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The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
Only twice in Scripture are the words “treasure,” “wisdom” and “knowledge” used together. In Isaiah 33:6, Yahweh promises that after He destroys the Assyrian destroyers, He will fill Zion with justice and will open the fourfold treasure of wisdom – salvation, wisdom, knowledge, and the fear of Yahweh. Earlier, the Branch from Jesse was given the Spirit of wisdom, knowledge, and fear (Isaiah 11:2), but in chapter 33 Isaiah says that the riches of the Spirit will spread from the Branch to the entire nation.
The other place that uses this combination of terms is Colossians 2:3, where Jesus is identified as the One “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Isaiah prophesies about the riches of jeshua, salvation (33:6), the riches of Jesus. Those treasures are opened only after a “time of distress” (33:3) when Gentiles attack Zion. That too is Jesus, for it is on the far side of the distress of the cross that Jesus is unlocked as the treasure-chest of the Father’s wisdom and knowledge.
“Wisdom” and “knowledge” do appear together in other connections, which give us further insight into what Isaiah and Paul promise.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 10:12 am
In an article some years ago in the Tyndale Bulletin, Andrew Perriman argues that Paul’s statement in Colossians 1:24 about “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” does not refer to eschatological “Messianic woes” nor to an inadequacy in Christ’s personal sufferings that Paul has to complete. Rather, what is lacking is the fullness of Christ’s afflictions in Paul’s own personal experience. The gap is not between what Christ has suffered in Himself and what Christ suffers with Paul’s help, but rather between “those ‘afflictions of Christ’ which he has already suffered and those which he expects or even hopes to suffer.” In short, “it is his own experience of the afflictions of Christ that is incomplete.”
Perriman thinks that this has a very specific meaning. Christ’s afflictions were fulfilled in His death; Paul has suffered as Christ did, but he has not yet suffered death on behalf of the churches. Therefore, he has not yet filled out the full extent of Christ’s sufferings in his own ministry. But he is willing to, almost expecting to, complete those sufferings in martyrdom.
One of the implications of this interpretation is that Paul “considered his sufferings to be defined by Christ’s sufferings.” His sufferings were not his own, but they, like everything else about Paul, belonged to Jesus. Commenting on Philippians 3, Perriman elaborates:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 6:50 am
Paul’s hymn(s) to Christ in Colossians 1-2 are constructed as a large chiasm:
A. 1:16-20: head; “rulers and authorities”
B. 1:19-20: fullness of deity in Christ; reconcile through cross
C. 1:21-23: formerly hostile, now established and steadfast
D. 1:24: rejoice, flesh
E. 1:26-27: mystery hidden from ages and generations; Christ in You
F. 1:28-2:2a: proclaim, labor, struggle
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 4:05 am
All the fullness (pleroma) of God (theotes) dwells somatikos, “bodily,” in the incarnate Son. His body is the temple, filled with all the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9).
Paul immediately follows this declaration of Christ’s full deity with this: “and in Him you have been made complete (pleroo).”
“In” the Son are two realities: The fullness of the Father’s deity, and us. Since we’re in the Son with the Father’s fullness, we become full. In the Son with the pleroma of the Father, we are pleromized.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, August 16, 2010 at 2:21 pm
“See to it that no one takes you captive [plunder you] through philosophy and empty deception,” Paul warns in Colossians 2:8.
Who might try to capture through “philosophy”? Paul punningly hints at the identity of the spoilers by using the verb sylagogeo, which pretty obviously (as commentators often note) resonates with the verb synago and the noun synagoge. The synagogues have become spoilers, and the philosophy that Paul warns about is not in the first instance Greek or Gnostic but the Jewish “philosophies” (Josephus uses philosophia to describe the different Jewish “sects” of the first century).
Through a double pun that links 2:2 and 2:8, Paul hints at the alternative to “philosophy and empty deceit.” ”Deceit” here is apate, which seems to pun on agape in 2:2. The possibility is strengthened by the fact that “full assurance” in 2:2 is plerosophia – full wisdom, the full wisdom that is found in the one who is the pleroma of the Father (1:19; 2:9). To the philosophia and apate of his opponents, Paul encourages the Colossians in pleorosophia and agape.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, August 16, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Why do you seek the living among the dead?
That was the angel’s question to the women who came to the tomb on the day of Jesus’ resurrection. Instead of finding Jesus, they found an empty tomb with the stone rolled away. Confused and desperate, they sought Jesus among the tombs, weeping. Someone has stolen His body. Where have you taken my Lord? Where have you laid Him? Tell us where you have hidden Him.
But the angel asks, Why do you seek the living among the dead?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 9:07 am
INTRODUCTION
In Colossians 2-3, Paul unfolds the implications of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We were “buried with Him in baptism” (2:12), and we have also been raised with Him (3:1). Our participation in Good Friday and Easter determines the shape our lives take.
THE TEXT
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. . . .” (Colossians 3:1-17).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, April 6, 2009 at 4:06 am
Paul says that in the circumcision made without hands, the “body of the flesh” is stripped off by the “circumcision of Christ” (Colossians 2:11).
I take “circumcision of Christ” to to be a reference to Jesus’ death. He is the seed of Abraham according to flesh, and so He has to be “circumcised.” On the cross the flesh of Abraham is removed once and for all. On the cross, the Father condemned sin in the flesh.
But why a “body” of flesh?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 6:34 am
INTRODUCTION
Last week, we saw that for Paul the cross delivers us from all powers, human and angelic and demonic, that rule human life. For Paul, one of those powers is the Law, but the cross delivers us from that too.
THE TEXT
“For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ. . . .” (Colossians 2:1-23).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, March 30, 2009 at 4:07 am
Unlike many who write about Paul’s teaching on the “powers,” GB Caird pays attention to Colossians 1:20, where Paul claims that things in heaven – which much include powers and principalities (1:16) are reconciled and pacified by the cross. When they do notice this verse, writers like Walter Wink push it out to the eschaton.
Caird notes that Paul is far from sharing this pessimism about the future of the powers: ”Paul seems to me to say that the Christian’s loyalty to society and the state, which are derivative authorities, must always be subordinated to his loyalty to the absolute authority of God in Christ; and that by the continued influence of Christ, working through his loyal followers in the church, the state itself may be brought progressively more and more within the Christian dispensation, and the affairs of state directed not merely by the ethics of law but by the ethics of the Gospel.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 11:27 am
These notes depend a great deal on NT Wright’s Tyndale Commentary on Colossians.
INTRODUCTION
On the cross, Jesus bore our sins so that we are delivered from sin and eternal death. But the effect of the cross is broader than this. According to Paul, it has cosmic effects. Nothing is the same after the cross of Jesus.
THE TEXT
“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colosse: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints. . . .” (Colossians 1:1-23).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, March 23, 2009 at 3:55 am
INTRODUCTION
As Pastor Sumpter pointed out last week, Israel’s calendar was part of her pedagogy. But Paul says that we are now full-grown sons (Galatians 4:1-7) and appears to associate observing days and seasons with reversion to childhood (Galatians 4:10-11; Colossians 2:16-17, 20-21). Is recognizing a church calendar an act of Judaizing?
THE TEXT
“Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. . . .” (Colossians 2:8-23).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, December 8, 2008 at 10:15 am
Wright on Colossians 2:8: He points out that Paul uses the rare verb sylagogein (“to take captive”) because “it makes a contemptuous pun with the word synagogue.” Paul’s warning is not just about those who would take captive, but about the temptation to lapse back into old covenant modes and ways. Given the exodus allusions earlier in the book (inheritance, redemption, transferred from darkness to light), this is a warning against returning to “Egypt,” the Egypt that Judaism had become.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 10, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Reflecting on Colossians 1:19-20, NT Wright notes that the incarnation and cross were not “undertaken with reluctance or merely because there was no other course. God not only acted in this way: he ‘took pleasure’ in doing so.”
Much popular atonement theology suggests otherwise: The conflict between God’s mercy and justice puts Him in a tight spot, which He resolves by sending His Son to receive the penalty for us. Jesus is God-as-substitute for sinners, but our formulations often suggest that God was forced into the atonement.
As Barth liked to emphasize, God remains Lord even in His revelation, the incarnation. Even – especially – here, He acts according to His good pleasure.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 10, 2008 at 3:11 pm
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