What Do YOU Think?

Colossians 2:6-19 (NRSV) Fullness of Life in Christ

6 As you ... have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; 12 when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, 14 erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

16 Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths. 17 These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. 18 Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, 19 and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.

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The lesson for this coming Sunday is an exhortation to life in Christ. Of thirteen letters in the New Testament traditionally accorded to Paul, seven are almost universally agreed as “authentic,” written by Paul himself: 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon and Romans.

Three are generally agreed as not written by Paul: 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus. 

Three are disputed: 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and Colossians. The Colossians letter is one of those on which competent and learned scholars disagree and dispute authenticity, with, some scholars say, about 60% doubting Colossians. However, there can be little doubt the early Church felt Colossians was authentic, if for no other reason than that Ephesians later seems largely to have been lifted from it. 

Modern scholars doubt Colossians on the basis of, for one primary reason, its christology. In our second reading for the upcoming Sunday, above, specifically Colossians 2:9 says of Christ, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” a developed christology that many scholars say would have made Paul, a solid, life-long monotheistic Jew, roll in his grave at the idea of deifying a human being or placing anything but the One God in the Godhead. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." 

For all the things about Colossians that point to it as authentically Paul, including a notion that relates it to Philemon, verse 2:9 raises among Pauline scholars the most solid basis for doubt: "... in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily."

Notwithstanding interesting, scholarly, even fun debates about authenticity, the Church has canonized Colossians in the New Testament as the Word of God, giving it as much value to us, and as much credence, as every other book of the Bible. Authorship is not the key; the key is that Colossians is part of our canon of Scripture.

What do I think about Colossians? I see Colossians as a beautiful precursor of the Church's ultimate realization as proclaimed a couple of generations later in the prologue to the Gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And I think scholarly squabbling helps make Bible study enormously enjoyable.

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