RENDALL ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.* ." IT appears,"
says Dr. Salmon, " with certainty, on com- parison of the substance and the language, that the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews is altogether Pauline." We confess to thinking this a most astonishing statement, which the learned and able writer of the book in which it occurs has made no serious attempt to substantiate, and which Mr. Rendall, without referring to it directly, has abundantly con- futed. He has struck, as it seems to us, into the right path, and done his business well, because he has recognised the fact that his chief concern, as an expositor, is with the theology of the Epistle. This is surely no more than a truism, and yet English commentators on the doctrinal treatises of the New Testament have been prone to forget it. They have examined the structure of sentences and the construction of words with an exuberance of grammatical learning which becomes little better than distracting, unless it is strictly subordinated to the main purpose of unfolding the general scope of the argu- ment, and the precise position of the writer with whom they have to deal. They have accumulated archaeological and histori- cal details, though writers like St. Paul lived apart from the natural scenes of the political organisation which lay around, and dwelt wholly in the religious ideas which possessed them. It is, then, on the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews that Mr. Kendall fixes his eye throughout; and doing that, he could not fail to see the marked and striking divergences which separate its teaching from that of the great Apostle.
We have been speaking of different, though not of con- tradictory, points of view ; and such a difference, as Mr. Rendall points out, shows itself in the conception of faith which is the very basis of St. Paul's teaching. To the Apostle, faith signifies an entire negation of self, an entire abandon- ment of all claim to any righteousness of our own, and an entire surrender of ourselves to God through Christ. In this faith complete justification is attained; and between faith and works, considered as the title to acceptance before God, there is the sharpest antagonism. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the -word has a lower sense, much nearer to that which has, upon the whole, prevailed in the Catholic Church. Here faith is a conviction of certain supernatural truths ; it is " the assurance of things we hope for, the proof of things not seen." It does not of itself imply salvation; rather it is, as in the passage just quoted, the foundation of that hope which is prominent in this Epistle, as in the First Epistle of Peter. "Faith toward God" is mentioned along with "the teaching of baptism and laying-on of hands, of resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment," as an elementary lesson im- pressed upon the convert from heathenism. So faith is the condition of prayer and the spiritual life : " He who cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Far from being contrasted with works, faith is the motive-spring of righteous life ; and thus, for example, the faith of Abraham is not set before us as the immediate cause of his justification, but as the power which enabled him to obey God and abandon everything at his call. Thus, very naturally, the idea of faith being other than the Pauline, the doctrine with regard to works is different also. " The Pauline conception of dead works," says Mr. Brandon, "as works of the law destitute of spiritual life, finds no place in this Epistle." Dead works are " evidently the sinful works of the flesh, for they are forsaken on repentance." They are
• The Epistle to the Hebrews. By Frederic Kendall, A.M., formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Assistant-Master at Harrow School. London: Macmillan and Co. 1588. said, in ix., 14, " to pollute the conscience, as contact with a dead body pollutes the flesh." In all which there is nothing really inconsistent with St. Paul's gospel; but a Paul who could have so written would have been Paul no longer.
But we shall obtain a clearer view of the writer's exact relations to St. Paul if we take the three great divisions of the Epistle as they stand. The first section extends from the beginning of the first to the thirteenth verse of the third chapter, and is occupied with an assertion of Christ's divine Sonship and his superiority to the angels. Scholars like Hilgenfeld, or Holtzmann, or Pfleiderer, who reject the Epistle to the Colossians as unauthentic, cannot help seeing even here a great advance on the Pauline Christology. Hilgenfeld, indeed, looks upon our Epistle as one of the most important among the documents of the New Testa- ment, precisely because it represents the first great incursion of philosophical principles, borrowed from Philo and here brought into connection with Christ, ideas which are developed in the Epistle to the Colossians, and which criminate, he thinks, in the Fourth Gospel. The critical position held by Mr. Rendall, and familiar to our readers, is of another kind altogether, and we cannot, therefore, claim any such interest for the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is worth while, however, to insist upon the fact that the doctrine of the divine Logos, though the term itself is never used, is worked out with great fullness ; that we find the closest similarity in thought, and to some extent in language, with the Epistle to the Colossians, and stand on the very threshold of the teaching of St. John's Gospel. But, apart from material which the author uses in common with others, he displays in this earliest section that independent originality, that exquisite delicacy of touch, that power to infuse an ethical element into doctrine, which are his characteristics throughout. Christ the effulgence of his Father's glory, has been made a little lower than the angels, and then re-entering his heavenly glory with a fresh title, he has been exalted " because of the suffering of death." He has become one with the whole human race. All of them have to travel along the same hard path ; they have to be sanctified in the same way, that they may enter into the same glory. " It became him for whom are all things and through whom are all things, to perfect the captain of our salvation through sufferings. For he who sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all from one Father : for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name to my brethren : in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praise." We shall seek in vain through the whole range of the New Testament for a nobler picture of Christ's oneness with God upon the one hand, with man upon the other, for a clearer light thrown on the darkness of human life, for more impressive warning on the guilt of neglecting " so great a salvation."
It is, however, in the second division of the Epistle, which reaches to the seventeenth verse of the tenth chapter, that the originality of the Epistle, and the contrast with St. Paul's point of view, appear in the boldest relief. Each writer has thought out his own philosophy of history, each philosophy being real and true, and yet each representing a different aspect of the truth. St. Paul habitually sets the Law in opposition to the Gospel. It is not the law, but the promise made by God to Abraham, which is the dawn of that perfect day which shone forth in Christ, and the law, though ordained in the provi- dence of God, is an interruption in the course of divine grace and mercy. The law " entered that sin might abound;" that sin might be apprehended in its " exceeding sinfulness," that man, aware of his utter inability to enter into life by keeping the Commandments, might fling himself in utter helplessness upon the promises of God, and be saved through that faith which is his gift. In the Epistle to the Hebrews there is no such oppo- sition : on the contrary, the law was "the shadow of good things to come ;" it prepared the way for the gospel ; it was not antagonistic to but simply fell short of the new dispensation, inasmuch as it " brought nothing to perfection." "Nay, the law," as Mr. Rendall reminds us, " is itself designated in ii., 2, as an earlier gospel, which failed only for lack of faith" in the hearers. Again, the law appears much more as a system of worship than as a moral code, and each part of the Jewish ritual has its antitype in the Christian Church. Above all, Christ is the great high-priest who has entered the eternal tabernacle in the heavens, and " ever lives to make intercession for us." It is this high-priesthood which is the great theme of the second section, and the name and thing are alike
unkn nvn to any other book of the New Testament. Yet wa doubt if any picture has impressed itself more deeply upon the Christian imagination than that of the merciful high- priest who is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because he has been tempted in all things like unto us, and yet without sin." It is more important to observe that this conception of Christ as a high-priest exhibits more clearly perhaps than anything else in the language of the New Testament the moral character of the Atonement. It fixes our attention on the fact that Christ was at once priest and victim ; that it was his self-oblation, the devotion of his own sinless will in obedience to the Supreme Will which found acceptance and made him our perfect example. "Through the eternal spirit, he offered himself spotless to God." " Wherefore entering the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body thou halt fitted to me : then said I, Lo, I come to do thy will, 0 God." Having entered the heavenly sanctuary, the new, unlike the Jewish; high-priest opens, the way thither to all believers : as he has tasted death for all and robbed it of its terrors, so " seated on the)right hand of the majesty on high," he secures for us his brethren " a confident entrance into the holy place." As the condition of this entrance, he imparts to all his own spirit of willing service, and twice over Jeremiah's great prophecy of the new covenant is quoted,—" I will put my laws into their mind, and on their heart I will write them."
The concluding and hortatory part is built up on the doctrinal foundations. Having spoken previously of Christ as having offered himself to God through an eternal Spirit, the author sees in the Old Testament heroes a cloud of wit- nesses who have seen the Christian race and borne "the reproach of Christ." Having spoken of the Son of God " as perfected through suffering," he exhorts Christians to believe that it is just when they are afflicted that God deals with them, as sons.
We have no space left to enter on the questions of author- ship and date. The former question, in the utter confusion of the traditional evidence, which is really no evidence at all, seems to be absolutely hopeless. Luther's guess that the author was .A.pollos, seems to us the best that has been made, though it is but a guess after all. Even the argument as to date, from the prevailing use of the present tense with regard to the Jewish sacrifices, is a precarious one, for it is the service of the Tabernacle, and not of the Temple, to which the Epistle refers. We wish that Mr. Rendall had admitted with greater frankness how widely the author's use of the Old Testament differs from anything which would be tolerated in modern exegesis. The Epistle can well afford admissions such as these. It abounds in arguments and illustrations which have been shaken long ago, but it abounds also in appeals to the heart which can never lose their force, in truths which cannot be shaken, but stand fast for ever.
Previous page
