HKB
[Sidenote: Character and Contents.]
Some difficulties are connected with the heresy taught by the religious agitators at Colossae. It is plain that their {173} teaching affected both doctrine and practice. They appealed to visions and a knowledge of the celestial world (ii. 18), and therefore set up a worship of angels which tended to thrust Christ from His true position in the creed of the Church. They treated the body with unsparing severity (ii. 23), they abstained from meat and drink, and paid a punctilious attention to festivals, new moons, and sabbaths (ii. 16). St. Paul calls these practices "material rudiments" (ii. 8), elementary methods now superseded by faith in Christ. Moreover, it is almost certain that literal circumcision was practised (ii. 11). These things point to Judaism. And yet St. Paul does not seem to be rebuking a return to the Judaism of the Old Testament. He could hardly have described a compliance with Old Testament injunctions as an "arbitrary religion" and "doctrines of men" (ii. 1, 22, 23). It might be Pharisaism, but if we look in the direction of Judaism, it is most natural that we should think of a Judaism resembling that of the Essenes. The Essenes were vegetarians, they avoided wine, they kept the sabbath with special scrupulousness, and had some secret teaching about the angels. These resemblances have tempted some commentators to identify the false teachers with the Essenes. But there is nothing to prove that the Essenes worshipped the angels, and St. Paul makes no mention of the Essene veneration for the sun, or their monastic life, or their elaborate process of initiation. Besides this, the principal community of Essenes dwelt by the Dead Sea, and it is very doubtful if any existed in Asia Minor.
It is best to confess our ignorance. All that we can say is that the scruple-mongers at Colossae taught doctrines which had points of contact with Essenism. They employed some affected interpretation of the Old Testament. They also were influenced by heathenism in their conception of half-divine beings intermediate between God and the world. How far they held any definitely dualistic view of matter we cannot tell. {174} But their system was a mischievous theosophy, which they endeavoured to popularize under catchwords like "wisdom" and "philosophy." The fact that there was at this time such a widespread tendency to adopt an exaggerated asceticism and theories about mediatorial spirits, makes it unnecessary to suppose that the Colossian heresy need be affiliated to any particular school of speculation.
The Epistle consists mainly of a more or less indirect argument against the insidious "philosophy" of the heretics, with an exhortation and personal notes.