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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Colossians 2:9 - 2:9
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
9. ὅτι. The reason for the warning of Col 2:8.
Hence the emphatic ἐν αὐτῷ. The fact has been already stated in Col 1:19, which however is here defined by the addition of τ. θεότητος, and the important word σωματικῶς.
ἐν αὐτῷ, Col 2:6.
κατοικεῖ, see Col 1:19. Observe (1) the compound; the permanence of the indwelling is emphasized; (2) the tense; this indwelling was not only during His historic life on earth, but even now.
πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα, see Col 1:19. Nothing less than all the fulness would meet the case. If any were omitted an excuse would arise for the new and, as was supposed, supplementary teaching.
τῆς θεότητος, “of the Godhead” or “of deity.”
Here only in the Greek Bible, as κυαθότης, τραπεζότης (both coined by Plato) = the abstract quality of a cup, and of a table, so θεότης = the abstract quality of God, that which makes God what He is and without which He would cease to be God. A similar word is θειότης (Rom 1:20†), which, as starting not from the thought of a person, but from the adjective θεῖος, divine, appears at first sight to be wider, but is in reality weaker, and describes the attributes rather than (as θεότης) the essential nature. Hence in Rom 1:20 St Paul says that men can perceive God’s θειότητα from nature, not His θεότητα, which indeed, as he implies here, can only be known through Christ. Similarly he uses τὸ θεῖον when speaking to the Athenians on the Areopagus (Act 17:29). Had St Paul used θειότης in our passage he would have seemed to the Colossians to include all lower forms of divinity, and to exclude the highest and, as we know, the only real form—Deity.
The Vulg. reads divinitas here as in Rom 1:20, probably being unaltered in this particular by Jerome, and due to a time before the Latin Christians, dissatisfied with divinitas, had coined deitas “nam et hoc verbo uti jam nostros non piget, ut de Graeco expressius transferant id quod illi θεότητα appellant,” Aug. De Civ. Dei, VII. 1. See Trench, Synon. § ii.
σωματικῶς, “bodily,” i.e. in Christ as incarnate, both during His historical life on earth and in His present glorified state in heaven (Php 3:21).
To St Paul the doctrine of the Incarnation, perfect in manhood (σωματικῶς) and perfect in Godhead (πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος), is a sine quâ non in all true teaching, and makes τὴν παράδοσιν τῶν ἀνθρώπων superfluous.
For St Paul’s insistence on the reality of the Incarnation cf. Col 1:22, ἐν τῷ σώματι τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ.
“St Paul’s language is carefully guarded. He does not say ἐν σώματι, for the Godhead cannot be confined to any limits of space [ἵνα μὴ νομίσῃς αὐτὸν συγκεκλεῖσθαι, ὡς ἐν σώματι, Chrys.]; nor σωματοειδῶς, for this might suggest the unreality of Christ’s human body; but σωματικῶς, ‘in bodily wise,’ ‘with a bodily manifestation’ ” (Lightfoot).
Other meanings have been suggested for σωματικῶς, e.g. “personally” (Oltramare); “really” as contrasted with “figuratively,” cf. Col 2:17 (apparently Bengel, and compare Augustine, Ep. 149, § 25, Migne, II. 641); “in one organic whole” as contrasted with the thought of the false teachers that the deity dwelt in angelic beings as well as in Christ (apparently Meyer-Haupt); or, again, “in the Church” (“others” in Chrys., cf. Col 1:24), but even if these suggestions can be defended by usage (even the last seems to require some express reference in its immediate context, contrast Col 1:18; Col 1:24), there is no necessity here to forsake the more obvious interpretation.