In Colossians 2, Paul urges the young church in Colossae to stick firmly to what we might now call orthodox Christian views.
In the background, this church faces a danger now know as the Colossian heresy. This is not a church that has gone completely off the rails and reinvented itself into a cult: Paul suggests, in the previous chapter, that the church is bearing fruit.
And yet, there is something that has gone amiss and weird ideas are creeping in among the congregation.
What is the Colossian heresy?
People have speculated on what the heresy might be. In Colossians 2, there are some glimpses. Paul refers to a “hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”
He talks of those who “have lost connection” with Jesus, suggesting that people though nominally Christian are getting their (religious) ideas elsewhere from God. Paul also mentions the “worship of angels”.
David E. Garland in The Biblical Theology Study Bible says:
The most one can say is that the error devalues Christ’s supremacy and the adequacy of salvation through him. It promotes mystical experiences, additional spiritual agents, and a regimen of ritual or ascetic observances to achieve well-being.
F.F. Bruce, who discusses a range of possible heresies, says:
While the Colossian heresy was basically Jewish, it is not the straightforward Judalizing legalism of Galatians that is envisaged in Colossians, but a form of mysticism which tmpted it adepts to look on themselves as a spiritual elite.
As mentioned in a previous article, the area that Colossae is within, known as Phrygia, had seen its Jewish population bulked up a couple of hundreds years before Jesus. So Bruce questions whether the heresy was in fact imported from what he calls “Jewish nonconformity” – i.e. outside of the usual beliefs of Judaism.
One contender is a form of Jewish gnosticism called merkabah mysticism. Bruce notes that there was “no doubt a measure of religious syncretism in the Jewish communities of Phrygia”. Syncretism is the “merging or attempted reconciling of the beliefs and practices of different religions or philosophies” (according to the Chambers dictionary).
Bruce says that the features of the Colossian heresy that might suggest syncretism “tend to recur in mystical experiences belonging to a wide variety of religious traditions”. So we can’t definitively know that the heresy evolves from the fringes of Judaism but Bruce does favour merkabah mysticism as a reasonable fit.
What does Paul recommend to counter it?
Paul’s response to the heresy is to urge the Christians to avoid being suckered up by the “hollow and deceptive philosophy”.
In Colossians 2:18 (NIV), Paul tells the Colossians that it’s important not to take seriously people who try to put them down and suggest their Christian isn’t valid. He writes:
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.
There is a clear suggestion here of people claiming to have received revelations that somehow don’t fit with what we know from scripture about how God communicates. They are taking something that their “unspiritual mind” has supposedly witnessed and using it to brag – they are “puffed up”.
Paul refers, five verses later, to the heresy involving “harsh treatment of the body” and “regulations [that] have an appearance of wisdom”. So Bruce says:
The Colossian heresy evidently encouraged the claim that the fullness of God could be appreciated only by mystical experiences for which ascetic preparation was necessary.
Paul rebuts the claim by saying that “in Christ you have been brought to fullness”. We don’t need a secret, VIP religious experience that only the elite have.