A Summary of Berkhof's Analysis of the Letter to the Colossians

Recently I have continued reading Berkhof's venerable ‘Intro to the New Testament’. Here is my summary of his comments on the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Colossae (in Asia Minor a.k.a. Turkey).

Content-Berkhof divides the epistles in two parts…

1)   The Doctrinal Part, emphasizing the unique Significance of Christ, 1:1—2: 23.

2)   The Practical Part, containing divers Directions and Exhortations, 3: 1—4:18.

Characteristics- Berkhof and others find this letter much like the letter to the Ephesians. Some regard it as a twin, and the similarity of the two letters have brought some to discredit Pauline authorship though of course not Berkhof. He writes;

“1. On its formal side this Epistle differs from that to the Ephesians in its polemical character. It is not a general exposition of the truth that is in Christ Jesus, without reference to antagonistic principles, but a statement of it with a special view to the errors that were gradually creeping into the Colossian church, insidious errors of which the Colossians, so it seems, little realized the danger. It is true that we find none of the fiery polemics of the Epistle to the Galatians here, nor any of the sharp invective of II Corinthians;—yet the controversial character of this letter is very evident.

Berkhof notes that this letter has a Christological focus while the letter to the Ephesians is largely theological. “While that contained in Ephesians is in the main Theological, that found in Colossians is primarily Christological, the summing up of all things in Christ, the Head. Essentially the Christology of this letter is in perfect harmony with that of previous Epistles, but there is a difference of emphasis. The writer here places prominently before his readers, not only the Soteriological, but also the Cosmical significance of Christ. He is the Head both of the Church and of the new creation. All things were created by him, and find the purpose of their existence in him.”

Berkhof presents some points on technical verbal content analysis of the epistle contrasted to his other letters.

Authorship

Berkhof presents and rebuffs several challenges to Pauline authorship that are based upon the language use and concepts that could be regarded as anti-deictic e.g Gnostic concepts.

On challenges to Paul’s elaboration upon Christology Berkhof writes: “we do not see why the further development of the Pauline Christology cannot have been the work of Paul himself. There is nothing in the Christology of this Epistle that conflicts with the recognized representation of Paul. We clearly find the essence of it in Rom. 8:19-22; I Cor. 8:6; II Cor. 4:4; Phil, 2:5-11. These passages prepare us for the statement of Paul regarding the Cosmical significance of Christ,. 1: 16,17. And the representation that all the forces of creation culminate in the glory of Christ does not necessarily run counter to Rom. 11: 36 and I Cor. 15 : 28, according to which all things exist to the praise of God, their Creator.”

The Church at Colossae- Phyrigia is in Asia Minor-the region that is today called Turkey (see map above). The Romans had fought the Celts in Asia Minor slaughtering one of the tribes of Celt warriors fighting naked until arrows pinned their feet through to the ground. It was something of a last redoubt of those politically recalcitrant to Roman rule before being subdued. Berkhof writes that Paul’s three years at Ephesus probably was the proximal cause for the hearing of the word and foundation of the church at Colossae yet he writes “Colossae was one of the cities of the beautiful Lycus Valley in Phrygia, situated but a short distance from Laodicea and Hierapolis. Herodotus speaks of it as a great city, but it did not retain its magnitude until New Testament times, for Strabo only reckons it as a πόλισμα. We have no information respecting the founding of the Colossian church. From the Acts of the Apostles we learn that Paul passed through Phrygia twice, once at the start of his second, and again at the beginning of his third missionary journey, Acts 16: 6; 18: 23. But on the first of these journeys he remained well to the East of Western Phrygia, where Collosae was situated; and though on the second he may have gone into the Lycus Valley, he certainly did not find nor found the Colossian church there, since he himself says in Col. 2: 1 that the Colossians had not seen his face in the flesh.”

The Apostle Paul could be regarded as the founder of the churches in Asia Minor that would in time emerge as the Orthodox Church in the Eastern Roman Empire refounded by Emperor Constantine as Constantinople at Byzantium. Some of those churches lasted through the vicissitudes of icon vs. iconoclasts, schism with the western Catholic Church and invasion and conquest by Osmanli tribesmen of Mohammedan faith when even the Church of Holy Wisdom-the Haggia Sofia, was converted into a mosque.

Berkhof writes “In all probability Paul’s prolonged residence at Ephesus and his preaching there for three years, so that “all those in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus,” Acts 19:10, was indirectly responsible for the founding of the churches in the Lycus Valley. The most plausible theory is that Epaphras was one of Paul’s Ephesian converts and became the founder of the Colossian church.”

Berkhof notes interestingly that Antiochus the Great moved 2000 Jewish families from Babylonia to a region near Lydia and Phrygia, why I cannot say. The region has a long history of forced displacements and relocations of various peoples continuing into the present day. The church was mostly gentiles though false doctrine did assail it from numerous sources.

I will provide an example of some of Berkhof’s substantive analysis; “According to the Epistle the Colossians were in danger of being misled by certain false teachings. As to the exact nature of the Colossian heresy there is a great variety of opinion. Some regard it as a mixture of Judaeistic and theosophic elements; others dub it Gnosticism or Gnostic Ebionism; and still others consider it to be a form of Essenism. We can infer from the Epistle that the errorists were members of the congregation, for they are described as those “not holding the head,” 2:19, an expression that is applicable only to those that had accepted Christ.”

Jesus Christ is of course the head of the church.

Composition

1) Occasion and Purpose- Berkhof illuminates some points that are a little obscure to moderns, though interesting enough still to historians and others on what people believed in error that departed from the gospel and doctrine of The Lord. The belief in the mediation of angels in everything as if they were the animistic spirits of pagan Romans-(i.e. Janus the Door goddess whose temple was only open during times of war) was theologically made anachronistic. Politically however the concept is still significant for the evolutionist camp often regards Christians as evolving from an animistic paradigm and generally still having that although in a consolidated monotheistic context. That is a somewhat shaky anti-philosophical, anti-God intellectual edifice obviously.

Quoting Berkhof; “Epaphras, the founder and probably also the minister of the congregation, had evidently seen the danger, gradually increasing, that was threatening the spiritual welfare of the church. The errorists did not directly antagonize him or Paul; yet their teaching was a subversion of the Pauline gospel. Hence he informed the apostle of the state of affairs, and this information led to the composition of the Epistle. The object Paul has in view is the correction of the Colossian heresy. Hence he clearly sets forth the unique significance of Christ, and the all-sufficient character of his redemption. Christ is the image of the invisible God, the Creator of the world, and also of the angels, and the only Mediator between God and man. He in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells, has reconciled all things to God and has delivered men from the power of sin and death. In his death He abrogated the shadows of the Old Testament and terminated the special ministry of the angels that was connected with the law, so that even this vestige of a supposed Biblical foundation for the worship of angels has been removed. In him believers are perfect and in him only.’

2) Time and Place- Berkhof dates Paul’s writing to A.D. 61 or 62

Canonical Significance

Berkhof writes “The canonical character of this Epistle has never been doubted by the Church. There are slight but uncertain indications of its use in Clement of Rome, Barnabas and Ignatius. More important references to it are found in Justin Martyr and Theophilus. Marcion gave it a place in his canon, and in the Muratorian Fragment it is named as one of the Pauline Epistles. With Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian the quotations increase both in number and definiteness. That the Epistle is not quoted as often as Ephesians is probably due to its polemical character. The permanent value of this letter is found primarily in its central teaching, that the Church of God is made perfect in Christ, its glorious Head. Since He is a perfect Mediator and the complete redemption of his people, they grow into him, as the Head of the body, they find the fulfillment of all their desires in him, as their Saviour, and they reach their perfection in him, as the Goal of the new creation. His perfect life is the life of the entire Church.”

It is somewhat miraculous, or perhaps an illustration of the divine ordering of history that the foundation of the churches of Asia Minor and Paul’s opportunity to write to the Colossian church from gaol before martyrdom occurred in a region that would be and remain Hellenized and infused with the thought of Plato and his work the Republic with it’s description of the realm of forms and metaphysical ideas in general that would become inspiration to Plotinus later. Plotinus, a neo-Platonist in essence develops Paul’s Christology from Colossians and explains the nature of the Universe and of cosmology emitted from the One in 54 tractates called The Enneads.

From my pointy of view the worldview of Plotinus is very much like a paradigm for contemporary physical cosmology with a theistic understanding. Forms of matter were and are a [perennial philosophical and scientific question, and Universal forms occur in the quantum world and also in gravitational characteristic such as drawing matter together. The mystery about The One that Plotinus wrote about pertain to God as well; why did the perfect One actualize anything at all. Even a thought implies less than omniscience I suppose for God has the answer to every question. The extension of anything into temporal form is a great mystery. Some physicists speculate that for practical purposes the Universe may be regarded as a hologram. Steady states of mass are quantum entanglement of waveforms in a Higgs field (that remind me of the sacrificial sheep being found by AVRM caught in a bush). With that thought I guess one could consider that our reality is God’s thought, and that all thought exists for God with all things existing even an infinite multiverse, without need for physical dimensions or scale in order to be, for those would all be contingent so it is best to use General Relativity as a metric for regarding the physical realm.

Jesus Christ as the Creator of the Universe and Head of the Church is represented by Plotinus as The Intelligence who brings everything into existence. Imperfection and sin were considered by Plotinus to be broken forms. Writing a couple of centuries after Paul it is easy enough to discern the development of Plotinus’ ideas in the history of ideas. Plotinus was something of a mystic himself, was condemned b y the Orthodox Church as a pagan representing a heresy and sort of marginalized.

Today the concept of continuing direct revelation from God is controversial for good reason. Heyschasm was the term for Plotinus’ direct encounter with the goodness of God, and that was something like that written of in The Cloud of Unknowing. Christian mysticism aside, as if they were investigating transcendent quantum cosmology issued by God within a holograph or Bishop Berklean pure-idea paradigm, the elucidation by Plotinus of cosmological concepts implicit in the Christology of the Epistle to the Colossians is worth a comment.