Colossians 1:17

αὐτός ἐστιν. αὐτ. is emphatic, He and no other. Lightfoot (followed by Westcott and Hort and Ellicott) accents ἔστιν, “He exists,” on account of the present, and compares ἐγὼ εἰμί (John 8:58). But there ἐγὼ εἰμί stands alone, whereas here αὐτ. ἐστ. is completed by πρὸ πάντων. Besides, there is no object in the assertion of the existence of the Son here. The sense of ἐστὶν depends to some extent on that of πρὸ πάντων. If, as is usual, πρὸ is taken here as temporal, αὐτός will be the pre-incarnate Son. If, however, with Haupt, it be taken to assert superiority in rank, αὐτός will be the exalted Christ, and the present will be quite regular. It is urged that for this some other preposition, such as ἐπὶ or ὑπέρ, would have been expected. Gess says that in each of the eleven other passages in which it occurs in Paul it is temporal, and in the other N.T. passages (37) it is used of place or, as generally, of time, except in James 5:12; 1 Peter 4:8, where it is used of rank. It is used, however, in classical Greek in this latter sense. Perhaps it is safest to allow the general Pauline usage to determine the sense here. In this case πρὸ is temporal and ἐστιν a timeless present. πάντων is, of course, neuter, like τὰ πάντα, not masculine. συνέστηκεν : “hold together”. The Son is the centre of unity for the universe. He keeps all its parts in their proper place and due relations and combines them into an ordered whole. Apart from Him it would go to pieces. Philo ascribes a similar function to the Logos. Haupt thinks that this thought that Christ is the principle of coherence for the universe is not in the passage, which means no more than that He sustains it (cf. Hebrews 1:3, φέρων τὰ πάντα).

The interpretation of Colossians 1:15-17 given by Oltramare should not be passed over. He eliminates the idea of pre-existence from the passage, and says that the reference is throughout to Christ as Redeemer. God had in creation to provide by a plan of Redemption for the entrance of evil into the universe, and only on that condition could it take place. So since Christ is the Redeemer, creation is based upon Him, He is the means to it, and the end which it contemplates. He objects to the common view on the following grounds: (1) Elsewhere Paul speaks of God, not Christ, as the Creator and goal of the universe; (2) Paul starts from the Christ in whom we have redemption as πρωτότ. π. κτίσεως, and in Colossians 1:18, which refers to the same Person as Colossians 1:17, He is spoken of as the Head of the Church, therefore the context is against any reference to a pre-incarnate Christ; (3) He carefully avoids saying that the Son has created all things, though he has to change the subject of the sentence. In reply to (1) it may be said that the Son acts as Agent of the Father, and so creation may be referred to either, and that while Paul contemplates the final surrender by the Son of the kingdom to the Father, he also contemplates a prior subjection of everything to the Son. Oltramare himself, for another purpose, points to apparent inconsistency in John (John 1:2 compared with Revelation 3:14; Revelation 4:11; Revelation 10:6) and the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 1:2 compared with Hebrews 2:10; Hebrews 11:3). If these writers did not find the two views incompatible, why should Paul have done so? In reply to (2) it may be urged that Paul's hold on the personal identity of the Son in the states through which He passed was strong enough to enable Him to glide from one to the other without any sense of incongruity. As to (3), the change in the form of sentence is probably to prepare for διʼ αὐτοῦ κ. εἰς αὐτὸν. There is a similar change at Colossians 1:19, where ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ corresponds to ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ (Colossians 1:16). His own view is open to fatal objections. It is not clear that the creation of the angels who did not fall would be conditional on provision being made for Redemption, nor yet how this would prove the superiority of the Redeemer to these angels. The insuperable difficulty, however, is that the thought is so far-fetched and not naturally suggested by the words. ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα can hardly be consistent with the creation of the universe long before the Son came into existence. Nor can διʼ αὐτοῦ mean merely that the Son was an indispensable condition for the creation of the universe, it implies active agency. Nor is any adequate explanation of τ. πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν given. Besides, Philippians 2:5-8 sufficiently proves that Paul believed in the pre-existence of Christ, and that makes it less than ever justifiable to take the passage in other than its plain sense. Gess, it may be added, explains that the firstborn is the one who opens for those who follow the path of life, and by his consecration to God must purchase for them the Divine good pleasure. Exodus 13:2; Exodus 13:12 sq. and Numbers 3:12 sq. are quoted to prove this, but neither says anything of the purchase of Divine favour for those born after. Exodus 4:22 and Psalms 89:27 are explained to mean, accordingly, that Israel and David, not the nations and their kings, are objects of God's good pleasure and mediators of it to the world. πρωτότ. π. κτ. is therefore explained as the opener of the path of life and mediator of God's love to every creature. But this is to overlook the fact that in Psalms 89. the firstborn is further defined as the highest of the kings of the earth.