Studying Colossians part 2: Two Themes

I have the privilege of currently working on Sunday School material for my church, Falls Baptist Church, from the book of Colossians; I have personally benefited greatly from this study. In Part 1 I discussed key resources (I reiterate: David Pao's commentary is the overall best commentary). Now I will discuss two key themes that really stood out to me.

"Vision for the Cosmos with Christ as center"--these words by Scot McKnight (2018 NICNT commentary) provide, in my opinion, an excellent summary of Colossians' greatest theme. Indeed, the supremacy of Christ in all things resonates throughout the book. Michael J. Gorman (Apostle of the Crucified Lord) well states that Colossians "exalts Christ as the cosmic sovereign, the preexistent Wisdom of God in whom God's fullness dwells, whose death has liberated those who believe from the hostile powers of the universe, and whose resurrection has raised them to sit with him above the defeated powers."

Consequently, the first major motif in Colossians is nothing more than "in Christ." Notice how consistently this expression or a related one occurs in the epistle: 1:2 ("in Christ"), 1:4 ("in Christ"), 1:14 ("in whom we have . . ."), 1:16 and 17, "by Him" (Greek en autō), 1:19 ("in Him"), 1:28 ("in Christ Jesus"), and that's all only in the first chapter! In addition, we have the amazing rhetorical reversal in 1:27, that Christ is in us!

In Jesus Christ dwells deity (2:9), "in Him" we are complete (2:10), and "in Him" we are spiritually circumcised, precisely because Jesus Christ's entire body was "circumcised" (i.e., "cut off," meaning "killed") on the cross for our sake! Consequently, Jesus' death and resurrection (2:12-15) have demonstrated that the entire universe revolves around Him, and that we can be participants with His glory.

This lays the foundation for the Apostle Paul's attack against the false teachers threatening the Colossian (and Laodicean) believers. [In the paragraphs below I am borrowing some general ideas from Pao's commentary, McKnight's commentary, and Köstenberger/Kellum/Quarles NT Intro The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown] The second key theme of Colossians is related to the first but develops as a reaction against the false teachers, namely, that spiritual maturity is unattainable without being "in Christ."

The problem with the false teachers was that they were striving to attain to the "heavenlies" by "earthly" means. For them, spiritual enlightenment could be attained by personal self-discipline, mystical-spiritual experiences ("worship of angels" in 2:18 is probably a subjective genitive, i.e., the angels' worship of God; the false teachers thought they could attain to the heavenly realm and worship alongside angels), combined with strict Torah-observance. In other words, the key to being spiritual was "Torah + self-discipline + mystical spiritual experiences."

All of this the Apostle Paul vehemently rejects, simply because they are based on "earthly" things (2:8, 20; ironically enough, since the false teachers wished to attain to "heavenly" things!) They all miserably fail, and are even ineffective in countering the temptations of the flesh (2:23, "no value when faced with the indulgence of the flesh").

Consequently, Colossians gives us the key to evaluating all teaching, good and bad. As Pao writes, "Any teachings that challenge the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ are to be unmasked to reveal their true nature as personal spiritual forces that threaten the Christian community."

The question we ask must be, "Does this teaching exalt Christ above all others?" For the false teachers, Christ was merely a footnote to spiritual maturity, which was attained through self-effort. With this in mind, we are in better shape to analyze various doctrines in the world:

·       To the heretics trying to seduce the Colossians, the Apostle Paul says, “Why are you seeking in the Torah and self-effort what is abounding over in Jesus Christ?” 

·       To the Roman Catholics of today we might say, “Why are you seeking in Mary and church tradition what can come only from Jesus Christ?” 

·       To the Mormon we might say, “Why are you looking for ‘another revelation’ [Book of Mormon] when Jesus Christ has already revealed Himself to us?” 

·       To the hyper-charismatic we might say, “Why are you seeking spirituality in tongues when true spirituality can only come from listening to Jesus?”

·       To the Buddhist we might say, “Why are you seeking enlightenment from meditating in search of a higher spirituality when He Who is true Enlightenment has robed Himself in the flesh to come seek you?”

·       To ourselves, we might say, “Why am I rooting my own identity and value in what I have or have not accomplished, or what other people think of me, when my value and worth come from being rooted in Jesus Christ?!” (Col 2:10). 

Studying Colossians part 1: Resources

Here at my church (Falls Baptist) we have recently begun a Sunday School series focusing on Colossians. I have definitely been edified and challenged by this study, particularly the role of the phrases "in Him/in Christ" throughout Colossians, a repeated theme that should cause us to focus on the supremacy of Jesus Christ above everything else. I appreciate how Scot McKnight articulates it: Colossians is about "Vision for the Cosmos with Christ as Center."

In part 2 I will discuss some of the key themes in Colossians. Here I want to introduce the reader to some of the best resources.

First, commentaries:If you can only afford one commentary on Colossians, buy David W. Pao, Colossians and Philemon, in the series Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. This is turning into one of my favorite NT commentaries, period. Pao combines solid conservative scholarship (which is not so hard to come by) with theological and practical insight (which is hard to come by!) In other words, Pao actually cares about the theological and practical significance of the text of Scripture (see, for example, his excellent discussion of the Wheaton revival on page 179). Whether or not this is or will be a hallmark of the ZECNT series as a whole remains to be seen!

The most recent conservative commentary of significance is Scot McKnight's Letter to the Colossians in the NICNT series (replacing the older volume by Fee). It has much to commend it, though his treatment of baptism rubs me (a Baptist!) the wrong way. In addition, the commentaries by Douglas J. Moo (Pillar) and F. F. Bruce (older NICNT) are both worth getting. For a commentary more practically oriented and easier to read (though still scholarly), see David Garland, Colossians, Philemon, in the NIV Application Commentary series (dear reader of a more KJV-oriented perspective, please do not let the title of the series turn you away from its value. By the statement of the KJV translators themselves [read the preface!], the NIV should still be considered the Word of God, "be it not fitly translated for phrase . . .")

Finally, an "oldie-but-goodie" would be J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon, which can be obtained quite cheaply on Amazon (and might even be public domain). Be warned, though--Lightfoot expects you to be able to read all the Latin he quotes! Nonetheless, if you're willing to dig, you can find nuggets of gold in Lightfoot's works.

Now, as for other resources:
It's always good to have a solid "New Testament Introduction" or two in your library, since these focus on matters of authorship, background, provenance, setting, date, etc. of each New Testament book. The classic evangelical NT Intro is by D. A. Carson, Douglas Moo, and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament (inexplicably Morris' name dropped off in later editions). However, I much prefer The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament by Andreas J. Köstenberger, L. Scott Kellum, and Charles L. Quarles (I require this for my seminary students). Granted, I'm biased (the first two authors were professors of mine at SEBTS), but this book is superior in its treatment of the background of each book and the current theological controversies in NT studies, in my humble-but-correct opinion. In addition, The New Testament in Antiquity by Burge, Cohick, and Green is very helpful in its discussion of the background of each NT book, including Colossians.

Finally, for serious study you should have access to a "New Testament Theology" book or two, which will focus on the theological themes of each book of the New Testament (or the New Testament as a whole; the methodology will vary). Frank S. Thielman's Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical Approach is what I require my seminary students to read in the class "New Testament Biblical Theology," and it has a chapter devoted to Colossians. In addition, Michael J. Gorman's Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters has some excellent material devoted to Colossians.

The Himes (partial) guide to serious Bible research from the comfort of your home

Since the golden age of Alexandria, a good library has been an indispensable part of academic research. Sadly, many of those interested in Biblical studies may not have access to decent-sized repositories of paper-bound information. There’s good news, however: with the advent of both the digital age and incredible library networking, you may not need more than your local city library to help you study whatever your heart desires, whether for personal enrichment or ministry.

One caveat, however: books will still be difficult to acquire copies of, unless they’re in the public domain. Articles may be printed out and distributed for various purposes (under the rules of “fair use”), but for obvious reasons books are a different breed of animal altogether. Having said that, inter-library loan at your local library may or may not be able to help (as I write this, I am planning an experiment which should be done by the time I’m finished with this blog post).

There are three phases to academic research (at least, the way I do it): 1. Finding what sources you need, 2. Actually reading/studying those sources, and 3. Putting your findings into a coherent frame of an argument (this all precedes the actual task of writing a paper or article). This blog post will try to help you with the first part of this process.

To begin with, finding primary resources (e.g., Josephus, Plutarch, Dead Sea scrolls) is fairly easy. At the moment of writing this, I am going to look online for Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. And, there! http://sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/ant-1.htm

In less than a minute I have access to a primary source. Since primary sources like Josephus are public domain, you should have no problem (never underestimate the power of the Google!!!!). The more obscures source the more difficulty you have, but you never know. [note to students: your instructor might prefer you use a published, physical copy of a primary source; check first. For Ph.D. students, you need to be citing the original language of a primary source if at all possible. See if your schools has a subscription to the on-line Thesauras Linguae Graecae, which has been incredibly helpful to my own research--I have my own subscription].

For secondary sources, including journal articles by top Bible scholars, join a public library. Seriously, a public library membership will give you access to powerful search engines such as Ebsco (thanks to my buddy Alex, soon-to-be NC State engineering graduate, for pointing this out to me). So, with my membership in the Wake County Public Libraries system, I go to their website, log in with card number and pin number (no, you can’t have mine! It only takes a couple minutes to get your own library membership). Then I click on “OneSearch,” and then (this is very important), I click on the link to “Academic Search Career” which will take you to Ebsco; searching for a term just by clicking on a box is virtually worthless for some reason—you need Ebsco’s own search engine.

Now that I'm on Ebsco, I just do a simple search by typing in “Atonement” at the top and hitting “enter.” Immediately I have a ton of articles to look at, some of which I can download the full text. For example, at the very top, we have “Tertullian and Penal Substitutionary Atonement” by Peter Ensor in the most recent edition of Evangelical Quarterly, and you can download the full text. In other words, with just a simple membership in a local (non-academic) library, you have access to the full text of a recent scholarly article in one of the top evangelical journals. For those articles that you don’t have access to, at least you know that they’re out there and you can explore options for inter-library loans (this may very from library to library). One very important caveat: Ebsco through this particular local library will not yield the same range of results that Ebsco through a full theological library will (for example: I can access articles from the Journal of Biblical Literature but not Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society in the Ebsco database for Wake County. Utilizing Ebsco at Southeastern's library has a much better list of results since it utilizes different databases).

Once you have access to Ebsco, play around a bit with the search parameters and explore its potential. One problem I had early in my doctoral studies is that I kept getting numerous “hits” for book reviews on the same book when all I was interested in was journal articles. Consequently, I had to learn how to limit my results to exclude book reviews.

Now let’s have a little experiment. There’s a book, an expensive monograph, that I desperately want to take a look at for an article (hopefully!) that I’m writing on the meaning of a particular word in the Pastoral Epistles. The book I need is Claire Smith, Pauline Communities as “Scholastic Communities”: A Study of the Vocabulary of “Teaching” in 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. The book is not available at Southeastern’s library (a 20 minute drive for me), and since I graduated from there I no longer have inter-library lone privileges at SEBTS (though I can still check stuff out). It is, however, at Duke Divinity’s library (about a 30-minute drive for me); since it is not currently checked out, so we’ll call that “Plan B.” For “Plan A,” I want to see if I can get it via inter-library loan at my local public library. I do not know the results of the experiment, which I am starting . . . now.

Update! And I have indeed acquired a copy of Claire Smith's very thorough and expensive book Pauline Communities as "Scholastic Communities"! Utilizing the "WorldCat" database at my local library's website, I was able to request this expensive and technical monograph via inter-library loan, and I picked up it up about a week and a half after I ordered. Kudos to the Wake County library system!

One final note: if you just want some commentaries or something and don’t care how old they are, “Google Books” may have what you’re looking for. For instance, I can read a significant number of pages in Colin Kruse’s commentary on John by going here. You may or may not get the part of the book that you need, but obviously if this is something that you’ll be using often, just buy it.

Furthermore, even for more recent and expensive books, “Google Books” will have a limited number of pages available for free viewing.  For instance, if I go here, Ican read a surprisingly large number of the pages in Andreas Köstenberger’s essay “The Destruction of the Second Temple and the Composition of the Fourth Gospel” in what would otherwise be a difficult-to-acquire book of essays (Amazon list price for the book Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel of John is $100+). It’s a bit “hit-and-miss” with what you can read on Google Books, but it may cause otherwise un-acquirable resources to become accessible (at least partially).

One other final note: as I’ve pointed out before (here , here , and here), a lot of academic journals are accessible for free on-line, so make use of that resource as needed.

Some Brief Thoughts on Bible Software (and Other Electronic Resources for Ministry)

 I was excited to recently read on Dr. David Black’s blog that he and his research assistant are working on a new book, tentatively titled The 100 Most Essential Tools for Using Greek in Ministry (see http://www.daveblackonline.com/blog.htm; scroll down to his post on Saturday, August 31^st, 7:48am). Immediately my mind jumped to Bible software and its potential for use in the ministry (by “ministry,” I don’t mean “vocational ministry,” I mean all Christians everywhere in their work for Christ’s kingdom) and even personal Bible study. You don't need to be a nerd like myself to benefit from such tools!

 For the longest time, the “Big Three” of Bible software have been BibleWorks, Logos, and Accordance (I’ve owned both BibleWorks and Accordance). Back in the day (i.e., a decade or so ago), BibleWorks and Accordance had the reputation of being superior at exegesis and syntactical studies while Logos was what you used to build your digital library. I think everything’s a bit more balanced nowdays, though my own bias is that Accordance is absolutely fantastic in its ability to do in-depth syntactical and semantic analysis (with a slightly steep learning curve), while Logos still has a very good reputation for making books accessible in electronic format. It’s worth noting, though, that Accordance is designed for Mac but can be run on a PC with an emulator. If curious, check out the respective websites at http://www.bibleworks.com, http://www.logos.com, and http://www.accordancebible.com.

 

Of course, there are probably other less-known software (some of it may even be free), so feel free to enlighten me in the comments section. In addition, I’m sure “smart” phones are now able to use Bible software to varying degrees. I still have a “primitive” cell phone, so I’m afraid I know little about such capabilities. While your phone is making you an Expresso and planning your next vacation, I use mine to actually make phone calls, which I thought was kind of the point of owning a phone in the first place . . ., but I digress. (Okay, so maybe I’m just a teensy-weensy bit jealous of your phone).

Anyways, good Bible software can help you do the following:

1.    Compare Bible versions. Even those without much Greek and Hebrew proficiency can still compare versions and at least get an idea of how controversial passages and/or words are handled. Also, study notes and even maps are usually included. All this is available with a mouse click.

2.    Give you immediate access to a theological library. This includes commentaries, systematic theologies, the church fathers, and Christian classics. Imagine being able to compare the views of Wayne Grudem and Millard Erickson on atonement, side by side, with just a few mouse clicks. Imagine being able to check out 3 different commentaries on Romans 9 within a matter of minutes, without getting up from your chair!

Now, frankly, I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to books and journals; I prefer something actually in my hand, and I probably will never have much of a digital library. Still, mark my words, the day is coming when most preachers will get up in the pulpit and say, “Please take our your I-phones and scroll down to John, chapter 1 . . .”  (if you’re in the mood for a satirical Australian discussion on Bible mediums, check out Michael Bird, “Dear Presbyter, Bring your Scroll to Church”

3.    Allow basic word searches. Many modules for Bible software come with Strong’s concordance numbers or its equivalent, so even those without Greek proficiency can see how the Apostle Paul uses the Greek word for “ministry” throughout his epistles. [warning: there are, of course, plenty of word-study fallacies that must be avoided. Most of these mistakes, however, occur quite frequently without the help of Bible study software, so this is hardly the place for an in-depth discussion of word-study fallacies! Still, there is much benefit, in my opinion, to seeing how a word is used elsewhere in Scripture, as well as in the 1st century literature]

4.    Allow in-depth syntactical and semantic study. This is the kind of stuff for serious Bible students and scholars. Accordance, for example, allows me to see how many times an Aorist imperative occurs within 5 words of a present-tense imperative in Josephus' Jewish Wars, if that ever becomes important [rabbit trail alert! In my opinion, the debate on Verbal Aspect Theory would be better served by less theoretical linguistics and more examination of actual 1st century 

      texts . . .]. With accordance, I can also see how the LXX uses the Greek word for “atonement,” or also how the Masoretic and LXX differ on a passage.

Naturally, all of the above costs money (and when all is said and done, the determined student may quite easily spend more on Bible software than he or she does on their computer!), but at the very basic package you’re sure to get a number of Bible versions with some basic study tools. In the meanwhile, you can search online for other resources (Google Books, for example, has many old classics that are public domain now).

One more thing: for the serious student of 1^st century Greek, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG for short) can prove to be invaluable. As for me, I could not have done my dissertation without it (examining the use of the Greek words proginwskw and prognwsis within 1^st century literature). It’s a bit expensive: over 100 dollars a year (though you can get a “five-years for the price of four” deal), but for some, it may be worth it.

Naturally, all the fancy-schmancy software in the world is no substitute for living out the Word. At the end of the day, an 80-year old lady who only has her King James Bible yet strives to love her neighbor is a better servant of Christ than a Ph.D. student with the latest bells and whistles of Bible software who cares little about praxis. Still, we live in an incredible age with hither-to undreamt of Bible study tools. It wouldn't hurt to make use of some of them.