COLOSSIANS: Gnostic Heresy

Paul also pens a letter to the church in Colossae, a small city off the main road that runs through Hierapolis and Laodicea. I’ve always found the conversation that surrounds Colossae moving, because this church is the recipient of one of Paul’s letters, and yet the entire city doesn’t survive but a few decades after the establishment of the church. We have mentioned before the many earthquakes that decimated cities throughout the Roman empire. Many of these cities would be central to Roman infrastructure; unfortunately for the people of Colossae, their city did not make the list. The earthquakes of the AD 60s leveled the city, and it was never rebuilt. To this day, the tel of Colossae — a small hill in the Turkish countryside — sits unexcavated, if not nearly forgotten.

The unexcavated tel of Colossae

From a literary perspective, Colossians mirrors the structure of Ephesians point by point. Most scholars believe they were penned together. While Paul didn’t have the ability to use the “copy and paste” function, he definitely uses the same literary technique in the two letters. Here’s what I mean.

Ephesians is six chapters long and Colossians is a little shorter at four chapters. If you look at the first half of both letters, you will notice that Paul talks theology, or what I like to call ‘orthodoxy’ (removed form it’s cultural usage, the etymology of the term refers to “right belief”). The last half of each letter speaks very deliberately of ‘orthopraxy’ (“right practice or behavior”). If you compare Ephesians 4–6 to Colossians 3–4, you will see an identical pattern. Paul speaks about household behavior as it relates to husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants.

It’s the first half of the letters that differ in content. This is because of the context of the recipients. I say that based on assumption because there is so much we don’t know about Colossae (since it lies unexcavated). What we do know comes from the few finds that were scattered along the fields of the local farmers and other things like currency. However, one of the things that seems apparent is the struggle in Colossae with the dangerous teachings of Gnosticism.

Now, the moment you begin talking about Gnosticism, you have entered into tricky waters, because the word can refer to so much and a student of philosophy and Greek belief has many strong opinions about the topic. I’m no expert, so I’ll quote one of my favorite excerpts on the issue from NT Wright. In Surprised by Hope (p. 88), Wright describes Gnosticism as it relates to biblical theology:

For Plato, the present world of space, time, and matter is a world of illusion, of flickering shadows in a cave, and the most appropriate human task is to get in touch with the true reality, which is beyond space, time, and matter. For Plato, this was the reality of eternal Forms.

To oversimplify once more, we may say that Plato’s picture was based on a rejection of the phenomena of matter and transience. The mess and muddle of the space-time-matter world was an offense to the tidy, clean, philosophical mind, which dwelt upon eternal realities. […]

The Platonic strain entered Christian thinking early on, not least with the phenomenon known as Gnosticism. Since the Gnostics have been making something of a comeback recently, a word about them is appropriate. The Gnostics believed, like Plato, that the material world was an inferior and dark place, evil in its very existence, but that within this world could be found certain people who were meant for something else. […] The Gnostic myth often suggests that the way out of our mess is to return to our primeval state, before the creation of the world. In this view creation itself is the fall, producing matter, which is the real evil. I hope it is clear both how closely this view parodies some aspects of Christianity and how deeply and thoroughly it diverges from it.

Wright will go on to explain how some Bible students will go to great lengths to show how some elements of this thought are preserved in the New Testament, but he will spend the rest of the chapter showing how dangerous this way of thinking is to biblical theology.

Paul seems to agree. His first half of the letter to the Colossians talks very directly about this false idea propped up by Gnosticism. Consider the following passage:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Notice the tense of the statement. Paul says not that God will deliver us, but that He has. The next verses continue even further into this.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Paul makes sure to use the most inclusive language possible for the incarnation and reconciliation of all things. He speaks of all things and makes sure to clarify that these are from heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. He speaks of how all these things were created through him. He speaks of how all of creation is held together in him. And, for good measure, adds that the complete fullness of God dwelt in the Christ.

Paul will go to play with this idea in the second chapter, at times very tongue-in-cheek.

It certainly behooves the Church today to consider the words of Wright above, that these Gnostic ideas “deeply and thoroughly diverges from” the teachings of the Apostles. The truth is that far too much Gnosticism has crept into Christian theology. The idea that we are spirits trapped in prisons of flesh, walking in a world that is doomed to destruction, just waiting for “some glad morning,” is not the mission God called us to and is not congruent with the teachings of Jesus, let alone Paul and the New Testament.

The Kingdom of God is here — deeply engaged with this world of flesh and blood, soil and spirit.