Colossenses 2
Ambrosiaster · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Colossenses 2:8
He calls that philosophy worldly by which men who desire to be wise in earthly terms are seduced. .
Colossenses 2:9
All that the Father has, he has given to the Son when he begot him bodily in the fullness of divinity, so that as he is the head, the creation is his body. Therefore, whatever can be supposed to be a heavenly creature must be seen as fully subordinate to Christ, so that no lesser being may be thought worthy of worship. .
Colossenses 2:11
[Paul] says that the Gentiles were dead, because they refused to receive the law, which had been given as a witness to the Creator, and then as a means of condemning vice. With Christ has come the forgiveness of sin, since freedom from sin is impossible without this gift, which saves us from the "penalty of death." .
Colossenses 2:14
Paul expounds here the nature of God's gracious care through its various sources. He recalls the many deeds by which God has brought rescue to the human race, so that he has not only remitted our transgressions but also lifted that sin, which from Adam's disobedience (which he calls the signed bond) did not allow us to rise from the dead…. Because death came from sin, when sin in fact was overcome, the resurrection of the dead became a reality. Indeed this could not have been done, if he had not nailed it to the cross. While the Savior conquers sin by not sinning, he holds man to be culpable and, being innocent, is killed by him: thus he crucifies sin. Sin being overcome is said to be put to death; the cross is not the death of the Savior, but of sin. .
Colossenses 2:18
It happens that persons become bound up with the worship of earthly things under the form of philosophy, so that, held by these, they do not rise…. They end up simulating true religion. They become inflated by watching the movements of the stars, which Paul calls angels, not by divine authority but by human superstition, which brings nothing but damnation. .
Colossenses 2:20
The problem is that the Colossians worship worldly things, put their hope in them, and not in Christ alone … so that these rules have been cut off from the head, who is Christ, and thus have become the basis of a pseudoreligion and a sacrilege. .