Bevere Review

Allan Bevere, who did his PhD under James DG Dunn on Colossians (when Dunn was doing his own work on Colossians), wrote a review of my Colossians commentary, and this is an excerpt of his review:

“Paul’s Christo-theological message of Colossians can be reduced to ‘God has conquered the powers, delivered all humans from sin and its powers, and reconciled the entire cosmos to himself in, through, and under Christ.'” So writes Scot McKnight in his commentary on Colossians in the NICNT series. In Colossians we see “a comprehensive vision of life under King Jesus” (p. 2).

Authorship: McKnight’s conclusions about Pauline authorship of Colossians must be viewed in the context of his larger concerns about the methodology of much modern scholarship in determining authorial questions, what he refers to as “the logic of the known to the unknown” (p. 5). Questions of authorship are complex and not easily settled. It appears that Paul did not actually pen most of his letters, but trusted an amanuensis (an editor given leeway to compose). What we do not know about the letters ascribed to Paul is how much freedom he gave to those who wrote down his concerns to various churches and pastors. It has been assumed, for example, that Romans is “a pure sample of Paul, the authentic voice of Paul,” but we have no idea how much freedom was given Tertius, the one who penned the letter. No one doubts that Paul is the author, but the role the actual writer played is unknown to us. Thus, how can it be concluded that Romans is purely Paul? The same is true for Colossians. At the beginning of the letter it claims to be from Paul and Timothy. Was Timothy Paul’s amanuensis? Colossians was composed while Paul was in prison. Did that situation make it necessary for the apostle to give Timothy extended freedom in composing the letter after sharing his concerns with the young pastor? Has modern scholarship tended to judge certain letters as authentically Pauline because they display what some believe is Reformational theology?

McKnight does not deny that there are tensions and difference to be addressed in judging the authorship in the Pauline corpus, but he rightly states that we have taken what we have known and drawn too many certain conclusions about the unknowns of the composition of Paul’s letters. Perhaps the issue before us is not trying to decide which letters of Paul are dictated word for word (if that indeed ever happened) or epistles composed by co-workers who outlined the apostle’s concerns in their own words. The larger point to be made is that regardless of how Colossians reached its final form, it is Pauline because it carries Paul’s authority. Scot concludes,

I do not think Paul wrote any of the letters because it is far more likely that Paul was behind all of the letters. We have no pure Pauline letters, no “undisputed” or “genuine” Pauline letters, but only letters in which we hear the voice of Paul standing alongside co-workers and (probably) professional scribes. Colossians, then, is Pauline as much as but not more than Galatians and Romans and the Corinthian letters (p. 18).