NOTES for Col 1:24-2:7
As early as the first century, Christians encountered a rather strange religious and philosophical teaching that gave a highly fanciful account of the structure of visible and invisible worlds and of the magical means by which a person could conquer the powers of darkness and force a way into the world where the Most High dwells. The magic of this breakthrough into the invisible and incorruptible did not always descend to primitive incantations, but its essence still ultimately amounted to religious violence against the spiritual world. Adherents of such teachings usually claim to possess a certain secret knowledge, hidden from ordinary people and accessible only to initiates. From the Greek word for ‘knowledge’, such religious and philosophical systems came to be called ‘gnosis’ or Gnosticism. Such views are not uncommon in any age, and our own time is as susceptible to the lure of magic as the end of the first century, although after two thousand years they look far more comical.
In this connection, the apostle Paul's words in today's reading from the Letter to the Colossians—that in Christ ‘all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden’—are hardly accidental. The Greek text speaks precisely of ‘hidden gnosis’, and the apostle explains that he says this specifically so that no one may ‘deceive’ the Colossians—and us—‘with persuasive words’. The apostle does not deny that there is a way back to the lost paradise, but for him it is not the Gnostics' secret knowledge or the teachings of modern Gnostic sects. The apostle speaks of the One who Himself is the Way, the Truth and the Life. For a person, then, returning to God means not practising absurd and cruel rites or perverting human nature, but, in the apostle's words, ‘walking in Christ’, being ‘rooted and built up in Him’. However secret, hidden and wonder-working ‘knowledge’ may be—‘falsely so called’, in the words of the Church Fathers—it is dead weight. Only being rooted in the living person of the Son of God can bring a person salvation.