THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOSSIANS
                        FROM ROME A.D. 63

                      BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION


                           GENUINENESS

        The author claims to be Paul ( Col 1:1 ) and there is no
real doubt about it in spite of Baur's denial of the Pauline
authorship which did not suit his _Tendenz_ theory of the New
Testament books. There is every mark of Paul's style and power in
the little Epistle and there is no evidence that any one else
took Paul's name to palm off this striking and vigorous polemic.

                             THE DATE

        Clearly it was sent at the same time with the Epistle to
Philemon and the one to the Ephesians since Tychicus the bearer
of the letter to Ephesus ( Eph 6:21f. ) and the one to Colossae
( Col 4:7f. ) was a companion of Onesimus ( Col 4:9 ) the bearer
of that to Philemon ( Phm 1:10-12 ). If Paul is a prisoner ( Col
4:3  Eph 6:20  Phm 1:9 ) in Rome, as most scholars hold, and not
in Ephesus as Deissmann and Duncan argue, the probable date would
be A.D. 63. I still believe that Paul is in Rome when he sends
out these epistles. If so, the time would be after the arrival in
Rome from Jerusalem as told in  Ac 28  and before the burning of
Rome by Nero in A.D. 64. If Philippians was already sent, A.D. 63
marks the last probable year for the writing of this group of
letters.

                           THE OCCASION

        The Epistle itself gives it as being due to the arrival
of Epaphras from Colossae ( Col 1:7-9  4:12f. ). He is probably
one of Paul's converts while in Ephesus who in behalf of Paul
( Col 1:7 ) evangelized the Lycus Valley (Colossae, Hierapolis,
Laodicea) where Paul had never been himself ( Col 2:1  4:13-16 ).
Since Paul's departure for Rome, the "grievous wolves" whom he
foresaw in Miletus ( Ac 20:29f. ) had descended upon these
churches and were playing havoc with many and leading them astray
much as new cults today mislead the unwary. These men were later
called Gnostics (see Ignatius) and had a subtle appeal that was
not easy to withstand. The air was full of the mystery cults like
the Eleusinian mysteries, Mithraism, the vogue of Isis, what not.
These new teachers professed new thought with a world-view that
sought to explain everything on the assumption that matter was
essentially evil and that the good God could only touch evil
matter by means of a series of aeons or emanations so far removed
from him as to prevent contamination by God and yet with enough
power to create evil matter. This jejune theory satisfied many
just as today some are content to deny the existence of sin,
disease, death in spite of the evidence of the senses to the
contrary. In his perplexity Epaphras journeyed all the way to
Rome to obtain Paul's help.

                      PURPOSE OF THE EPISTLE

        Epaphras did not come in vain, for Paul was tremendously
stirred by the peril to Christianity from the Gnostics (hoi
gn(9373)tikoi, the knowing ones). He had won his fight for freedom
in Christ against the Judaizers who tried to fasten Jewish
sacramentarianism upon spiritual Christianity. Now there is an
equal danger of the dissipation of vital Christianity in
philosophic speculation. In particular, the peril was keen
concerning the Person of Christ when the Gnostics embraced
Christianity and applied their theory of the universe to him.
They split into factions on the subject of Christ. The Docetic
(from doke(935c), to seem) Gnostics held that Jesus did not have a
real human body, but only a phantom body. He was, in fact, an
aeon and had no real humanity. The Cerinthian (followers of
Cerinthus) Gnostics admitted the humanity of the man Jesus, but
claimed that the Christ was an aeon that came on Jesus at his
baptism in the form of a dove and left him on the Cross so that
only the man Jesus died. At once this heresy sharpened the issue
concerning the Person of Christ already set forth in  Php
2:5-11 . Paul met the issue squarely and powerfully portrayed his
full-length portrait of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the
Son of Man (both deity and humanity) in opposition to both types
of Gnostics. So then Colossians seems written expressly for our
own day when so many are trying to rob Jesus Christ of his deity.
The Gnostics took varying views of moral issues also as men do
now. There were the ascetics with rigorous rules and the
licentious element that let down all the bars for the flesh while
the spirit communed with God. One cannot understand Colossians
without some knowledge of Gnosticism such as may be obtained in
such books as Angus's _The Mystery-Religions and Christianity_,
Glover's _The Conflict of Religion in the Early Roman Empire_,
Kennedy's St. _Paul and the Mystery-Religions_, Lightfoot's
_Commentary on Colossians_.

                   SOME BOOKS ABOUT COLOSSIANS

        One may note commentaries by T. K. Abbott (_Int. Crit_.
1897), Gross Alexander (1910), Dargan (1887), Dibelius (1912),
Ellicott (1890), Ewald (1905), Griffith-Thomas (1923), Findlay
(1895), Haupt (1903), M. Jones (1923), Lightfoot (1904), Maclaren
(1888), Meinertz (1917), Moule (1900), Mullins (1913), Oltramare
(1891), Peake (1903), Radford (1931), A. T. Robertson (1926),
Rutherford (1908), E. F. Scott (1930), Von Soden (1893), F. B.
Westcott (1914), Williams (1907).