Reconciling and purifying Heaven?

[votivesoul]

Originally Posted by Esaias

And my question is what are those things "in heaven" that are being reconciled back to God?

Playing a bit of catch up, so, decided it was best to pick up where I left off...

I understand your question better, now, I think. My answer largely remains the same, however. Here's why:

And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/colossians/1-20.htm

At the link above you can see that the word translated as "things" that pertains to "the heavens" is τὰ or ta.

Biblical Greek has 24 different forms of the definite article, and ta is one of those forms. In this case, ta is the accusative plural neuter.

Accusative refers to the direct object of the verb, or that which receives the action that the verb indicates is happening. As such, ta refers back to the verb "to reconcile". Secondly, ta is plural, meaning more than one, and refers then to whatever it is that is being reconciled (note, that "heavens" is in the dative case, meaning it's the indirect object, meaning that the "heavens" were not the recipients of the reconciliation). Finally, ta is neuter, meaning no gender has been assigned to it, and as can be seen, does not correspond to any particular word in the verse.

As such, the most literal rendering of ta ought to simply be "the" ("things" is merely implied due to the plural nature of the article).

This is how Professor Paul R. McReynolds renders ta in Colossians 1:20 in his Word Study Greek-English New Testament, a hyper-literal interlinear translation.

Unfortunately, I don't have a link that shows this. But I will copy it out from my copy, as follows:

and through him to thoroughly reconcile the all in him, having made peace through the blood of the cross of him, through him whether the on the earth or the in the heavens

Note the two words emboldened above. They are both ta in the Greek text.

Now, for a comparison, note how the Reina-Valera Version renders the verse:

Y por él reconciliar todas las cosas á sí, pacificando por la sangre de su cruz, así lo que está en la tierra como lo que está en los cielos.

The words "lo que" that I have underlined above are singular, that is, had they been pluralized, they would have read "los que". As such, "lo que" functions as a demonstrative pronoun, namely the Spanish equivalent to the English word "that".

And when we look more closely at the word ta, recognizing it for what it is, we see that ta actually functions just so, that is, as a demonstrative pronoun. See here:

http://biblehub.com/greek/3588.htm

From the link above:

...corresponds to our definite article the (German der, die, das), which is properly a demonstrative pronoun...

And again,

...As a demonstrative pronoun...

And,

...in prose, where it makes a partition or distributes into parts...that...

What does this all mean?

Essentially, it means the verse should likely read like this:

And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether [that which is] in earth, or [that which is] in heaven.

"That which is in heaven" then shows that God can very much be the "thing" in heaven that needed to be reconciled, such as my opening post showed.

(To be continued...)