Spoilers

“See to it that no one takes you captive [plunder you] through philosophy and empty deception,” Paul warns in Colossians 2:8.

Who might try to capture through “philosophy”?  Paul punningly hints at the identity of the spoilers by using the verb sylagogeo , which pretty obviously (as commentators often note) resonates with the verb synago and the noun synagoge .  The synagogues have become spoilers, and the philosophy that Paul warns about is not in the first instance Greek or Gnostic but the Jewish “philosophies” (Josephus uses philosophia to describe the different Jewish “sects” of the first century).

Through a double pun that links 2:2 and 2:8, Paul hints at the alternative to “philosophy and empty deceit.”  ”Deceit” here is apate , which seems to pun on agape in 2:2.  The possibility is strengthened by the fact that “full assurance” in 2:2 is plerosophia – full wisdom, the full wisdom that is found in the one who is the pleroma of the Father (1:19; 2:9).  To the philosophia and apate of his opponents, Paul encourages the Colossians in pleorosophia and agape .