In fact, it might be claimed that the power of the tension represented by the theology of Colossians was crucial for the subsequent development of Christianity. On the one hand, the universal claims of the letter gave permission to the church to regard itself not as a private or self-enclosed entity with an incommunicable message, but as a potentially universal body which represented a new way of being human endowed with a message concerning the whole of ‘reality’. Such a vision made Christian theology