THE WITNESS OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS
The Epistle to the Hebrews enters no claim to be the composition of one of our Lord’s immediate followers. Neither does it represent the thought of a period antedating the composition of the Epistles of Paul. It synchronizes in its date rather with that of the later half of these Epistles (c. A. D. 64). It comes to us like its own Melchizedek, “ without father, without mother, without genealogy,” bearing its own independent witness to how Jesus was thought and spoken of by the Christian community in the seventh decade of the first Christian century; or, at least, by a special and very interesting group of Christians living at that time, made up of those Jews who had seen in Jesus the promised Messiah and accepted Him as their longed-for Redeemer.
In the designations it applies to our Lord in general, this Epistle reflects, of course, the usage of the first age of the Church, which has already been observed in the other Epistles: but equally of course not without its own peculiarities. As in the Epistles of Paul, the most frequently occurring of the simple designations is ‘Christ’ 5" 6' 911.14,24,28 JJ26) 1 'The simple
‘ Jesus,’ however, is employed relatively much more
1 ‘ Christ ’ is used everywhere as a proper name — even when it has the article: cf. Davidson, Ep. to the Heb., 73, note 1. In some passages the term ^ Son ’ is almost or quite a proper name: cf. Riehm 272, Davidson, loc, cit., note 2.
Witness of Epistle to the Hebrews 277 frequently than in Paul’s letters (2^ 3^ 6^*^ 7^^ 1019 j 22,24 1312^. j|. occurs almost as frequently, indeed, as ‘ Christ.’ Neither is, however, a common title in Hebrews (nine and eight times respectively), nor is the compound title ‘Jesus Christ,’ which occurs three times (10^^ 13®’^^) j while ‘Lord Jesus’ (13“^) and ‘Jesus the Son of God’ (4^^) each occurs once. The simple ‘ Lord ’ also is only occasionally applied to our Lord ( 2^ 7^“* [12^^]); and no combinations of it with other designations occur at all, except, as we have already intimated, the phrase ‘ our Lord Jesus ’ is once met with ( 13^^) It is noticeable that in two of the three instances in which the term ‘Lord’ is employed of Christ 2^) it is used in order to throw into prominence His superangelic dignity. The peculiarity of Hebrews is manifested in the free use it makes of the two designations, ‘ the Son ’
favorite ontological and the favorite soteriological designations of Christ in this Epistle.
It is chiefly by means of and in connection with the title ‘Son’ that this Epistle (in this, like the Epistles ^, of John) gives expression to its concep-
Jesus’ Humanityt^o^ our Lords person. There is no lack of recognition of the humanity of our Lord. Indeed, nowhere else in the New Testa-
applied to Christ is not alien to Hebrews. We meet once (13^®) with the designation ‘our Lord Jesus’: and at we read ‘that the Lord springs from Judah.’ In ji® God is represented as saying to Christ, ‘Xhou, Lord, hast laid the foundations of the earth,’ and speaks of
ment do we find the reality and the completeness of His humanity so fully expounded and so strongly Insisted upon.® But It Is the transcendent conception of Christ, which looks upon Him as ‘ the Son of God,’ clothed with all the attributes of God, that gives Its whole tone to the Epistle.^ The keynote is struck in the very opening verses, where our Lord is set as ‘ Son ’ in contrast not merely with the prophets, the greatest representatives of God on earth, but also with the angels, the highest of creatures. All these are servants of God: He is His ‘ Son,’ through whom no doubt God works (i“), but as one works through a fellow In whom He Is reduplicated; and whom He addresses by the great names peculiar to Himself,
That It is what Is called the metaphysical Sonship, which Is here attributed to our Lord Is obvious In ^ itself and Is put beyond all doubt by the
Son’ is description which Is given of Him as
‘ Son.’^ In this description there are assigned to Him divine works. In eternity and In time: the creation of the world and the upholding of the
the salvation which the Lord has announced. Finally Hebrews has a passage where we cannot decisively pronounce whether xupto<^ refers to God or to Christ,... (12^^).”
3 Cf. Riehm, Der Lekrhegriff des Hebrderhrlefes, 1867, p. 271. “ We shall see that the author emphasizes the true humanity of Jesus more than is found in any other N. T. book.” Accordingly, cf. §§36, 37» 38, 39> for details.
^ Cf. Riehm, pp. 270, 271: “ He sees in Christ above all the Son of God in the eminent sense of that word.”
^ Cf. Riehm, op. cit., p. 276: “ There is already contained in what has been said the solution of the second question which we were to deal with in this paragraph — the question, namely, whether the uniquely intimate relation of Christ to God, which is designated by the name of
Witness of Epistle to the Hebrews 279 universe. But the most striking element of it tells us rather what the ‘ Son ’ is than what He had done or is yet to do. He is, we are told, “ the effulgence of God’s glory and the very image of His substance ” — which seems to be only a rich and suggestive way of saying, to put it briefly, that the ‘ Son,’ as ‘ Son,’ is just God’s fellow. He is the repetition of God’s glory: the reiteration of His substance. By the “ glory of God” is meant here just the divine nature itself, apprehended in its splendor: and by its “effulgence” is meant not a reflection, but, so to speak, a reduplication of it. The ‘ Son ’ is just God over again in the glory of His majesty.® Similarly by the “ substance ” of God is meant, not His bare essence, but His whole nature, with all its attributes; and by “the very image ” is meant a correspondence as close as that which an impression gives back to a seal: the ‘ Son ’ of God in no single trait in the least differs from God.*^ In a word, what is
Son, is an ethico-religlous or a metaphysical one. Since this name belongs to Christ on account of His pretemporal relation to God, the notion ‘ Son of God ’ is plainly in the first instance a metaphysical one.,,. An unprejudiced exposition of the relative passages must lead to the conclusion that according to the doctrine of the author, it is precisely the metaphysical attributes which are attributed to Christ in j2 seq, that make Him the ‘ Son of God.’ ”
®Riehm offers this illustration to clarify the notion of djzabyaaiia',
“ Should all the light which proceeds from the sun be united again in a second body of light, which radiates it out again a second time, there would be an aizabyaffiia of the sun in the sense in which the author has used the word here. All the rays of the manifold divine glory unite again in the Son, in order in Him, joined together in a new glorious Light-Being, to present the divine glory a second time and to make it through this second presentation visible even to the creature” (p. 288),
Cf. also Davidson in loc., who judiciously echoes Riehm.
size in this second predicate that the nature of the Son corresponds precisely with the nature of the Father; that there is no trait in the
2 8o The Designations of Our Lord given to us in the ‘ Son ’ is here declared to be God as ‘ Son ’ standing over against God as ‘ Father.’®
It can cause no surprise, therefore, when the author declares that it was of the ‘ Son ’ that God® was speaking in the Psalm (45®), when He said. His Deity “ Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.” This is only to apply directly to the ‘ Son ’ the name which is in the whole discussion implied to be His: for undoubtedly the very point of the whole argument is to the effect that Jesus Christ as the ‘ Son of God ’ stands infinitely above every creature just because He is ‘ God ’ Himself.^® We may leave undecided the question whether or no the doxology at the close of the Epistle is to be referred to Christ, treated here as the God He is recognized
nature of the Father which does not find itself in perfection also in the nature of the Son, and vice versa'' Of the whole, he says (pp. 284-5) • “ The Son is then, according to the doctrine of the Ep. to the Heb., an independently existing Divine Person, whose substance is not created by God, but has proceeded out of the glory of the Father’s nature; a Divine Person to whom in consequence the same glorious nature belongs, so that every attribute of the Father repeats itself in the Son, and every attribute of the ^Son repeats itself in the Father; so that through the Son the whole nature of God is completely revealed.”
Cf. the long “ Note on the Son ” in Davidson’s Commentary, pp. 73-79.
® It is noticeable, however, that God is not called ‘Father’ as over against the ‘ Son ’ in this Epistle. Cf. Riehm, op. cit., p. 272: “ As the author so frequently designates Christ as the Son of God, it is somewhat remarkable that he only a single time and that in a citation from the O. T. (i®) calls God the Father of Christ.”
^ For this is the significance of the formulas of citation to which 1* goes back.
10 So Delitzsch, in loc. (E. T., p. 76): “ The very point of the argument for the superiority of the Son above the angels, drawn from Ps 45'’’ and foil., lies surely in the fact that He is here twice, or at least once, addressed in the vocative as 6 6e6<s,’* Hofmann and even Riehm are unnecessarily subtle here.
Witness of Epistle to the Hebrews throughout the Epistle as being. Certainly there is no reason why this author should not have ascribed “ eternal glory ” to the Being he had described as in His very nature “ the effulgence of the divine glory, and for that very reason it may be a matter of indifference to us whether he has done so or not. Nor Is much added to this picture of the divine Christ by his designation of Him, without qualification, as ‘ the Firstborn ’ (i®), or by his noticing that God has “ appointed Him Heir of all things” (i^). ‘Firstborn’ and ‘ Heir ’ are little more than specially honorific ways of saying ‘ Son.’ God’s ‘ Firstborn ’ as such takes rank above all other existing beings: even all of the angels shall do Him reverence. God’s ‘ Firstborn ’ is also naturally God’s ‘ Heir,’ an heir whose Inheritance embraces the universe, and whose tenure stretches to eternity. All these declarations are bound very closely together in their common relation to the fundamental conception of our Lord’s divine Sonship; and constitute Items by the mention of which the contents of the Idea of Sonship are developed. The statements of the opening verses of the Epistle seem to be arranged In a sort of climax by means of which the glory of the ' New Covenant, revealed in the ‘ Son,’ is more and more enhanced. The glory of the New Covenant Is that It has been Introduced by God the ‘ Son ’ — that ‘ Son ’ who, despite His lowly manifesta- iiRiehm says (p. 286): “Still how can it occasion surprise that the author in 1321 praises Jesus Christ with the doxology, & i) do^a e£9 rob? aiwva?, which, according to O. T. notions, is due to Jehovah only, but in the N. T. passages is also transferred to Christ? It is recognized by all recent commentators that the relative (w) refers to Christ and not to God.” So also Bleek, Lunemann, Maier, Kurtz, Lowrie: contra, Delitzsch: non liquet, Davidson.
tion on earth, has been appointed heir of all things, — that is. Lord of all: by whom, indeed, the worlds were made in the depths of eternity, — that is, who Is the eternal Creator of all that is: who, in fact, is in Himself the effulgence of God’s glory and the impress of His substance — that is to say, all that God is: and by whom, because He is all that_God Is,.the universe Is held In being.
It is particularly noticeable that at this precise point a mention of Christ’s propitiatory work is introduced.
. This ‘ Son of God,’ whose dignity has been thus expounded, “ made purification of sins.” The soteriological interest is present, therefore, even in this ontological passage, and it is the joteriological interest, indeed, which gives its importance to this ontological discussion in the eyes of the writer. The soteriological titles by which he designates our Lord are therefore naturally as rich as the ontological ones. He is ‘ the Mediator of the New Covenant ’ (8^ 9^^ 12^^): He is the Ground of eternal Salvation (5^): He is ‘the Author of Salvation ’ (2^^, cf. Acts 3^^ 5^^): He is ‘ the Author and Perfecter of our Faith ’ ( I2“): He is our Forerunner into that which is within the veil (6"^) He Is ‘ the Apostle and High Priest of our Confession ’ (3^): He is ‘the Great Shepherd of the Sheep’
12 The alrio<$ of Salvation (5^) is merely He who is the Cause or Producer of Salvation. The dpyr^yo'^ of Salvation cf. 12-) is commonly supposed to be He who has Himself trodden the pathway over which our feet should pass, and to be so far equivalent to the Tzpodpopo<^ (6^®). So, e. g. G. Vos In the Princeton Theological Re^ienv, July, 1907, p. 434, who classes apyriycx; and Tzpodpopu^ together as implying identification in experience, in contrast with acrco<s In which this is not present; but see to the contrary, Cremer, ed. 3 and subsequent
JVitness of Epistle to the Hebrews 283 designations: and we see at a glance that they reflect in their substance the high estimate put upon our Lord’s person as the ‘ Son of God.’ It is only because He is the ‘ Son of God ’ that He may be fitly described in His saving work by these high designations. It is i also at once observable that the Messanic conception undedies and gives form to them all. If Jesus is conceived by the writer of this Epistle in His person i fundamentally as the eternal ‘Son of God’; He Is
I equally conceived in His work as fundamentally the Messiah appointed of God to inaugurate the new order of things and to bring His people safely into the experience of the promised salvation. As ‘ Mediator of the New Covenant ’ He gives His life for the redemption of His people, establishing new relations between them
I supposes the use of the simple ‘ priest ’ to be due in general to the j appeal to Ps. no (510 being exceptional), while ‘High Priest’ is the j real preference of the author, resting on a reference in his mind to j the entrance of the High Priest into the Holy of Holies on the day of
! the atonement, which prefigures what is to him the central act of Christ’s priestly ministry, — the entrance into Heaven. “ The Saviour is a high! priest because in the discharge of His ministry He enters into Heaven.
I... The inference lies near that the whole discussion of the subject ' ultimately serves the purpose of showing the necessity of the heavenly state of existence of the Saviour.” On the other hand, I cf. Davidson, p. 147: “ According to the representation of the Epistle, there is no difference in principle between priest and high priest”; j and Denney, Hastings’ B. D., iv. p. 98 a: “In the New Testament i it is only in the Ep. to the Hebrews that Jesus is spoken of as
I fiiya? Ispetx^ and dp^tepeu? — terms which are not to be distinguished from each other, the last two only signifying Christ’s eminence in the priestly character.”
and God by means of His blood. As the ‘ Originator of Salvation,’ He tasted death for every man, receiving in Himself the penalties due to them, not to Him. As ‘ Author and Perfecter of our faith ’ He endured the cross, despising the shamie that He might be not merely our example, but our Saviour. As ‘ the Great Shepherd ’ He laid down His life for His sheep. As ‘ the Apostle and High Priest ’ He is the One appointed by God to make sacrifice of Himself for the sins of the people, — for every High Priest must needs have somewhat to offer, and this ‘ our High Priest * has through His own blood obtained eternal redemption for us.
We see that the red thread of redemption in blood is woven Into all the allusions to the saving work of the ‘ Son of God.’ And we see that the chief
^‘^Priest^^ vehicle In this Epistle for the expression of this high teaching Is the representation of our Lord’s work as priestly in Its nature, and the proclamation of Him as ‘ the great High Priest.’ The interest of this grows out of the circumstance that here at last in the New Testament the conception of ' 'Messiah as Priest comes to Its rights. In their absorption in the conception of Messiah as King, the Jew^s gave scanty hospitality to the rich suggestions of the Old Testament of other aspects In which His office and work might be contemplated. It was characteristic of Christianity, under the Illumination thrown back upon the promise by Its fulfillment, to gather these neglected aspects together and note their fulfillment In Christ. Among them was the conception of Messiah as a priest performing the priestly work of propitiation. There seems to be little trace of the currency of
J-Fitness of Epistle to the Hebrews 285 such a conception among the Jews. There is also little use made of it in other books of the New Testament. But in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is given its full exposition; strikingly illustrated from the same Psalm which declares the Messiah David’s Lord not less than David’s son, — “ Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek ”; and made the vehicle for the inculcation of the fundamental doctrine of Christianity — the propitiatory death of Jesus, the reconciliation of God by His sacrifice of Himself, and His eternal intercession for His people. This is the greaC contribution of the Epistle to the Hebrews to the apprehension of the nature of our Lord’s work.^^ wanting, until it presented itself to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Stanton, Jenxiish and Christian Messiah, p. 293 ff.).” On the idea of our Lord’s priesthood see the “ extended note on the priesthood of Christ ” in Davidson’s Com. on Heb., p. 146 seq.; and cf. Denney in Hastings’ B. D., iv,, 98 seq., and especially Vos, as above, pp. 423 seq., who adduces the passages which show that although the term ‘priest’ is not explicitly applied to the Messiah by the Jews, nor to our Lord elsewhere in the N. T., the idea is not alien to either the Jews or the N. T. writers.