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1. The place of early Christian communities in their environment

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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

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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?unmigrated-wiki-markup

This mixture of Jewish traditions, Gnostic thinking, elements from the mystery religions \ -\- all in the context of faith in Christ \ -\- seems to be a religious movement +sui generis+, more or less without any clear parallel, especially in the theological "heresies" with which Paul himself seems to have had to do, notwithstanding certain obvious agreements (such as the demand to observe religious festivals \ [cf. Col 2:16 with Gal 4:8 ff.\]).

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.

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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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