Here is a great article I stumbled across when talking to someone on Facebook.
http://www.herealittletherealittle.net/index.cfm?page_name=Colossian-Heresy
A great read of what heresy Paul was combatting in the Colossian church. Here are snippet of what was said:
“Of the “pleroma,” ISBE states:
“For the Gnostics God is the ultimate, nameless, unknowable being called the ‘Abyss.’ He is perfect, but the material world is alien to the divine nature. How, then, does it come to exist at all? What is the source of its imperfections and evils? The Gnostic answer is that the FULNESS (Gr. pleroma) of the diety could flow out in no other way than in emanations or aeons or angels, all of which are necessarily imperfect, the highest of them being more spiritual than the grade immediately below. Of these aeons there is a gradation so numerous that at length the lowest of them is almost wholly corporeal, the spiritual element having been gradually diminished or eliminated until at last the world of mankind and of matter is reached, the abode of evil. In this way the gulf is bridged between God and mankind. The highest aeons approximate closely the divine nature, so spiritual are they and so free from matter. These form the highest hierarchy of angels, and these with many other grades of angelic hosts are to be worshiped. (p. 488, vol. 2, “Gnosticism”)
We see this Gnostic belief in the need to worship the angelic host specifically referred to later in the letter (Col. 2:18). Paul’s argument for the primacy of Christ, which began in verse 15, rebuts the Gnostic teaching on the nature of the Godhead. It is not through the hierarchy of angels (aeons) that Christians are reconciled to God, but rather through His son, Yeshua the Messiah.”
This here is key for me, as I was keen to do an article on the ‘Doctrine of Demons’ and how that it was related to the Greek and present times. Below they say it better than I could.
“COLOSSIANS 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe [ta stoicheia tou kosmou], and not according to Christ. (NRSV)
Paul gets to the heart of the problem in verse 8. He warns the Colossians of the devious philosophy the Gnostics were promoting and labels their doctrines the traditions of men (see Matt. 15:1-9; Mark 7:1-13), as well as the teaching of demons.”
We need anti-Gnostic teachers today to help cleanse the church from these teachings from ‘doctrines of demons’. Or as the NRSV so nicely put it philosophies of ‘elemental spirits of the universe’.
