Colossians 2:8 - Exposition

Beware lest there shall be some one who maketh you his spoil through his philosophy and empty deceit ( Colossians 2:4 , Colossians 2:18 , Colossians 2:23 ; Ephesians 4:14 ; 1 Timothy 6:20 ; 1 Corinthians 2:1 , 1 Corinthians 2:4 ; Galatians 1:7 ; Acts 20:30 ). "Beware;" literally, see ( to it), a common form of warning ( Colossians 4:17 ). The future indicative" shall be," used instead of the more regular subjunctive "should be," implies that what is feared is too likely to prove the case (comp. Hebrews 3:12 and (with another tense) Galatians 4:11 ). "Some one who maketh (you) his spoil ( ὁ συλαγωγῶν )" is an expression so distinct and individualizing that it appears to single out a definite, well known person. The denunciations of this Epistle are throughout in the singular number ( Galatians 4:4 , Galatians 4:16 , Galatians 4:18 ), in marked contrast with the plural of Galatians 1:17 , and that prevails in the apostle's earlier polemical references. It is in harmony with the philosophical, Gnosticizing character of the Colossian heresy that it should rest on the authority of some single teacher, rather than on Scripture or tradition, as did the conservative legalistic Judaism. συλαγωγῶν , a very rare word, hapax legomenon in the New Testament, bears its meaning on its face. It indicates the selfish, partisan spirit, and the overbearing conduct of the false teacher. Against such men St. Paul had forewarned the Ephesian elders ( Acts 20:29 , Acts 20:30 ). "And empty deceit" stands in a qualifying apposition to "philosophy:" "His philosophy, indeed! "It is no better than a vain deceit." This kind of irony we shall find the writer using with still greater effect in Galatians 1:18 . Deceit is empty ( κενός : comp. Ephesians 5:6 ; 1 Thessalonians 2:1 ; 1 Corinthians 15:14 ; distinguish from μάταιος , fruitless, vain ) , which deceives by being a show of what it is not, a hollow pretence. From the prominence given to this aspect of the new teaching, we infer that it claimed to be a philosophy, and made this its special distinction and ground of superiority. And this consideration points (comp. Introduction, § 4), to some connection between the system of the Colossian errorists and the Alexandrine Judaism, of which Philo, an elder contemporary of St. Paul, is our chief exponent. The aim of this school, which had now existed for two centuries at least, and had diffused its ideas far and wide, was to transform and sublimate Judaism by interpreting it under philosophical principles. Its teachers endeavoured, in fact, to put the "new wine" of Plato into the old bottles" of Moses, persuading themselves that it was originally there (comp. note on "mystery," Colossians 1:27 ). In Philo, philosophy is the name for true religion, whose essence consists in the pursuit and contemplation of pure spiritual truth. Moses and the patriarchs are, with him, all "philosophers;" the writers of the Old Testament" philosophize;" it is" the philosophical man" who holds converse with God. This is the only place where philosophy is expressly mentioned in the New Testament; in 1 Corinthians 1:21 and context it is, however, only verbally wanting. According to the tradition of men, according to the rudiments of the world, and not according to Christ. This clause qualifies "making spoil" (Meyer, Ellicott) rather than "deceit;" human authority and natural reason furnish the principles and the method according to which the false teacher proceeds. "Tradition'' does not necessarily imply antiquity; "of men" is the emphatic part of the phrase. These words are characteristic of St. Paul, who was so profoundly conscious of the supernatural origin of his own doctrine (see Galatians 1:11-17 ; 1 Corinthians 11:23 ; 1 Thessalonians 4:15 : comp. John 3:31-35 ; John 8:23 ; 1 John 4:5 ). Similarly, "the rudiments of the world" are the crude beginnings of truth, the childishly faulty and imperfect religious conceptions and usages to which the world had attained apart from the revelation of Christ (comp. Galatians 4:3 , Galatians 4:9 ; also Hebrews 5:12 , for this use of στοιχεῖα ) . It is not either Jewish or non-Jewish elements specifically that are intended. Jew and Greek are one in so far as their religious ideas are "not according to Christ." Greek thought had also contributed its rudiments to the world's education for Christ: hence, comprehensively, "the rudiments of the world ". The blending of Greek and Jewish elements in the Colossian theosophy would of itself suggest this generalization, already shadowed forth in Galatians 4:3 . Neander, Hofmann, and Klopper (the latest German commentator), have returned to the view that prevailed amongst the Fathers, from Origen downwards, reading this phrase, both here and in Galatians, in a physical sense, as in 2 Peter 3:10 , 2 Peter 3:12 ; the elementa mundi, "the powers of nature," "heavenly bodies," etc., worshipped by the Gentiles as gods, and which the Jews identified with the angels ( 2 Peter 3:18 ; Hebrews 1:7 ) as God's agents in the direction of the world. This interproration has much to recommend it, but it scarcely harmonizes with the parallel "tradition of men," still less with the context of verse 20, and is absolutely at variance, as it seems to us, with the argument involved in Galatians 4:3 . Not the doctrine of Christ, but Christ himself is the substitute for these discarded rudiments ( Galatians 4:17 , Galatians 4:20 ). His Person is the norm and test of truth ( 1 Corinthians 12:3 ; 1 John 4:1-3 ). The views combatted were "not according to Christ," for they made him something less and lower than that which he is.