Commenting
on purported missing books of the Bible, Christina Darlington wrote the
following about the epistle from Laodicea referenced in Col 4:16:
Was Paul’s epistle from Laodicea lost (Colossians 4:16)?
At Colossians 4:16, Paul commands the church
at Colossae saying, “And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be
read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.”
Some argue that the “epistle from Laodicea”
is a lost letter of Paul because none of Paul’s letters in our New Testament
bear this title. However, the text says this letter was “from Laodicea,” not
that the letter was called by that name. There is good evidence that the letter
“from Laodicea” is a reference to the book of Ephesians.
There are several reason for this. First,
Paul wrote Ephesians at the same time that he wrote the book of Colossians.
Second, Ephesians was a kind of cyclical letter that Paul sent throughout the
churches of Asia Minor, and three Greek manuscripts do not contain the words “at
Ephesus” in Ephesians 1:1 in the phrase, “to the saints which are at Ephesus.”
Therefore, many believe that the letter coming “from Laodicea” mentioned in Colossians
4:16 was indeed a reference to Paul’s Ephesian letter. (Christina R.
Darlington, Misguided by Mormonism But
Redeemed by God’s Grace: Leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints for Biblical Christianity [2d ed.; 2019], 231-32, emphasis in
original)
Such
dogmatic comments flies in the face of most of biblical scholarship. Taking
seriously the biblical injunction that truth should be determined by two or
three witnesses, here are three Protestant sources arguing that the letter is a
missing letter, not Ephesians or some other text in the existent Pauline epistolary
corpus:
John Muddiman
At Col. 4.16 there is a reference to ‘the
[letter] from Laodicea’ which the Colossians are told to acquire in exchange
for their own. Some have claimed (see Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon [1884]:274-81)
that this formula implies either a letter written by the Laodiceans to Paul or
one by Paul from Laodicea. But both options are implausible. Would Paul want
the Colossians to read a letter to him from a neighbouring church, presumably
of enquiry or complaint, without the benefit of his own reply? And Paul had not
visited Laodicea (see Col. 2.1) when he used this phrase.
So, ‘the letter from Laodicea’ must simply refer to the last lap on its journey,
for the road from Ephesus passes through Laodicea before it reaches Colossae.
And since it was Paul who instructed the exchange, it is most likely that Paul
was the author of both letters. Theories that it was a letter by Epaphras
(Anderson, “Who wrote the Letter to Laodicea?” [1966]) or was the Epistle to
the Hebrews (Anderson, “Hebrews mong the Letters of Paul” [1975]; cf. ABD IV, 231-3) can therefore be
discounted . . . So is Paul’s Laodiceans entirely lost? John Knox (Philemon Among the Letters of Paul: A New
View of its Place and Importance [1935]) famously identified it with the
letter to Philemon. This involves a complex revision of the usual understanding
of the setting of the letter, whereby Philemon becomes a resident of Laodicea
and leader of its house-church, while Archippus becomes the owner of Onesimus.
However, Knox’s view is generally reckoned to be unlikely, for the ‘you’
(singular) addressed in the letter must surely be the first-named addressee
(Phlm. 2) and the owner of the slave (Phlm. 11). More importantly, the letter
to Philemon is too much of a private note for it to be appropriate to read aloud
to the congregation at Colossae. On the other hand, Knox was surely correct to
claim that the behaviour and treatment of Onesimus might well have become a
matter of public concern among the churches of the Lycus valley; and it is no
accident that both Colossians and Ephesians contain instructions on the
treatment of salves (Col. 4.22-4; Eph. 6.5-9) and also warnings about
dishonesty (Col. 4.25; Eph. 4.28) . . . What was Paul’s letter to the
Laodiceans like? Colossians (2.2) appears to be a brief summary of it: ‘I want
their (i.e. the Laodiceans’) hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so
that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and know the secret
of God, which is Christ.” Each of the elements in this sentence should be
compared with statements also made in Ephesians: ‘encourage your hearts (6.22;
cf. Col. 4.8), ‘united in love’ (4.16), ‘all the riches (1.18; 3.8) of assured
understandings (3.4) and to know (1.17; 4.13) the secret of Go which is Christ’
(3.3; 6.19). We can further deduce from Col. 4.16 that Laodiceans would have
been such a usefully to complement Colossians when the letters were exchanged.
It would have been intended to encourage and exhort a particular community to
grow together in confidence and unity and to understand their faith better and
its outworking in practice. It would probably have mentioned Paul’s
imprisonment and tried to cast it in a positive light (cf. Eph. 3.1, 13;
6.19f.) and should also have referred to the exchange of letters with
Colossians (c. Eph 3.4) and alluded to the Onesimus affair (cf. Eph. 4.28;
6.5-9). So we can gain some idea of its original content and purpose, but we
are left guessing about the detail. (John Muddiman, The Epistle to the Ephesians [Black’s New Testament Commentaries;
London: Continuum, 2001], 25-26; see Appendix B: “Paul to the Laodiceans: A
Tentative Reconstruction,” pp. 302-5; on how the identification of Ephesians
with Laodiceans originated with Marcion, see pp. 27-29)
E.K. Simpson and F.F. Bruce
16 The
Colossians are then told to pass on this letter, after it has been read to them
at a church meeting, to the Laodicean church, in order that they may read it
too. At the same time they are told to procure a certain letter from Laodicea
and have it read in the Colossian church. Much discussion has been devoted to
this “epistle from Laodicea”, but to very little purpose. It was presumably a
letter sent by Paul to that church (possibly by the hand of Tychicus), but if
so it was probably lost at an early date—too early for it to be salvaged and
included in the Pauline corpus towards the end of the first century.
One
view identifies it with the Epistle to the Ephesians. But Ephesians appears
almost certainly to have been written after Colossians, and not to one church
only in the province of Asia. If it was written after Colossians, it is
unlikely that it would be mentioned in Colossians—unless indeed Ch. 4:16 is a
later addition (and of that there is no evidence). We know that Marcion in his
Apostolic Canon gave the Epistle to the Ephesians the title “To the
Laodiceans”; but he probably knew the Epistle to the Ephesians in a form which
lacked the words “at Ephesus” in the first verse, and found what seemed to be a
pointer to its destination in Col. 4:16. This is more likely than the view that
he deliberately suppressed the reference to Ephesus in Eph. 1:1 because the
church of that city had refused his doctrine.
Yet
another suggestion about the “epistle from Laodicea” is E. J. Goodspeed’s; he
would like to identify it with the Epistle to Philemon. But if Onesimus is
commended to the Christians of Colossae as “one of you” (v. 9), it is more
natural to think of Philemon as a member of the Colossian church.
We
must, in short, remain in doubt about this Laodicean letter. It may be that the
Laodicean church required a letter more or less on the same lines as the
Epistle to the Colossians; yet the two were sufficiently dissimilar for Paul to
direct that either letter should be read in the other church.
The
reference to an epistle not included (or not obviously included) in the NT
canon led at a later date to the fabrication of an apocryphal “Epistle of Paul
to the Laodiceans” (just as the OT references to the Book of Jashar and other
“lost books” have stimulated the composition of books bearing their titles). (E.K. Simpson and F.F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians
[The New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament; Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 1957], 310-11)
David W. Pao
The letter to the Laodiceans has been identified as the letter to the
Ephesians, Philemon, or even the present letter to the Colossians (one that
contained both the letter to the Colossians and one to the Laodiceans). Most
are convinced, however, that this letter remains lost. This note provides room
for the later forger to pen the apocryphal “Epistle to the Laodiceans,”
containing phrases taken mainly from Philippians and Galatians. (David W. Pao, Colossians and Philemon [Zondervan
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan,
2012], 320-21)
Such
dogmatism from Darlington is informed, not by careful research and exegesis,
but to protect one of the key “building blocks” of Sola Scriptura, the formal
doctrine of Protestantism, namely, tota
scriptura (for sola scriptura to be operative, there must first be access
to the totality [the tota] of scripture). For a lengthy
refutation thereof, see:
Additionally,
what also informs Darlington’s comments here is her eisegetical (and, frankly,
nonsensical) understanding of the promise in Isa 40:8 and like-texts. Consider
the following:
We must remember that God the Father and
Jesus Christ Himself promised that the Word of God would endure forever (see
Isaiah 40:8; Matthew 24:35; 1 Peter 1:25). Thus, if one book of Scripture were
lost, we would have to question the strength of God to keep His promises.
Indeed, such is not the case for Scripture declares that God cannot lie (Titus
1:2)! (Darlington, Misguided by Mormonism,
233)
[T]here is a difference between the Word of God, which is eternal (Psalm 119:89, 152, 160), and the Bible, which is not. The Bible is the Word of God written. If one were to destroy one paper Bible, or all paper Bibles, he would not have destroyed the eternal Word of God. One such example is given in Jeremiah 36. The prophet was told by God to write His words in a book, and to read it to the people. Wicked king Jehoiakim, not comfortable with what had been written, had the written Word destroyed. God then told the prophet to write the Word down again. The king had destroyed the written Word, but he had not destroyed God's Word. God's Word is eternal propositions that find expression in written statements. (W. Gary Crampton, By Scripture Alone: The Sufficiency of Scripture [Unicoi, Tenn.: The Trinity Foundation, 2002], 156)Other passages that refute such a naive reading of such texts include the following:
Luke 3:2-3: “Annas and Caiphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.”
Luke 4:44; 5:1: “And he preached in the synagogues of Galilee. And it came to pass that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret.”
Luke 8:11-15: “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil and taketh away the word out of their hears, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation, fall away. And they which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which are in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”
John 1:1, 14: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
Acts 4:31: “And when they had parted, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.”
1 Thess 2:13: “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”
Heb 11:3: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do not appear.”