In him dwells all the fullness of what is divine bodily. What’s that all about?

My argument about the other encomium, in Colossians 1:15-20, is that it makes Christ Jesus the beginning of a new political-religious order, in which government in heaven and government on earth have been reconciled.

Hitherto the rule of God and rule over the nations of the Greek-Roman world have been in conflict, at odds with each other. God is king in heaven, but pagan kings rule on earth. That fundamental division will—sooner or later—be overcome in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom has been given the authority to rule over the kings of the earth from heaven. This will be such a far-reaching transformation of the ancient world that it is described as a new creation. We have come to know it as Christendom—for all the problems, historical and theological, which such a hermeneutical leap backwards produces.

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