Christ as the «Head» of the New Creation, Lord and King: Paul’s Christology in the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of reconstructing the Christology of the

Apostle Paul in the later Epistles of the bond period, as well as evaluating the Protestant concept of various types of Christologies (earthly, messenger, heavenly). The purpose of the study is to analyze and reconstruct various aspects of Christology contained in the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. When writing the article, historical-philological, structural, comparative-historical methods were used, as well as the method of typologization, which allows us to identify the features of the Christology of the Apostle Paul and evaluate Protestant interpretations of the division of Christology into different types. Modern Western theology has been significantly influenced by biblical criticism, which has forced a review of the unshakeable foundations of Christianity, many of which have been replaced. For example, Inspiration began to be understood in a psychological way, and the canonical composition of the books of the New Testament was declared the result of the struggle of the early Christian parties of the first century («Petrinism» and «Paulism»). A number of Western authors, reconstructing the teaching of the Apostle Paul about Jesus as the eternal Son of God, admit that there was a «poetic exaltation of Christ» in the Epistle to the Colossians. As a result, according to Protestant theologians, the Messianic Christology of the Son of God is finally confused with the higher Christology that Christ is the eternal Son of God, the Creator and Lord of all. The same approach in Protestant theology is observed in relation to the Epistle to the Ephesians. Western authors agree that the Apostle Paul in his teaching «grew» from an earthly Christology to a messenger and heavenly one. Accordingly, in later Epistles, there is less and less mention of Christ, and more and more it is indicated that He is the Son, the consubstantial God, the eternal creator of all things. Thus, the arguments of modern Protestant authors about the Christology of the Apostle Paul are based on the spirit of the popular understanding of theological evolutionism in the Western environment.