The Letter to the Hebrews. Jon C. Laansma

pre-incarnation to incarnation. This, of course, does not need to contradict the doctrine of the “enhypostasis” of Christ, namely, the idea that the human person Jesus had subsistence only in union with the Logos. Hebrews affirms personal unity and continuity in the movement from pre-incarnate to incarnate existence but is not otherwise observing the later technical distinctions in its language.

16. If we were inclined to press points, we could insist that his priestly role also had a termination, namely, when he sat (10:12–13), though this does not comport with other statements (e.g., 4:14–16; 10:19–25).

17. It may be that the verb mesiteuō in 6:17 is fully intended in this sense; see Griffiths, Hebrews and Divine Speech, 111–14.

18. Bauckham, “Divinity in Hebrews,” 15–36.

19. I owe personal thanks to Rosalie de Rosset for help with this idea.

20. Caird, “Exegetical Method of Hebrews,” 44–51.

21. The study of apostolic interpretive methods and principles has been fruitful, even if theorists have reached differing and even incompatible conclusions. For a cross-section of some of the theories, Beale, The Right Doctrine, is still useful. An analogy from the modern music industry is instructive in thinking on the almost limitless number of paths a text and its ideas could take from its origin through its stages of appropriation (McCabe, “Inspiration.”).

22. E.g., Ellingworth, “Universe in Hebrews,” 337–50.

23. Caird, Language and Imagery, 262.

24. Depending on how Rev 13:8 is translated (contrast NIV and ESV) the idea might be more directly expressed there. Cf. 1 Cor 10:1-4; Rom 3:25-26.

25. D’Angelo, Moses in Hebrews, 95–199, 248–49, 254–55, 259–63. Attridge seems to be making a related argument in “Antithesis,” 1–9; cf. Attridge, “Response,” 208.

26. In Revelation, this statement follows several definite, realistically descriptive assertions about the heavenly temple (naos): 7:15; 11:1, 2, 19; 14:15, 17; 15:5, 6, 8; 16:1, 17.

27. Beale, Revelation, 1061–62.

28. See for example, Torrance, Incarnation, 37, 107–9, 184, and Torrance, Atonement, 93–94, 124–25, 148–53.

29. Torrance, Incarnation, 108.

30. In case it needs to be said, we are attempting to understand how Hebrews is intending, for the purposes of this word of exhortation, the language of the heavenly pattern shown Moses and the heavenly tabernacle pitched by God. We are not implying that the world to come does not consist of bodies (1 Cor 15) and (re)created environment, which (based on the resurrection body of the Lord) involves definite forms. Still less are we forgetting that as human the Son existed as finite body, with all this entails. Post-resurrection he continues to exist as body—indeed as flesh and bone (Luke 24:39), capable of consuming this worldly fish—yet with what limits we do not know (Luke 24:31, 36; John 20:26; 1 Cor 15:35–58). The Scriptural imagination makes beggars of ours (Ezek 10:17). Nor have we forgotten the eye-witness-based accounts of the ascension as a vertical movement (Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9–11); that very narrative should occasion more probing reflection on space and spheres.

31. We will have occasion to observe that the idea of, for instance, a substitutionary offering is operative at points, even though the sacrificial imagery on its own would not seem to involve or require that idea. The larger reality of Christ’s salvation exerts a pressure on the images—new wine in old wine skins—and Hebrews has no final interest in suppressing this, unless perhaps there is merely the need to keep the rhetoric effectively focused for pastoral ends.

32. Koester, Hebrews, 119.

33. Marshall, “Soteriology in Hebrews,” 261.

34. This contrasts with the way that John uses the language of sanctification (e.g., John 10:36; 17:19).

35. Heb 7:28 forms an inclusion with 5:1–10; 5:9, in turn, picks up the thread from 2:10 where the idea is that the Son was perfected “through suffering.” The emphasis of “perfecting” seems to fall on the sufferings that made him a merciful, faithful, empathetic priest. Along the way to 7:28, however, more of the Son’s story has been rehearsed or hinted at, all of which is indicated in 7:26–28. This would include dealing with the problem of corruptibility through resurrection, a problem highlighted in Moses by the laws of ritual impurity, since these latter arguably address the problem of human mortality and corruptibility as unfit for God’s presence; cf. Moffitt, Atonement and the Resurrection. I do not find Moffitt’s idea of “the logic of resurrection” to be as fully controlling as it is in his argument (his exegesis of Hebrews seems to me forced at points, as if attempting to make Hebrews say what other Jewish texts say more clearly), but I strongly agree that it is ingredient in Hebrews’ larger mix of atonement theology and Moffitt’s work deserves very close, sympathetic attention. The atonement, as a reality, has more dimensions than any one human perspective can convey. Hebrews has its own emphases but has no interest in limiting its vision to these, which would amount to limiting the atonement itself. As a result, we find hints and gestures to other and deeper features of the atonement also at work and also necessary for this vision of Christ as priest and sacrifice. Among other things, Moffitt helps us hold together ideas of ritual and moral impurity as these were operative within the single fabric of Israel’s cultic system and Jesus’ effectual work. This is a much more satisfying account than those that suggest, for instance, that Hebrews treats ritual impurity as merely part of the shadowy symbolism of the Mosaic system while moral impurity is the real concern addressed in the atonement of Christ.

36. For a full discussion, see Peterson, Hebrews and Perfection; Attridge, Hebrews, 83-87.

37. Barclay, Gift.

38. In the wider world of Greco-Roman antiquity, it was natural to reserve gifts for those who merited them; there was nothing inherently contradictory between a “grace” (gift), so understood, and merit. Giving the gift without discrimination cheapened the gift itself. If it was in fact a matter of giving the gift without regard to merit, Barclay would characterize the conception as perfected in terms of “incongruity.” One question to be put to Paul, for example, would be whether the grace of salvation in his gospel was “incongruous”