- Chapters
- 4
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Letters of Paul
What it is
Written to a church Paul had not founded — Epaphras planted it — which was being offered a package deal: keep Christ, but add dietary rules, festivals, the veneration of angelic powers, and a course of ascetic and visionary practice. Paul’s answer is that in Christ the fullness of God dwells bodily, and that there is nothing to add.
It travelled to the same town, by the same courier, as the letter to Philemon.
Known for
1:15–20 — the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation — one of the earliest Christian hymns we possess.
Where it sits
Disputed, on grounds of vocabulary, style, and a more cosmic Christology than the undisputed letters. Much traditional and Orthodox scholarship holds it as Paul’s. It is Scripture in the Orthodox Church either way, and 1:15–20 is read at feasts of the Lord.
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