04_Biblica_Collins_Layout 1 01/04/14 11:47 Pagina 76 76 C. JOHN COLLINS and Wisdom of God” (§40.43). Further, “the omnipotent and per- fectly holy Word of the Father himself who is present in all things and extends his power everywhere, illuminating all things visible and invisible, holding them together and binding them together [sune,cei kai. susfi,ggei] for himself” (§42.3-4) 30. For a similar use of sune,cw, cf. his De Incarnatione, §17.4: the Word “is not held together [sunei,ceto] by anyone, but rather himself held to- gether [sunei/ce] everything” 31. In other words, this sustaining activity that Athanasius speaks of goes beyond simply keeping the world in existence. Lightfoot’s description of Col 1,17 could serve as a summary of the point Athanasius was making: Christ “impresses upon creation that unity and solidarity which makes it a cosmos instead of a chaos” 32. Or, to use a phrase from G. van Kooten, the text focuses on “the world as a harmoniously functioning and stable body” 33. This is common in philosophers’ use of these terms, and it is indeed highly relevant to the circumstances behind the Letter to the Colossians: it is the 30 Perhaps this last is an echo of Philo, De Fuga et Inventione, 112. 31 Although Thomson renders sune,cw with “contain” here (and in §42.30), the context favors my rendering: just a few lines later (§17.8-9), he has another word for “contain”, the standard perie,cw: the Word “contains the universe and is not contained” (perie,cwn ta. o[la kai. mh. perieco,menoj). 32 J. B. LIGHTFOOT, St Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (Lynn, MA 1981 [1876]) 156. Cf. also, Athanasius, Contra Gentes, §27.36- 37, where the various components of the universe “hold together through mu- tual support” (tai/j parV avllh,lwn evpikouri,aij sunista,mena). 33 G.H. VAN KOOTEN, Cosmic Christology in Paul and the Pauline School. Colossians and Ephesians in the Context of Graeco-Roman Cosmology, with a New Synopsis of the Greek Texts (WUNT; Tübingen 2003) 30. It is well out- side of my scope here to assess van Kooten’s main thesis, namely that in Colos- sians (as distinct from Ephesians) the “body” is the cosmos, and the “bonds” (Col 2,19; ESV “ligaments”) support the unity of the cosmos. I will note simply that I find it unlikely, since I do not wish to downplay the way that Col 1,18a identifies the body as the church. Further, the context of 2,19, with its mention of a body, of joints, and growth, seems straightforwardly to support what van Kooten (53) calls “Lightfoot’s medical, physiological understanding”. At the same time, since van Kooten has brought so much evidence that Hellenistic authors used “bond” terminology for the cohesion of the cosmos, perhaps it is legitimate to suggest that the body in Col 2,19 is the church, seen as the first installment of the renewed cosmos. This would account for the possible cos- mological overtones of the terms found in Colossians.