dealing with the effulgence of Jesus Christ. In the passage, the apostle Paul moves rapidly, effortlessly, and without even pausing for breath between describing the salvation that Christian believers find in their Redeemer and depicting the cosmic scope of what is “held together” through that same Redeemer. The claims are striking and bear repeating. The apostle says, in effect, that if we study anything in the realms of nature or the realms of the spirit, we study what came into existence through