The Prototokos Paradigm: A Biblical Response to Pagan Spirituality

By Rev. Ted Hamilton

In his book Rumors of Another World, Philip Yancey recalled seeing a copy of a New Testament from which all the verses about the “invisible world” had been snipped out. The pages hardly held together, because cutting out references to the unseen spirit world removes nearly one third of the New Testament’s seven thousand verses.[i] The unseen spiritual dimensions were an important component of the worldview of the New Testament writers and of Jesus himself. Much of Western Christianity, embarrassed by post-Enlightenment scientific and technological advances, gradually but inexorably drifted from the Bible’s emphasis on the invisible world to a preoccupation with the visible. One might say that the gospel of Jesus Christ, at least in North America, has become one more coping mechanism to help us survive and thrive in the challenges of the visible world.

The recent rise of interest in alternative spiritualities and Neopaganism rebukes any embarrassment we might have and acts as a wake-up call to the church. It is a potent reminder that we have mostly forgotten what the New Testament writers knew: powerful, invisible spiritual realities oppose the gospel, shaping and operating behind what we see and experience. How should the church of Jesus Christ address the reality of the invisible spirit world today?  We fix our eyes on what is seen, whether positive realities (like strong marriages and families, healthy self-esteem, moral civil government, and impeccable personal morality) or negative realities (like abortion, Christian persecution, and the decay of social morals). Without discounting the importance of such things, how does the church sharpen its focus on Paul’s priority to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen” (2 Cor 4:18 NIV)? 

The Scriptures do not leave us without an answer. In Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, he confronts a powerful form of spiritual paganism energized by contact with the occultic elemental spirits. The paganism Paul stared down in Colossae shares many characteristics with the Neopaganism we confront. Paul’s response to the unseen spiritual forces converging on Colossae presents a powerful paradigm for a contemporary confrontation with those same forces. We have a story to tell—a logos (word) that is more than a match for the muthos (myth) of paganism. This logos, though antithetical to paganism, still speaks powerfully to those whose legitimate heart yearnings have led them to paganism for satisfaction. Paul’s methodology is more than a “how to” guide. It is also a devotional display of the cosmic power and love of the Lord Jesus Christ, a love that is relevant in any age and in any circumstance.

The Unseen World in Colossae   

The “Colossian heresy” has been a subject of vigorous academic debate ever since the 1875 publication of J. B. Lightfoot’s landmark Colossians commentary.[ii] Two scholars independently identified over forty distinct, and not completely reconcilable, views of the error Paul addresses in Colossians.[iii] The book is problematic because the reader hears only one side of a conversation. We must infer what Paul’s opponents proposed by reading Paul’s answers to them. Such inference leaves the details sketchy.

Scholars may disagree on the precise contours of the Colossian heresy, but they do not disagree on what elements of Paul’s letter illuminate it. First, the emphasis on the “fullness” of the deity that dwells in Jesus, suggests that the Colossian philosophy challenged that fullness, locating some of it outside of Jesus (1:19; 2:9). Second, the Colossian philosophy depended upon the “basic principles of the world” (NIV), better translated as “the elemental spirits of the universe” (2:8,20).[iv] Third, the suspect philosophy included restrictions on what could be consumed and handled, as well as requirements regarding participation in various religious celebrations and festivals, including New Moon celebrations and Sabbath days (vv 16,21). Fourth, there is a direct reference to self-abasement and the worship of angels (vv 18,23). Fifth, and finally, the Colossian philosophy seemingly included various ecstatic visionary experiences of the divine.[v]  

This final point underscores both the appeal and the power of alternative spirituality in Colossae. As Christians, we know that “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ [italics mine]” (Rom10:17, NIV). But the preacher of propositional truth will often be trumped by someone proposing an exciting personal experience, even if that experience does not square with the propositional truth of the gospel. The Colossian brand of spirituality offered convincing but misguided personal experience.

David DeSilva provides a good summary of what Paul was facing in Colossae:

The Colossian philosophy truly “remains an unsolved puzzle,” but its major contours are fairly well defined. Human life below and access to the realms above lie under the authority of intermediate spiritual beings (variously called angels, elemental spirits, principalities and the like). Ascetic practices and rigorous self-discipline were required either in obedience to these beings or as the means to enter into visionary experiences of them. Positive interaction with these beings was probably regarded as, in some sense, necessary for human beings to move into the fullness of the divine realm or experience the fullness of God.[vi]

That this experiential pagan spirituality had a kind of magnetic attraction to the Christians in Colossae is confirmed by Paul’s use of the word sulalegeo in Colossians 2:8 (its only occurrence in the New Testament): “See to it that no one takes you captive (sulagogon)…”   It is a bold word, emphasizing the power of the philosophy to capture its adherents and carry them off, away from the historical and propositional truths of the gospel into the history-rejecting and enslaving error of paganism. The Neopaganism of our day exerts that same enslaving power.

Confronting Christians in Colossae with the Cosmic

So how does the church respond to today’s Neopagan challenges?  How does it counteract the magnetic attraction of pagan spiritualities that offer ecstatic personal experiences and altered states of consciousness?  The church today must see and understand Paul’s gospel in all its fullness, and then, wisely and with love, train that gospel on contemporary paganism wherever it rears its ugly head.

At first, Paul’s method seems negative, since he goes on the attack against Colossian paganism. He characterizes the philosophy and its practices as:

• “hollow and deceptive,” dependent only on “human tradition” (v 8);
• a “shadow of things” rather than “the reality” (v 17);
• involving a “false humility” (v 18);
• an “unspiritual mind” puffed up with “idle notions” (v 18);
• “destined to perish with use” (v 22);
• having only “an appearance of wisdom” but really “lack[ing] any value” (v 23).

Though undoubtedly accurate, these negative judgments are incidental to Paul’s primary—and positive—way of confronting paganism. Paul’s primary method is to overwhelm paganism, burying it under a positive presentation of the full-orbed gospel of Jesus Christ. As is always the case, the answer to a problem is the good news of Jesus Christ.

This positive gospel-centered approach is not unique to Colossians. You see the same strategy repeated throughout Paul’s writings. It is like killing a fly with a sledgehammer. Whatever the issue, trivial or significant, Paul brings the full weight of the gospel down on it. Peter’s refusal to eat with Gentile Christians, mentioned by Paul in Galatians, was a result of Peter’s failure to act “in line with the truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14ff). Christians in Corinth were suing each other in the civil courts because they forgot “that the saints will judge the world” and that they were “washed…sanctified…[and] justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:2,11). Paul grounds his imperatives against sexual immorality in Corinth in the gospel realities of redemption (“You are not your own; you were bought at a price” [1 Cor 6:19–20]) and resurrection (“By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also” [1 Cor 6:14]).

The fact that North American Christians may have some difficulty understanding how and why the gospel can be (and is) the correct and total response to contemporary paganism indicates the extent to which we have bought into a “Reader’s Digest” version of the gospel. For many of us, the gospel is about Jesus dying for one’s sin and about accepting Jesus as personal Savior and Lord. That is not incorrect— but it is incomplete. Such gospel reductionism eventually leads Christ-followers to conceive of the gospel as merely the entry gate into Christianity which is then left behind as one matures in the faith. We must not forget that Jesus is not just “the truth”; he is also “the way” and “the life.”  The gospel is not just about personal salvation. It is the overarching true story of God, through Jesus, reclaiming and redeeming the life of all of creation—the cosmos!  So Jesus (who he is, what he did, and what he continues to do on a cosmic scale) is relevant to all of life, whether animate or inanimate, whether past, present or future. Accordingly, the wise application of the gospel story in all its implications is the answer to every alternative truth claim.

The Creed of Christ’s Preeminence: The Form

The cosmic scope of the gospel is brilliantly displayed in Colossians. The centerpiece of Paul’s gospel response to the Colossian heresy has appropriately been called “the Creed of Christ’s Preeminence”[vii] (Col 1:15–20). It is an elevated, worshipful passage that poetically communicates deep and ancient truths about the person and work of Jesus Christ.

There may be as many theories about the form and substance of these six verses as there are about the Colossian heresy itself. Was it a preexisting hymn?  Was it Paul’s own poetry?  Is it modeled after Greek or Hebrew poetic forms?  Beyond these academic debates, however, virtually every interpreter has observed a Hebrew-like parallelism in the passage. Other interpreters have persuasively demonstrated that this parallelism additionally reflects a Hebraic chiastic structure that highlights the Jesus-focused truths of the passage.[viii]

Here is a schematic structure of the creed:


Paul’s poetic creed contains two main stanzas, recognizable by the repetition of certain introductory words. The parallelism is veiled by the translation and versification in our English Bibles. The first stanza (vv15–16) is marked out by the words “He is…” (os estin) in verse 15 and “For in him…” (oti en auto) in verse16. The second stanza is marked out by a repetition of the same words. In verse18b, we see “He is…” (os estin), and in verse 19 we see “For in him…” (oti en auto).

These two main stanzas are further highlighted by the reversed repetition of the words “heaven” and “earth.”  Thus, the first stanza uses “in heaven and on earth” (v16), while the second stanza reverses the expressions: “on earth or in heaven” (v19).

Between the two main stanzas (vv15–16 and vv18b–20) lies a connecting passage comprised of verses17–18a. This segment is “bookended” by two parallel passages which are identified by their matching introductory words. Verse 17a begins with “And he is…” (kai autos estin) and verse 18a also begins with “And he is…” (kai autos estin). Verse 17a looks back to the first stanza and summarizes what it has told us about Jesus: “He is before all things…”  Verse 18a looks forward to the second stanza and summarizes what it will tell us about Jesus: “And he is the head of the body, the church…”  That leaves verse 17b standing alone at the very center of the creed and so functioning as the powerful summary of the overall point of the passage:  “and in him all things hold together.”[i] It is, in the end, all about Jesus. Jesus, in himself, is the total response to all competing pagan ideologies.

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[i] Baugh helpfully illustrates the overall poetic structure: “The effect resembles an hourglass with its focus on the narrow part in the middle; or a butterfly turned on its side with its two wings colored by the same markings of spots and lines and joined in the center by its body.” Steven M. Baugh, “Firstborn over All Creation,” Kerux 1 (1986): 29.

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[i] Philip Yancey, Rumors of another World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 182.

[ii] J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (London: Macmillan, 1875).

[iii] See Peter T. O’Brien, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol.44: Colossians, Philemon (Waco: Word, 1982), xxxi; and David A. DeSilva, An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods & Ministry Formation (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), 692.

[iv] For a thorough defense for identifying the stoicheia tou kosmou in Col 2:8 and 2:20 as evil spiritual powers frequently associated with and standing behind the physical elements and astral bodies, see Clinton E. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 158–194.

[v] This reasoning is based on Paul’s use of the verb embateuw in Col 2:18, a technical term in local mystery initiation rites. See Clinton Arnold’s groundbreaking work on the syncretistic Colossian error, The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996).

[vi] DeSilva, Introduction, 694.

[vii] Handley C. G. Moule, Colossian and Philemon Studies (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1945), 75.

[viii] See especially, Steven M. Baugh, “The Poetic Form of Colossians 1:15–20,” Westminster Theological Journal 47 (1985): 227­–44; and Steven M. Baugh, “Firstborn over All Creation,” Kerux 1 (1986): 28–34. I am indebted to Dr. Baugh’s insightful analysis throughout this chapter for both form and substance.