sought, not, as the heretics in Colossaj insisted, in all sorts of sham
wisdom, apart from Christ. But in the phrase " in whom are all
the treasures hidden" (iv <i dot ndvre^ ol Orjaavpol diroupv^oi) it is
not intimated that they, as being absolutely hidden, can and may
never be (taken up Paul in ver. 2 uttered the hope that they might
come to the knowledge of the mystery, and, with it, of its purport,
*'. e., of its treasures), but that human strength is not sufficient for
it, that, in one word, no one knows God but he to whom he mani-
fests himself (Matth. xi. 27). God veils himself to the prudent and
wise of this world, whose wisdom is in themselves, and proceeds from
themselves alone ; they know nothing of him, their knowledge is
mere show ; God reveals himself only to " babes and sucklings" and
to the humble, by imparting himself to them as their portion. For
the rest, this passage sufficiently refutes all those dreamers and
fanatics, who thought they were bound to expect a still higher and
more comprehensive revelation of God than that in Christ ; viz., an
age of the Holy Ghost. All that the Holy Ghost reveals he takes
from that which is Christ's (John xvi. 15) ; in him are all the treas-
ures of wisdom and of knowledge. (From the context of vers. 3 and
2 yvwfftf here can be nothing else than Krriyvuaig as in ver. 2, which
testifies against the asserted difference between the two expressions.
See at i. 9.)

Vers. 4, 5. Paul now applies the preceding general exhortation
to the special circumstances of his readers. Its object is to warn
them against the deceitful discourses of the false teachers. This in-
terest in the welfare of the absent he bases on the spiritual union in



COLOSSIANS II. 6, 7. 203

which he knows himself to be with them, his readers, and which en-
ables him with joy to perceive the firmness of their state of faith.
(TlaQakoyt&odai is not found again in the New Testament, except at
James i. 22, as here, in the sense, " to deceive by false conclusions
[paralogisms]." The choice of the term is to be explained by the
form of arguing which the false teachers made use of for their views.
ILiOavokoyia is found only here. In 1 Cor. ii. 4 ev Tretdolg oofaag Aoyotf
stands for it. The term has here a subordinate idea of blame ; it
designates a striving not to convince by the force of truth, but to
persuade by the show of it. Ver. 5. Comp. the parallel 1 Cor. v. 3
to the antithesis here : aapnl direct Trvevpari ovv VJMV el^t. livevfia
is, of course, not the Holy Ghost, but forms here the antithesis with
<japf : " outwardly far, I am yet inwardly near you, and take part in
your welfare." The collocation ^atpwv nal pheiruv is strange ; /3/le-
TTWV would seem necessarily to come first. Schott and Bahr take it
as a Hendiadys : Icetabundus observans, or cum gaudio considerans.
But Winer [G-r. 54, 5] and Bohmer justly remarked that it is
simpler to take aai in the meaning of scilicet, by which means the
Kal jQ/Le-rrcoi', K. T. A., receives the character of an epexegetic addition :
" in the spirit I am with you in joy, viz., inasmuch as in the spirit I
see your firm attitude." Td&g is taken from the frequently recurring
metaphor of military service, " the compact order of the warriors,
which attests their ability for fighting out the combat well." The
GTfped)f.ia rrjg elg Xpiarbv morevg vfj,&v } which follows, and in which
faith is described as the power which strengthens them in their posi-
tion for the fight, explains rd^ig. The reading voreprjua has arisen
merely from the circumstance, that from what follows [ver. 20. seq.]
it seemed not well possible to predicate firmness in the faith of the
Colossians. But Paul praises their firmness, in order to shew what
he expects of them. As to the rest, neither need ver. 20, seq., be
understood as if the Colossians had already given themselves up to
the false teachers ; the question is there rather an oratorical figure.
[See the explanation at that passage.] 2repe6>jita is not found again
in the New Testament ; the LXX. use it for s^, Gen. i. 6 ; how-
ever, the verb occurs Acts xvi. 5.)

Vers. 6, 7. With reference to the instruction received (from
Epaphras, chap. i. ver. 7), Paul then exhorts them to remain faith-
ful to it. But Christian instruction, as at Eph. iv. 20 (on which com-
pare the Cornm.), is not represented as a mere reception of a doc-
trine of and regarding Christ, but as an actual reception of himself, in
that really a higher living principle fills the faithful by the commu-
nication of the Holy Ghost ; in him (Christ) they are to walk, in
him be firmly rooted and built up. But Christ is here emphatically
designated as the Lord, in order to render manifest the necessity of
letting him rule. (On ippi&pevoi and EnoiKodo^ovnevoi see Eph. iii.



204 COLOSSIANS II. 8.

18, ii. 20, 22. As shewn by ev avroi, Christ is not in
conceived as the foundation and foundation-stone, on which the
faithful are built up, but as the element that fills the whole build-
ing, as the life-giving breath. The metaphor is rather to be taken
thus : the building is begun ; the foundation has been laid by. the
apostles and prophets [Eph. ii. 20] ; all now are built up on that
foundation through being and living in Christ. Christ is the author
and finisher of the faith [Heb. xii. 2] . In the words ^e^aiov^voi iv
rg mo-i KaO&s ^<J?a07/Te, man? cannot be understood of the sub-
jective Tuemf, but of the objective one, of the fides qu(p creditur, of
the doctrine of faith. In the latter we may be instructed and es-
tablish ourselves in accordance with the instruction that we have re-
ceived. Paul means therefore that the Colossians are to adhere to
the doctrine of Epaphras, which he confirms as true, and not suffer
themselves to be led away from it through the deceits of the here-
tics. [The opposite to faftaiavaQai is icXvduvifraOai, Eph. iv. 14.]
But they are not merely to adhere to that faith, but also to in-
crease in it [iv avrq, scil. marei], and that too with thanksgiving,
consequently with thankful hearts, for God's grace given them
through the communication of the pure truth. As to the rest, Iv
avry is wanting in A.C., and D.E. read iv avrw, but the omission and
alteration are too easily explained for any stress to be laid on those
various readings.)

Ver. 8. The apostle, upon this, pronounces an open warning
against false philosophy, as the Colossian false teachers dissemina-
ted it ; a warning, however, which is not, before ver. 16, again re-
sumed and carried out more in detail, as in vers. 9-15 the idea
that we must not depart from Christ, as in him everything needful
unto salvation is given, is carried out. The destructive element,
which Paul warns against, is called 77 QiXoowfria. But that, according
to Paul's intention, not every philosophy, not every striving after
an insight into and a knowledge of the truth, is meant here to be
rejected, and a blind uneducated faith recommended, is partly clear
already from the doctrine of Paul in general, in which there plainly
manifests itself a striving after knowledge, and the endeavour to
reconcile faith and knowledge, and thus Christian philosophy and
science is expressly recommended, nay, is set up as the aim of the
development of the church (compare the remarks in the Comm.
on Eph. iv. 13); partly from the addition KOI KEVTJS dndr^. For
the absence of the article shews that this is not meant to be a
second and different point, by the side of philosophy ; it also lies in
the nature of the case that such .discordant things as philosophy
and vain deceit cannot be placed side by side, if the term "vain de-
ceit" were meant to designate generally every form of empty delusion.
A/d TTfr 0tAoao</>ta KOI icevrjg d-rrdrr]^ rather forms one joint idea, and



COLOSSIANS II, 8. 205

that too so that the empty deceit must be taken as manifesting it-
self precisely in philosophy. Empty, deceptive philosophy, there-
fore, presupposes another genuine one as acknowledged. The former
is here the self-styled, fictitious " wisdom," which the false teachers
in Colossae extolled, pretending to possess (verse 18) knowledge of a
peculiar kind as to the realm of spirits, while they were in fact
blind in Divine things ; only such false wisdom (the ifjevd&vvpoc;
yv&oig of 1 Tim. vi. 20, which does not deserve the noble name of
knowledge) is meant to be blamed, not the true. That false wis-
dom receives from Paul for a more accurate definition the predicate,
Kara r-^v -napddoaiv r&v dvOp(*)n(*)v : after the tradition of men. But
still every human endeavour to find the truth, manifesting itself in
following the traditions of a school, seems to be blamed here, and
revelation alone, which is not man's at all, but God's only, seems to
be represented as the rightful source ; for, as, after this, Koapos and
Xpiarog are opposed to one another, so here Qeog forms the tacit con-
trast to av0/3G)7rof. No doubt ; but human philosophy is only
blamed in so far as it sets itself on a par with, or in opposition, to,
the revelation of G-od. Where the question is not of revelation,
e. g., as among the Greeks before Christ, there Paul would not blame
a (f)t^ooo(j)ia Kara rfjv napadoaiv r&v avdyu-nuv as such. But certainly
within the domain of revelation no human wisdom can or dare claim
authority along with, much less against, the Divine wisdom ; philo-
sophy must always be Kara Xpiarov, i. e. } be in harmony with the
truth manifested by and in him, if it would pretend to the name
of a Christian philosophy. Christ, who is personal truth itself, can
also alone be the truth of philosophy. As to the rest, Paul shews
by the term trapadooig that these false teachers had not invented their
views themselves, but received them in the way of tradition.* This
favours the view expressed in the Introduction, that the Colossian
false teachers sought to amalgamate the Cabbalistic tenets, which
were already in existence, and which had come down to them in the
way of tradition, with Christianity. The name fakoaofaa can be no
argument against our supposing Jewish wisdom to be here meant,
for the Jewish inquirers also were called philosophers, not only by the
Platonizing Philo, but also by the Pharisee Josephus. Certainly
Bahr is right in maintaining against Tittmann that fahooo&a cannot
mean merely knowledge of the Jewish law, much less, as Heinrichs
insists, " religious worship according to the law ;" but all unusually
profound inquiry into religious matters Josephus calls philosophy.
Thus by him the sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes
are called philosophers (B. J. ii. 12, 1). The correctness of this de-
claration that " the deceptive philosophy" here denotes the G-nostic-

* It is not improbable that in the term napddoaie an allusion to the name
tradition, is contained.



206 COLOSSIANS II. 9.

Cabbalistic system of the false teachers, which they knew how to
present in a very plausible way (ev mdavoXoyia, verse 5), is further
confirmed in what follows by the phrase na-d rd orot%ela rov KOCT/JOU,
after the elements of the world. We have already at Gal. iv. 3
made acquaintance with tho same phrase, which is explained ib. iv.
9 by dadevfj KOI TTTW;^ oroixeia, weak and beggarly elements. This
phrase, too, points to the Old Testament, and therefore is in favour
of the Judaistic character of the false teachers. The name aroi^a
alone would contain no reproach ; it is only the Old Testament
that is characterized by it as containing the elements of religious
life, whereas in Christ the reAof of the law, the reteio-rjc, is contained.
But the addition rov KOO/WV involves the blame ; for Paul does not
mean to blame the Old Testament in itself, but that spiritless, ex-
ternal, literal manner in which the false teachers understood it.
Instead of considering it as actually fulfilled in Christ in its spirit,
they endeavoured faithfully to adhere to it outwardly in the letter.
Thus they degraded the Word of God to a mere form of the world,
to beggarly elements. (See the particulars on the cn-ot^eta rov Koopov
at Gal. iv. 3.) The assumption, that elements of Gentile wisdom
are also to be understood by the "elements of the world," is here,
as at Gal. iv. 3, not demonstrable. Verses 16, 17 pronounce too
decidedly for the purely Jewish character of the Colossian false
teachers for any one to be able to feel himself justified in supposing
any Gentile elements in their system. Even though the Cabbalists
might originally have received their impulse from Persian and Chal-
dean ideas, yet their system had long so entirely passed over into
the Jewish life and character, that Paul could have no motive still
to distinguish in it the originally Gentile ideas from the Jewish
ones. (BAtTrere \ir\ with an indicative following expresses the convic-
tion that what the warning is given against might actually take
place. The article with the participle auAaywywv denotes a definitely
conceived personality [see Winer's Gr., 18, 3, p. 100]; it is sup-
posable that that perverse tendency in Colossee originated with some
definite individual whom Paul had in his thoughts here. 2vAayw-
yelv, from OV^TJ, booty, is only found here. One need not imagine, as
the object, faith, or anything of the kind, in the Colossian Christians ;
it is they themselves who are meant to be caught by the false teachers.
In 2 Tim. iii. 6, oigpaAwiigw is used in the same combination.)

Ver. 9. That Paul here, immediately upon naming the name of
Christ, allows himself to be drawn back to the majesty of the person
of Christ, of which he had in i. 15, seq., already so copiously treated,
plainly shews that the error of the false teachers as to the person of
Christ appeared to Paul's mind especially dangerous. The idea of
ver. 9 unites itself to what precedes as follows : " beware lest any
one should spoil you through the deceptive philosophy which is not



COLOSSIANS II. 9. 207

after CHrist ; of this we must beware, because in Christ dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead ; consequently that alone can be true
which is after him" According to the parallel passage, i. 19, the
sense of our passage cannot be doubtful. To interpret TOV TO Ttvbf-
pwfta rfjg OEOTTJTOC;, the ivhole fulness of the Godhead, of the totality
of the church, or of the whole circle of doctrine which God would
convey to man through Christ, is so arbitrary and contradictory to
the context that it must be rejected as completely inadmissible.
(See Ba'hr in the Comm. ad h. 1.) Paul speaks here, as at i. 19,
of the conjunction of the Divine and human natures in Christ, of
the Son of God's incarnation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
But the ovfiariK&s, bodily, is obscure, and requires a closer consider-
ation. The interpretation totaliter, which Heumann among others
defends, is to be rejected at once ; for, not to mention that no pas-
sage can be adduced in which oufiariK^ has that meaning, the to-
tality is surely already expressed in the ndv TO TrA^pw^a in the
strongest way. Nor can we explain acofj,ariK<Zg as vere, realiter, in
opposition to " typical," with Grotius, Nosselt, and others, after
Augustine. For, although o-w^a, as the opposite of oKid, means the
essential fulfilment in opposition to what is typical, still no example
occurs in which acj^artK^ is used in opposition to TvmK&s. Nor
does the construction with KaroiKel harmonize with this sense. For
we can say, indeed, " the temple is a type of Christ," but not " the
Son of God dwells typically in the temple." Yet this must neces-
sarily be admissible, in order to make a fitting antithesis to the
sentiment, the fulness of the Godhead dwells really (not merely
typically) in Jesus. Sw^cmKws 1 now can mean either " bodily" or
" in substance." For the former acceptation many of the Fathers
had already declared 'themselves, in later times Calixtus, Calovius,
Gerhard, Storr, Flatt, Bahr ; Bohmer leaves it undecided which is
preferable. Steiger expresses himself too harshly in calling this view
tasteless and insipid ; its adoption, on the contrary, is perfectly
conceivable if they regarded the heretics as docetics. This now we
cannot do, as was remarked on i. 22 ; but, even putting out of sight
that point in the doctrine of the Colossian false teachers, the expla-
nation of oupaTin&c; as = iv rut o^ari is discountenanced by the fact
that this Divine indwelling in the human nature of Jesus, and
therefore also in the body, is already involved in the KV avrti. Were,
then, this KV avr& meant to be more accurately defined, Paul would
not certainly, for that purpose, have chosen the adverb by which the
idea is united with the verb Karoiicei, but would have written simply
KV TW a&naTi. The adverbial form admits of no other acceptation
than essentialiter, substantialiter, ovaiud&s, Thus Athanasius, The-
ophylact, (Ecumenius, have already interpreted, and later the Ke-
fonners in a body, as also Wolf, Bochart, Steiger, and others. For



208 COLOSSIANS II. 10.

the explanation of this use of cupa = substantia, we must appeal, not so
much to the Hebrew DW, to which atifia does not exactly correspond,
as to the use of tpa, body, which in the rabbinical dialect is perfectly
analogous to our " substance." (See Buxtorf. Lex. Rabb. et Talm.,
p. 405.) But the further question arises, what is the meaning of
this clause, " the whole fulness of the Godhead dwells essentially,
substantially in him ?" against what heretical mode of conception
does it form the antithesis ? The verb Karoua-lv and the present
tense are especially to be insisted upon ; by them Paul opposes
those Gnostic views which supposed a merely temporary influence of
a higher spirit upon Jesus from his baptism to his death ; Christ is
a permanent Divine Shechinah ; even on the throne of the Father
the glorified human nature is combined with the Divine. But <rw-
uart/cwf intimates the difference between the being of God in Christ
and that in man, of which the words next following treat ; in Christ
God is essentially present, not merely as influence, but centrally, so
that Jesus is not a deified man, but God-man ; on the other hand,
the indwelling of God in man is to be considered as only operation;
God is in them, but they are not God.

Ver. 10. That nai lore cannot be taken imperatively is suffi-
ciently inherent in the very idea ; we cannot demand to be filled by
God. Besides, the New Testament puts ytveoOe for the imperative,
not tore. The clause depends, like KV avrw Karoinei, on or/., with
which no doubt an express tym? would have been suitable, because
the dwelling of the fulness of God in Christ, and belivers' being filled
by him, form antitheses. With ver. 8 this clause is thus connected :
" beware of a philosophy ot> Kara Xptorov, for he fills you ; therefore
you must give place to no foreign influence." Yet lv avrti surprises
us. We might deem it necessary to take lv here in the sense of
did, as Christ is certainly to be considered as he who fills his own.
But it is more suitable to suppose a conciseness in the phrase, and
that KOTK iv av-rw Trerr/iTfpa^evoi stands for " in him, i. e., as being in
communion with him, ye are filled with his life." After this, Paul
details further how everything is given to the faithful in Christ ;
therefore they are to keep themselves to him alone, as the head,
which is just what the false teachers do not do (ver. 19), in that
they unite themselves to subordinate powers, whom Christ governs.
Therefore Paul calls him 77 nefyaXri Traa^f dpxrjs KCU ifovataf } the head
of all dominion and power. (See at i. 16.) The name K0aA?/ is
derived from the image of oti^a, as the church is usually called ; the
reading tnKtyoias for dpxw in D.E. could therefore very easily arise.
Here Paul seems either to have conceived the whole spiritual world as
the body whose head Christ is, or he has only in this latter expression
adhered to the idea of him that guides and governs. As to the rest,
the names dp%<u and KJ-ovaiat in themselves might be used as well of



COLOSSIANS II. 11.

lad angels as of good ones. But from the polemical aim of Paul
against the angel-worship of the Colossian heretics, it is to be as-
sumed that he had good spirits principally in his mind. (See, how-
ever, at ver. 15.) The reading o or 6 has certainly important
authorities in its favour ; Lachmann has received 6 into the text,
and Steiger defends it, considering TTvb/pa^a as the subject. But
then, in vers. 11 and 12 too, &v <L would necessarily have to be re-
ferred to TrA^pw^a, which, however, is entirely unsuitable ; it is not
in the fulness of the Godhead as such that the faithful are circum-
cised, dead, risen again, but in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom
the fulness of the Godhead dwells, therefore in the incarnate Son of
God, in the God-man. This decides, even with inferior critical au-
thorities, for of as the true reading.

Ver. 11. Paul then shews in the sequel of this representation,
how in Christ all that the believer can possess in spiritual blessings
is already given him in Christ. Christ's death and resurrection are
vicarious for mankind : as all fell in Adam, so all are dead and rise
again in Christ. This idea is very familiar to the apostle, and has
already been particularly considered in detail in the Comm. at Rom.
v. 12, seq., vi. 1, seq.

The aorists receive thus their proper meaning (see on Rom. viii.
30); in Christ all is fulfilled once for all ; his rere^eorai holds good
for eternity ; the life of the church and of the individual in her is
only the development of what has already been given in him. It
seems peculiar in this passage that the vicarious work of Christ (ac-
cording to which the KV o> is to be taken quite literally, inasmuch as
the faithful are conceived as reposing spiritually in Christ, the spir-
itual Adam, in the same way as all reposed bodily in Adam, their
bodily progenitor) is referred, not merely to the particular events of
the death and the resurrection, as usual, but to circumcision also.
But in the iv oi /cat Trepterp/^T/Ts we must not think, for instance, of
the bodily circumcision of Christ, as if that were conceived as a cir-
cumcision of all (for the discourse here is of the spiritual circum-
cision of all, and not of the bodily one) ; the ideas of death and
circumcision are here treated as identical, as the epexegetic annex-
ation of the clause avvra^vreg avra) KV ru> fta-nrio^arL, buried with him
in baptism, to what precedes shews.

For the burial is only the absolutely consummated death, to
which baptism is compared, as Rom. vi. 4, with reference to the rite
of submersion, by which the old man is withdrawn from sight in the
same way as the dead man by burial. But circumcision is a figura-
tive death ; the entire old man was to die as a sacrifice for sin, in-
stead of which his blood is partially shed and the foreskin removed,
as a type of the sinful appendages (Trpoaapr^uaro, as the Gnostics
said) of the soul. The faithful are therefore circumcised in Christ
VOL. V. 14



210 COLOSSIANS II. 11.

spiritually, as his death in the faith is their death too. In baptism,
as the act in which the new birth is realized, the faithful die with
Christ, are buried with him, and receive therewith the circumcision
of Christ (the Trepiroprj d^ipoTroirj-o^, which Christ accomplishes by
his Spirit, the circumcision of the heart. (Comp. Deut. x. 16, xxx. 6,
Jerem. iv. 4, with Kom. ii. 28, 29.) The added epexegetical clause,
i-v rq dTrendvaei rov crufiaros 1% aap/cof, is also peculiar. The whole of
the context shews that body of flesh (atifia rrj$ crap/coV) cannot here de-
note, as at i. 22, the physical body, for the spiritual circumcision cer-
tainly does not liberate from the physical body ; odpt; here has a ref-
erence to the sinfulness of human nature. If we compare Col. iii. 9,
a7TK6vadfievoi rov Trakaibv avQpu-xov ovv raig Trpdt-eaiv avrov, it cannot
be doubtful that dTrendvois rov awfw,rog ri]<; aapK.6^ denotes the same
thing. 2o5/io rfy oa.pn6<; = oufia oapniKov, a a&iia which contains in
it the nature of the aap, of sinfulness. It is presumable that Paul
chose this expression with reference to the death which the follow-
ing avvra^Evreg presupposes. Death is the laying aside of the body :
in like manner the spiritual death which man dies with Christ the
total circumcision which Christ performs is the laying aside of the
sinful body, i. e. } the putting off the old man and the putting on the
new one. This way of taking the words was, no doubt, the founda-