The True Temple in Colossae: Repeated Allusion to the Temple in Colossians
2:9 from Psalm 67:17-18
The first observation
is that the clause builds on Colossians 1:19, most of which is a verbatim
reproduction of that verse:
|
Colossians
1:19 |
Colossians
2:9 |
|
because in him he was
well-pleased for all the fullness to dwell οτι εν αθτω ευδοκησεν παν το πληρωμα κατοικησαι |
because in him all the Divine fullness
dwells in bodily form οτι εν αυτω κατοικει παν το πληρωμα της θεοτητος σωματικως |
We saw that 1:19 was
an allusion to Psalm 67:17-18: “God was well-pleased [ευκοκησεν] to dwell [κατοικειν] in it [εν αυτω {Zion}].
. . the Lord will dwell [there] forever . . . in the holy place [αγιω].” This allusion was
applied to Christ in 1:19. The Psalm 67:17-18 allusion carries over from 1:19
to 2:9. Now Paul applies this truth about Christ’s preeminence as the temple
from 1:18-19 and places it in contrast to the false teachers who do not base
their pseudo “philosophy and vain deception” on Christ (on which see Col 1:8).
This is the first suggestion that the false teaching in Colossae has to do with
not focusing on Christ as the true temple. This will become explicit soon.
As we saw in 1:19
above, the notion of God’s “glory filling the temple [or tabernacle]” is found
in the Greek OT, and πληρης (“full”) is employed in some of these passages, where
the temple is “full of the glory” of God (Isa 6:1; Ezek 43:5; 44:4; cf. Isa
6:3). This background probably supplements the above-noted Psalm 67 temple
allusion.
The reference to “bodily
form” also highlights that Christ’s divine presence has not taken up abode in
an inanimate physical and architectural structure, as in the OT, but in Christ’s
own body as the new form of the temple. (Greg Beale, “The Temple and Anti-Temple at
Colossae,” in Craig A. Evans and Aaron W. White, Who Created Christianity?
Fresh Approaches to the Relationship Between Paul and Jesus [Peabody,
Mass.: Hendrickson, 2020], 411-31, here, pp. 416-17)