The ethical lists which are found in several places in the New Testament point out that the early church was an exceedingly ethical community. The purpose of the present paper is to take the Colossian ethical lists into consideration, and in particula...
The ethical lists which are found in several places in the New Testament point out that the early church was an exceedingly ethical community. The purpose of the present paper is to take the Colossian ethical lists into consideration, and in particular the roles they play. Col 3:1-17 is a cluster of ethical guidelines, centering on both two vice-lists(Lasterkataloge) and a virtue-list(Tugendkatalog). It is of great impotance for Paul to repeat the similar thoughts and vocabularies, which he mentioned already in chapter 1 and 2, in order to reject the Colossian heresy as well as to develop his Christology. This fact reveals that the Colossian ethical lists are closely related to the context in which they occur. On the one hand, they apply theology(esp. Christology) to the practical life of Christians. On the other hand, they refute the practices of false teachings. In other words, they seem to play two roles: the application of the theology and the refutation of the heresy. Since the Christology in Colossians is brought into practice by the ethical lists, the latter is the very expression of the former. Simultaneously, the ethical lists obviously function polemically against the heresy since they attack its ethical errors. The early church, which strove to preserve Christology to refute the heresy on the basis of her ethical directions, vitally challenges us to recover strong Christian ethics to express the theology properly and to wrestle with the modern heresies at full strength.