The Reformers’ Attitude to the Law of God

By Geoffrey H. Greenhough

Cheadle, Cheshire, England

This essay was awarded first prize in the Johnston Essay Competition conducted by the Protestant Reformation Society, England.

The Subject of the Law of God figures very large in the writings of theologians in the Reformed tradition. Calvin wrote extensively on the Law in his Institutes; his contemporaries Bullinger and Hooper both devoted whole works to an exposition of the Ten Commandments, as did the English puritans Watson, Hopkins, and Andrewes; the value which these men saw in the Decalogue, as a concise summary of the Law, has been appreciated by Reformed scholars in later centuries, witness the writings of Charles Hodge and expositions of the Decalogue by Dale, Pink, and Wallace.

But recognizing the value of the Law of God was no innovation by the Reformers. Irenaeus had seen it; Augustine knew it well; the medieval schoolmen, of whom Aquinas was the best exponent, considered at length the application of the Law to the Christian. But it is to Martin Luther that the historian must turn for the first expression of the distinctive emphasis of the Reformation about this doctrine: to Luther one turns because he was first in time, and also because his works were widely read, and had a considerable effect on later Reformers; to Luther also because his writings have ever since been widely available, and so have continued to exercise an influence on Christian doctrine.

Within three years of its publication in 1522, Luther’s New Testament in German had been reprinted, prefaces and all, in many editions and had been circulated throughout Western Europe. Had not the printing press come into use some sixty years previously, Luther’s New Testament might have achieved but little. But the new ground that Luther struck, combined with the wide circulation that the presses gave it, meant that Luther’s ideas were disseminated to a continent whose theologians had for the most part hardly begun to inquire beyond mystical medievalism.

In his prefaces, Luther set Law over against Gospel. To him, there were two kingdoms, the earthly, natural, civil kingdom and the kingdom of the heavenly, the gracious, and the redeemed. The heavenly kingdom was typified by grace, freedom, and love, in which the function of the law was to drive men in desperation to Christ, to seek salvation. The only righteousness of this kingdom was the righteousness of faith—”faith alone,” as in Luther’s embellishment of Ephesians 2:8. The earthly kingdom, on the other hand, enjoyed God’s providential care, for he was the Creator of it. To this kingdom belonged moral values, humanitarianism, civil and political justice. The two kingdoms were not to be confused: earthly moral endeavour was not to be viewed in terms of merit in the heavenly kingdom in which the Gospel alone gave justification. So, theologians were not to consider Jesus, as did à Kempis and medieval mystics generally, as a law-giver or an example to follow. This was the theme which Luther gave to the Prologue of the 1522 New Testament, and which he worked out in the Prefaces.

* * * * *

Tyndale had Luther’s New Testament very soon after its first publication. By 1525, he had produced an English New Testament with his own redaction of Luther’s prefatory material. Confiscatsed while still on the presses in Cologne, only a fragment of Matthew, with its preface, remains; but the complete work, printed in Worms in 1526, yield a wealth of information about Tyndale’s theology at this date. In translating Luther, Tyndale made significant textual changes, especially to the parts relating to the Law and the Gospel. These emendations show us where Tyndale consciously wanted to express his differences from Luther. But Tyndale greatly expanded the Prologue, giving it a distinctive theology of his own and indicating to us the weightier emphasis that he wanted to lay on the whole subject.

Tyndale and Grace

First, he was completely at one with Luther on the uniqueness of the Gospel: in the 1526 Prologue to Romans he emphasized that justification is by faith in Christ alone; should a man depend on his own efforts, he is relying on what Scripture calls the Works of the Law, that is, what a man can do “of his own free will, of his own proper strength.” But he is incapable of justifying himself in this way, because inwardly he still has “unlust,” that is, his heart is not with his actions.[1] This theme is carried on in Tyndale’s later works. The Prologue to Genesis, published in 1530, shows how law-keeping and ceremonial “neither…justified in the heart before God.” These Old Testament ordinances had a good purpose, to make sin manifest and to create a thirst for salvation:

He that goeth about to quiet his conscience and to justify himself with the law, doth but heal his wounds with fretting corrosives. And he that goeth about to purchase grace with ceremonies, doth but suck the ale-pole to quench his thirst.[2]

In his (later) exposition of 1 John, Tyndale writes, concerning the text 1 John 1: 1–4,

[No-one believes in Christ] except Moses have him first in cure, and with his law have robbed him of his righteousness.[3]

The following year, Tyndale published his translation of Jonah, in the Preface to which he summarised the purpose of the three divisions of Scripture:

1. the law, “to condemn the flesh”;
2. the Gospel, “promises…mercy for all that repent and acknowledge their sins at the preaching of the law”;
3. the historical parts, “the sure and undoubted examples that God so will deal with us.”[4]

Tyndale on Law and Sanctification

These examples of Tyndale’s understanding of the law as leading to the Gospel are part of the theology which he held in common with Martin Luther. This understanding he shared also with the main stream of Reformation writers. Where Tyndale takes a distinctive stance is in his application of the law to the Christian. This stance is adumbrated in the Worms New Testament, but is expressed much more clearly in Tyndale’s Prologue to Jonah, published in 1531 and renamed “A Pathway to the Holy Scripture.” It finds expression also in his later works, and particularly well in the Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount:

[Christians] of a very thankfulness…love the law…and submit themselves to learn it and to profit therein, and to do tomorrow what they cannot do today.[5]

On Matthew 5:17–19 he comments:

So fast shall they of the kingdom of heaven cleave unto the pure law of God.[6]

And in the “Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue,” Book III:

I find in the Scripture (Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8) that all the children of God, which only are the true members of the church, have every one of them the law written in their hearts; so that if there were no law to compel, they would yet naturally, out of their own hearts, keep the law of God; yea, and against violence compelling to the contrary.[7]

Tyndale on Contract

These instances serve to indicate how Tyndale viewed the law. To him it was firstly the way in which the Holy Spirit drove the sinner to the cross, but secondly, and equally as valid, it was the divinely appointed rule of life and growing sanctification for the regenerated soul. Law-keeping was for the Christian the evidence of his new birth and the vehicle of his sanctification. This concept constituted a rejection of Lutheran theology for Tyndale, for Luther could only accept the first part of the use of the Law. Clebsch considers[8] that Tyndale “puritanized” Luther by giving to Luther’s concept of sanctification, a new life of love to God and to one’s neighbour, a schematization in an obedience to the law. There is some evidence for this in the early pages of Tyndale’s Prologue to the Sermon on the Mount. But this is not “puritanization.” Tyndale’s acceptance of the place of the Law in the Christian life must really be seen as a radical departure from, not an adaptation of, Luther’s theology.

There is some other, some non-Lutheran, basis for Tyndale’s characteristic concept. That basis was Tyndale’s understanding of the idea of contract. The concept was that regenerate man was bound to live in conformity to the loving purposes of God, purposes made known to men in the Old Testament revelation of God’s covenant. The Old Testament covenant was reaffirmed under new forms in the New Testament (where circumcision becomes baptism, passover becomes the Lord’s supper, and so on). In Christian baptism, man entered into the covenant relationship with God, and so bound himself to a spiritual faith, the promise of mercy, and a “consent to the law, that it is righteous and good.” It was Tyndale’s understanding of the place of contract and covenant that produced the subtitle to his exposition of 1 John (1531): “Except a man have the profession of his baptism in his heart, he cannot understand the Scripture,” and the subtitle of his exposition of the Sermon on the Mount: “…Containing the whole sum of the covenant between God and us, upon which we be baptized to keep it.” This particular exposition, says Trinterud, is the key to Tyndale’s expositions of all the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, and James. The theology of contract became central to his understanding of the law as a whole.[9] Clebsch says that “revised his theology around the controlling notion of covenant, understood as a moralistic contract between God and man.”[10] Clebsch is not sympathetic to Tyndale’s thought at this point, and writes accordingly. Even so his findings are true, if put antagonistically. But he goes too far in claiming that Tyndale’s resultant Gospel was that “God will deal kindly and lovingly with those who love his law and believe in Christ.”[11]

Tyndale’s Originality

It has been noted that Tyndale had a basic commonality of evangelical belief with Luther, and that his view that the Law was the basis of the believer’s life in Christ was in direct opposition to Luther. But this was no new theology. He was very much in the line of Protestant Reformed thought being expounded in Basel, where Oecolampadius taught covenant theology in his work on Isaiah, first published about 1525. The same theology was heard from Zwingli in Zurich and from the lips of Capito in Strasbourg. From these Rhineland centres of the Reformation, Bullinger, Bibliander, Bucer, and Peter Martyr were propagating the same covenant theology that Tyndale was making plain in England. And the cross-fertilization of thought was fostered and furthered by the subsequent political occurrences which followed on the successive deaths of Henry VIII and Edward VI, and later, on the end of the Marian persecution.

* * * * *

Lutheranism, English Reformed Protestantism and Calvinism all stem from the three giants of the Reformation period. Luther, the eldest of the three, outlived Tyndale, and Tyndale was martyred before Calvin published his first edition of the Institutes. This means that an interaction of ideas between Luther and Tyndale was to be expected, as also between Luther and Calvin, but that there can be no conceivable dependence of Tyndale on Calvin.

It has been proper up to this point to consider Tyndale’s distinctive departure from Luther’s teaching on Law. But the ongoing Reformation, in the formulation of doctrine, worked over its history time and time again, and drew from the thoughts of many theologians. In the days of the Reformation the giants were as yet unrecognized and were indeed still winning their spurs, so to speak. It is noteworthy, therefore, that Calvin drew at the same well as Tyndale when he came to formulate the doctrine of the Law. Like Luther, he also saw law as restraining sin: this was the “usus politicus,” for determining state law and regulating communal behaviour. Like Luther again, Calvin recognized the work of the Law as driving men to Christ: this was the “usus pedagogus.” But like Tyndale, and unlike Luther, Calvin recognized the “usus normativus” of the Law, determining the conduct of believers. On this third use, Calvin wrote that “the office of the law is to excite them to the study of purity and holiness, by reminding them of their duty.”[12]

There is also in the Institutes the same emphasis which is apparent in Tyndale’s work, that is that the regenerate man obeys the Law because the Holy Spirit, in his work of sanctification, gives him a love of the Law and a desire to fulfil it: “being free from the yoke of the law itself [human consciences] voluntarily obey the will of God.”[13]

Calvin’s great contribution to the Reformation was his ability to analyse and codify principles which had been already developed and expounded by others, but not properly incorporated into a systematic theology. In the Institutes Calvin expounds the Law at length. At the Fall, man lost his love of God, the divine gifts, and the divine image. Subsequently, when his God-given conscience pointed to his guilt, man refused to listen. Therefore God gave the written Law to accuse man of his sin. Jesus fulfilled the Law positively in that he unfailingly kept it, and negatively in that he paid its penalty on man’s behalf. The Decalogue is expounded as being relevant to the believer to teach him love,[14] but not to bind him. He cannot be found guilty according to the Law because of his standing in Christ, nor can he be bound to obey the Law because of his freedom in Christ. But the indwelling Holy Spirit calls him “cheerfully and readily” to respond to the Father’s love, and to love the law.

* * * * *

Covenant, then, was a concept evident in Luther, but basic to both Calvin and Tyndale. It became the foundation of the English Reformers’ understanding of the relationship of the Law to the Gospel and to sanctification. It stands too as the key to the understanding of Puritan theology.

Tyndale’s Immediate Successors

Several of Tyndale’s contemporaries took up the dual purpose concept of the Law of God.

Miles Coverdale expounded the condemnatory value of the Law, driving a man to seek salvation by means other than his own good works. The Law, he wrote, teaches us “right from unright” and causes us to learn that right is not in our power.[15] Like Tyndale, Coverdale saw the Law in its three parts:

1. The ceremonial law. This directed the Jews towards faith in their Messiah. The ceremonial law is now fulfilled in Christ.
2. The judicial Law. This is not binding on Christian governments, but is the model for civil use, encouraging good government and peace.
3. The Moral Law. This is enduring, and still applicable to all Christians.[16]

Coverdale considered the moral law to be well summed up in the Decalogue, in which “is comprehended all that serveth for a godly life.”[17] He saw the Sermon on the Mount as the “absolute intensification of the divine law,” alienating the sinner from God’s standards, then offering salvation by driving the sinner to seek grace in Christ, and then being the “rules of right living for men who, once enlisted into Christianity through baptism, would be enabled to live rightly.”[18]

Robert Barnes was such an exponent of the doctrine of justification by faith that he initially rejected the teaching of the Epistle of James (as also did Luther). After his imprisonment in 1529, at which point Latimer became the leader of the English Reformers, Barnes composed his “Supplication to King Henry VIII,” published in 1534. In this document, Barnes reaffirmed the doctrine of justification by faith but also reconciled the teaching of James with this doctrine. He wrote:

[Works are not] done to justify the man, but a just man must needs do them…not by them to be justified but alonely in them to serve his brother [following the example of Christ] for he hath no need of them as concerning his justification…[Works are] an outward declaration and testimony of the inward justification by faith.[19]

Barnes saw the church as a “covenanted society,” declaring its justification by faith by means of a life of good works based on the Law of God.

The theology of John Frith was at first very Lutheran. He opposed Tyndale’s views that good works were a necessary following of faith in Christ. Later, however, he wrote the Revelation of Antichrist. In this book Frith described the place of the Law: firstly, the Law of God was written on the regenerate heart, then the Holy Spirit acted as “exhorter” to the Christian, calling him to walk according to the Law. Christ was seen as the new giver of the Law, affirming in the New Testament what the Old Testament had laid down as the standards of right behaviour. For “[Christ] hath not delivered us from the Law, but from the power and violence of the law.”[20]

George Joye and Simon Fish followed Tyndale’s lead in seeing the Law in the context of a covenant relationship with God. John Hooper, in his Declaration of the Ten Commandments, cast his argument in the framework of the three “uses” of the Law:

1. The usus politicus. This is external in applicability and civil. It prohibits and punishes (1 Tim 1). “The Law is given to the unjust.”
2. The usus pedagogus. According to this use, the Law informs and instructs the heart and the conscience. It preaches damnation, accuses and points to a Saviour.
3. The usus normativus. By this use, the Christian is shown what God requires. There is no other standard “that we should feign works of our brains to serve him withal.”[21]

Hooper uses concepts which in later Reformed writings become commonplace illustrations. He speaks of the Law as our “accuser,” “promising life to the observers thereof, and death to the transgressors of the same.”[22] Like almost every other author reprinted in the Parker Society volumes, he uses the two Pauline metaphors of the “glass” and the “schoolmaster”: the Law is a mirror in which a man beholds himself and sees his guilt; and the Law is a schoolmaster which teaches the man, who has recognized his guilt, that the way of salvation is through Christ.

The Reign of Edward VI (1547-1553)

John Bradford’s writings appeared after Henry’s death, and serve to illustrate well the continuity of Reformed thought through the short reign of Edward VI. Bradford was above all an evangelist, and his writings amply illustrate the fact. In his sermon on repentance, printed in 1553, he wrote of three ways to turn the negligent and sluggish mind to Christ:

1. Pray
2. “Get thee God’s Law as a glass to toot [i.e., look] in, for in it and by it cometh the true knowledge of sin, without which knowledge there can be no sorrow…”
3. “Look upon the tag tied to God’s Law [i.e., the penalty]”[23]

Even so, Bradford also has the Law as the guide to the Christian life. Though he was an evangelist who sought to win hearts for Christ in a true repentance and faith, he looked beyond conversion and saw that the Law serves “to keep the old man from carnality and security, and to stir [the Christian] up to diligence and fortitude.”[24]

The Swiss Reformer, Henry Builinger, published a series of fifty sermons, the “Decades,” during Edward’s reign, and these were circulated among English Reformers. In a sermon on the moral law, Bullinger differentiated, as did Tyndale, between the ceremonial, the judicial, and the moral law, and showed how the moral law still endured. The Decalogue, which summed up the moral law, was “the very absolute and everlasting rule of true righteousness and all virtues, set down for all places, men, and ages to frame themselves by.”[25]

Like so many of the Reformers, Bullinger wrote extensively on the Commandments, applying them minutely to the social structures of his day. He linked the Old Testament ceremonial laws to Christian church ceremonial: “holy rites belonging to the ministers of religion.”[26] This interpretation was not taken up by mainstream Reformers. But Bullinger’s sermon “on the use, fulfilling, and abrogation of the Law” preaches standard Reformed doctrine. The moral law, “leadeth us by the hand to Christ.” The saints of the Old Testament “used the Law and ceremonies as a guide and schoolmistress to lead them by the hand to Christ their Saviour.” The Law teaches Christians “what to follow and what to eschew.” The first table of the Ten Commandments teaches us “what we owe to God and how he will be worshipped”; the second table “frameth the offices of life, and teacheth us how to behave towards our neighbour.” The judicial laws “teach the government of an house or a commonweal, so that by them we may live honestly among ourselves and holily to God-wards.”[27]

Hugh Latimer was a popular preacher, in the best sense of the term, and several times was called to preach before the Court of Edward VI. In a sermon on Matthew 6:10 that has been preserved Latimer explained his text, “Thy will be done,” as meaning that “he will help and strengthen us, so that we may keep his holy law and commandments.”[28] Latimer takes up the “looking glass” concept, so popular with many of the Reformers, and noted already in the writings of Hooper and Bradford. In his sermon on Romans 13:8, 9 he uses it to illustrate the power of the Law to convict of sin: “The law of God, when it is preached, bringeth us to the knowledge of our sins; for it is like as a glass….”[29] In the Edwardian Catechism of 1553, the Law is again seen as a glass to “behold the filth and spots of our soul (that) we might the more fervently long for our Saviour Jesus Christ.”[30]

The Marian Exile

The death of Edward VI caused many to fear greatly for the future of the Protestant Reformation in England, and some Reformers left England for the comparative safety of the Continent. The subsequent persecution during Mary’s reign proved that their apprehensions were justified: several leaders of the Reformation were martyred for their faith whilst others kept alive the pure doctrine of Christ by joining their brethren in Europe. Thomas Becon was one of those Imprisoned in the Tower, but he was subsequently released (due, according to Foxe, to mistaken identity) and fled the country.

Just as in Henry’s reign, Peter Martyr, Martin Bucer, and other European scholars had come to England, so now, by political expediency, England’s leading Reformers, clergy and laymen, joined their European counterparts in Geneva, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, and Marburg. The cross-fertilization of thought which ensued gave griste and marrow to the Reformation in England. That which Calvin was systematizing in successive editions of the Institutes was commonly held doctrine among English Reformers. Cranmer, in the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI, had already spelt out the doctrines of total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace, and the final perseverance of the saints. Nor was Thomas Becon any innovator when, following the Marian exile, he described the function of the Law as

1. to declare the will of God, to reveal sin, and to lead us as a schoolmaster to Christ;
2. for Christians to obey.[31]

Becon later expanded this in his book News out of Heaven, published in 1560. He said here that the purpose of the Law was

1. to “prove the obedience of your heart;”
2. to “keep you in an honest and godly trade of living;”
3. to “refrain you from wicked doing;”
4. to “repress idolatry, swearing, ungodliness…;”
5. to “set before your eyes your abominable wickedness”;
6. so that “you may learn to know yourselves (and) make more haste to approach unto God’s mercy.”[32]

James Pilkington also spent the period of the Marian exile abroad, in Geneva, Zürich, and other Reformation centres. He was a staunch friend of Calvin, and it was to Calvin’s advice that he turned when offered the See of Durham. Calvin encouraged him to accept this, even though it entailed the wearing of episcopal vestments, for the sake of the Gospel. Pilkington’s concept of the nature of the Gospel can be judged from his exposition of Haggai, where he describes the Law as a schoolmaster, and also where he has the delightful metaphor of the Law as a shoemaker’s needle, going first through the hole, and then drawing after it the strong thread of God’s mercies.[33] In the same work Pilkington strikes hard at those who would preach Christ without having first preached the Law:

…by preaching the Law and threatenings unto them, that they which were afore so forgetful of their duties, now hearing the great anger and vengeance of God that hanged over their heads…stirred them up to do their duties and fear God. Thus may we here see the fond and tender ears of them, that would not hear nor have the law preached, but altogether the sweet comfortable promises and mercies of Christ; nor can abide the anger of God….[34]

Elizabeth’s Reign: The Early Puritans

Puritanism properly began with Elizabeth’s reign.[35] That it flourished on a solid theology of Reformation teaching can be seen from the vigorous production of puritan writings from 1553 onwards. That it began with the massive support of the returning Marian exiles is also plain: indeed, it would have been a complete hiatus in historical development had it not been so. But it cannot be said that the theology of puritanism was secondhand Calvinism, brought back by the exiles. Rather, those exiles had left England because they were already convinced about the doctrines of the Reformation, convinced too that they were important enough to suffer exile for. The support of a larger fellowship, that of the Continental Reformers, had strengthened their beliefs; Calvin’s expository writings and his Institutes had given to those beliefs a more robust schematization; but they were to be found squarely in Tyndale’s prologues, his later writings, and in the writings of Latimer, Bradford, and Hooper; and, under Mary several Reformers had preferred martyrdom to a recantation of their faith. Those early Reformers stood with Zwingli, Bullinger, Oecolampadius, Bucer, and many others in the Rhineland cities of Basel, Strasbourg, and Frankfurt. The pedigree goes back indeed to Augustine.

The puritan successors to these giants of the Reformation were Jewel, Whitaker, Nowell, Rogers, and Whitgift. Jewel, created bishop of Salisbury in 1560: defended Cranmer’s theology in the Second Prayer Book. Regarding the place of the Law, he showed how it brought men to faith, and then schooled them to the “full, perfect man.”[36] William Whitaker, who was chiefly responsible for the Lambeth Articles of 1595 and whose distinctive Calvinism shows clearly in them, saw the law as “the will of God…plainly revealed to us in the Scripture.”[37]

Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul’s, wrote in his Catechism of 1570 that the Law is full and perfect, and that nothing is godliness apart from it. The Law forbids and commands; it has an inward application as well as an outward one in that it commands “gentle sincerity.”[38] It has a two-fold target: it condemns the ungodly, and for Christians it provides “a mark for them to level at, a goal to run unto.”[39]

Thomas Rogers wrote an exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles which he published in 1586. On Article 7 he propounded the Christian relevance of the three parts of the Law. In this work he modified somewhat some of the more extravagant utterances of earlier Reformers. He said:

1. “Christians are not bound at all to the observation of the judicial ceremonies;”
2. “the judicial laws of the Jews are not necessarily to be received or established in any commonwealth” (this Rogers deduced by reference to the New Testament injunction to obey Gentile rulers);
3. “no Christian man whatsoever is freed from obedience of the moral law.”[40]

This particular exposition is in the best tradition of the making of Reformed theology: it compares scripture with scripture, and weighs carefully the previous conclusions made by men of faith. Rogers’ formulation of the value of the Law was espoused by Archbishop Whitgift in his Defence of the Answer.[41]

The Reformed doctrine of the Law in this reached its final redaction for many generations. It stood as common ground between the bishops of the Church of England and the puritan divines throughout the reign of Elizabeth. It is an integral part of the doctrinal outlook of the Westminster Confession. And the incorporation of the Thirty-Nine Articles into the Book of Common Prayer in 1662 gives testimony to the fact that, historically and officially, the teaching of the Church of England is truly Reformed, both generally and in the particular instance of the doctrine of the Law of God.

* * * * *

The Reformers and their immediate successors strove with the Scriptures, and from them rediscovered the great truths of law and grace. By the Puritan period, these two truths had been nicely distinguished and well related to each other. As a result, the traditional Reformed view from then onwards has presented a thoroughly biblical way of salvation and growth in Christian daily living. Regrettably, but perhaps inevitably, the careful balance needed in order fairly to present the function of the Law has often not been maintained. Polarization has resulted, one side presenting the so-called “social gospel” and the other a facile “easy gospel” of third-rate evangelicalism. But, in the goodness of God, there has been a succession of able theologians who have continued to propound the Law in its true relationship to grace, and so maintain the equilibrium so typical of the Christian Gospel.

At the turn of the present century, S. H. Kellogg wrote, in his introduction to Leviticus, that “the book is of use for today, as suggesting principles which should guide human legislators who would rule according to the mind of God.”[42] This is a distinct echo of Bullinger’s Sermon III. A modern writer, Alan Cole, put the Decalogue firmly in the context of grace and of the covenant, when he stressed that God’s people are bound by God’s law: “it is because of his redemptive work that God has a right to command.”[43] Martin Lloyd-Jones, writing in 1959 on the Sermon on the Mount, struck a truly reformed note: “We are not told in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Live like this and you will become a Christian’; rather we are told, ‘Because you are a Christian live like this.”[44] Here Dr. Lloyd-Jones makes obedience to the Law the resultant of receiving grace, and incidentally he tugs the foundations away from the “social gospel” as well as from the easy evangelicalism so prevalent in his hey-day. In a later passage in the same book, he shows how the work of the Law is also to prompt the sinner to seek grace: “Nothing shows me the absolute need of new birth, and of the Holy Spirit and his work within, so much as the Sermon on the Mount.”[45] Professor J. N. D. Anderson made the same point in his book, Morality, Law, and Grace (1972): “The moral law reveals not only our transgressions and failures, but the essential sinfulness of the human heart. So it drives us to regeneration [that is, to grace] as the only remedy.”[46]

But this is not the theology of all evangelical scholars. Michael Green, who writes very much as an apologist as well as an evangelist, deals with the Sermon on the Mount in his latest popular book, New Life: New Lifestyle. In Chapter five he emphasizes the need to rely on the Holy Spirit to live a life pleasing to Christ. He makes the point that one needs to reason out what Christian behaviour should be in any given situation, and goes on to ask if in fact Jesus was really laying down legislation in the Sermon. He continues: “Not really….Literal obedience to the command completely destroy the principle behind the command…Thank God we are not called to obey a code but to please a person.”[47] Canon Green has unnecessarily juxtaposed precept and principle here. The point he is making carries weight; but in making it he has blurred the edges of Christian norms of behaviour by placing the biblical text subject to reason, rather than the reverse.

Hymns, as they are known today, were not part of the church’s worship at the time of the Reformation. But since the eighteenth century revival they have played a significant role in both reflecting and moulding the theology of Christian folk. Wesley’s hymn books greatly affected the development of Methodism; the Olney hymns similarly played their part in the revival within the Church of England; and Youth Praise is having its effect on worship today.

One of John Wesley’s hymns prays,

Open our eyes, and let us see 

The wonders of thy law.[48]

Another, by Charles Wesley, declares,

All who read or hear are blessed 

If thy plain commands we do.[49]

John Newton’s Olney congregation sang of true holiness:

To walk as children of the day, 

To mark the precepts’ holy light 

To wage the warfare, watch and pray….[50]

Bishop Wordsworth’s hymn on the Scriptures begins,

Lord be thy word my rule.

The hymn is in the first edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and was retained in the Revision. But the modern supplement, One Hundred Hymns for Today, includes Patrick Appleford’s hymn “Lord Jesus Christ,” which affirms,

All your commands I know are true.

Though neither of these two hymns carries the word “law,” yet in each there is an implication of obedience in the words “rule” and “commands.”

The Anglican Hymn Book, published a decade ago, has a number of hymns referring to the power of God’s Law. In Isaac Watts’ hymn “Lord I have made thy word my choice” there are the lines,

I’ll read the histories of thy love 

And keep thy laws in sight.[51]

Charles Wesley’s hymn “Come, O thou all-victorious Lord” is taken from the Methodist Hymn Book. It speaks of the power of the Word to convict of sin:

Strike with the hammer of thy word 

And break these hearts of stone.[52]

Youth Praise offered to the church of the late 1960s a good number of new hymns, many of them speaking of sin and its remedy. Regrettably, some hymns imply by their silence on the law that sin is instinctively recognized by the sinner:

Sometimes when you’re feeling all alone and blue, 

Jesus can come in and help to pull you through; 

Sometimes you just know that you need Jesus too, 

So come on, sinner, come to him, He died for you, 

A sinner such as you, a sinner such as me, 

He came to save from the grave….[53]

This verse is from a hymn that is trying to answer the problem of loneliness. But it answers loneliness with forgiveness. Youth Praise, 269, also tackles this well-known problem of contemporary society, but answers it with the offer of walking with Christ. Young’s hymn, “Jesus grant that we may follow” is one of this collection’s best examples showing the place of God’s Law:

Lord we know we cannot follow 

Till you save us from our sin, 

May the fullness of your Spirit 

Give us risen power within. 

Saviour, give us strength to follow 

Your example and your law; 

Loving You above all others, 

Others may we love the more.[54]

One feels that here, amid the relativity and subjectivity of much neo-evangelical preaching and belief, the objective reference point of the Law of God has been established in a modern hymnbook. One looks in vain for a similar note in the Sound of Living Waters collection by Pulkington and Harper.[55]

In a generation whose Christian public is following the general European trend of non-literacy, folk-singing and listening to folk-singers are growing in popularity. It becomes increasingly important, therefore, for Christian truth to be disseminated through the medium of hymns and songs. In this way it can be heard on record, on cassette, and live. In this way, Christian young people, who share in the general wealth of young people, buy records of Christian “groups,” play guitars, and sing the songs that these groups make popular.

To use the available means of propagation in this way is very much in line with the strategy of Wesley and Whitefield, who preached in the fields, Simeon who rented lecture halls in Cambridge, General Booth who opened soup kitchens, and Billy Graham who hired Haringay. Christian leaders through history have seized the opportunities of the day. Those who, like the Psalmist, love God’s Law have today available to them media for spreading a love of that Law and bringing to Christ Christians who are whole. Expository material in the Reformed tradition is no longer hard to obtain, as it was a generation ago. But those who read it are ministers and preachers. The medium of song is today available to Reformed poets and musicians, those whom God has given gifts in this field, and who are willing in his name to enter the fiercely competitive world of publishing, and place Reformed truth before the Christian public at large.

Notes

1. William Tyndale, Prologue to Romans (Parker Society Edition; Cambridge: The University Press, 1948), I, 487–488. (Further references to the Parker Society edition of the works of the English Reformers will be abbreviated PS, followed by the name of the appropriate author and the volume number of his writings.)
2. PS: Tyndale, I, 415–416.
3. PS: Tyndale, II, 146.
4. PS: Tyndale, I, 449–464.
5. PS: Tyndale, II, 11.
6. PS: Tyndale, II, 39.
7. PS: Tyndale, III, 137.
8. W. A. Clebsch, England’s Earliest Protestants, 1520–1535 (New H:ven: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 184.
9. L. J. Trinterud, “A Reappraisal of William Tyndale’s Debt to Martin Luther,” Church History, XXXI (1962), 36–40.
10. Clebsch, op. cit., p. 180.
11. Ibid., p. 171.
12. Calvin, Institutes, III, xix, 2.
13. Calvin, Institutes, III, xix, 4.
14. Calvin, Institutes, I, iii.
15. “The Old Faith.” PS: Coverdale, I, 43.
16. PS: Coverdale, I, 45–47.
17. PS: Coverdale, I, 40.
18. Clebsch, op. cit., p. 272.
19. Cited in D. B. Knox, The Doctrine of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII (London: James Clarke, 1961), p. 68.
20. Cited in ibid., p. 55.
21. PS: Hooper, I, 281–282.
22. PS: Hooper, II, 26.
23. PS: Bradford, I, 54.
24. Letter to Hart, Cole, etc.; PS: Bradford, II, 196.
25. PS: Bullinger, I, 211.
26. PS: Bullinger, II, 125.
27. PS: Builinger, II, 242, 243.
28. PS: Latimer, I, 370.
29. PS: Latimer, II, 10.
30. PS: The Two Liturgies, A.D. 1549 and A.D. 1552…Set Forth by Authority in the Reign of King Edward VI., 499.
31. PS: Becon, II, 496.
32. PS: Becon, I, 48—49.
33. PS: Pilkington, 104.
34. PS: Pilkington, 97.
35. E. F. Kevan. The Grace of Law (London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1964), p. 21.
36. PS: Jewel, II, 615.
37. PS: Whitaker, 382.
38. PS: Nowell, 125.
39. PS: Nowell, 140.
40. PS: Rogers, 88–91.
41. See PS: Whitgift, III, 552ff.
42. S. H. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus. The Expositor’s Bible (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1891), p. 25.
43. R. Alan Cole, Exodus. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973), p. 25.
44. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1959), p. 17.
45. Ibid., p. 18.
46. J. N. D. Anderson, Morality, Law, and Grace (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1972), p. 22.
47. Michael Green, New Life: New Lifestyle (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), pp. 74-75.
48. Methodist Hymn Book, 304.
49. Methodist Hymn Book, 306.
50. Olney Hymns, Book III, 71.
51. Anglican Hymn Book, 304.
52. Anglican Hymn Book, 482.
53. Youth Praise, 61.
54. Youth Praise, 247.
55. Sound of Living Waters (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975).

Admonition and Error in Hebrews

By Noel Weeks

University of Sydney, N.S.W., Australia

One of the most difficult problems facing the exegete who deals with the New Testament epistles is the reconstruction of the error(s) against which the letters were written.[1] It is obvious that our concepts of the errors combated will affect our interpretation. Failure to raise this problem may lead to the overlooking of exegetical possibilities. Given that the heresies combated have some Jewish background, the New Testament writers were not forced to take issue at every point raised by the heresy. They could accept the Old Testament data as common while subjecting it to a very different interpretation. Much that strikes us as simple teaching may indeed be polemic in that it is designed to demonstrate a different interpretation from that held by the heretics.

We may well suspect that Hebrews is polemical and antithetical in its instruction. The Superiority of Christ to angels to Moses, and of his priesthood to that of Aaron, is directed against those who do not recognize that superiority.[2] We may further suggest that even in its practical admonitions the polemic is never absent. For example Hebrews 2:2, 3 accepts the gravity of the “angelic” revelation only to stress the far greater revelation that came through the Son. Chapter 3 begins with an argument for the superiority of the Son to Moses. The admonition that follows points out (3:16) that the movement led by Moses ended in rebellion and death. Not only does Moses occupy a lesser place; the deliverance led by Moses is also not to be overrated.

It follows therefore that our interpretation of the difficult admonition passages in 5:11–6:12 and 10:26–39 will reflect our understanding of the heresy involved. The practical problem is that we are forced to infer the nature of the heresy from the nature of the polemic. It is hard to prove that a certain view of the heresy is correct. The best that can be argued is that a particular view of the heresy provides a solution for various exegetical problems in the text of the epistle. In describing the heresy we have little hope of giving a full picture of its system of doctrine. Some individual characteristics are the most we can extract from the answer of the writer to the Hebrews.

The heresy saw certain of its practices or experiences as related to the experiences and practices of Israel in the wilderness. We may suspect that this was because they saw themselves as the legitimate continuation of Israel. The definitive and foundational experience for Israel was the wilderness experience. So the heresy interpreted its own practices by reference to Israel in the wilderness. There may have been an element of forced exegesis or, perhaps, allegory in the connection that was made between wilderness Israel and the practices of the sect.

The clearest example is provided by 13:9–14. The writer warns the readers against preoccupation with dietary matters.[3] He then points out that we eat from a different altar than that available to those who serve the tabernacle. Christian “eating” is contrasted to the eating of the tabernacle priests and, it would seem, to the eating prescribed under the rejected dietary laws. For the argument to have force the heresy must have seen a connection between their dietary laws and the regulations for the tabernacle priests.

This example also shows the author’s method of answering the heresy. He does not challenge the connection between wilderness Israel and the heretics; rather he demonstrates the superiority of the new order brought by Christ over the old order. There was no need for the author to challenge the connection the heresy made between itself and wilderness Israel. Since we may presume that the heresy was Jewish, that continuity was there anyway. Furthermore, the author elsewhere sees the continuation of the Old Testament sacrificial system as evidence of its inferiority (10:1–3). It is not at all part of his purpose to argue that the wilderness was a limited and once for all experience. As its sacrificial ordinances with all their weakness continued, so its failures had not been rectified before the coming of Christ. Not only did Moses fail to lead the people into rest (3:16–19); Joshua also did not (4:8).

The superiority of the new order is emphasized in the warning passages as much as in the instruction passages. In 2:1–4 there is a contrast between disobedience to the former revelation and disobedience to the new revelation. The writer goes further in 3:7–4:11, in that he contrasts the deliverance under Moses and Joshua with that brought by the Lord. Whereas Moses and Joshua did not lead the people into rest, those who believe in the Lord do enter into the rest.

In the teaching portions there is an emphasis on the inability of the old ordinances to produce internal change. They are external ordinances (7:18, 19; 9:8–14). Corresponding to this is the mention of disobedience under the old covenant in the warnings (3:15–19). Against those who stressed their continuity with Israel it had to be pointed out that this was not a glorious lineage. Unbelief marked that heritage (cf. Matt 23:29–35; Acts 7:51–53; 28:24–27). The writer stresses the necessity of continuing with Christ lest the believers become like unbelieving Israel (3:6; cf. 10:36–39).

With this background we may turn to the difficult passage 5:11–6:12. We would expect that the author would include, in this warning passage also, the lessons to be learned from the weaknesses and failures under the old covenant. This does not seem to be the case. Rather, it seems to describe the failures of temporary believers in Christ, When we examine the passage more carefully, we are confronted with the basic exegetical problem: the description in 6:1, 2 of elements of instruction which belong with the old order rather than with distinctively Christian teaching. Whereas this would seem to point to the old covenant, the verses which follow (4, 5) seem to indicate Christian experience. Exegetes have been faced with a choice and have chosen to attempt to squeeze the items listed in 6:1, 2 into Christian instruction. If we are forced to a choice, surely the pattern of admonition in the letter would make us look for a description of experiences under the old order. In other words, we should not re-interpret the very clear list in 6:1, 2 in the light of the somewhat indefinite list in 6:4, 5. Rather we should seek an interpretation of 6:4, 5 which brings these verses into line with the indications in 6:1, 2 of a reference to the old covenant. The rest of this paper will be devoted to showing that the latter interpretation is indeed possible, if not demanded by the language, and thus brings this passage into line with the other warning passages in the epistle.

The first exegetical problem is whether we read τίνα (“what are”) or τινὰ (“something of”) in 5:12. Is the author saying that they need to have pointed out to them what are just elementary principles in order that they may progress beyond them or that they need to be taught the elementary principles all over again? The former is obviously the case, because in 6:1 the author warns against going back over the elementary points.[4] Also in favor of this alternative is that the bulk of ancient versions, authors, and accented manuscripts read τίνα.

The phrases, “elements of the beginning of the oracles of God” (τὰ στοικεῖα τῆς ἀρχῆς τῶν λογίων τοῦ Θεοῦ) and “the word of the beginnings of Christ” (τὸν τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ χριστοῦ λόγον), are both aimed to emphasize the absolutely elementary nature of what must be left behind. And both refer to the former revelation. This is somewhat more obvious with the first phrase than the second. “Oracles of God” is used in the New Testament often, if not exclusively, of the Old Testament.[5] The “elements” (στοιχεῖα) may well be a technical term in the heresy being combated. It seems to be a term used by the Colossian heresy (Col 2:8, 20). Without going into the problem of the exact form of the Colossian heresy I think it safe to say that the concern for angels and dietary laws[6] points to a connection between the Colossian and the Hebrews heresies. The “elements” seem connected to the Old Testament in Colossians 2:20–22 and Galatians 4:3. Thus the writer wants to warn his readers of the dangers of remaining attached to the basic rudiments of the Old Testament revelation.[7]

The second phrase is not such a clear reference to the old revelation. Yet what better way to describe the Old Testament than “the beginning (first principles)-of-the-Christ Word”? It is the word which contains the first rudiments of instruction about the Messiah. Yet we must not stop with these rudiments. The things listed in 6:1, 2 are clearly drawn from the Old Testament. There is nothing here that is distinctive of Christian instruction and experience. The matter is practically decided by the mention of “washings.” As 9:10 shows this is a reference to the Old Testament ritual washings.[8]

However, progress from basic instruction to full Christian faith is not automatic. We are dependent upon the work of God (6:3). The thought here is completely in accord with the teaching of Paul (2 Cor 3:12–18), that one cannot progress beyond the Mosaic ordinances without divine intervention. To reinforce the point of the gulf that exists between the elementary ordinances and Christian maturity the writer deals with the sins of those who had received the Mosaic ordinances.

The crucial problem then becomes the interpretation of 6:4, 5. There is an apparent vagueness in the terms used. These terms seem applicable to Christian experience, especially when we note the use of “enlightened” in 10:32. Yet, once again there is nothing distinctively Christian in these terms. They are, in fact, descriptions of the wilderness experience of Israel.

Before proceeding to argue the last point the problem of the overlap of this terminology with Christian terminology must be faced. There is a very real parallel between the great Old Testament act of redemption and the New Testament salvation.[9] The people of God in both eras have had similar experiences. Herein lies the danger for the readers. They may come to see the old revelation as being on the same level as the new. The writer does not deny the reality of this comparison between wilderness experience and Christian experience. “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also” (4:2). Yet he does stress that this was not of profit to those who received the former revelation: “the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.”

There is another possibility. Are the terms used in vv. 4, 5 technical terms within the heresy? Does the particular sect of Judaism involved attempt to connect its experiences and practices with those of wilderness Israel by means of such terms? In other words, their practices would involve “enlightenment,” “tasting,” etc., which are connected by a particular exegesis to Israel’s “enlightenment,” “tasting,” etc. There is no way of proving this possibility. The structure of thought I have suggested finds analogies in Philo and Qumran, but the heresy is not identical with the teaching of Philo or Qumran.[10] All that can be said is that such a structure is suggested by 13:9–14 and is compatible with what we learn from Colossians.

The terms used in vv. 4, 5 have as their background the miracles that Israel witnessed in the wilderness. As far as an echoing of the actual words of the LXX is concerned, there is particular dependence upon the reflection by the Psalms on the wilderness sojourn. The “enlightenment” of Israel is mentioned in Psalms 43:3, 44:3; 78:14; 105:39.[11] To these allusions to the pillar of fire in the wilderness we may add references to the law such as Psalm 119:130. A verse which may link together, by way of allusion, the external light that led Israel and the inner enlightenment is Psalm 36:9.[12]

Israel ate of the “bread of heaven” (Ps 78:24; 105:40). The accounts of the manna mention its taste (Exod 16:31; Num 11:8). The Spirit was given to Bezalel (Exod 35:30, 31). The Spirit was given also to the elders of the people (Num 11:77ff). It was against the Spirit that the people rebelled (Ps 106:33). References to the receipt of the Word of God are too numerous to mention, but Psalm 119:103 might be particularly mentioned as involving also the idea of tasting.

So far the writer has been willing to give great significance to the experience of Israel during the sojourn in the wilderness, Nevertheless by the phrase “the powers of an age to come” he places all this in perspective. The power of God was manifested in the wilderness, but it was a power that did not properly belong to that time. It was an intrusion, a foreshadowing. The powers displayed belong more properly to the age yet to come. The dominant typological structure of Hebrews emerges here. The old era was not complete or significant in itself. What light and significance it had derived from the projection into it of the powers of the age of full revelation. This very phrase is itself strong evidence that these verses do not describe Christian experience. Certainly there is an age to come for the Christian also. However, the stress of Hebrews is that the “age to come” has already come with the coming of the Lord. The future age is not set over against the New Testament age. The “future age” begins with the New Testament age. However, from the standpoint of Israel in the wilderness that age was definitely in the future.

The crowning proof of the insufficiency of that former revelation is the fact that it was those who received it who put the Son of God to death. In 6:6 we meet a clear example of the way that interpretation influences translation, and translation in turn has a strong influence on interpretation. ἀναστανροῦντας is generally translated “crucify again.” Translators are being influenced by the belief that the passage deals with apostate Christians. Yet, in extra-biblical Greek it always means simply “crucify” with the ἀνα prefix having the sense of “up” rather than “again.”[13] What is referred to here is not a figurative recrucifixion by apostate Christians; rather, it is the original crucifixion of the Lord by those who were recipients of all the blessings which came to Israel through Moses. The teaching of this passage is thus another point of overlap between Stephen’s speech (specifically Acts 7:52, 53) and this epistle.[14]

What then is the force of these verses? What is declared to be “impossible”? What is impossible is the revivification of Judaism.[15] The community which had received all of the blessings of the Mosaic economy and yet was without faith will receive the judgment that comes upon the unfruitful field (6:8). This passage is thus a continuation of the thought of the gospels (Matt 3:9, 10; 21:42–44; 23:37–39). It goes against the sense of the passage and the author’s intent to delve into the question of the fate of individuals. His readers were in danger because they failed to see the inadequacies of contemporary Judaism. Under the pressure of persecution they might be tempted to join a sect of Judaism which appeared to offer similar teaching and experiences. The readers must be made to realize that the ship of Judaism was sinking. It could not be refloated. Salvation lay with the church. The Christian community must follow its Lord in a religious separation from those whose share was in the tabernacle (13:10–14).

The author makes it clear in 6:9, 10 that he does not class the recipients of the letter with the unbelievers described earlier. They have shown by their actions that they have taken the side of the Christian community. They need resolution to persevere in that decision. The same point is made in 10:32–39.

The only point that remains for consideration is 10:26–31. Once again we find the reference to sin under the Mosaic law. There is a clear reference to the death of Christ in v. 29. The insult done to the Spirit of God may once again be compared to the accusation which Stephen made (Acts 7:51). The problem rather lies with “and has considered as common the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.” The first part of the phrase is no problem, since it aptly describes what happened at the trial and crucifixion of Jesus (Matt 27:25). The real problem is with the clause “in which he was sanctified.” There is an ambiguity here. Who was sanctified by the blood of the covenant, the murderers of Jesus or Jesus himself? I believe that the latter is the case. It must be remembered that ἁγιάξω (“sanctify”) does not necessarily imply the existence of sin. Thus Jesus was the one “whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world” (John 10:26). Further the whole point of the author has been to emphasize that Jesus has fulfilled the requirements of a high priest. There is an analogy between the Aaronic ordinances and the sacrifice of Christ. So it is reasonable to suggest that as Aaron was consecrated by the blood of the sacrifice (Exod 29) so Jesus was consecrated as high priest through the offering of his own blood.[16] Hence we find in this passage another reference to the heinous transgression of those who had received the law and all the blessings granted to Israel.

Notes

1. The Qumram findings and renewed interest in Jewish sects have resulted in works such as J. J. Gunther, St. Paul’s Opponents and their Background (Leiden; E. J. Brill, 1973). While containing much useful information one cannot but wonder if we yet have the sources necessary for a full understanding of schools of thought such as “the Colossian heresy.” The same applies for the error against which Hebrews is written, in spite of the value of Y. Yadin, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Epistle to the Hebrews” in C. Rabin and Y. Yadin (eds.) Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls Scripta Hierosolymitana 4 (Jerusalem; Magnes Press, 1958), pp. 36-55.
2. Yadin (ibid.) compares Qumran and the beliefs of the addressees of the letter on these points.
3. We meet here one of the points of contact between the “Hebrews heresy” and the “Colossian heresy” (cf. Col 2:20–22).
4. Westcott argues the contrary case, but his point escapes me: it could hardly be said that the Hebrews required to learn what the elements of the Faith were. They knew what they were though they did not know them” (The Epistle to the Hebrews [2nd edn., London, Macmillan, 1892], p. 133).
5. Acts 7:38 and Rom 3:2 are clear cases. 1 Peter 4:11 is doubtful, but a reference to the O.T. Scriptures would not be out of place in the context.
6. Should we add sabbath observance to this list? Compare Col 2:16 with the emphasis in Heb 3, 4 {Heb 4}, that it is through Christ that one enters the true sabbath rest.
7. For a discussion of the milk/solid food image in 5:12–14 {Heb 5}, see R. Williamson, Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), pp. 277ff.
8. Despite the ingenuity of commentators it is hard to explain why multiple “baptisms” should be part of basic Christian instruction. It is questionable whether baptismov” as opposed to bavptisma is used of Christian baptism. Mark 7:4 is clearly a reference to ritual washings. The doubtful case is Col 2:12, where the manuscripts are divided between baptismw’/ and baptivsmati. The question is discussed in J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (2nd edn., London: Macmillan, 1876), ad loc.
9. If the thesis presented here is correct, it explains the overlap between the terminology used in 6:4 {Heb 6:4}, and Christian sacramental terminology (cf., the thesis of Philip E. Hughes, “Hebrews 6:4–6 and the Peril of Apostasy,” Westminster Theological Journal 35 [1972-3], 137–155). Christian terms are drawn from the quarry of the sacramental experience of Israel.
10. Note, however, the comment of Yadin, “…we cannot help feeling that the DSS (Dead Sea Sect) organized itself in as exact as possible a replica of the life of the tribes of Israel in the wilderness…” (op. cit., p. 55). Was Qumran unique in this? Are there overlaps between Qumran and certain aspects of Diaspora Judaism?
11. To save multiple references, all passages are cited according to the psalm and verse divisions of the English translation, rather than the LXX or Massoretic text.
12. If the heresy was trying to connect their own inner experience and Israel’s external experience, they should have turned to such a passage for a precedent.
13. W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 60b.
14. Compare also Acts 7:39 with Heb 3:16; Acts 7:38 with Heb 5:12; Acts 7:44 with Heb 8:5.
15. The teaching of Rom 11:25ff on this point is discussed in H. Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 358ff.
16. Are we meant to connect the blood and water which comes from the side of Jesus (John 19:34) with the pouring of the blood of the sacrifice at the foot of the altar (Exod 39:12)?

A Knowledge of God

The Book of Acts 2.0

Perfection and Eschatology in Hebrews

By Moisés Silva

Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California

This article is an expanded version of part of a paper read before the Evangelical Theological Society, Far Western Region, in November, 1975.

The verb τελειοῦν and its derivatives occur fourteen times in the Epistle to the Hebrews (an average of more than one occurrence per chapter); indeed, about a third of the New Testament occurrences are found in this epistle. This high frequency, which can hardly be explained as a mannerism, suggests that the concept referred to by the terms was of more than average importance for the author. The suspicion is confirmed by even a cursory examination of the contexts where the words are found: Old Testament saints are perfected only with us (11:40; cf. 12:23), for only the divine arrangement mediated by Christ, who is the perfecter of our faith (12:2), may be called perfect (7:11, 19; cf. 9:11), and consequently only his blood can perfect the conscience (9:9; 10:1, 14); further, the author calls Christians to perfection (5:14; 6:1), and even Jesus, we are told, experienced perfection through his sufferings (2:10, 5:9; 7:28).

The modern reader (who, to complicate matters, naturally associates perfection with moral and ethical qualities) feels less than comfortable with this lumping together of quite disparate items. What possible experience is there common to Jesus, to divine-human arrangements, and to sinful men which may be described as the undergoing of perfection? Can we define the word(s), or formulate the concept, in a way that is consistent with these various occurrences?

F. F. Bruce, commenting on 2:10, defines perfection in Hebrews as “unimpeded access to God.”[1] To be perfect, in other words, constitutes inward fitness to approach God. Presumably, Bruce bases his interpretation on the Septuagintal use of τελειοῦν in ceremonial contexts, particularly in the Pentateuch. Gerhard Delling[2] has summarized the evidence by pointing especially to Exodus 29, which speaks of the priestly consecration of Aaron and his sons (verses 9, 29, 33, 35). The Hebrew idiom in these passages (millēʾ yad, “to fill the hand,” translated literally by LXX, τελειοῦν τὰς χείρας) is linked with qiddēsh in verse 33 and clearly means “to consecrate, to qualify someone for priestly service.” We cannot assume, however, that these passages provide the linguistic background to the use of the verb in Hebrews unless we can show (1) that τελειοῦν by itself could be used in this cultic sense and (2) that such a use is called for by the contexts of the verb in Hebrews. Fortunately, we can meet both of these requirements. In Leviticus 21:10 the Greek verb independently translates the Hebrew idiom;[3] in addition, τελείωσις translates mélluʾîm (“consecration, ordination”) in various passages in Exodus and Leviticus. Further, the Epistle to the Hebrews does support this view by bringing together the idea of perfection with that of sanctification (2:10–11; 10:14) and with the broader notion of our approach to God (7:19).[4]

This interpretation, then, evinces sound exegesis and is, I am convinced, correct as far as it goes. A careful study of the material, however, compels the reader to look for more. For example, the use of the term with reference to Jesus, who is blameless (7:26), continues to be a problem, since the consecration of priests did involve moral cleansing.[5] To be sure, an author is at liberty, when drawing an analogy, to ignore whatever elements he wishes,[6] and so the writer of Hebrews may have set aside the notion of moral cleansing when speaking of Jesus as one who was being prepared for His priestly Messianic work; nevertheless, perhaps we can find another interpretation that minimizes, or even eliminates, the suggestion of moral progression in Jesus’ character. A more serious objection to the purely cultic interpretation is that it cannot be carried through consistently.[7] For example, can we say of Old Testament saints that they could not approach God, as would be suggested by 11:40? This too is not a fatal objection. We cannot demand, before adopting a particular lexical meaning, that the author use the term with absolute consistency. But again, if we can find some acceptation that eliminates the objection, surely such a meaning would commend itself to us as highly preferable.

The solution proposed in this article finds its theological basis in the statement at Hebrews 1:4, where we are told that God’s Son has inherited a name superior to that of the angels. But when we ask what is the name that this Son has inherited, the answer is, oddly enough, Son again (verses 5ff). It is, I think, surprising that very little has been made in the past of the apparent fact that the author uses the word Son in two different senses in these verses. In verse 2 it indicates what Jesus is, and has always been, by divine nature; in verses 4ff it is the Messianic title He receives in connection with some type of change in his human nature. Surely this temporal distinction—that after completing his work Jesus became something he was not before—accords naturally with the context: the participle γενόμενος (rather than ὤν) is used in verse 4 and the Father is quoted as addressing to Him the words, “Today I have begotten you” (verse 5). Some commentators in the past have ignored the problem altogether; others have simply asserted that verse four does not affect the truth of Jesus’ eternal sonship, but they fail to explain adequately in what sense the name was inherited at the resurrection; still others have resorted to the questionable expedient that verse 4 refers merely to a divine declaration of what in fact has always been true.[8]

Interestingly, we find a very similar problem in the opening verses of Romans, where Paul speaks of Christ as τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ Θεοῦ in connection with his resurrection.(Romans 1:4). Traditionally, commentators have assumed that the phrase refers to Jesus’ deity, in contrast to his humanity;[9] then, in order to avoid some form of adoptionism, they have suggested that ὁρίζειν here means “to declare,” rather than “to ordain, appoint,” which is the established sense. As a matter of fact, the contrast between κατὰ σάρκα and κατὰ πνεῦμα (which ironically was thought to support this traditional interpretation) should have alerted expositors to the eschatological concerns of the passage.

The contrast is not between the two natures of Christ, but between two successive stages in his human-messianic existence. At the resurrection Christ became life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15:45) and received the exalted sonship which is the crown of his messianic work (in contrast, υίοῦ αὐτοῦ in verse 3 does refer to that sonship which has always been his by virtue of his divine nature). It should be noted, however, that the resurrection does not affect Jesus alone. Insofar as he gives of his life-giving Spirit to his people, he introduces the new age and makes us partakers of his resurrection (Romans 8:9–11; 2 Cor 3:17–18; Eph 2:6; Col 3:3; Phil 3:20).[10]

Now is it possible that the same eschatological concern has affected the opening of Hebrews? To ask the question is to answer it, for the author himself tells us in verse 2 that he is dealing with an event that has taken place ἐπ᾿ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμέρων τούτων (a Septuagintalism vividly recalling the prophetic formula, béʾaḥärîth havyāmîm). Although the significance of the eschatological perspective is not so widely recognized for the author of Hebrews as it is for Paul,[11] the evidence is no less clear.[12] Verse 2 of chapter 1, coupled with the description of νυνί as συντελεία τῶν αἰώνων in 9:26 (cf. 1 Cor 10:11, which itself is in a passage strongly reminiscent of the argument in Heb 3–4, esp. 4:1–2), lends an unmistakable note of fulfillment to the whole epistle, surfacing particularly in such passages as 2:5–9; 6:5; 7:12; 8:6–13; 11:39–40; 12:18. But further, if the epistle is truly informed by an eschatological perspective, and if that perspective in turn gives meaning to the exaltation of the Messiah, we may in effect have our clue to the significance of “perfection,” not only in reference to Jesus, but throughout the epistle.

We may note that the connection between the perfecting of Jesus and his exaltation is not even dependent on a strong eschatological approach. Already in the 19th century, Henry Alford (who, following Bleek, had rejected the ceremonial interpretation on the grounds that the meaning ‘consecrate” did not suit the other passages in the epistle) insisted that the context (verse 9, δόξῃ καὶ τιμῇ ἐστεφανωμένον) leads us rather to the very ancient view that perfected means “glorified.”[13] Indeed, no fewer than seven passages relate the sufferings of the Messiah either to an explicit reference to the exaltation (1:3-4; 2:9; 10:12), or to the notion of perfection (2:10; 5:8–9; 7:27–28), or to both exaltation and perfection (12:2).

The accompanying chart is particularly instructive in that it brings out the parallelism between 2:10; 5:9 and 12:2. Any interpretation of τελειωτής in 12:2 that is not consonant with τελειοῦν, in 2:10 and 5:9 stands self-condemned.[14] It is clear, further, that ἀρχηγός and τελειωτής have the same fundamental significance for the author of Hebrews that ἀρχή, ἀπαρχή and πρωτότοκος have for Paul (Col 1:18; 1 Cor 15:20; Rom 8:29; cf. Col 1:15). Ridderbos rightly insists that in these Pauline passages “what is intended is not merely that Christ was the First or formed a beginning in terms of chronological order; he was rather the Pioneer, the Inaugurator, who opened up the way….In him the resurrection of the dead dawns, his resurrection represents the commencement of the new world of God.”[15] We find the same thought in Hebrews 2:11 (really an explanation of verse 10, πολλοὺς υἱοὺς εἰς δόξαν ἀγαγόντα): Jesus sanctifies His people because He is one with them.[16] Therefore, the perfecting of human conscience (9:9; 10:1, 14) is not a reference to forgiveness or fitness to approach God, which Old Testament saints did experience (cf. Ps 32 and Rom 4), but to the enjoyment of the time of fulfillment, the new epoch introduced by the Messiah through his exaltation. Through him we have been sanctified: we enjoy direct access to the more perfect tabernacle not made by man (9:11). The Old Testament heroes of the faith were not made perfect without us—a statement further defined by the author with the words, οὐκ ἐκομίσαντο τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν (11:39f). In other words, the least in the kingdom of heaven (= the time of fulfillment) is greater even than the greatest of the prophets.[17]

	1:3–4	2:9	10:12
suffering	καθαρισμὸν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ποιησάμενος	διὰ τὸ πάθημα τοῦ θανάτου	ὑπὲρ ἁμαρτιῶν προσενέγκας θυσίαν
exaltation	ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾶ τῆς μεγαλωσύνης… κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν ἀγγέλων	δόξῃ καὶ τιμῇ ἐστεφανωμένον (contrast: βραχύ τι παρ᾿ ἀγγέλους ἠλαττωμένον)	ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ θεοῦ

	2:10	5:8–9	7:27–28
suffering	διὰ παθημάτων	ὢν υἱὸς ἔμαθεν ἀφ᾿ ὧν ἔπαθεν τὴν ὑπακοήν	ἐφάπαξ ἑαυτὸν ἀνενέγκας
perfection	ἔπρεπεν…αὐτῷ… τὸν ἀρχηγὸν τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτῶν… τελειῶσαι	τελειωθεὶς ἐγένετο πᾶσιν τοῖς ὑπακούουσιν αὐτῷ αἳτιος σωτηρίας	υἱὸν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τετελειωμένον

	12:1
suffering	ὑπέμεινεν σταυρόν
exaltation/perfection	τὸν τῆς πίστεως ἀρχηγὸν καὶ τελειωτὴν ᾿Ιησοῦν…ἐν δεξιᾷ τε τοῦ θρόνου τοῦ θεοῦ κεκάθικεν

This viewpoint is confirmed by the fact that the author links the theme of perfection with that of the new covenant. In chapter 7 (verses 11, 19) he states that the Levitical economy could not perfect anything. Then in chapter 8 (verses 6ff) he argues that the superiority of Jesus’ ministry may be gauged by the greatness of the covenant which he mediates, a covenant founded on the “better” promises of Jeremiah 31:31–34, where God, finding fault with the people (cf. Rom 8:3), speaks of the coming days (yāmîm bāʾîm) when he will make a new covenant. The use of the adjective “new,” claims our author, renders the former covenant obsolete. Clearly, then, the writer of Hebrews is unwilling to call the Mosaic economy perfect, not because there was anything intrinsically wrong with it, but because in the divine arrangement it was designed as a shadow, anticipating the substance. The substance, therefore, far from opposing the shadow, is its fulfillment—this is perfection!

This eschatological interpretation of perfection in terms of fulfillment (though not to the exclusion of the cultic interpretation) both yields an excellent sense and results in a more consistent use of the word-group in Hebrews. However, two passages remain that present some difficulties. (1) Hebrews 5:14 to 6:1 speaks of solid food for the perfect and encourages us to go on to perfection. (2) Hebrews 12:23 speaks of God’s people in heaven, in contrast to those on earth, as πνεύματα δικαίων τετελειωμένων. I should like to emphasize that, even if we should decide that the two passages are not consistent with the eschatological interpretation, we need not for that reason set the interpretation aside. No one will argue that the non-technical use of a word by an author rules out the possibility of his using the word technically elsewhere. Thus, it would seem reasonable to suggest that in 5:14–6:1 the author reverts to the usual sense of “maturity” and that in 12:23 the thought of moral perfection is present, without assuming that the other passages are thereby stripped of their eschatological concern. In point of fact, however, one could argue that even these two passages evince some connection with the author’s usual sense.

First, Hebrews 5:14–6:1. In the Pauline epistles the Holy Spirit is the sign of fulfillment, the coming of God’s kingdom; indeed, to use the word πνευματικός (1 Cor 2:15 in comparison with verses 10–12) in reference to people is to make an eschatological statement regarding all Christians. Nevertheless, Paul can also restrict the use of the word so that it has reference to those who give proper manifestation of their spiritual status. For example, he hesitates to call the immature Corinthians spiritual (1 Cor 3:1); similarly, in Galatians 6:1 he speaks of those who are spiritual in contrast to those are caught in a fault. Could we not argue therefore that the author of Hebrews in some contexts may restrict the meaning of perfect to those who are giving proper manifestation that they belong to the age of fulfillment? Indeed, the danger faced by the recipients of the letter was that of going back to the old, obsolete, pre-eschgtological (!) covenant.[18]

Hebrews 12:32 is more difficult. We may ask, however, whether “the spirits of righteous men made perfect” necessarily refers to those who have died. For one thing, verse 9 contains the word spirits without any suggestion of death. Further, one could argue that a distinction is intended between “the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven” (=all God’s people or else those who have died, since they are with the angels) and “the spirits of righteous men made perfect” (=those who remain?). But even if the reference is indeed to those who have died, perhaps the author intends us to understand that finally they too have received the promises; that is, they have now, though in heaven, been perfected together with us (11:40), and thus the eschatological note is present here too.[19] Even more satisfactory is an interpretation recently put forward by W. J. Dumbrell, who argues that Hebrews 12:22–24 directs the reader to the thought of “covenant conclusion, modelled on the Sinai definitive pattern.” Since scrutiny is one of the elements in the covenant conclusion, “spirits of just men made perfect” may give expression to the “formal approval” of God as the judge. That is, the phrase does not at all refer to a group different from “the church of the firstborn”; on the contrary, it is a climactic expression, referring to the “total redeemed community,” who enjoy in festivity the arrival of the coming age.[20]

We may note in conclusion what appears to be a striking and fundamental theological agreement between Paul and the author of Hebrews. No doubt the peculiar use of τελειοῦν in Hebrews might be thought to provide additional evidence for the common view that the New Testament contains a number of theologies, not one.[21] In point of fact, however, the terminology of Hebrews indicates a difference in form, not in content, and a close study of that terminology reveals some patterns in the very structure of the author’s theology that are hardly distinguishable from Paul’s. The discipline of biblical theology, with its emphasis on the distinctive features of the individual New Testament authors, far from disturbing our commitment to the unity of Scripture, establishes it.

Notes

1. The Epistle to the Hebrews, New International Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), p. 44.
2. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, s.v. teleiovw, VIII, 79–84, esp. pp. 80f. The suggestion can be traced back at least as far as Calvin (who translated the verb with consecrare in his commentary on Hebrews 2:10), but it received only moderate support until it was revitalized by Olaf Moe in his short article, “Der Gedanke des allgemeinen Priestertums im Hebräerbrief,” Theologische Zeitschrift 5 (1949), 161–169, especially pp. 165ff. Most recent commentators, though to varying degrees of emphasis, acknowledge the “cultic” significance of the term(s). Note further Paul Johannes du Plessis, TELEIOS: The Idea of Perfection in the New Testament (Kampen: Kok, 1959), p. 213.
3. In other words, this is proof that the technical sense of the idiom did transfer to the “head word.” Such an ellipsis or shortening is “due to the syntagmatic association which had developed between names occurring frequently in the same context; so frequently indeed that there is no need to pronounce the whole phrase: the sense of a contiguous word is, so to speak, transfused into its neighbour which, through a special kind of semantic ellipsis, will act for the complete construction”’ (Stephen Ullmann, The Principles of Semantics, 2nd ed. [New York: Philosophical Library, 1957]), p. 238; for a classic study, see Gustaf Stern, Meaning and Change of Meaning, with Special Reference to the English Language. [Göteborg: Elanders Boktryckei, 1931], Ch. X, esp. pp. 265-277). Although this is a common semantic change (“capital”=“capital city,” etc.), we cannot simply assume that a “head word” may in any situation acquire the sense of the whole phrase; we need to prove it by adducing examples where the usual meaning of the word no longer makes sense.
4. J. A. Bengel astutely comments regarding ejggivzomen in 7:19 {Heb 7:19}: “Haec vero teleivwsi”” (Gnomon Novi Testamenti, ed. tertia [Tubingae: Sumtibus Ludov. Frid. Fues., 1855]).
5. Some authors, in fact, feel that ethical considerations do play a role even in those passages where Jesus is said to be perfected. Cf. Allen Wikgren, “Patterns of Perfection in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” NTS 6 (1959–60): 159-167.
6. Fransisco Rodriguez Adrados, Estudios de lingüistica general (Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, 1969), p. 52, notes that linguistic creativity, particularly the use of metaphors, is only possible because of our ability to neutralize certain distinctions.
7. “Es ist jedoch die Frage, ob der Sprachgebrauch des Hb durchgängig in diesem kultischen Sinn gedeutet werden kann”; so Otto Michel, Der Brief an die Hebräer, Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament, 13. Abteilung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960), p. 77. Indeed, Delling himself devotes a separate section (in TDNT, VIII, 83f and 86f) to the use of the term(s) in the later chapters of Hebrews (see below, note 14).
8. This last viewpoint has sometimes been linked to the idea that “today” in verse 5 {Heb 1:5} is a reference to eternity. Fortunately, very few commentators in recent times have insisted that the author of Hebrews had in mind the doctrine of eternal generation.
9. See especially Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964, orig. 1886), pp. 19f. This interpretation has misled many to conclude that the primary theological significance of Jesus’ resurrection is that it is evidence of his deity.
10. See especially Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 64-68, 214ff. For the comments above I depend primarily on John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), pp. 6ff, and on Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Pauline Soteriology (unpublished Th. D. dissertation, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1969; Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1969), pp. 104ff, 141ff. Notice in particular, with regard to 1 Cor 15:45, the interesting turn suggested by James D. G. Dunn that “life-giving Spirit” can only be interpreted “as a reference to the spiritual experience of the early believers”; indeed, he adds, “the believers experience the life-giving Spirit is for Paul proof that the risen Jesus is sw’ma pneumatikovn” (“1 Corinthians 15:45—Last Adam, Life-giving Spirit,” in Christ and Spirit in the New Testament, ed. Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley [Cambridge: The University Press, 1973], pp. 131f).
11. For example, Jean Héring, The Epistle to the Hebrews (London: Epworth Press, 1970), esp. p. xii, denies it.
12. Perhaps the earliest to recognize fully this fact was Geerhardus Vos, although his work on The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), was not published until 1956, after his death. Du Plessis (see above, note 3) refers on p. 209 to a work by Grosheide, Het eschatologisch karakter van der Brief aan de Hebreën, unavailable to me. In his important article, “The Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews” (pp. 363-393 in The Background of the New Testament and Its Eschatalogy, ed. W. D. Davies and D. Daube in honor of Charles Harold Dodd [Cambridge: The University Press, 1956]), C. K. Barrett comments: “The characteristically Christian conviction…that eschatological events have already taken place…is found as clearly in Hebrews as in any other part of the N.T.” (p. 364), adding that “the thought of Hebrews is consistent, and that in it the eschatological is the determining element” (p. 366). Note finally the recent and useful little work by Bertold Klappert, Die Eschatologie des Hebräerbriefs, Theologische Existenz Heute, 156 (München: Kaiser Verlag, 1969), which places much emphasis on “das eschatologische Christusgeschehen als verbürgte Verheissung” (see p. 54).
13. The Greek Testament (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, & Co., 1870), IV, 44. Alford quotes Theophylact: teleivwsin ejntau’qa noei’ thVn dovxan h{n ejdoxavsqh.
14. For example, Delling considers that teleiwthv” in 12:2 {Heb 12:2} means either “the One who has brought believing to completion,” or “the One who exercises complete faith” (TDNT, VIII, 86f), but neither fits the contexts of 2:10 {Heb 2:10} and 5:9 {Heb 5:9}. Klappert (see above, note 12), who recognizes that in the Epistle the ideas of Jesus’ high priesthood and of His exaltation are inseparable (p. 34), argues that teleiou’n refers to Jesus’ suffering and exaltation in 2:10 {Heb 2:10}; 5:9 {Heb 5:9}; 7:28 {Heb 7:28}; 12:2 {Heb 12:2}; however, he tries to preserve the cultic meaning elsewhere, thus assuming that the author deliberately uses the term(s) in two different senses. He then cleverly seeks to link both meanings with the remark that “gründet für den Hebräerbrief das ‘Schon’ des kultisch-eschatologischen rEkEtoov in dem ku i-eschatologischen Perfekt, so begründet die Vollendung Christi das ‘Noch-nicht’ des futurisch-eschatologischen teleiou’n” (p. 57). However, this raises some fresh problems. It seems more productive to say, not that the author uses the term(s) in two distinct though related senses, but that both senses are present throughout the epistle. That is, the cultic note ‘Provides the background for the use of the term(s), but the eschatological exaltation of Christ, as the fulfillment of the promises, constitutes their concrete designation. With some hesitation, I would suggest that the latter idea may be described as denotation, the former as connotation (however, these terms often serve to confuse, rather than to clarify, the issues).
15. Paul, p. 56.
16. This sanctifying work is carried out by the Holy Spirit, as our author himself may be hinting at with 6:4. Paul in particular emphasizes that what Jesus obtains for His people is applied to them by the Spirit (see above, p. 5 and note 10).
17. Matthew 11:11. For a defense of this interpretation, see Herman Ridderhos, The Coming of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), pp. 53f.
18. In addition, we may note that teleiovth” in 6:1 {Heb 6:1} does not necessarily mean “maturity.” Du Plessis (p. 209) argues for the translation, “Let us address ourselves to the question of perfection.” If this interpretation proves correct, then the passage ceases to be a problem.
19. Cf. G. Lünemann: “The divkaioi, however, are called teteleiwmevnoi not in the sense of the ‘perfect just ones’…, nor yet because they have finished their life’s course and overcome the weaknesses and imperfections of the earthly life, but because they have already been brought by Christ to the goal of consummation” (Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. H. A. W. Meyer [New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890], pp. 718f). Notice also Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952 [orig. 1857]), II, pp. 352f. (also p. 291).
20. “‘The Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect,”’ in The Evangelical Quarterly, 48 (1976): 154-159 (the quotations are from pages 158–159). Dumbrell speaks of “complete divine favour and acceptance” as the thought expressed by “made perfect”; this view, as I have suggested, implies that the OT saints had not received divine acceptance (contra Romans 4:1ff). Nevertheless, Mr. Dumbrell is sensitive to the eschatological note of the epistle, as the concluding comments of his article clearly show.
21. Cf. most recently Werner G. Kümmel who states that for the purposes of dogmatics, “biblical theology is unable to exhibit any unitary teaching in the New Testament” (The Theology of the New Testament According to Its Major Witnesses [Nashville: Abingdon, 1973]), p. 15.