moon Festivals, Galatians 4:3–11 and Colossians 2:16,” JTS NS 40 (1989): 100, reminds us that in Paul’s age “the boundaries between astronomy, astrology, and the worship of heavenly bodies were unclear and easily crossed.” While most today view the moon, sun, and stars from a neutral astronomical perspective, most in the first century viewed them as “spiritually potent masters,” which not only controlled the calendar but human lives.

21. One can infer from the emphasis on “fullness” (2:9) that the opposing group promised some kind of fullness through different means, presumably the rites and practices described in 2:16–18. The perfect periphrastic “you have been filled” in 2:10 (este … pepleromenoi) emphasizes completed action in the past with continuing results in the present.

22. In 1:19 Paul used the past tense, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell.” Here he uses the present tense, “lives.” It is a timeless present and refers to permanent residence of Deity in the living Lord (Harris, Colossians and Philemon, 98).

23. As Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 100, puts it, theotes describes “the quality of being divine”; theiotes refers to “divine nature.” Paul rarely uses abstract terminology such as this to refer to God.

24. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 103. Pokorný, Colossians, 122, comments: “In Christ one encounters the true, authentic fulness of God, over against which all other conceptions of God, speculations, and experiences are secondary.” The implications are clear: “There is no need for men to spread their allegiance among a variety of manifestations of divine authority, since God’s nature and purpose are seen complete in Christ” (Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 191).

25. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 312–15, discuss seven possible interpretations of this word, somatikos.

26. Ibid., 314.

27. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 191–92.

28. The adverb has also been interpreted to mean “embodied” in the corporate life of the church and “in organic unity.” But the point is that Deity is not parceled out through a hierarchy of powers but is confined to one real person, Christ.

29. The verb “to fulfill” is used by Paul elsewhere to refer to Christians being filled “with all joy and peace” and with “goodness” and “knowledge” (Rom. 15:13–14), “with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18); and with “the fruit of righteousness” on the day of Christ (Phil. 1:10–11).

30. Paul does not engage in an assault on circumcision for Christians as he does in Galatians, and the letter contains no evidence that anyone was coercing the Colossians to be circumcised. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 156, presents the most plausible scenario: The Colossians faced a vigorous Jewish apologetic that justified and exalted circumcision (perhaps as Philo does in Special Laws 1:1–11 and Questions on Genesis 3:46–62) rather than any attempt to make them Jewish proselytes. They rejected any claims that Gentiles had any hope for salvation without circumcision. Paul counters that they have the only circumcision that counts, divine circumcision in Christ.

31. Tacitus claimed that the Jews adopted circumcision “to distinguish themselves from other peoples by this difference” (Histories 5.5); see Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 154.

32. The spiritualizing of circumcision is also found in Old Testament tradition (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Lev. 26:41; Jer. 4:4; 6:10; 9:26; Ezek. 44:7, 9). See also the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QS 5.4–5, 26; 1QpHab 11.13).

33. On Paul’s various usages of the word “flesh” and “body,” see R. J. Erickson, “Flesh,” in DPL, 303–6. The verb “to strip off” (apekdyomai) appears in 3:9 and has the “old self” as its object. The “old self” does refer to human nature that has been taken over by sin, but it is not synonymous with the “body of flesh.” We might add that the phrase “sinful nature” may also lead the reader to infer wrongly that we have an “unsinful nature.” When Paul uses “flesh” in a negative sense, it refers to the degenerate person as a whole (including the fleshly passions), which has arrayed itself for rebellion against God. It is what humans become apart from the regenerating grace of God. But in this instance Paul uses the word sarx (“flesh”) in a neutral sense to refer to the human body. For a quite different interpretation, see Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 106, who argues that the “body” refers to a group of people as in “the body of Christ.” Stripping off the body of flesh, he argues, refers to breaking with old fleshly solidarities. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 296, contends that Paul refers to cutting off “their solidarity with Adam, ‘the body of sin’ (Rom 6:6), humanity under the rule of sin and death.”

34. Elsewhere Paul always attributes circumcision of the heart to the Spirit (Rom. 2:29; 2 Cor. 3:3; Phil. 3:3).

35. Moule, Colossians and Philemon, 95, 96; Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 364–65.

36. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 157. “Nailing it to the cross” (2:14) is another vivid image in this passage.

37. So Moule, Colossians and Philemon, 96; R. P. Martin, Colossians and Philemon, 82; O’Brien, Colossians and Philemon, 117.

38. Roy Yates, “ ‘The Worship of Angels,’ ” ExpTim 97 (1987): 14, comments: “What the mystic tried to achieve by release from the body, Christ achieved for all ‘in his body of flesh by his death’ (Col 1:22, cf. 2:11).”

39. Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, 103, is correct that “the circumcision of Christ which every member of the community has experienced is nothing other than being baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ.”

40. O’Brien, Colossians and Philemon, 116. Paul does not view Christian baptism as a more efficacious replacement for the Jewish rite of circumcision.

41. This view assumes that God is the subject of all the finite verbs. The aorist participles “having forgiven” (NIV, “He forgave us,” 2:13), “having canceled” (2:14), “having nailed” (NIV, “nailing,” 2:14), “having stripped,” (NIV, “disarmed,” 2:15), “having revealed” (NIV, “he made a public spectacle,” 2:15) also have God as the subject and use striking metaphors to express what God has done for us in Christ.

42. The Greek for “sins” in 2:13 has “transgressions” (paraptomata), which can imply deliberate disobedience. Formerly, they were morally, spiritually, theologically cut off from God.

43. Some scholars claim to spot an inconsistency between 2:12 and 3:1, which affirm the present experience of the resurrection, and 1 Cor. 15, where Paul insists that the resurrection is “not yet.” In Colossians, Paul uses resurrection as an image for one’s conversion and transformation. He describes a new life coming from dying to sin in baptism, not a resurrection to glory. The hope remains “stored up for you in heaven” (1:5) and a believer’s resurrection victory “is hidden with Christ in God.” The statement in 3:4 makes it clear: “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” But Paul can use an aorist verb (“he … glorified,” Rom. 8:30) to proclaim the present certainty of our future destiny.

44. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 163–64, makes the case that Paul does not try to rebut this Jewish characterization of Gentile status before God:

On the contrary, he reaffirms the Christian-Jewish starting point, that Israel was in an advantaged position over other nations by virtue of God’s choice of Israel to be his special people. The difference is that the disadvantaged state of “uncircumcision” has been remedied by a “circumcision not performed by human hand” (2:11) rather than by “circumcision in the flesh.”

45. See Roy Yates, “Colossians 2,14: Metaphor of Forgiveness,” Bib 71 (1990): 248–59.

46. We should rule out altogether the interpretation, which was spun purely from the imagination of Origen, that it refers to some mythical pact with Satan made by Adam. It is also unlikely that Paul has in view a book, kept in heaven by an angel, in which everyone’s transgressions are recorded. Although the idea can be found in Jewish apocalyptic literature (see Ex. 32:32–33; Ps. 69:28; Dan. 12:1; Rev. 3:5; and 1 Enoch 89:61–64, 70–71; 108:7; Apocalypse of Zephaniah 7:1–8; Apocalypse of Abraham (A) 12:7–18; 13:9–14; (B) 10:7–11:7; 2 Enoch 53:2–3; Odes of Solomon 23:5–9; Gospel of Truth 19:17), Paul employs an image of the promissory note that everyone in the Gentile audience could readily recognize.

47. Yates, “Col 2,14,” 252.

48. Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, ed. Philip S. Watson (London: James Clarke, 1953), 283.

49. The verb “took” (erken) is in the perfect tense, emphasizing its permanence.

50. Barclay, The All-Sufficient Christ, 79, presses the image of the verb translated “canceled” (exaleipho) in 2:14. It means “to wipe or to sponge off,” something a scribe would do to correct his writing. He points out that another way a bond could be canceled was by marking an X through it. The charge beneath the mark, however, was still readable. Barclay suggests that Paul’s choice of verbs implies that the bond has been obliterated.

51. Houlden, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 188.

52. We take God to be the subject of the verb, and the middle voice as having an active and not a reflexive force (i.e., “stripping them in one’s own interest”). If Christ is the subject, the middle voice would be reflexive; and it would mean that Christ stripped himself of the powers that had assailed him, defeating them on the cross. This interpretation was prevalent among the early Greek Fathers. Lightfoot’s interpretation, which reflects this view, has been quoted or paraphrased many times: “The powers of evil, which had clung like a Nessus robe about his humanity, were torn off and cast aside for ever” (Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 190; see a variation of it in Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 167–68).

53. The NIV interprets the Greek en auto (“in him” or “in it”) as a reference to the cross (“by the cross”). If God is the subject of all the verbs in 2:13–15, however, it would be better to translate it “in him,” that is, in Christ.

54. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 192. Roy Yates, “Colossians 2:15: Christ Triumphant,” NTS 37 (1991): 573–91, claims that the triumph imagery pictures a “celebratory procession” from the Roman triumph. Those led in triumph were not “defeated captives, who were driven before the victor’s chariot, but liberated Romans, dancers, chorus, and adulating crowds. They are the attendants of the triumphator celebrating the fruits of victory in the triumph.” He claims that the powers are not despoiled or led in triumph but are part of “the celebratory hosts.” It becomes a preview of their reconciliation (1:19).

55. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians and Thessalonians, 191.

56. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 98.

57. Ibid., 99.

58. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 141.

59. Ibid., 142.

60. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 194.

61. Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil’s Dictionary,” in The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce (New York: Citadel, 1946), 325.

62. This is not to say that Paul made any attempt to adjust his theology to current philosophical thinking (1 Cor. 1:21–25). Comparing Paul and Philo, Paul’s near contemporary from Alexandria, brings out a striking contrast in their use of philosophy. Terence P. Paige, “Philosophy,” DPL, 718, points out that Paul was aware of the intellectual currents of his era; but, unlike Philo, he had no intention of trying to reconcile his message with the values and aspirations of Hellenistic philosophy. He comments, “Paul holds the gospel to be the only means to divine wisdom (1 Cor 1:21; 2:6–16; Eph 1:15–18).”

63. MacLeod, “The Epistle to the Colossians: Exposition,” 190.

64. Stockhausen, Letters in the Pauline Tradition, 39.

65. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 183.

66. A. E. Housman, The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman (New York/Chicago/San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 111.

67. Timothy B. Savage, Power Through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians, SNTSMS 86 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996), 27.

68. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 218, cites the citation in Hippolytus (Haeresies 9.11) on the heretical teaching of Elchasai, who lived during the time of Trajan (A.D. 98–117). It mixed Jewish nomism with astrological beliefs and practices and warned against the wicked stars of impiety and their days of the sovereignty. Elchasai taught that the Sabbath needed to be honored since the powers of these stars prevailed on that day.

69. Lester J. Ness, “Astrology in Judaism in Late Antiquity,” ABW 2 (1992): 47, cites the “Letter of Rehoboam,” dating to A.D. 100, which claims to be Solomon’s instructions to his son on how to make the angels and demons serve him. It includes prayers asking God to make the planets obedient and prescribes the offerings for each planet.

70. Schweizer, Colossians, 152–53.

71. Albert Camus, The Fall (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 120.

72. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “How to Think About Secularism,” First Things 64 (June/July 1996): 31.

73. See Paul Vitz, Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self Worship, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

74. Henry Grady Davis, Design for Preaching (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1957), 103.

75. Moule, Colossians and Philemon, 96.

76. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 188.

77. John Donne, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne and the Complete Poetry of William Blake (New York: The Modern Library, 1941), 271–72.

78. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, Philemon, and to the Ephesians, 105.

79. Carl E. Braaten, Christ and Counter Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 84.

80. L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 5.

81. The images of bearing fruit (a slow process) and increasing in knowledge (see 1:10) fit this idea of continual transformation.

82. Robert Newton Peck, A Day No Pigs Would Die (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 56.

83. MacLeod, “The Epistle to the Colossians: Exposition,” 192.

84. Thomas G. Long, “Myers-Briggs and Other Modern Astrologies,” TToday 49 (1992): 294.

85. DeMaris, The Colossian Philosophy, 149, citing Mary Daly, Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (New York: HarperCollins, 1984), 8–9, 11, 19, 155, 169, 178–81, 291–93.

86. MacLeod, “The Epistle to the Colossians: Exposition,” 193.

87. Scott, The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians, 50.

88. Ibid.

89. Quoted by Antonie Wessels, Images of Jesus: How Jesus Is Perceived and Portrayed in Non-European Cultures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 94.

1. See Philo, Confusion of Tongues 190; Who Is the Heir? 72–73, 112; The Migration of Abraham 12. The writer of Hebrews describes the tabernacle as “a copy and shadow of what is in heaven” (Heb. 8:5) and the law as “only a shadow of the good things that are coming” (10:1).

2. Hebrews 10:1 provides a parallel: “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.”

3. G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980), 53.

4. O’Brien, Colossians, 140, observes that the term shadow does not have the Platonic sense of a timeless, metaphysical copy of the heavenly and eternal “idea.” It is used in the sense of foreshadowing what is to come. The addition of the phrase “the things that were to come” clearly transforms it from any static Platonic dualism to an expression of Jewish eschatological hope (see also Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 176).

5. The NIV captures this meaning by translating it “the things that were to come,” making it clear that the realities have come in Christ.

6. A similar thought is expressed in Gal. 3:23–25, using the imagery of imprisonment and minority: “Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law.”

7. The phrase translated in the NIV “the reality … is found in Christ” reads literally, “the body of Christ.”

8. Fred O. Francis, “Humility and Angelic Worship in Col 2:18,” in Conflict at Colossae, ed. Fred O Francis and Wayne A Meeks, 163.

9. The verb thelo does not mean “delight,” but Hebrew does use the phrase ḥapaṣ b^e (“delight in,” “take pleasure in,” or “have a desire for”; see 1 Sam. 18:22; 2 Sam. 15:26; 1 Kings 10:9; 1 Chron. 28:4; 2 Chron. 9:8; Ps. 111:1; 146:10; Testament of Asher 1:6). Some argue that this Hebraic idiom is behind the Greek text. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 178, contends that it refers to “what the other sets as his own goal or relishes as the means of achieving that goal, not a goal or means of achieving it which he sets before or wishes to impose on the Colossian Christians.”

10. See James D. G. Dunn, “The Colossian Philosophy: A Confident Jewish Apologia,” Bib 76 (1995): 171. See Gottlob Schrenk, “θέλω,κτλ.,” TDNT, 3:46, n. 13.

11. A. Fridrichsen, “Thelon Col. 2:18,” ZNW 21 (1922): 135–37. The verb can look forward to the “will-worship” (NIV “self-imposed worship”) in 2:23; Paul connects it to individual willpower. See Houlden, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 197.

12. Beare, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 202.

13. The parallelism can be shown in this literal translation:

“Let no one condemn you in [en] food, drink, feasts, New Moons, Sabbaths” (2:16b).

“Let no one disqualify you willfully [or arbitrarily] in [en] humility [self-abasement], worship of angels, and visions” (2:18b).

14. See further, Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 225. The verb without the preposition (brabeuo) occurs in 3:15 (“rule”).

15. The opponents may not intend to rob them of the prize; that is Paul’s reading of the situation and the result of any capitulation to their views.

16. Francis, “Humility and Angelic Worship in Col 2:18,” argues that the errorists see the humility of angels in their visions. Christopher Rowland, “Apocalyptic Visions and the Exaltation of Christ in the Letter to the Colossians,” JSNT 19 (1983): 75, contends that Paul is not referring to “fasting by human beings followed by devotion to exalted angelic beings but entirely concerned with the angels in heaven.” He argues (81, n. 24), “It makes better sense of the section to regard the humility not as a reference to the ritual preparations for visions performed by men (e.g., fasting) but as a part of what was seen by the visionary.” See also Craig A. Evans, “The Colossian Mystics,” Bib 63 (1982): 195–96.

17. It may be a Greek translation of the Hebrew som, which can mean “fasting” and “affliction.” See Ps. 35:13; 69:10; Isa. 58:3, 5; Judith. 4:9; Psalms of Solomon 3:8.

18. Fasting is associated with heavenly revelation in Dan. 10:2–3; 005013, 005020; 006035; 2 Apocalypse of Baruch 5:7; Apocalypse of Abraham 9:7–10; Testament of Isaac 4:1–6; 5:4; Greek Apocalypse of Ezra 1:2–7; Philo, On Dreams 1.35–37; Life of Moses 2.67–70. Hermas, Visions 3.10.6; Similitudes 5.3.7 connects fasting to receiving visions: “All inquiries require humility; fast therefore, and you will receive what you ask of the Lord.”

19. Pagan cults of angels existed in the ancient world; see A. R. R. Sheppard, “Pagan Cults of Angels in Roman Asia Minor,” Talanta 12–13 (1980–81): 77–101.

20. Rowland, “Apocalyptic Visions,” 75, notes that “there was considerable interest in the apocalyptic literature in the worship of the heaven court.”

21. Rowland (ibid., 77) suggests that like Qumran, the “opponents in Colossae may have considered that the activities of angels were not merely of interest to the visionary but important as an example for the righteous to imitate.” Consequently, what worried Paul “was that the Colossians were not interested in Christ as the centre of their religious experience, but in the activities of the angels as a pattern for living which might detract from the example of Christ.”

22. See Arnold, Colossian Syncretism, 92–93.

23. Arnold picks up and develops a suggestion by A. Lukyn Williams, “The Cult of Angels at Colossae,” JTS 10 (1909): 413–38, who claimed that it refers to a veneration of angels found on the fringes of Judaism in connection to exorcism and magic.

24. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 20, shows that magical texts do reflect a “high regard for ‘angels’ and other supernatural beings that were invoked by the practitioner…. ‘Angels’ known from Judaism figure prominently in the magical papyri.” Magic was syncretistic, and people involved in it would use whatever names and intermediaries that promised power. Regarded as powerful assistants of God, most assumed that angels could help accomplish the same things as God, and they could be more easily manipulated to do whatever one wanted. Angels were also associated with the stars and planets, which were viewed as active in controlling human fate. Consequently, many invoked angels to provide protection from harmful spirits, to become agents in revelatory magic and dream oracles (to give answers to questions), and to ensure prosperity and success in any kind of endeavor. One example may be cited from the Greek magical papyri (4.3165–76): “Give me all favor, all success, for the angel bringing good, who stands beside [the goddess] Tyche, is with you. Accordingly give profit [and] success to this house.”

25. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible, 26, suggests that “worship of angels” was Paul’s pejorative and emotive term for a practice he wished to ridicule and which the opponents would have resented. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 122, contends that the tone and context suggest that Paul is using “heavy irony: the people he is opposing spend so much time in speculations about angels, or in celebrating the fact that their law was given by them, that they are in effect worshipping them instead of God….” It is a “contemptuous reference” to their worship that may appear to be “heavenly-minded and super-spiritual” but was in fact “bordering on idolatry.” See also Michael Mach, Entwicklungstadien des jüdischen Engelglaubens in vorrabbinischer Zeit, Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1992), 294.

26. We have argued that a local Jewish group that dismissed the Christian hope was the root of the Colossian problem; if they actually worshiped angels, then it would have been a very syncretistic form of Judaism. Rimmon Kasher, “Angelology and the Supernal Worlds in the Aramaic Targums to the Prophets,” JSJ 27 (1996): 168–91, compares the treatment of angels in Targum Jonathan and the Toseftot Targum. Targum Jonathan, which was more heavily influenced by the views of the rabbinical sages, adopted a more cautious, reserved approach to angels, never assigning them any independent power. The Toseftot Targum was never accepted as an official translation, and its unexpurgated renderings offer “valuable evidence of popular Jewish concepts and beliefs as they evolved in synagogues of Antiquity.” It had a positive view of angels, mentioning their names and introducing their involvement in events on earth and in the heavens. But even here angels were not independent beings to be worshiped or addressed and took no part in prayer. When one reads some Jewish texts relating to angels, however, one can easily imagine how the elaborate angelology can be caricatured as a kind of worship of angels. As is the case today, the less theologically sophisticated believer may have shown an undue reverence for them.

27. Some manuscripts (followed by the KJV) have “what he has not seen,” so that Paul denies the reality of these visions.

28. William M. Ramsay, The Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day, 2d ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914), 285–305. Martin Dibelius, “The Isis Initiation in Apuleius and Related Initiatory Rites,” in Conflict in Colossae, ed. Fred O. Francis and Wayne Meeks, Sources for Biblical Study 4 (Missoula: Scholar’s Press, 1973), 61–121, developed his views that this phrase alludes to an initiation into a mystery religion from inscriptions connected to the Apollo temple at Claros, a short distance from Ephesus.

Apuleius, in Metamorphoses (“The Golden Ass”), 11.19–23, describes such a visionary journey where Lucius, the protagonist, proceeds to different levels in his initiation to the goddess Isis and sees the higher and lower deities subjected to the goddess. He learns the secret and venerable tradition and prepares for his initiation by abstaining from certain foods and wine, by going through purificatory rites, and by obeying several arduous prohibitions. He puts on a linen garment and enters the innermost sanctuary (“the boundary of death”). At midnight he experiences a vision: “I saw the sun flashing with bright light” and “I came face to face with the gods below and the gods above and paid reverence to them from close at hand” (11.23). He passes through the “elements” (11.23) and then gains immunity from and authority over hostile powers.

Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 231, offers the possibility that the leaders of the errorists had experienced ritual initiation in one or more of the Phrygian cults before their conversion. They “viewed their past visionary experience as giving them authentic and helpful insight into the supernatural realm.” What they had seen was “a partial basis for their claim of wisdom and understanding in these matters” and for belittling others.

In my opinion, the existence of such parallels does not necessitate that Paul refers to such initiatory visions; it only remains a possibility. If someone were extolling their initiation into one of the Phrygian cults as providing greater spiritual wisdom and additional protection from the powers, I cannot imagine that Paul would be so docile in his response. Paul does not call for them to reject their pagan past again.

29. F. O. Francis, “The Background of EMBATEUEIN (Col 2:18) in Legal Papyri and Oracle Inscriptions,” in Conflict at Colossae, ed. F. O. Francis and Wayne Meeks, 199.

30. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 123. Paul was reticent about his own visionary experiences. When he did mention them to the Corinthians, he used the third person and said that his entering heaven produced nothing he was permitted to repeat and led to his thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:1–10).

31. Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 349. This interpretation best explains the present tense of the participle.

32. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 182, claims that what Paul finds “reprehensible” is “the attitude of dismissive superiority” engendered by the interest in angelic worship, not the interest itself.

33. MacLeod, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 205.

34. See Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 350.

35. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “Tradition and Redaction in Col 1:15–20,” RB 102 (1995): 240, questions the widely held view that Paul’s vision of the Church as a “body” derives from the Greek philosophical reflections on the body politic. He considers it most implausible and “psychologically impossible” for Paul to take over a term used to characterize civil society that was “riven by divisions” (Gal. 3:28; 5:19–20) and to apply it to the church, whose unity was rooted in the love of Christ (1 Thess. 4:9). Rather, he suggests that the image was a reaction to one of the striking features of the temples dedicated to Asclepius that were “widely scattered throughout the eastern Mediterranean; namely, the ceramic representations of parts of the body which had been cured.” He argues:

The sight of legs which were not legs, of hands which were not hands, brought Paul to the realization that a leg was truly a leg only when a part of a body. Believers, he inferred, were truly “alive” only when they “belonged” to Christ as his members (2:6, 13; 3:4). The “death” of egocentric isolation has been replaced by the “life” of shared existence.

36. Morna Hooker, “Were There False Teachers in Colossae?” in Christ and Spirit in the New Testament, ed. Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973) 317, offers the translation “Why submit?” She is followed by Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 188. The verb translated “submit” (dogmatizesthe) can be middle or passive in form. If it is translated as a passive, “Why should you allow yourselves to be subjected to its rules?” (KJV), it is clearer that they have not already acquiesced. Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 125, argues that it should be taken as a passive because it is not “a rebuke for a lapse” but “a warning of danger.” See also Barth and Blanke, Colossians, 354.

37. The implication is that the errorists still live under their dominion.

38. Philo (Life of Moses II, 68–69) claimed that Moses cleansed himself of all the calls of mortal nature (food, drink, and intercourse with women) when he entered on his work as prophet so that he would always be fit to receive the oracular messages.

39. See Rom. 14:5–6, which lumps observances of special days together with food and drink. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 172, points out that “traditional Jews” placed great importance on food laws and fiercely insisted on “maintenance of their practice as a vital test case of Jewish identity and faithfulness to God’s covenant with Israel.” See Lev. 7:26–27; 11:1–23; Deut. 12:16, 23–24; 14:3–21; Dan. 1:3–16; 10:3; Tob. 1:10–12; Judith 12:2, 19; Add. Est. 14:17; Joseph and Asenath 7:1; 8:5. Jewish scruples over food were well known throughout the ancient world.

Jews in the Diaspora normally lived with their Gentile neighbors in a state of mutual respect. Why would they denounce Christians for failing to observe such rules? Dunn (174) argues that Christians had taken over Jewish claims and privileges for themselves, and this would have aroused their ire. They could not tolerate their claims to be redeemed by the God of Israel when they rejected the identity markers that set God’s people apart from the unwashed hordes.

40. Beare, “The Epistles to the Colossians,” 206, cites Chrysostom’s comment: “See how he mocks them.”

41. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 200. Houlden, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 199, says he is mocking them “for their pernickety scrupulosity.”

42. This phrase is difficult and reads literally, “which things are all for corruption in the using.”

43. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 193–94, claims that this text offers further proof that the opponents are Jewish: “The allusion to a rebuke to Israel would only be effective if it came as a rebuke to those who understood themselves as the people of Israel. These regulations of which the Colossian (Christian?) Jews made so much were the very ‘commands and teachings’ that Isaiah had long ago warned against.”

44. Moule, Colossians and Philemon, 108.

45. Bruce Hollenbach, “Col. II.23: Which Things Lead to the Fulfillment of the Flesh,” NTS 25 (1978–79): 254–61. The “which things” (hatina) refers backward to the “human commands and teachings” (2:22) and forward to the list in 2:23—wisdom, self-imposed worship, humility, harsh treatment of the body (see Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 200).

46. Hollenbach, “Col. II.23,” 261, reminds us of the clear causal connection in Paul’s thought between legalism and the fulfillment of the flesh (see Rom. 6:12–14; 7:5, 8–10, 21–23; Gal. 3:21–22; 5:17–21).

47. Scott, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, 61.

48. Epistle to Diognetus, 4.1, 5–6.

49. James S. Stewart, “A First-Century Heresy and Its Modern Counterpart,” SJT 23 (1970): 422–23.

50. Beare, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 201.

51. David H. Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary (Clarksville, Md.: Jewish New Testament Publications, 1992), 612.

52. Wall, Colossians and Philemon, 120.

53. Ibid.

54. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 203.

55. Baggott, A New Approach to Colossians, 86.

56. Bill Stadick, “Regarding a Co-Worker’s Kindergarten Report Card,” First Things 64 (June/July 1996): 32.

57. Rebecca Owanikin, “Colossians 2:18: A Challenge to Some Doctrines of Certain Aladura Churches in Nigeria,” African Journal of Biblical Studies 2 (1987): 89–95, reports that a certain church group “subjects all its members to periodic beatings with whips as a process of penitence.”

58. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 201.

59. See Paul C. Vitz, Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

60. Roland Mushat Frye, Perspective on Man: Literature and the Christian Tradition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), 117–18.

61. Fred O. Francis, “The Christological Argument of Colossians,” in God’s Christ and His People: Studies in Honor of Nils Alstrup Dahl, ed. Jacob Jervell and Wayne Meeks (Oslo/Bergen/Tromsö: Unversitetsforlaget, 1977), 204.

62. Marvin Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 5.

63. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (New York: A. L. Burt, n.d.), 277.

64. MacLeod, “The Epistle to the Colossians,” 206.

65. Houlden, Paul’s Letters from Prison, 165, cites Justin Martyr showing too great an esteem for angels in his First Apology 6. The object of Christian devotion is “the Father of righteousness … and the Son who came from him … and the army of the other good angels, who follow him and are made like him, and the prophetic Spirit.”

66. Cited by Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 68, n. 2.

67. Diane McColley, “Angels,” in A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, ed. David Lyle Jeffrey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 41.

68. Trudy Bush, “On the Tide of the Angels,” Christian Century 112 (1995): 237.

69. James Sterngold, “A Fellowship of Angels and America,” New York Times (Apr. 6, 1997), H 41.

70. Ibid.

71. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism, 31.

72. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, ed. Maynard Mack (London: Methuen, 1950), 31.

73. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 187.

74. Scott, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, and to Ephesians, 56.

75. C. S. Lewis, Transpositions and Others Addresses (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1958), 38.

76. L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 76.

77. Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York/Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), 192.