By Schubert Ogden
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1. The place of early Christian communities in their environment
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There was, of course, a limit to his theological tolerance: certain developments in doctrine and in life became error or "heresy," for him when they became an immediate threat to the Christian confession. He was firm in his belief that the relation between God and human beings that corresponds to God's will – -- which he calls the "righteousness of God" – -- has been established through Christ alone. Therefore, this relation can be appropriated solely by faith in the saving deed that has become manifest in the cross of Jesus. "Error" arises not only where such faith is suppressed by assertions contradictory of it, where unfaith takes the place of faith, but also where faith in Christ is supplemented by acknowledging competing norms, commandments, beliefs, laws – -- from whatsoever tradition they may corne.
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Whether or not the "heretics" with whom Paul had to do in Galatia, Corinth, Philippi were all of the same type, it's clear that in one church not founded by Paul – -- be it Colossae or Laodicea – -- there developed a conflict situation comparable to that in Galatia, and that the author of Colossians reacted to it very much as Paul had reacted to the situation in Galatia, without, however, repeating the themes of that earlier conflict (law, justification).
We know of the founding of the Colossian or Laodicean church only what can be learned from Colossians itself. But we do know that Asia Minor in the first century after Christ was a veritable playground for the most different kinds of religious movements – -- including the indigenous cults, partially transformed by mystery religions; the ever-growing world-denying movement of Gnosticism; a strong Judaism (Paul himself presumably stemmed from Asia Minor); and the traditional Greek religions, transformed by the religiosity of the Near East and Asia Minor. In such a climate, the congregations in Colossae and Laodicea presumably developed. Is it any wonder that currents soon became powerful that were judged to be highly dangerous by those who came out of the missionary work of Paul or stood close to its tradition.?
2. The teaching of the opponents attacked in Colossians
We have no direct witnesses to the preaching of the "heretics" who were active in Colossae (or Laodicea, or both?). Our only source for the "Colossian heresy" is Colossians itself – rather as though the only source we possessed for reconstructing the church struggle in Germany during the Nazi time were the Barmen Declaration of 1934. From the text of this declaration, the teaching of the "German Christians" whom it attacks cannot be completely reconstructed, even though its outlines can be drawn sufficiently insofar as one has at least some notion of the political and spiritual situation of the time in general. But beyond this formal parallel, there are also certain material similarities between the Barmen Declaration and Colossians.
The persons whose teaching Colossians attacks call their teaching "philosophy" – -- not, however, in the modern sense of a view based upon reason and understanding, but in the ancient sense in which the concept could allow for a certain amount of religiosity and mysticism as well as magic and superstition. As such, it was evidently directed toward a comprehensive explanation of the world, and was represented by teachers who evidently understood it as a legitimate form of the Christian message and who, therefore, saw themselves occupying a place within the church, not alongside, much less against, it.
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But there's no reason to exclude Gnostic elements as well, since Jewish and Gnostic developments had long since been interconnected. In fact, it's often assumed – -- probably correctly – -- that one of the sources of Gnosticism was a "marginalized" Judaism, where creation and salvation were no longer held together. Thoroughly non-Jewish, in any event, is reverence toward angels, which would appear to be more at home in some form of Hellenistic religiosity. Also non-Jewish is the special attention given to "the rudiments of the world" (2:8) and "powers and principalities" (2:10, 15). Could this be due to some influence from the mystery religions, whose terminology is in any case evident in 2:18?
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As a group within the Christian community, the chief interest of the Colossian "philosophers" appears to have been to supplement, or support, the acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as Lord, which they in no way questioned. Through certain cultic practices, through religiously motivated observance of certain moral, especially ascetic, norms, and through a religious reverence for angels and the worldly elements they sought to achieve the "perfection," or "completion" that faith in Christ would otherwise lack. The result was that these "supports," or "supplements" obscured faith in Christ, and that Christ himself was made a kind of cult god, who had a place in a given context of cosmic "powers and principalities," to which human beings were subject.
If we ask how such a doctrine could have developed in Colossae (or in Laodicea), the answer seems simple enough: A major factor in all religiousness is the striving for security in an uncertain world, the striving for a complete understanding and thus also a mastery of this world, which is experienced as so threatening. Christian faith mediated to persons in late antiquity the knowledge that they had been extricated from this world through Christ's death and resurrection, and Paul especially emphasized that, on the basis of their faith, Christians could now turn toward this world as free men and women. But the real threats that human beings experienced themselves as exposed to in the world did not seem to have been overcome. Thus when Paul enumerates all the "powers" that cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:38 f.), it becomes clear that there must have been real fear of such a separation from God being brought about by death or life, angels or archangels, present or future, etc. It was in face of just this fear that the "Colossian philosophy" promised relief – -- by proposing that we satisfy the claims of all these powers against us, so as thereby to escape any danger from them.
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The author calls upon the Colossian Christians not to not allow themselves to be forced onto the way of religious accomplishments. He admonishes them, each in his or her place (cf. the Haustafeln), to accept the reality of Christ in faith and to act in life accordingly. By so stressing the present reality of salvation, he is in danger of losing sight of the future. But it would be a mistake to portray the author as a "religious enthusiast" because of this genuine and by no means wholly safe surrender of the "eschatological reservation." His emphasis on the present reality of salvation is grounded in the intention of making the Christ-occurrence the definitive standard for life. The letter to the Colossians is polemical writing, not a balanced, fully developed systematic theology. He stresses certain things while neglecting others, such as, in particular, eschatology. In any event, one ought not to overlook that the apostle who is represented as the author of the letter is not some "hero" who has already put earthly things behind him and is even now leading a "heavenly existence," but one who is imprisoned in chains and who speaks of the liberating lordship of Christ from this vantage point. The letter does indeed lack the dialectic of "already now" (of justification) and "not yet" (of eschatological salvation) (Rom 5:1; Rom 1:1-6). But it is only the concept that is lacking, finally, not the thing itself. For the parenesis paraenesis of the letter (3:5-4:6) binds the already "risen" Christians to the reality of the world (3:1-4). And the picture of Paul in the letter shows that Christian life does not consist in fleeing from the world but in holding out within it – -- even though it is indeed true that this world, as represented by angels and powers, is already conquered by Christ (2:15) and therefore can no longer touch the Christian.
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The theological protest of Colossians against the "Colossian philosophy" was followed up many centuries later in a completely different, and yet thoroughly comparable, situation – -- namely, by the Barmen Declaration of the German Evangelical Church on 31 May 1934. The false doctrine repudiated by this declaration had certain similarities to the "Colossian philosophy." In it, too, Yes to Christ was set in the context of a "but also"; and experiences of a historical kind or from nature were interpreted religiously and acknowledged as supplementary sources of revelation. The Barmen Declaration answered with an emphatic confession of Jesus Christ very much like that of Colossians. Both documents set over against the heretical "as well as also" a sharp "either/or."
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