The Christ Hymn in Col 1:11-20; Second Essay

Christology is rooted in community life. It arises out of faith, even though it also gave birth to faith. The hymn in these verses is "triggered" by mention of "redemption" in v. 14, which is clarified by the words "forgiveness of sins."

It is as if the author is now saying, "Enough of focus on you, Colossians, and your faith, patience, and gratitude. Now is the time to turn to the foundation of these things--the living Christ." In both of the two "stanzas" of the hymn (beginning in 15 and 18b) a word is used to capture the essence of the Christ. In v. 15 he is called the image or eikon. In v. 18b he is the first or arche. I list both of these terms here because they have rich meaning in Greek thought as well as in Hellenistic Judaism (around the time of the NT).

When Paul says that Christ is the "image" of the invisible God, he uses a word, eikon, that would immediately have an effect on readers. The term is used by Plato throughout his most cosmological dialogue, Timaeus, and is especially important because when Plato sums up his work in the last paragraph, eikon is at the center. Plato concludes:

"And now at length we may say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its termination. For this our Cosmos has received the living creatures both mortal and immortal and been thereby fulfilled; it being itself a visible Living Creature embracing the visible creatures, a perceptible God made in the image of the Intelligible, most great and good and fair and perfect in its generation--even this one Heaven sole of its kind..," Timaeus, 92c.

For Plato this world had a certain divinity, but it was made in imitation of, or as an image of, the "Intelligible realm," the realm of ideas. But in Greek philosophy the concept of image removes the phenomenon from the item which it images; it is less noble, less perfect, less whole than the original. But when the word "image" is quickly joined to the next words: "the firstborn of all creation," we see a close connection to Prov. 8 in the Jewish tradition. In the beginning of God's creative work, God created Wisdom (Prov. 8:22). It was beside God as a master worker, daily was the divine delight, and it in turn delighted in the human creatures (8:30f.).

This notion of Christ as "image," or as "first born" of God then becomes a subject of Christian thought. We see it especially in Hebrews 1:

"He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs," Heb. 1:3-4.

In other words, our author (and the Christ-hymn underlying this passage) stresses the way that Christ fulfills the most sophisticated biblical and philosophical longing of the day.

This section goes on to specify things about the cosmic Christ, though time doesn't permit a close examination of them all. Suffice it to say that the most arresting idea is in v. 17--that in Christ all things "consist" or "hold together." The verb sunhistemi, translated as "hold together," is a word appearing in Platonic and Stoic philosophy to express the wonderful untiy of the entire world. Aristotle could say that "all things are from God are are held together by God." And, when we turn to some of the Intertestamental wisdom litearture we have the same thought--"And by God's word all things hold together" (Sirach 43:26). Everything that is, is established in Christ. What a mind-expanding concept...

IV. Christ, the First-Born From the Dead (18b-20)

If the first stanza of the hymn celebrates Christ in a way familiar to Greek philosophy and Hellenistic Judaism, the second stanza stresses Christ's unique role in Christian faith. Christ is called the "beginning, the first born from the dead" (v. 18b). We need turn no further than the Gospel of John to see the "Christianization" of the term arche, a word that could be used philosophically to describe one's "first principles."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it," John 1:1-5.

Colossians 1 stands in this tradition of reading the concept of arche. Christ is this first principle of all things, who was also raised from the dead. And then, just when we think that the author has gone about as far as possible with the "Christianizing" of Jewish and Greek concepts, we meet the word "fullness" or pleroma. Something about the "fullness" dwells in Christ. That term will become a central term in the next century in various expressions of Gnosticism. In Gnostic theology the "fullness" was something less than God, and it signified the uppermost world in "immediate proximity to God which in turn is separated from the cosmos by a boundary," Lohse, p. 57. God was not the "fullness," but was above it. In some Gnostic thought, Jesus could be identified with the pleroma, but he would, by possessing the "fullness," be one step below God.

Not so for our author. Our English translation has the note that "in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (v. 19), even though the Greek has no explicit reference to "God." But it is a good translation in this instance, because the author is trying to show that the philosophical and theological speculation making Christ somewhat "less" than God is incorrect. Somehow all these terms, the eikon, arche, pleroma, which were used in the world of late antiquity to stress someone just below the One or God, or the Intelligible Realm, have now been completely identified with God through Christ.

Conclusion

Thus we have, in this most remarkable hymn, a brief and powerful statement about the rule of Christ the King. It is made even more powerful when we realize how skillful it is in bringing so many richly-laden philosophical concepts to the discussion, concepts that are, as it were "brought captive" to Christ. Col. 1 says it better than any Papal encyclical can--and we have only scratched the surface of it.

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