Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 31:2 (Jun 1988)
Article: Presently Entering The Kingdom Of Christ: The Background And Purpose Of Col 1:12-14
Author: Gary Steven Shogren

JETS 31:2 (June 1988) p. 173

Presently Entering The Kingdom Of Christ: The Background And Purpose Of Col 1:12-14

Gary S. Shogren*

In Col 1:12–14 Paul charges the Colossians to give “thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (NASB).1 We will here center our discussion on the linguistic and conceptual background of this controversial passage and then go on to examine one of its possible purposes within Colossians.

The helpfulness of our approach can be measured by its methodological implications as well as by its exegetical value. Col 1:12–14 is often a testing ground for theories about earlier Christian or even pre-Christian—namely, Qumran-Essene—sources and Pauline redaction. The presupposition that lies behind such methods usually is that a close verbal parallel to another literary source is of sufficient weight to indicate the borrowing and modifying of that source. Thus a verbal parallel is tantamount to a conceptual parallel, which in turn leads to theories about the genealogy of a concept. Within this study we will examine the drawbacks of this method and of its results for Col 1:12–14.

I. The Linguistic Conceptual Background Of Col 1:12-14

For some time it has been suggested that Paul did not compose Col 1:12–14 but that he borrowed from an earlier tradition, perhaps from an introit to the Christological hymn in 1:15–20. Ernst Käsemann contended that earlier Christian redactors had joined two traditions: a primitive Church confession in 1:12–14, and a gnostic hymn in 1:15–20.2 The thesis that has kindled the most enthusiasm, however, is that Paul or a deutero-Pauline author discovered a Qumran-Essenic tradition and adapted it as a summation of Christian conversion.

*Gary Shogren is pastor of Penacook Bible Church in New Hampshire.

JETS 31:2 (June 1988) p. 174

1. The theory of correspondence with the language of Qumran Essenism. A leading proponent of the Qumran source theory is Reinhard Deichgräber, who focuses on the vocabulary of Col 1:12–14 and makes these o...