Colossians (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries Series)

Publisher Description

The Abingdon New Testament Commentaries series provides compact, critical commentaries on the writings of the New Testament. The commentaries are written with special attention to the needs and interests of theological students, but they are also useful for students in upper-level college or university settings, as well as for pastors and other religious leaders. In addition to providing basic information about the New Testament texts and insights into their meanings, these commentaries are intended to exemplify the tasks and procedures of careful, critical biblical exegesis.The short letter to the Colossians has played a significant role in the development of Christian thought. Its emphases on salvation as largely realized here and now, on knowledge in relation to faith, on Christ as the head of the church, on the entire cosmos and all humanity as the objects of God's work of redemption through him, and on Paul's authority -- all these pointed in the direction the church's theology was moving at the end of the apostolic period. Christian notions of ethical responsibility conceived in terms of opposition to asceticism and a kind of adjustment to the outside world, as well as the subordination of wives to husbands and slaves to masters, were influenced by the "household table" of Colossians 3:18-4:1. In the fourth century the statements about Christ in Colossians were claimed by advocates on different sides of the Arian controversy, which dealt with the status of the Son of God in relation to God the Father and the created order. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Colossians has attracted special attention as theologians and ordinary believers have wrestled with new questionsabout science and religious pluralism.