From the above account it will have appeared that the distinctive feature of this epistle is its Christology. The doctrine of the Person of Christ is here stated with greater precision and fulness than in any other of St Paul’s epistles. It is therefore pertinent to ask (even though the answer must necessarily be brief) what relation this statement bears to certain other enunciations of the same doctrine; |considered in relation to|to those for instance which occur elsewhere in St Paul’s own letters, to those which are found in other Apostolic writings, and to those which appear in the fathers of the succeeding generations.
1. The Christology of St Paul’s earlier epistles
1. The Christology of the Colossian Epistle is in no way different from that of the Apostle’s earlier letters. It may indeed be called a development of his former teaching, but only as exhibiting the doctrine in fresh relations, as drawing new deductions from it, as defining what had hitherto been left undefined, not as superadding any foreign element to it. The doctrine is practically involved in the opening and closing words of his earliest extant epistle: ‘The Church which is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’; ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you[[529]].’ The main conception of the Person of Christ, as enforced in the Colossian Epistle, alone justifies and explains this language, which otherwise would be emptied of all significance. And again; it had been enunciated by the Apostle explicitly, though briefly, in the earliest directly doctrinal passage which bears on the subject; ‘One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him[[530]].’ |the same in substance but|The absolute universal mediation of the Son is declared as unreservedly in this passage from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, as in any later statement of the Apostle: and, |less fully developed|if all the doctrinal and practical inferences which it implicitly involves were not directly emphasized at this early date, it was because the circumstances did not yet require explicitness on these points. New forms of error bring into prominence new aspects of the truth. The heresies of Laodicea and Colossæ have been invaluable to the later Church in this respect. The Apostle himself, it is not too much to say, realised with ever increasing force the manifoldness, the adaptability, the completeness of the Christian idea, notwithstanding its simplicity, as he opposed it to each successive development of error. The Person of Christ proved the complete answer to false speculations at Colossæ, as it had been found the sovereign antidote to false practices at Corinth. All these unforeseen harmonies must have appeared to him, as they will appear to us, fresh evidences of its truth.
2. The Christology of other Apostolic writings.
|Their fundamental identity.|
2. And when we turn from St Paul to the other Apostolic writings which dwell on the Person of Christ from a doctrinal point of view, we find them enunciating it in language which implies the same fundamental conception, though they may not always present it in exactly the same aspect. More especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews first, and in the Gospel of St John afterwards, the form of expression is identical with the statement of St Paul. In both these writings the universe is said to have been created or to exist by or through Him. This is the crucial expression, which involves in itself all the higher conceptions of the Person of Christ[[531]]. The Epistle to the Hebrews seems to have been written by a disciple of St Paul immediately after the Apostle’s death, and therefore within some five or six years from the date which has been assigned to the Colossian letter. The Gospel of St John, if the traditional report may be accepted, dates about a quarter of a century later; but it is linked with our epistle by the fact that the readers for whom it was primarily intended belonged to the neighbouring districts of Proconsular Asia. Thus it illustrates, and is illustrated by, the teaching of St Paul in this letter. More especially by the emphatic use of the term Logos, which St Paul for some reason has suppressed, it supplies the centre round which the ideas gather, and thus gives unity and directness to the conception.
Firmness of the apostolic idea.
In the Christology of these Apostolic writings there is a firmness and precision which leaves no doubt about the main conception present to the mind of the writers. The idea of Christ as an intermediate being, neither God nor man, is absolutely and expressly excluded. On the one hand His humanity is distinctly emphasized. On the other He is represented as existing from eternity, as the perfect manifestation of the Father, as the absolute mediator in the creation and government of the world.
3. The Christology of the succeeding ages.
3. But, when we turn from these Apostolic statements to the writings of succeeding generations, we are struck with the contrast[[532]]. A vagueness, a flaccidity, of conception betrays itself in their language.