Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
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Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men?

(Col 2:8-10, 20-22)

The Greek word here translated in both passages as ‘the basic principles of the world’ is στοιχεια. It is the word used for Aristotle’s elements of earth, water, air, and fire; it is the title of Euclid’s celebrated Elements; it is what Peter says ‘will be destroyed by fire’ and ‘melt in the heat’ (2 Pet 3:10,12). I say this to try and illustrate by example the meaning of ‘the basic principles of the world’; that these στοιχεια are the laws and elements comprising the world in which we live. Paul is setting up Christ as opposing these laws and elements, and the philosophies based on them. Many Greek philosophers, Plato not least among them, believed that an ethic for life could be deduced by looking at the natural world, by careful study of the στοιχεια governing the universe. Rigorous pursuit of nature produced a Way for followers of Greek philosophy, whether Stoic or Epicurean. But this way is not the Way of Jesus.

Paul is warning against a form of Christian syncretism which combines Christ with worldliness – not worldliness in the sense of ‘big’ godless sins (though this can be a part of it), but a way that comes through philosophy that starts with this world and not with Christ. By putting forward Christ as an alternative to the basic principles of this world, Paul is saying that he is not of this world. This Jesus fellow, he is something alien to this universe. Throughout Colossians Paul connects Jesus with the gospel and with the church. He declares himself first a servant of the gospel, then a servant of the church, the holy ones containing the mystery of ‘Christ in you’, the one who is the fountainhead of both gospel and church. If he is otherworldly, then so is his gospel, and so ought to be his church. And she should not be cheated of her lover through philosophy based on the principles of the universe, for her lover came to her from outside of it.

Yet Paul also says that ‘God was pleased … through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven’ (Col 1:19-20). The message is not to be divorced from the world, but to bring Christ into the world, rather than the world to Christ. Colossians, and I am increasingly convinced Ephesians as well, is one large tapestry with many intricate weaves, but one thread that runs through it is transforming reconciliation. The gospel, which is the message of Christ (and the person of Christ is the gospel), has come into the world, like light to darkness, like resurrection to death, like the head to the body, like circumcision, like baptism, like a divine Something come from outside the στοιχεια of this universe. But this reconciliation, and this transformation, does not begin with things that are earthly, but always begins and always ends with Christ. He himself defines the fullness of life, how I must live and what I must be, the reason and rhyme and source of all that I do. Christ in my thoughts and in my deeds, in the moving of my hands and in the coordination of my body, in my ears and on my lips, in every meal and every relationship, in silence and in praise, on dates and on lonely Friday nights. When I embrace the mystery of Christ in me, working out the gospel in the community of believers, these become Christ in the world and what was worldly becomes otherworldly, and everything comes together under him, whether things on earth or in heaven, under him who made peace through his blood, shed on the cross.