3 - Colossians, the Pauline Corpus and the theology of the New Testament

Summary

This study has been written on the assumption that the author of Colossians was not Paul himself, but that he or she was heavily influenced by Paul's thought. The differences in style from Paul's own writings, exhaustively discussed by W. Bujard, are to be set alongside differences in vocabulary and also in thought; the last is only to be expected if Bujard is correct in contrasting the ‘associative’ ways of thought of the author of Colossians with Paul's way of arguing, for, as he remarks, ‘at heart the difference between Paul and the author of Colossians is a difference in thought-structure’. It is true that many, particularly in the British Isles, fight a rearguard action on this question, denying that the case has been conclusively proven that Paul could not have composed Colossians; however, in my judgement, principles of historical criticism forbid that the odds should be thus loaded against one side in favour of a traditional or conservative position; one rather has to weigh the probabilities even-handedly, and for me the balance seems to come down reasonably clearly in favour of another hand than Paul's.

The differences in content between this letter's thought and Paul's have been succinctly set out by E. Lohse in his commentary in the course of an excursus on ‘The Letter to the Colossians and Pauline Theology’: there is, first of all, the absence of distinctive Pauline terms, even when the subject-matter is similar to themes which Paul handles; nor is there mention of ‘righteousness’, of ‘law’ (nomos), even though the letter is opposing a legalistic teaching, nor of ‘sin’ in the singular, and there is little mention of God's Spirit.