The Bible and the Church Part One: A False Opposition

In an Anglican Facebook group, the same one that I mentioned in the introduction to my last essay, I recently saw the question posed of whether the Bible gave us the Church or the Church gave us the Bible.  These alternatives were presented in such a way as to make clear the underlying assumption that they are mutually exclusive and that it must be one or the other.  Anyone fortunate enough to have studied under the late Dr. Chuck Nichols will remember how fond he was of posing questions like this then answering them with “yes.”  I was very much tempted to follow his example but instead replied by saying that both positions are wrong, that the right way of looking at it is that God gave us both the Bible and the Church.  In thinking more about it I realized that rather than having recourse to an undefined “we” a better way of wording it would have been to say that God gave the Bible to the Church.  Since this was yet another Protestant versus Catholic dispute among orthodox Anglicans who for some reason or another are unwilling to accept that the Anglican Church is both Protestant and Catholic, but a different kind of Protestant from 5-point Calvinist Presbyterians and Baptists and a different kind of Catholic from the followers of the Patriarch of Rome, this answer would probably not have satisfied either side although it ought to satisfy both.  Either side can accept the wording, depending upon how the word Church is defined.   If Church is defined as a synonym for the word “Christians” then the Protestants would have no problem with “God gave the Bible to the Church.”  If Church is defined more narrowly as the society of Christian faith founded by Jesus Christ through His Apostles and continued to the present day under the leadership of the three-fold ministry established in the Apostolic era then the Catholics would have no problem with “God gave the Bible to the Church.”  As to the question of which definition of “Church” is the right one, in Dr. Nichols’ memory I shall give the answer “yes.”

 

Both the Bible and the Church possess authority.  These authorities differ in kind rather than degree so it is pointless to argue about which is the higher authority.  Both derive their different types of authority directly from God rather than the one from the other.  The Bible’s authority comes directly from God because the Bible is the written Word of God.  When you read the Bible or hear it read what you are reading or hearing is God speaking.  The Bible is the written Word of God, not because the Church says it is or somehow made it to be so but because the Holy Ghost inspired its human writers, not just in the sense in which we say Shakespeare was inspired, but in the sense that the words they wrote were not just their words but God’s words as well.  This is not just the Protestant view of the Bible.  The Roman Catholic Church officially declares this to be its view of the Bible in its Catechism, indeed, it even uses the “fundamentalist” language of the Bible being “without error.” (1)  The Eastern Orthodox view of the Bible, whatever David Bentley Hart might have to say about it, is no different.  Liberals in each of these ecclesiastical groups reject this view of the Bible, but this is because liberalism is unbelief wearing a thin guise of faith and so their defection does not take away from the Scriptures as the written Word of God being the common view of Christians.  The point, however, is that the Bible’s authority comes from the fact that it is God speaking, the written Word of God, and that it is God Himself and not the Church that makes it such.

 

The Church, however, also gets her authority directly from God.  When it comes to Church authority, we can speak either of the authority of the Church, that is to say, authority vested in the Church as a whole, organic, society, or we can speak of authority in the Church, which is the authority exercised in that society by the Apostolic ministerial leadership that Christ established.  The distinction is not hard and absolute because for the most part the authority of the collective body is exercised through the ministerial leadership in the body.  Those who erroneously think that the King of all creation, the King of Kings, established His Church as a type of democratic republic, think, equally erroneously, that authority in the Church is delegated to the ministers from the larger body.  This is clearly not what is depicted in the Scriptural history of the Gospels and the book of Acts.  This same Scriptural history testifies to the Church’s receiving her authority directly from God.  God the Son commissioned the Apostles before His Ascension, God the Holy Spirit descended upon them and empowered them on the first Whitsunday, and they exercised this authority and power long before the New Testament which testifies to all this is written.  

 

The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is a key event when it comes to grasping this.  The Council took place around the year 50 AD, almost two decades after the events of the Gospel and the birth of the Christian Church.  While the Gospel of St. Matthew was probably written already at this point in time, at least in the Hebrew or Aramaic form attested to by the Church Fathers, (2) and possibly St. Mark’s Gospel as well, the only book of the New Testament about which we can say with anything like certainty that it predated the Council is the epistle of St. James.  This is because St. James writes in that epistle as if the Church was a Jewish body that had yet to experience any significant influx of Gentile converts.  It was the first such influx that generated the controversy that the Council of Jerusalem, over which St. James presided, convened to address.  It is therefore extremely unlikely that St. James wrote the epistle after the Council.  All of St. Paul’s epistles were written after the Council, however.  Chronologically his first epistle was 1 Thessalonians which was written in his second missionary journey at some point in the time period covered by the seventeenth chapter of Acts. The book of Acts itself was obviously written in the ‘60s because it ends with the arrival of St. Paul in Rome which took place around the year 60.  St Luke wrote his Gospel first but probably just prior to writing Acts and so that Gospel can be dated to the late 50’s or early 60’s.  The epistle of St. Jude seems to have been written around the same time as St. Peter’s second epistle which was written shortly before his death around the year 67.  St. John’s writings were the last of the New Testament books to be written, traditionally ascribed to the very end of the Apostle’s ministry in the last decade of the first century.  The bulk of the New Testament was written after the Council of Jerusalem and most of it at least a decade later.

 

The Council of Jerusalem was not the first time the Apostles exercised the authority that Jesus Christ had given them in the Church.  They had exercised that authority, for example, to establish the order of deacons within the first year or so of the Church as recorded in the sixth chapter of Acts and to convert the existing office of presbyter (elder) into an order of ministry in the Church beneath themselves and above the deacons as attested by SS Paul and Barnabas ordaining such over the Churches they planted on their first missionary journey leading up to the events of the Council and by their association with the Apostles in the Council, thus completing the three tiers of ministry of the Christian Church corresponding to those of the Old Testament Church.  In the Council of Jerusalem, however, we find the Apostles, in council with their presbyters, exercising not merely their authority in the Church, but the authority of the Church, in order to settle a major controversy.  The controversy was over whether Gentile converts to Christianity had to also become Jews in order to become Christians.  After the fall of Jerusalem, 70 AD, the rabbinical leadership of those Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ would redefine Judaism in such a way that a Jew who was baptized into the Christian faith ceased to be a Jew.  Clearly such rabbis were on the same wave length as the synagogue leaders who drove the Apostles and their converts out in the book of Acts.  In the century or so after the Council of Jerusalem the possibility of being both a Jew and a Christian was removed by the leadership of the Jewish side.  In 50 AD, however, two decades before the fall of Jerusalem, the Church had to contend with the question of whether her Gentile converts had to become Jews by being circumcised and agreeing to follow the ceremonial requirements of the Mosaic Law (the kosher dietary code, the Sabbath, etc.)  The controversy broke out first at Antioch, from where SS Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem to consult the Apostles, who after hearing their case and the arguments of the other side, hotly debated the matter until St. Peter addressed them and made the case for the Gentiles not being made to become Jews based upon his account of the conversion of Cornelius the centurion and how that had been brought about and upon salvation being by grace rather than Law.  SS Paul and Barnabas then added their testimony about their ministry among the Gentiles to his and St. James, who as bishop of the Church of Jerusalem had presided over the council and in ruling spoke for the council and the whole Church, ruled against the Gentiles being made to become Jews.

 

St. James referenced the Scriptures in his ruling.  He quoted Amos 9:11-12, a Messianic prophecy in which the Gentile nations are said to be called by the name of the Lord.  When he instructed the Gentile Christians to abstain from the pollution of idols, fornication, and eating things strangled and blood, these prohibitions come from the moral Law (both tablets of the Ten Commandments are represented) and from the Noachic Covenant made with all mankind after the Deluge.  The purpose of these Scriptural references, however, was not to show that the Council had found the answer spelled out for them in the pages of the Old Testament.  The Council had not found their answer there because it was not there to be found, at least not in the way one would think it to be if certain extreme versions of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura were correct.  The Scriptural references are to show that the Council’s decision was in accordance with the Old Testament, in harmony with the Hebrew Scriptures, rather than contradictory to them or seeking to overturn them.

St. Paul in his epistles would provide a doctrinal foundation for the Church’s ruling on this matter.  The Mosaic Law had been a wall of separation between the Jews and the Gentiles.   Jesus Christ had nailed the Law to His cross and in His death had removed the wall, uniting Jews and Gentiles to each other and Himself in His one Body, the Church.  That Jews and Gentiles were to be united in this way had been a mystery in the previous age before Christ had come, but now that Christ has come it is revealed.  In the unity of the Church, on those external and ceremonial matters where the Law had previously separated Jews and Gentiles, liberty was now to reign.  These ideas are taught by St. Paul throughout his epistles.  The Church’s ruling in the Council of Jerusalem had preceded the writing of these epistles, however, and it did not include this sort of doctrinal explanation.

 

This illustrates how the authority that God has given the Church and the authority of the Bible with differs in kind.  The authority of both pertains to doctrine.  Doctrine comes in two basic kinds, doctrine regarding the faith, and doctrine regarding practice. Regardless of whether it consists of truths to be believed and confessed, or commandments to be followed or done, sound doctrine comes from God through revelation.  It is through the Scriptures that this revelation comes because the Scriptures are the very words of God which the Holy Ghost inspired the human writers to write.  This is the nature of Scriptural authority.  The truths about Christ removing the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles and uniting them in one body were written by St. Paul in his epistles rather than declared by edict of the Church at the Council of Jerusalem because St. Paul was writing Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. 

 

This is not the nature of the authority given to the Church.  St. Jude speaks of the faith has having been “once delivered to the saints.” The faith, the body of truths which we believe and confess as Christians, was delivered to the Church by Jesus Christ in the days of the Apostles.  She was charged with safeguarding it which is the effect of St. Jude’s injunction to “earnestly contend” for it and so charged was vested with all the authority necessary to carry out this task. This includes the kind of authority on display in the Council of Jerusalem. 

 

A controversy had arisen.  It was a doctrinal dispute, having to do primarily with matters of practice although it also touched upon matters of faith particularly with regards to salvation.  The Church heard both sides, deliberated, and issued a judicial ruling.  While her ruling was not taken from the Scriptures in the same sense it would have been as if the dispute had been about whether or not one is allowed to help himself to his neighbour’s belongings and the ruling of no was taken from Exodus 20:15 she did cite the Scriptures to show her ruling was in harmony with them.  Despite not being taken directly from the Scriptures, neither did her ruling add to the teachings of Scriptures in a revelatory way in the way St. Paul’s epistles later would. 

 

The Church has no revelatory authority to add to the faith she has been entrusted with.  She can however exercise her judicial authority in safeguarding the faith to define it, and she has been called upon to do so time and again, especially in the centuries after Scriptural revelation had been completed in the first.  This includes identifying heresy as heresy, such as when she defined Arius’ doctrine (that there was a time when the Father was without the Son) as heresy.  It includes clarifying sound doctrine, such as when she issued the Definition of Chalcedon explaining that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, Who in the Incarnation added a complete and perfect human nature to Himself in such a way that He remained the one Person He had always been, but with two natures that retained their differences and distinctions, but were now in His Person indivisible and inseparable.  It also involves summarizing the truths that are de fide, of the faith in such a way that rejection places one outside the faith, such as was done in the Apostles’ and Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creeds.  None of this added anything to the content of the Apostolic faith and we should be very grateful that the Church put this effort into contending for the faith rather than saying something to the effect of “eh, they have the Bible, that’s good enough, they don’t need us to do anything about it.”

 

The two types of authority clearly complement each other.  It is wrong to pit them against each other as is so often done by both sides in these “Protestant” vs. “Catholic” disputes.  Since they differ from each other in kind, it is also wrong to try and rank them as if the difference were one of degree.  Neither the Bible nor the Church gives the other to us.  God has given us the Christian faith.  The “us” to whom He has given the Christian faith is not merely “us” as individuals but also and even more so “us” as the community of faith that is the Church.  We, both as individual Christians and as the Church, have been charged with sharing the Christian faith with the world through evangelism.  The Church has been charged with keeping the faith with which she has been entrusted safe from error. To assist her in keeping this charge, God has given the Church the necessary tool of His own written Word, the Bible.  The Bible was primarily given to the Church as a society rather than Christians as individuals.  Protestantism tends to see it otherwise, but it was not until the eve of the Reformation that the printing industry developed the technology that would make it practical for every Christian to have a personal copy of the Bible.  Ancient Israel had received her Scriptures from God as a national community and in the time of Christ’s earthly ministry they were read, heard, and studied as such, or sung in the case of the Psalter, in the communities known as synagogues.  It was no different for the Christian Church when she inherited these Scriptures from Israel as her Old Testament and as the Apostolic teachings were written down and received by the Church as the New Testament that completed her Scriptures they were received as writings to be read and heard and studied as a community in just the same way.

 

In Part Two we shall look at the how the proper view that God has given the Bible to the Church relates to the question of how we know what belongs in the Bible.  This question is frequently raised by those arguing for the “Church gave us the Bible” position.  Usually when this question is raised in this way it is canon that is in view.  When the question is presented with a narrow focus on canon it becomes “which books belong in the Bible?”  Canon is not the only aspect to this question, however. There is also the matter of text.  The two largest examples will illustrate what I mean by this.  Do the long ending of St. Mark’s Gospel (16:8b-20) and the Pericope de Adultera (John 7:53-8:11) belong in the Bible or are they interpolations? They are found in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts as well as the ancient translations and in quotations by the Church Fathers but are missing from a couple of very old manuscripts.  Does the age of these manuscripts outweigh all the other evidence?  The question of text and the question of canon are two sides to the same question of what belongs in the Bible. We shall, Lord willing, see how the matters discussed in this essay inform the answer to this question in Part Two.

 

 (1)   Catechism of the Catholic Church: Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by Pope John Paul II, 2^nd Edition (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 107.

(2)   Eusebius of Caesarea, the “Christian Herodotus” or father of Church History said that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew prior to leaving the Holy Land (Historia Ecclesiastica, 3.24.6).  This would date the Hebrew original to about a decade prior to the Council of Jerusalem.  There is a general Patristic consensus that St. Matthew’s was the first Gospel written  which is an excellent commentary on the worth or lack thereof of Modern scholarship which disagrees and says St. Mark wrote first.  There is also a Patristic consensus that St. Matthew’s Gospel was written in Hebrew – they may have meant Aramaic although St. Jerome who saw the original in the library of Caesarea (De Viris Illustribus, 3) would have recognized the difference – before being translated into Greek.  St. Irenaeus, however, said that both SS Peter and Paul were in Rome at the time of its composition (Adversus Haereses, 3.1.1) which would have be 60 AD or later.  Although St. Irenaeus was talking about the original Hebrew composition he could have gotten the time confused with that of the Greek composition. 

The Pauline Authorship of the Epistle to Hebrews

 

Objections and Answers

 

The arguments against St. Paul’s authorship of the epistle to Hebrews are incredibly weak as is almost inevitably the case for opinions that claim the consensus of Modern scholarship.  Thomas R. Schreiner, the James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of the commentary on Hebrews in the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2015) provides three such arguments. 

 

The first of these is “in Paul’s 13 letters he identifies himself by name, thus the absence of a name in Hebrews renders it doubtful that Paul wrote the letter.”  This, in my opinion, is the only reason there has ever been any question about the matter. 

 

Here is why it is a weak argument.  While St. Paul mentions his name more than once in several of his epistles (both to the Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, both to the Thessalonians, II Timothy and Philemon), the place where it occurs consistently in each of these and all his other acknowledged epistles is the first verse where it can be found as the first word in the opening salutation.  This is not unique to St. Paul.  SS James and Jude begin their epistles with such a salutation in which their names come first, followed by a description of themselves, then an identification of to whom the epistle is addressed.  St. Peter begins both of his epistles this way.  St. John includes such an introductory salutation in his second and third epistle, but does not include his name but rather identifies himself only as “the elder.”  St. John’s first epistle, however, does not contain an introductory salutation.  There are only two epistles in the New Testament in which this is omitted.  Hebrews is the other.  Since the entire customary section of the epistle in which St. Paul’s name can be counted on to appear in his other epistles is omitted entirely from this one, the absence of his name is much less of an argument against his authorship than it would have been had the introductory salutation appeared without his name or with a substitute for it as in St. John’s epistles.  

 

Schreiner’s second argument is “stylistic arguments should not be relied on too heavily since the Pauline corpus is so limited. Still, the polished Greek style of Hebrews doesn’t accord with what we find in the Pauline letters.”

 

This is the strongest of his three arguments.  Note however, his own caveat against relying too much upon this kind of argument.  There are other reasons than the size of the Pauline corpus for why this argument should not be given too much weight.  For one thing, this is frequently grossly exaggerated.  There are plenty of similarities as well as differences between the Greek of Hebrews and that of the acknowledged Pauline corpus.  The claim that Hebrews presents a fine-tuned argument of a superior type to that found in St. Paul’s other epistles does not hold up if the comparison is to Romans.  The acknowledged Pauline epistles were written over a period from the early 50’s until close to the Apostle’s death around 65 AD (II Timothy).  They vary in the degree of polish to their Greek style.  The ones in which he himself describes his speech as “rude” (II Corinthians 11:6, in a context that alludes back to the beginning chapters of I Corinthians) are among his earliest.  The more polished ones, such as Philippians, are among he later Prison Epistles.  This needs to be taken into consideration in contrasting style because after a decade of practice in writing epistles, which he had spent planting Churches in Greek cities in the company of some polished Greek speakers, it is to be expected that his style would become more polished. His own earlier reference to his speech as rude, however, should not necessarily be taken as meaning that he could not speak or write polished Greek.  It would be rather odd for this to be the case of someone with his education raised in Tarsus.  In the Corinthian epistles his point seems to be, rather, that he is not relying upon clever rhetoric to persuade but on the power intrinsic to the Gospel, which suggests a deliberate choice to speak plainly rather than the inability to speak otherwise. 

 

Moreover, there is no reason to think that St. Paul, who we know made use of amanuenses for his epistles, might not have made use of St. Luke in an advisory or editorial capacity to polish up his Greek on this occasion.  The evidence that supports Pauline authorship tells us that if St. Paul was the author, the epistle was written after his first imprisonment in Rome.  That St. Luke accompanied St. Paul to Rome we know from the book of Acts, in which the arrival at Rome like the voyage is told in the first person plural (Acts 28:16).  That St. Luke was with him in Rome at the very end we know from II Timothy 4:11.  Therefore, when writing the epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul would have had at hand a companion who was quite capable of polishing up his Greek style as it is similar to the style he used in his own two books.  Indeed, that something very much like this took place appears to be hinted at by Origen, whose teacher St. Clement of Alexandria was the first to comment on the stylistic differences between Hebrews and the other Pauline epistles.  St. Clement thought that St. Paul wrote the epistle in Hebrew and that someone else translated it into the Greek text that has been handed down.

 

Schreiner attempted to argue that this is not what Origen was saying but David Alan Black’s misinterpretation of Origen.  He wrote:

 

David Alan Black, however, argues Origen believed Paul was the author but someone else was the penman. Black’s interpretation of Origen should be rejected. It has been shown that when Origen speaks of who wrote the epistle he was referring to the author, not merely the secretary. Hence, the notion that Origen believed Paul was the author fails to persuade.

 

While he provides a reference to David L. Allen’s commentary on Hebrews to back up his claim that Black is wrong about Origen, here is the entire quotation of Origen from Eusebius in context with bold added for emphasis:

 

In addition he makes the following statements in regard to the Epistle to the Hebrews in his Homilies upon it: That the verbal style of the epistle entitled ‘To the Hebrews,’ is not rude like the language of the apostle, who acknowledged himself ‘rude in speech’ (2 Corinthians 11:6) that is, in expression; but that its diction is purer Greek, any one who has the power to discern differences of phraseology will acknowledge. Moreover, that the thoughts of the epistle are admirable, and not inferior to the acknowledged apostolic writings, any one who carefully examines the apostolic text will admit.’ Farther on he adds: If I gave my opinion, I should say that the thoughts are those of the apostle, but the diction and phraseology are those of some one who remembered the apostolic teachings, and wrote down at his leisure what had been said by his teacher. Therefore if any church holds that this epistle is by Paul, let it be commended for this. For not without reason have the ancients handed it down as Paul’s. But who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows. The statement of some who have gone before us is that Clement, bishop of the Romans, wrote the epistle, and of others that Luke, the author of the Gospel and the Acts, wrote it. But let this suffice on these matters. (Eusebius, Church History, 6.25.11-14).

 

Since Origen lived in the late second to mid third centuries the ancients to whom he refers must go back very far.

 

Origen made reference to Hebrews in numerous other works and consistently identified St. Paul as the author, including in multiple places in his magnus opus, On First Principles.  See, for example, his Letter to Africanus, 9.  David Alan Black was quite right in saying Origen thought St. Paul to be the author of Hebrews.

 

If the objection be made that St. Paul did not do this with his other epistles, including his final epistle, II Timothy, to this the answer can be made that Hebrews was written to a very different audience than that to which St. Paul was accustomed to write, to Jewish Christians outside of his own jurisdiction (Gal. 2:7-8) for whom he could not rely upon his own Apostolic authority in the way that he did with Gentile Christians in Churches under his jurisdiction which he for the most part had planted, which provides ample reason for him to have made use of the resource of St. Luke that we know was available to him.  That he did not do so in writing to St. Timothy is easily enough explained by the fact that he would have felt no such need in writing to a close companion.

 

Schreiner’s third argument is “the writer separates himself from the original eyewitnesses in Heb 2:3.  Paul, by way of contrast, emphasizes repeatedly his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ and refuses to put himself in a subordinate position to the apostles and eyewitnesses. This last reason, in particular, rules out the notion that Paul was the author.”

 

Schreiner seems to think that this is the deathblow to the claim of Pauline authorship.  It is no such thing.  In fact, it is explained by a factor that I already identified in my response to Schreiner’s second argument.  The epistle of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians.  In his epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul writes that he was the Apostle to the uncircumcision – Gentiles -, as St. Peter was the Apostle to the circumcision – Jews.  Therefore, as author of Hebrews St. Paul would have been writing to those whom he acknowledged as belonging to St. Peter’s jurisdiction rather than his.  Therefore, the occasion called for a very different approach than trumpeting his own Apostolic authority as he did especially when it was challenged, as is the case with the epistles to the Corinthians, or when there was a need to establish his equality with the other Apostles as when, in the epistle to the Galatians, the ruling of the Council of Jerusalem in which the other Apostles backed up his position, was still in the process of being circulated throughout the Churches.  That Hebrews 2:3 if written by St. Paul is compatible with Galatians 1:11-12 can be seen in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians.  In the third verse St. Paul speaks of his gospel as “that which I also received” which brings Hebrews 2:3 in, and in the eighth verse he testifies to his own witness to the central Gospel fact of the Resurrection.  Note the “first of all” in verse three and the “last of all” in verse eight.  The thoughts of both Hebrews 2:3 and Galatians 1:11-12 are here united in a single passage.  Look at the wording of St. Paul in Hebrews 2:3 “and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.”  What was delivered unto him by the Twelve confirmed what he had already received directly from Christ.

 

Pauline Thought and Style in Hebrews

 

That these arguments against Pauline authorship are far from being persuasive I trust that I have demonstrated.  I will now move on to making the positive case for the Pauline authorship of the epistle.  Since so much has been made of the difference in Greek style between the text of Hebrews and the text of the acknowledged Pauline corpus I will start by noting textual similarities between these.  This will not be an exhaustive treatment but will focus on the biggest similarities.  For those interested in Greek Paulisms in Hebrews I refer you to David Alan Black’s book listed in For More Reading below.

First I will make what ought to be an obvious observation.  While pointing out that letter X and letter Y both contain word Z does not amount to conclusive proof that letter X and letter Y were written by the same person it is stronger evidence for that conclusion than pointing out that letter A contains word C while letter B does not is for the conclusion that letters A and B were written by different people.  Pointing out that the expression “flesh and blood” appears only five times in the entire Bible, all in the New Testament, once spoken by the Lord Jesus (Matt. 16:17), thrice in acknowledged Pauline epistles (1 Cor. 15:50, Gal. 1:16, and Eph. 6:12) and the final time in Hebrews 2:14 is stronger evidence that St. Paul wrote Hebrews than the argument that the Lord Jesus is repeatedly called a priest in Hebrews but not once in the rest of the Pauline corpus is against the Pauline authorship of Hebrews.  This would be the case even if there was not a glaring explanation of St. Paul’s heavy use of the word in one epistle and non-use of it in the others.  Writing to Jewish Christians, in Hebrews St. Paul is making the case for Jesus as the fulfilment of all to which the Old Covenant pointed, the Priest of the heavenly tabernacle Who offered Himself there as the one sacrifice that could actually accomplish that which the Levitical priests and the sacrifices of bulls and goats could only prefigure.  Writing to Gentile Christians, St. Paul emphasized their full inclusion in the New Covenant alongside Jewish Christians accomplished by Jesus Christ in His death in which the Law was removed as a divider between Jew and Gentile.  Speaking of Jesus as Priest was necessary to the argument in Hebrews but not to that in the other epistles.

 

The similarities between Hebrews and the other Pauline epistles go beyond expressions which appear in both, however.  Take the warning passages in the epistle to Hebrews for example.  There are five of them in total, the first of which being the very verse (2:3) that some think is the definitive evidence against Pauline authorship, the second is the extended quotation and commentary on the Venite in the third and fourth chapters, the third being the favourite passage of those on the Arminian side of a debate I have no intention of getting into here (6:4-8), the fourth occurring at the spot where the main argument has been wrapped up and the shift into practical application is beginning (10:26-31), and the fifth being 12:14-29.  The way these appear, punctuating the flow of the main argument, closely resembles the warning passages in the acknowledged Pauline corpus (1 Cor. 6:9-10, Gal. 5:19-21, Eph. 5:5-7).  Now these last warning passages consist of a list of types of people or the behaviours that characterize them who will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.  The warnings in Hebrews are against apostasy and more specifically the apostasy of falling back from Christianity into a Judaism that does not acknowledge Jesus as the Christ.  This is precisely the sort of difference we would expect given the difference between those addressed and the nature of the case being made to them.  That there are more of these in Hebrews than the other epistles can be explained by the fact that they are far more directly connected to the purpose of the epistle than is the case with the others.  Nevertheless, they share with the other Pauline warnings the feature of being followed by a positive exhortation based upon the Apostle’s confidence that God’s grace in those to whom he is writing is greater than the evils against which he is warning them.  Compare Hebrews 6:9 with 1 Corinthians 6:11 and Galatians 5:22-25.

 

Or consider the ending of the warning passage in Hebrews 10.  Verse 38 begins with a quotation from Habakkuk “the just shall live by faith” that is used by St. Paul in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11 but by no other New Testament writer.  This is followed by the final words of the warning in the remainder of the verse, then by the confident assertion “But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul” in the next verse, the final verse of the chapters, which segues into an extended discussion of faith in the next chapter that includes a definition of faith (v. 1), a declaration of the necessity of faith (v. 6), and a catalogue of Old Testament figures that emphasizes all that they were able to accomplish by faith.  Notice what is said about Noah in verse 7 “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”  Could there be any expression more Pauline than this?  While Johannine literature also emphasizes the role of faith in salvation, St. John prefers the verbal form to the noun and the concept of salvation that he stresses in connection with believing is everlasting life.  It is St. Paul who talks about the righteousness that is by faith. Think about how he addresses this in Romans.  After having shown salvation to be unattainable through works, whether one is under the Law like the Jews, or under his own conscience like the Gentiles, because with or without Law all have sinned, he returns to the thought with which he began the discussion in 1:16-17, and declares that “now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe” (3:21-22, italics mine).  In the following chapter he connects this thought with heirship just as in Hebrews 11:7, albeit speaking about Abraham rather than Noah (Rom. 4:13).  There are other variations on this wording throughout Romans with “righteousness which is of faith” occurring again in verse 10:6.

 

From start to finish, important concepts from the acknowledged Pauline corpus reappear in Hebrews.  In Hebrews 1:2 the Son’s instrumental role in creation is mentioned “by whom also he made the worlds” and then connected in the following verse with the Son’s being the image of the Father “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.”  These thoughts are similarly connected in Colossians 1:15-16 where they are presented in the reverse order, although different words for image are used.  Indeed, the next phrase in Hebrews 1:3 about the Son’s sustaining or preserving all things in being “and upholding all things by the word of his power” has a parallel, albeit a more loose one, in the continuation of the thought in Colossians “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” (v. 17) Hebrews then goes on to say “when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” and a similar reference to His atoning work occurs right before the Colossians passage “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” (v. 14) If we look at the larger context of the Hebrews passage we find that just before the mention of Christ’s role in creation, it is said that God has appointed Him “heir of all things” and a few verses later the Son is called the “firstbegotten.” (v. 6) The Colossians passage calls the Son the “firstborn of every creature” (v. 15) and the “firstborn from the dead” (v. 18).  The same word πρωτότοκος that is rendered “firstbegotten” in Hebrews is rendered “firstborn” in the two verses in Colossians.  It needs to be stated that it is not temporal beginning but the position or status, with rights and authority, that is indicated by this word in these verses.  This position/status which is called “preeminence” in Col. 1:18 is the overarching theme of both passages.

 

This is not like the lengthy parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels.  The Evangelists each wrote his own account of events in the same life.  A great degree of overlap is to be expected.  Even the parallels between Jude’s epistle and the second chapter of II Peter are a different case.  Both are denunciations of false teachers and it is likely that SS Jude and Peter were talking about the same specific false teachers.  In Hebrews and Colossians what we find are the same doctrinal concepts about Jesus and the fact that we find them all in association with each other in one place in both epistles is stronger evidence that St. Paul wrote both than if all of the concepts from Hebrews had been found separately and interspersed throughout St. Paul’s other writings. Compare this to the reference to the Son’s sitting down at the right hand of God. This recurs throughout Hebrews (8:1, 10:12, 12:2) and it also recurs throughout St. Paul’s acknowledged corpus (Rom 8:34, Eph. 1:20, Col. 3:1).   On its own this is a much weaker argument for Pauline authorship of Hebrews than the parallels between Hebrews 1 and Colossians 1, especially since it is referred to by many others as well (Jesus in His trial before Caiaphas, St. Peter and the other Apostles in Acts 5:31, St. Luke in reference to St. Stephen’s vision in Acts 7:55, and St. Peter in 1 Pet. 3:22 also mention it).  Taken with the Hebrews/Colossians comparison, however, the multiple references in both Hebrews and St. Paul’s other epistles provide additional corroborating evidence.

 

Also note that while the instrumental role of the Son in creation is also emphasized by St. John in the prologue to his Gospel, St. John speaks of Him there as the Word, as part of his larger allusion to Genesis 1 in which God speaks everything into existence.  In Hebrews as in Colossians, He is spoken of as the Son.

 

In the second chapter of Hebrews we find a passage (vv. 9-18) that has parallels throughout St. Paul’s corpus.  Jesus’ journey to Exaltation through Humiliation unto death (v. 9) is discussed here as in Philippians 2:5-11, His destruction through death of death personified in the devil (v. 14) brings to mind 1 Corinthians 15, note especially verse 26, and when Hebrews 2:16 says “ but he took on him the seed of Abraham” remember that it is St. Paul who identifies the seed of Abraham with Christ in Galatians 3:16.

 

At the end of chapter five of Hebrews we find a lengthy rebuke of the intended readers for being less mature in their faith than they ought to be.  Jesus has just been referred to as a “high priest after the order of Melchisedec” (v. 10) and of Melchisedec the epistle says “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.” (v. 11) Immediately after this the epistle says:

 

For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (vv. 12-14)

 

There is one other passage in the New Testament that is very similar to this.  St. Paul also rebukes the Corinthians for their immaturity, saying that he needs to feed them with milk when they should have moved on to meat.  Here is the passage:

 

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? (I Corinthians 3:1-3)

 

No Anonymity

 

Perhaps the most important similarity between Hebrews and the rest of the Pauline corpus, however, is the final verse.  That verse is “Grace be with you all. Amen.” (Heb. 13:25).  A version of this ends every single Pauline epistle in the New Testament, usually in the last verse, sometimes in the penultimate (1 Cor. 16:23 for example).  This is the simple version of it.  The most complex is the familiar Trinitarian Grace from 2 Corinthians 13:14, “
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.”  The significance of this is a) again, all St. Paul’s epistles end with this, b) no epistle attributed to any other author ends with this and the only other book to end with it is Revelation which is not an epistle and was written long after St. Paul’s death, and most importantly c) St. Paul tells us what this means.   The first two epistles St. Paul wrote are I and II Thessalonians.  These were written shortly after the events of Acts 17:1-10 in which St. Paul on his second missionary journey had come to Thessalonica, preached in the synagogue, established a Church in the house of one Jason, then fled to Berea after trouble was stirred up by those in the synagogue who did not believe assisted by “certain lewd fellows of the baser sort” (v. 5) Not having had time to properly instruct the Thessalonian Church, St. Paul wrote the first epistle shortly after his flight, then wrote the second epistle when word came to him that the Thessalonians had received a letter purporting to be from him and claiming that the Second Coming had already occurred (II Thess. 2:1-2).  Therefore, he ended this epistle with instructions as to how they could tell a real epistle of his from a false one.  Every epistle of his would end with a salutation that he would write himself (without an amanuensis) and it would be the Grace. “The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” (II Thess. 3:17-18).

 

This means that St. Paul did identify himself as the author of Hebrews after all.  The grace at the end is his signature.  The verses prior to that strongly indicate his identity as well.  He was writing from Italy (13:24), and would travel to them with St. Timothy who had just been set free if he were to make the journey shortly (v. 23).  The wording reads like a short version of the wrap-up to any Pauline epistle (and the brevity of it is noted v. 22).  Earlier in the epistle he wrote “For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” (10:34). He had been in bonds, clearly had been set at liberty if he was contemplating making a trip to them with St. Timothy, and was in Italy.

 

If that were not sufficient proof, St. Peter also identifies St. Paul as the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews.  Here is St. Peter writing at the end of his second epistle (and his life):

 

And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (II Pet. 3:15-16).

 

We see from this passage that St. Paul had written to the same people to whom St. Peter was writing.  These were the same people to whom he wrote his first epistle (II Pet. 3:1).  These were “the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (I Pet. 1:1), i.e., diaspora Jews in Asia Minor who had become Christians (v. 2).  None of the thirteen epistles that begin with St. Paul’s name were written to these.  This could not be an allusion to a non-scriptural epistle because St. Peter identifies it as scripture.  The epistle he is talking about contains “things hard to be understood.”    While this is not necessarily what St. Peter is alluding to, note that Hebrews says of things concerning Melchisedec that they are “things hard to be uttered” (5:11) but utters them anyway a couple of chapters later (7:1-10).  Presumably something hard to utter is also hard to understand.  Finally “the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation” is the minor theme of Hebrews.  The major theme, of course, is that the first and lesser Covenant has been fulfilled – made full or complete – by that of which it was merely the shadow, the greater New Covenant.  The minor theme, however, is there in all the warnings as the reverse complement of the idea that if neglecting or violating the first Covenant had severe consequences, so much worse will be the consequences for neglecting the salvation offered in the New Covenant, which salvation has come at last, after and in despite of all the sin and rebellion, because of the patient, longsuffering, grace of God.

 

At a future date I may follow this up with an examination of the Patristic evidence that was only touched in the Objections Answered section.

 

For Further Reading

 

David Alan Black, The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul (Gonzalez, Fl: Energion Publications, 2013).

 

Christopher Wordsworth, On the Canon of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and on the Apocrypha, Eleven Discourses Preached Before the University of Cambridge, Being the Hulsean Lectures for the Year 1847 (London: Francis & John Rivington, 1848), “Lecture VIII” 200-243.

 

There is a chapter in a seventh century commentary on Hebrews which also presents a very strong case for Pauline authorship that answers many of the arguments “the consensus of Modern scholarship” finds so convincing before there ever was such a consensus but it is against my principles to recommend anything by someone who supported the Puritan revolt against King Charles I which was the mother of all left-wing revolutions.

The Second Article – God the Son

 The first Article of the Creed, as we have seen, is an affirmation of faith in God the Father, the Creator of all things.   The second Article is an affirmation of faith in God the Son.   It is the first of six Articles that pertain to the Son before the affirmation of faith in God the Holy Spirit in the eight Article.   Since the Creed consists of twelve Articles in total, this means that half of them concern God the Son.

 

In the Apostles’ Creed the second Article is “et in Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominus nostrum” which in the English of the Book of Common Prayer is “And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord”.   In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed the second Article is “Καὶ εἰς ἕνα Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ, τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων.”    In this series we shall treat what is ordinarily considered the third Article of the conciliar Creed to be part of the second.   This is “φῶς ἐκ φωτός, Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ, γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί· δι' οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο.”    Taken together, these are rendered in the Book of Common Prayer as  “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made.”   Note that in the Greek of the Creed the words “Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ” do not precede “φῶς ἐκ φωτός”.   Here the Book of Common Prayer follows the Latin which has “Deum de Deo” before “lumen de lumine”.   This is one of two places where the Latin text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed inserts something that is not present in the original Greek, the other being the famously controversial Filoque in the Article about the Holy Spirit.  This is less controversial than the Filoque which played a key role in the dispute which led to the Greek and Latin Churches breaking Communion with each other because here the Latin interpolation does not express anything about which the Latin and Greek Churches are in theological disagreement.   Indeed, “Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ” appeared in the original Nicene Creed of 325 AD but was dropped when the Creed was revised at the First Council of Constantinople of 381 AD.   Redundancy seems to have been the reason for its having been removed.   In the original Nicene Creed the words “μονογενῆ, τοὐτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός, Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ” followed “begotten of the Father” and preceded “Light of Light”.   The First Council of Constantinople (381 AD) in revising the Creed moved the μονογενῆ and placed it in attributive position to “the Son of God”.   The remainder of these words which assert nothing that was not stated more precisely later in the same Article (1) were replaced with “before all worlds”.   Nobody really knows how “Deum de Deo” made its way back into the Latin version of the Creed.   It is also present in the Armenian version of the Creed but so are all the other words that were removed from the original Nicene Creed in the Constantinopolitan revision and this version also expands the “through whom all things were made” so as to repeat the “heaven and earth” and “visible and invisible” clauses of the first Article.

 

The first Article of the Creed, as we saw in our discussion of the same, established continuity between the faith we confess as Christians and the faith of Old Testament Israel by asserting our belief that the One God, the Father, is Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.   In this second Article, the faith we confess diverges from that of others who claim continuity with the Old Testament religion.   We believe in Jesus Christ.

 

Who is Jesus Christ?

 

Jesus is the Name of this Second Person Whom we confess alongside God the Father.   St. Luke in his Gospel tells of the Annunciation, the visit the angel Gabriel paid to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she was favoured by God in that she would bear a child Who would be God’s Son.  Gabriel told her that her Son was to be given the name Jesus.     St. Matthew in his Gospel records that at some point after this Joseph of Nazareth to whom Mary was espoused was visited by an angel in a dream who told him to marry Mary and raise her child Who was the Son of God.   Joseph is also told to give the child the name Jesus and is given a reason for the name “for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).   This is what the name Jesus means.   It was a common name among the Jews because it was the name of an important figure in the Old Testament.    יְהוֹשֻׁעַ‎ which when put directly into English from Hebrew is traditionally rendered Joshua was the name of one of Moses’ lieutenants, who led the Israelites into battle against various enemies when they were en route from Egypt to the Promised Land, who was one of the spies Moses sent into the Promised Land and the only one other than Caleb who proved to be faithful, and who was chosen to lead the people into the Promised Land after Moses death.   The book narrating the conquest of Canaan bears his name.    The book of Numbers tells us that his name was originally Oshea but that Moses changed it to Jehoshua or Joshua.   Oshea means “salvation”.   J(eh)oshua means “Jehovah is salvation”.    Jesus is this Name after it has been transliterated from Hebrew into Aramaic, then from Aramaic into Greek, then from Greek into Latin, and finally Anglicized by the removal of inflection and rendering Latin’s consonantal I as J.   It is in the divine Person Who bears this name in the New Testament that its meaning is truly fulfilled.   The Old Testament Joshua prefigured Him.  Through Joshua, God brought His people out of the wilderness in which they had been wandering due to their disobedience and into the Promised Land.   Indeed, in the fact that Moses, through whom the Law was given and whose name often signifies that Law, led the people in the wilderness but could not lead them across the Jordan into the Promised Land, which was reserved for Joshua, we see illustrated in the Old Testament that key theme of the New, that the Law cannot take a person from the wildness of sin and bring him into the Promised Land of peace with God, only Jesus can do that.   Jesus is Jehovah come into the world to save His people and the world from sin by taking that sin away on the Cross.

 

Christ is said or written together with Jesus so often that many assume it to be His surname.   It is more accurately thought of as a title.   As with the name Jesus it is the Anglicization of the Latin spelling of a Greek word that represents a Hebrew original.   In this case, however, the Greek word is a translation rather than a transliteration of the Hebrew.   The Hebrew word is מָשִׁיחַ which is rendered directly into English as Messiah.   This word means “Anointed One”.   In the Old Testament the kings of Israel were anointed with oil.    So were the high priests and, on at least one occasion, prophets.  Samuel was instructed by God to anoint first Saul, then David, as king with oil.   David would not harm Saul because he was “the LORD’s anointed”.   While every king of Israel and every high priest was a small-m “messiah” or small-c “christ”, the big-M Messiah or big-C Christ was the promised King who would arise out of the House of David to restore and redeem Israel.   Promises of this Redeemer-King can be found throughout the Old Testament but especially in the writings of the prophets who arose to warn Israel and Judah and call them to repentance in the period just before and during the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions that took the northern and southern kingdoms captive respectively.   In the prophetic writings it is promised that the future King will not merely restore Israel to what she was under David and Solomon but will usher in a Golden Age in which all nations will acknowledge His kingdom which will last forever, a New Covenant will be written in the hearts of man rather than on tablets of stone, and the curse on Creation due to man’s sin will finally be lifted.  

 

The Gospel Jesus preached to Israel from the beginning of His earthly ministry was “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”.    “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” can be paraphrased as “the promises are fulfilled, the Kingdom is present among you now”.   Jesus could proclaim such a Gospel because the Kingdom was present in the Person of Himself, the King.    He explained to them, however, in His teachings, that His Kingdom was spiritual rather than political and that it was bondage to sin that He came to deliver them and the world from rather than from the Roman Empire.   That He, Jesus, is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” was the sole article in the very first Christian confession or creed.  This was the confession made by St. Peter in response to a query from the Lord first about Whom His disciples said that He was.   Jesus praised the confession as revelation from His Father in Heaven and declared that He would build His Church upon this rock, then began to explain to His disciples that He would be crucified and rise again the third day.   Later, just before He raised her brother Lazarus, Martha made the same confession as St. Peter in response to Jesus’ asking her whether she believed His assertion that “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-27).   These interactions show that the Christ, the promised King of the House of David, the High Priest after the Order of Melchizedek, the Prophet greater than Moses, was the One Who gives everlasting life to all who believe in Him and that to do so He had to die Himself then rise again. 

 

In the confession of St. Peter and Martha, “the Christ” and “the Son of God” are placed in apposition which is a way of saying that the two expressions refer to the same Person without needing an extra word to link or equate them.   In the Psalms of David there are a number of verses in which the LORD speaks to or about the Messiah as His Son.    The Old and New Testaments use the expression “son of God” with several different meaning.   In the book of Job, the “sons of God” who assemble in His court are usually understood to be the angels.  In St. Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill he spoke of all people as being God’s children.   In the Old Testament the nation Israel is sometimes spoken of as God’s son and in the Johannine literature of the New Testament believers in Jesus are said to be children of God.   When either Testament speaks of Jesus, the Christ, as the Son of God, however, He is not spoken of as being One Son among many, but as God’s Only Son.   Similarly, when Jesus speaks of God the Father, He sometimes speaks of Him as His Father and He sometimes speaks of Him to His disciples as “your Father”, but He never speaks of God as “Our Father” so as to make His Sonship identical with that of His disciples.   While the Lord’s Prayer begins with “Our Father” this is not Jesus including Himself with His disciples in “Our” and joining them in a common prayer but prescribing this form of prayer to them.    The way in which Jesus is God’s Son, therefore, is unique to Himself and not shared with any other.

 

Everything in the portion of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that we are considering alongside the second Article of the Apostles’ Creed that is not also found in the second Article is there for the purpose of clarifying precisely what it means that Jesus is the Son of God.   This was at the heart of the controversy over which the two first Ecumenical Councils, the ones which gave us the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, were convened.   A priest in Alexandria named Arius taught that Jesus was the first creation of God, Who had a beginning before which He was not, that God had created Him out of nothing with a similar but not identical nature to His Own, and then through Him had created all other things.    When his heresy began to spill out and infect other dioceses and provinces outside of Alexandria, the First Council of Nicaea was convened to deal with the controversy.   The orthodox side, led nominally by Arius’ own bishop, the Patriarch Alexander I of Alexandria, but in actuality by his archdeacon Athanasius, prevailed, the Arian positions were anathematized, and the Council published the original Nicene Creed, but the controversy continued long after with the Arians at times having the upper hand (Athanasius, who succeeded Alexander as Patriarch of Alexandra, was temporarily deposed of his See for seven years and was sent into exile on five separate occasions), making necessary the First Council of Constantinople which revised the Creed into the form we know today and condemned Arianism as heresy.

 

Before the second Ecumenical Council produced the final version of the Creed there were numerous attempts by Arian groups and other similar heresies to revise the Nicene Creed to their liking.   An account of these can be found in the Historia Ecclesiastica of Socrates Scholasticus, the fifth century Christian historian who picked up where Eusebius of Caesarea, the “Christian Herodotus” left off. (2)  The word in the Nicene Creed to which the most objections were made was ὁμοούσιον which means “of the same essence”.   The heretical revisions replaced this word with such alternatives as ὁμοιούσιον which means “of a similar essence” and ὅμοιον which means “similar” in a more general sense.   There are many today who consider such disputes to be hairsplitting but the orthodox side was right to stand its ground and insist upon ὁμοούσιον because that one iota that separates ὁμοούσιον from ὁμοιούσιον is the difference between the Son being God and the Son being a creature, the closest to God of all creatures, but a creature nonetheless.   The word ὁμοούσιον captures what it is that makes Jesus’ Sonship distinct from that of all lesser beings who are in some lesser sense children of God.   Human beings in general and angels are “sons of God” in the sense that they are His creatures but this does not make them God.   Christians are children of God through regeneration (John 1:12-13) and adoption (Rom. 8:15) but this does not make them God.   In creation, living things reproduce after their own kind.   A cat gives birth to a cat, a dog sires another dog, a bird lays an egg and when it hatches it is another bird that comes out, etc.   A man has a son and that son is a man like his father.   This is the sense in which Jesus is God’s Son and in this sense of the word God has only the One Son, the Son Who is God as His Father is God.    ὁμοούσιον was the best word for this because it guarded against the Arian heresy that Jesus is of a similar but different and lesser nature to God the Father without lending any support to the Sabellian heresy which stresses the unity in nature of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to the point that it denies the distinction between the Persons.

 

There is another way in which the Creed expresses the truth that Jesus’ Sonship to the Father is the kind of Sonship that means that He like His Father is God and this is the word “begotten”.   In the English text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed this word appears three times.   The first of these is when it says that Jesus Christ is “the only-begotten Son of God”.   Here “only-begotten” is the translation of τὸν μονογενῆ, the same word that is translated this way in the Authorized Bible in John 3:16.   In the last century or so a consensus has arisen among New Testament Greek scholars this is a mistranslation based upon a mistaken etymology and that this word is better understood as meaning “unique” or “one of a kind”.   This consensus is wrong, but even if it were correct it would not apply to the other two instances of “begotten” for in these the word γεννηθέντα is used which is the aorist passive participle of the verb which means “beget”.   While this verb when used of the relationship between two created beings signifies that the begetter existed before the begotten when used of the Eternal Uncreated Father and His Eternal Uncreated Son it indicates the priority of the Father in the sense that He is the Source of the Son and the Son comes from Him but not priority in any temporal sense.   That there never was a time before the Father had His Son is, indeed, what the two uses of “begotten” signify, the first by saying that the Son was begotten of the Father “before all worlds”, that is to say, before Creation, of which time is a dimension, the second by saying that “begotten” does not mean “created”.   Theologically, this truth is usually referred to as the “eternal generation” of the Son, although the term filiation is also used.

 

These truths, that Jesus as the Son comes from the Father in such a way that What the Father is, God, He, the Son, is also are simply stated in each of the expressions “God of God”, “Light of Light” and “Very God of Very God”.

 

In this Article of the Creed we also affirm the Son’s Lordship.   Saying that Jesus Christ is Lord can be another way of affirming His deity.   To avoid profaning the divine Name, the custom had developed in the Hebrew tradition of saying the word that means “Lord” instead when reading the Old Testament text.    When the Old Testament was translated into the Greek Septuagint this custom influenced the translators to put κύριος in the place of the divine Name and this practice persists into our English translation where the divine Name is transliterated as Jehovah or Jah in only a small handful of instances but otherwise rendered LORD spelled in all capitals to distinguish where the Name of God is what is indicated from places where אֲדֹנָי appears in the Hebrew text in which cases only the L is capitalized.  When the New Testament calls Jesus κύριος, sometimes this word has the weight that it has in the LXX when it stands in for the Name of God, at other times it is used in a more literal sense of “Ruler” or “Master”.   These meanings overlap, of course – Jesus as God is the Ultimate Sovereign Ruler of all – but there is a real distinction.  Generally, when Jesus is declared to be Lord in a confessional sort of way (Rom. 10:9) the emphasis is upon His deity, when is spoken of as Lord in a more personal sort of way, the emphasis is upon His authority in His relationship with His disciples.    In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed the word “Lord” is qualified by the number “One”.  This is directly parallel to how the Creed declares God to be One in the first Article about the Father.    In the Nicene Creed, therefore, the emphasis in affirming Jesus’ Lordship is upon His deity.   The Apostles’ Creed, however, which qualifies the word “Lord” with the possessive “our”, places the emphasis in His Lordship upon His relationship of authority to we who confess Him as such.   The two versions of the Creed, therefore, complement each other, and present both aspects of Jesus’ Lordship as it is found in the New Testament.

 

The final affirmation in this portion of the Creed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan version is “through whom all things were made”.   This wording identifies the Son’s role in Creation in terms of instrumentality or means.  The Son is the instrument through Whom the Father created all things.   This is what we find asserted by St. John in the third verse of His Gospel “all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made”.   This follows shortly after St. John’s introduction of Jesus as “the Word” Who was “in the beginning” with God and Who “was God”.  This alludes to the first chapter of Genesis which also starts with the words “in the beginning” and in which God creates all things through the means of His Word.

 

The second Article is all about the deity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.   We shall, Lord willing, next look at the third Article, in which the focus shifts to His humanity, God the Son become Man.

  ,

 

 

 (1)   “τοὐτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός” is asserted with more precision as “ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί” and  “Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ” as “Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ”.

(2)   Eusebius was present at the Council of Nicaea as Bishop of Caesarea but finished writing his History just prior to the Council and concluded his narrative with the triumph of Constantine over his rivals.

 

 

Maundy Musings

 

Today is Maundy Thursday, the first day of the Great Paschal Triduum.    The name Maundy refers to the ritual footwashing that traditionally takes place on this day.   St. John, who provides the longest account of the evening remembered today of any of the Evangelists, even though he begins his account after the Last Supper, highlighted in all the other Gospels, has ended, tells us that after the Last Supper, Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, then told them:

 

Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well: for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.   For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. (Jn. 13:13-15)

 

Later in the same chapter St. John records Jesus giving the New Commandment: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another”.   The Latin word for commandment is mandatum, the source of the word “mandate” that public health officers have made so odious by their abuse of such over the last two years.   It is also the source of the word Maundy as the word for ritual foot-washing.   

 

Footwashing was not the only ritual instituted by Jesus that evening.   The other Evangelists all record the institution of the Eucharist which took place immediately prior to this during the Last Supper.   As St. John begins his account of this evening at the end of the Last Supper he does not record the institution, although earlier in his Gospel as part of his account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand – the only miracle other than the Resurrection found in all four Gospels - he recorded Jesus’ discourse about Himself as the Bread of Life in which the meaning of the Eucharist is expounded at length.  

 

That St. John begins his account of this evening after the Last Supper, so emphasized in the other Gospels, has ended is not surprising.   Eusebius of Caeserea, the Church’s Herodotus, in his Ecclesiastical History records an account by Clement of Alexandria of how copies of the other three Gospels had come into St. John’s hands and he, having proclaimed them faithful and true, wrote his own Gospel with an eye to including material that they had left out.   (Book III, chapter 24).   The Patristic writers specify that St. John included the events that took place between Jesus’ baptism and John the Baptist’s imprisonment – this covers all of the first three chapters of his Gospel and at least part of the fourth.   Other material that St. John includes that the other Evangelists omit are Jesus’ words and deeds in Jerusalem on His visits there prior to the Triumphal Entry, and His lengthy private discourses.   The latter is what we find in his account of the evening of the Last Supper.   After the account of Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet, commanding them to do likewise, and the subsequent account of Judas’ departure, the New Commandment comes at the beginning of a lengthy discourse that extends through to the end of the seventeenth chapter.   It is generally called the Upper Room Discourse although Jesus and the disciples begin moving from the Upper Room to the Garden of Gethsemane at the end of the fourteenth chapter.   In this discourse Jesus speaks of His coming departure back to the Father, comforts His disciples with the assurance that He will return to take them to the place He is preparing for them in His Father’s house, promises that when He returns to the Father He will send another Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to them, commands them to abide in Him (“I am the true vine”) and expands on the New Commandment.   He warns them of the persecution they will face in the world for His sake, but assures them that He has overcome the world.   He concludes the discourse with a prayer in which He asks the Father to glorify the Son, to keep His disciples from the evil in the world, and that they might be one as the Father and Son are one.

 

One interesting difference between St. John’s account of this evening and those of the other Evangelists cannot be explained by the Fourth Evangelist’s consciously choosing material that had not already been covered.   This is the difference which F. F. Bruce called “the thorniest problem in the New Testament”, namely that St. John seems to date the events of this evening one day earlier than the other Evangelists do.   In the Synoptic Gospels, the Last Supper seems to be the Passover Seder.   In St. John’s Gospel, however, Jesus’ accusers when they bring Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate, refrain from entering the Roman judgment hall themselves “lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover.” (18:28).   There is a theological implication to St. John’s timing.   At the beginning of his Gospel he tells of how John the Baptist pointed Jesus out to his followers saying “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”. (1:29)   By St. John’s dating Jesus’ death on the Cross would have taken place at precisely the moment on the Ides of Nisan when the Passover lamb was slain.

 

The other Evangelists, however, seem to be quite clear on the Last Supper having been the Passover.   St. Mark, for example, begins his account of the Last Supper by saying “And the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the Passover” (14:12) and a few verses later says “And his disciples went forth, and came into the city, and found as he had said unto them: and they made ready the Passover”.   St. Luke tells us that at the Supper Jesus said “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (22:15) and includes details (e.g. “the cup after supper”, 22:20) that belong specifically to a Passover Seder.

 

So how do we account for this?   Let us begin by taking the liberal explanation, the kind that the Jesus Seminar and similar types, would suggest, i.e., that one or more of the Gospels is unreliable, off the table.   This leaves us with a number of possibilities. 

 

One of these is that either the Synoptic Evangelists or St. John do not actual say what they appear to be saying at first glance.   It is not difficult to make the case that St. John does not actually date the death of Jesus to the slaying of the Paschal lamb as he appears to do.    Passover begins on the Ides of Nisan but it lasts a week.   Therefore, St. John in 18:28 could have been talking about a meal later in the week of Passover than the initial Seder.    

 

Another possibility is that Jesus arranged to eat the Passover a day early.   “The day of unleavened bread” that the other Evangelists talk about could possibly refer to the day before Passover when the bedikat chametz, the thorough going over of the home to find and eliminate any leaven, took place, and “when the Passover must be killed” could possibly refer to the time of day rather than the specific date.   While this is a far less plausible explanation of the words of the Synoptic Evangelists than the explanation in the previous paragraph is of St. John’s, it arguably finds support within the Synoptic Gospels themselves in that these record that the chief priests who conspired to take Jesus “by craft, and put him to death” had said “Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people” (Mk. 14:1-2).  The chief priests would have had to sign off on any request to have an early Passover and this would have provided them with a reason to do so.   If they allowed Jesus to have an early Passover, that would have gotten Him away from the crowd, enabling Judas to bring their posse to arrest Him, all before the Passover actually began.   As it stands, the words of the conspirators just quoted are difficult to reconcile with their actions if the Last Supper took place on the actual Passover as SS Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to indicate, because that would mean they did precisely what they had agreed not to do. 

 

Interestingly enough, another explanation could be that both the Synoptic Evangelists and St. John mean exactly what they appear to mean and that both are right because there was more than one Ides of Nisan.  Even though that explanation sounds at first like it might come from a movie by Harold Ramis featuring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell we know that at least one sect of Second Temple Judaism, the Essenes, the ascetic mystic sect that left behind the famous scrolls of the Qumran Cave, followed a different calendar from that of other Jews.   They used what they called a Jubilee Calendar, a solar-based pentecontad calendar that placed the Passover on the same day of the week every year.   By the ordinary Jewish lunar calendar, in which each month begins with the new moon, the Passover falls on different days of the week depending upon the year.    While Jesus was not likely to have used the Essenes’ calendar – and it would have put the Passover on a date that fits none of the Gospels if He had - the point is that there were differences among first century Jews about these matters.   The beginning of the month was set by the Sanhedrin which ruled on the basis of witnesses attesting to having seen the new moon.   Discrepancies were not unknown. Rosh Hashanah 22b in the Talmud discusses an incident in which the Boethusians – a sect similar if not identical to the Sadducees – bribed a couple of witnesses to falsify their testimony about the new moon.   Although the Talmud depicts the scheme as failing and the Sanhedrin becoming stricter as to whose testimony they would accept – Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein, a Messianic Rabbi (1) of the nineteenth century, argued in his New Testament Commentary that the Sadducees had pulled this same stunt the year of the Crucifixion in order to get their way in their famous controversy with the Pharisees over the timing of the Feast of Weeks which would have had the effect of moving Passover by a day as well.   The Pharisees would not have taken this well and with their large popular following would have been able to get away with keeping the Passover the day before where it would have been without the shenanigans.  Since He was to die the next day on the official Passover, Lichtenstein reasoned, Jesus celebrated the Passover with His disciples on the day the Pharisees kept it that year.

 

While this third explanation involves more conjecture than the other two, it is hardly baseless conjecture.   Jesus Christ is the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world” as John the Baptist said, and our Passover sacrificed for us as St. Paul wrote (1 Cor. 5:7), making it appropriate that His death occur when St. John implies it did at the time of the slaying of the Paschal lamb.   Through this Sacrifice He established the long promised New Covenant as He announced in advance at the Last Supper, as He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist, making it appropriate that this take place at the Passover of the Old Covenant, as the Synoptic Gospels say.   The third explanation, which allows for both, seems the best to me.

 

Have a blessed Maundy Thursday.

(1) That is a Rabbi who believed in Jesus as Messiah.