Second, ‘image’ would seem to be used as a counter point^[77] to the ‘invisible’ nature of God. It is Christ who makes God visible to us echoing the theology of the gospel writer John^[78].

Third, ‘image’ must be recognized as a significant Roman category. Especially during the heights of the emperor worship cult, the image of Caesar^[79] was imprinted on the popular consciousness^[80]. The idea of the mark of the beast from Revelation and the subsequent warning against the worship^[81] of his image^[82] show that the early Christian’s had an imagination of ‘image’ as used in Roman terms. There is also an interesting parallel in the way ‘image’ is used in this passage in later Roman literature. Marcus Aurelius speaks about nature in the fourth book of his Meditations writing, “O Nature. From You all things proceed, subsist in You, and return to You^[83].” Though the word ‘image’ isn’t used here, the specific pattern of, ‘from you… through you… to you” is a close parallel to the way our passage speaks about the ‘image of the invisible God’. Though Aurelius writes after our dating of the Colossians hymn it suggests that the patterns in the writing of the Colossians hymn are influenced by, or perhaps crafted in contrast to Roman thought. Walsh and Keesmaat specifically put forward the thesis that this poetic section is primarily designed as a contrast between the dominant Roman and the subversive Christian imagination of reality^[84].

[Christ] is the source of our liberated imagination

    a subversion of empire

Because it all starts with him

    and it all ends with him

    everything

    all things

    whatever you can imagine

             visible or invisible^[85]

(A selection from Walsh and Keesmaat’s targum)