Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
All Commentaries on Colossians 2:8 Go To Colossians 2
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Lest any man impose upon you. In the Greek, make a prey of you, as thieves that steal things.
There were two sorts of false teachers among them; they who mixed vain errors from heathen philosophy with the principles of the Christian religion, and they who had been Jews, and were for making them retain those rites and customs which the Jews had among them, and were only from their private human traditions. (Witham) This alludes to the traditions and observances which the Pharisees had added to the law of Moses, and which Christ had blamed; but which these false apostles wished to introduce amongst the Colossians. The ceremonial laws were the elementary instructions given by God to the world, but we are to attach ourselves to the doctrines of Jesus Christ, from whom alone we expect light and justice, and sanctity. (Bible de Vence)
According to the rudiments of the world: by which some expound vain fallacies and false maxims of the first kind of teachers; others the Jewish ceremonies, which are called weak and poor elements, or rudiments. (Galatians iv. 9.) This is neither to condemn in general the use of philosophy, which St. Augustine commends, and made use of, nor all traditions delivered by the apostles. See 1 Corinthians xi. and 2. Thessalonians ii. 14. (Witham)
