The Bible is filled with phrases that may seem curious to us today, phrases based on ideas that its original audience believed but most modern people have never heard of. For example, Paul warns in Colossians 2:8 that Christians should watch out for ideas that are based on “elemental spirits.” What is he referring to?
While many Christians assume the answer is demons posing as spirits that give good advice, the truth is a little more complicated than that. Let’s explore what the verse says, its background context, and what this discussion can teach us today.
What Is Paul's Warning about Elemental Spirits in Colossians 2:8?
In Colossians, Paul tells readers about the dangers of following any worldview not based on the gospel.
“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” (NIV)
Paul makes a similar comment in Colossians 2:20 when he tells readers that being saved means that they “died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world” (NIV). Similarly, in Galatians 4:3, Paul talks about what it was like living in bondage to sin and how “when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world” (NIV).
“Elemental spirits” is a common phrase used for religions that believe in nature spirits (gods of the elements, like water and fire). Many Bible verses warn about the dangers of following pagan religions that promote false gods because those gods or spirits may be demons in disguise (1 Corinthians 10:20).
However, although some translations, such as the English Standard Version (ESV), have used the phrase “elemental spirits” for Colossians 2:8, the widely used New International Version and many others do not. The New American Standard Bible, one of the most literal translations that strives to capture word-for-word what the original languages say, uses “elementary principles.” Older translations, such as the King James Bible, use “rudiments.”
What does this mean? It means that what looks like a passage warning about demons posing as nature spirits may be talking about something else. We need to dig deeper to consider what elemental spirits/spiritual forces means in this passage.
What Does Paul Mean By “Elemental Spirits” in Colossians 2:8?
Lexicons, the dictionaries of ancient languages that books of the Bible were written in, point out that the ancient Greek word used in Colossians 2:8 is stoicheion. Theologian Radjagukguk Robinson discusses how the word developed from the third century BC to mean first principles, the elemental things that make up something important.
More specifically, stoicheion can mean one of four elemental things:
- The letters of the alphabet (the concepts, not just any written version)
- The basic rules governing knowledge (like the elemental principles of physics)
- The elements that all things originate from (like fire and water)
- The spiritual beings (or the heavenly bodies, the spiritual forces all around us)
If it seems confusing that one word could mean spirits or ideas or elements, we should remember that ancient Greeks did not separate “material” and “spiritual” things as much as we do today. As C.S. Lewis’ friend Owen Barfield points out in his book Poetic Diction, ancient and medieval people used concrete words (like wind) to talk about abstract things (like the Holy Spirit, a “wind blowing where it may”) because they saw abstract and concrete things as fundamentally connected. One word, like the Greek pneuma, described breath and spirit and wind because all three things were part of the same fundamental idea. The question was which part of the idea a speaker was focusing on when they said pneuma, which required looking at the context of what they were saying.
The question then is: what part of the word is Colossians 2:8 emphasizing? Are readers supposed to read “elemental spiritual forces” and think about evil spirits being behind hollow philosophy, or about sinful ideas (bad principles) behind hollow philosophy?
What Are the Elemental Spirits in Colossians 2:8?
Some theologians have argued that Colossians 2:8 is talking about evil spirits that pose as nature gods (gods of water or fire). However, as pointed out earlier, many translations use “elementary principles” instead of “elemental spirits,” probably to avoid the connotation that Paul is specifically talking about demons.
Theologians such as Matthew Henry have argued that Paul is talking about elemental knowledge, principles that sound good but are not based in the gospel, and lead to philosophies and worldviews that do not fit the gospel. In which case, Colossians 2:8 and similar passages are telling us to be careful about theories and philosophies that do not follow the principles the gospel explains to be true. Paul talked about these building blocks in a way that almost sounds like he's talking about evil spirits because he lived in a world that saw spiritual undertones even in the building blocks of ideas (or the universe).
Some theologians, such as Ernest P. Clark, argue that the phrase has more to do with nature than with ideas, but the same point remains. Clark argues that many ancient Jews used stoicheion to talk about natural elements believed to affect how humans handled their desires. Being a good person was connected to “living in harmony” with the cosmos. Clark argues that when Paul says the gospel is greater than the elemental spiritual forces, Paul is implying that the natural world influences how humans behave, but nature is broken by sin, so the influence is not always good. The good news is that Christ transforms people and frees them from all sinful influences. We are redeemed from a sinful universe with many seen and unseen things pointing us toward unhealthy ideas. Instead, we can live for Christ.
Why Should We Know about the Elemental Spirits in Colossians 2:8?
While the Bible certainly warns about evil spirits in many passages, it does not seem to be warning about them in Colossians 2:8. We can understand why that is a good thing to know: it reminds us not to use this verse next time we talk with someone about whether demons exist and can manipulate us.
But even so, the fact that ancient Greeks believed that nature and elementary principles all have something spiritual behind them can seem like a niche thing to discuss. Why does this matter to us today? Most people born after the Enlightenment separate “spiritual” things and “material” things more than Paul’s readers did. If the phrase “elemental spirits” or spiritual forces” is connected to a view of the world that most of us do not hold today, we may wonder: what’s the point?
First, it matters because Colossians 2:8 reminds us that the Bible was not written yesterday. Like all ancient books, it is informed by when it was written, containing ideas which may seem odd but are important to understand the text. In this case, one of those ideas is that Paul saw spiritual things happening in the world that were not just demons and angels fighting each other. The spiritual realm is even more mysterious than we think, but God is ultimately in control.
Second, Colossians 2:8 challenges us to consider whether old ideas make more sense than some of our current ideas. Thinking about natural elements and elementary principles as having spiritual overtones may sound weird, but it is not as weird as we may think. The basic point here is that the universe is like an enchanted forest, filled with lots of mysterious forces holding things together. That is not too different from physicists describing the universe as being built of many invisible things, everything being made of energy moving at different frequencies to create the world we know. Reality is more mysterious than we realize. We don’t have to embrace ancient Greek metaphysics, but we should consider whether this worldview, with room for mystery and trusting God to navigate mystery, captures the big picture better than our post-Enlightenment secular worldview where only a few things have spiritual meaning.
Third, whether the passage is warning us about elementary ideas (Henry’s view) or natural elements (Clark’s view), we need to be discerning about how things influence us. We need to remember that knowledge is not neutral. There are basic ideas, assumptions about how the world works, that do not fit the gospel. We do not need to treat all philosophy as evil, and there is a well-developed argument that all genuine truth is God’s truth, which means we can affirm things in other worldviews that fit the gospel’s ideas. However, we need to remember that any knowledge we learn needs to be submitted to Christ, who will help us see the full truth.
We also need to remember that nature is not neutral. Most of us probably don’t share the ancient Greek view that natural elements influence our desires. However, we should remember that Christianity has a particular view of nature. The ancient view of elements having spiritual connotations challenges us to remember that nature was affected by sin (Romans 5:12), and our environment influences us in many subtle ways.
This last point about nature leads into perhaps the most surprising lesson we can learn from Colossians 2:8.
What Do Elemental Spirits in Colossians 2:8 Teach Us about Nature?
Stephen L. Clark uses Colossians 2 in his book God’s World and the Great Awakening to point out that we are too easily tempted to view creation as evil (filled with evil spirits) or unimportant (something we can use up without thinking about the consequences), or swing too far in the other direction and treat all nature as “god matter.” We often forget that Christianity stands between these views.
On the one hand, Christians do not believe that all natural things contain God (pantheism), which would imply that everything in the natural world is good. There is evil out there, and we need to be discerning about what has been broken. At the same time, Christians believe that creation was good in the first place (Genesis 1-2), that God used creation to break sin (sending a human savior instead of a purely spiritual one). Not only that, but God is restoring all things through Christ (Acts 3:21), making all things new in the new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21). Christianity stands between the ancient pantheistic worldview that trusts nature too much and the new secular worldview that sees nothing spiritual in the world today.
Therefore, we need to think seriously about what it means that nature is broken, that Adam and Eve were called to be good stewards of creation, and whether God’s plan to restore all things (Acts 3:21) means that God calls us to challenge harmful things happening in nature and produce a healthier world. For Christian environmentalists such as Robert Siegel or Wendell Berry, tending good things in nature and minimizing bad things in nature is a part of living out the gospel. When we do that, we take seriously Paul’s warning to look at our natural world, choose to be transformed by the gospel, and bring the gospel’s values into the world as we partner with God to restore all things.
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