Central Themes in Hebrews

I've recently been reading through the Greek text of Hebrews (which I honestly find a struggle since there are so many words not used elsewhere in the NT). I've noticed two main areas that I think give the real gist of what the book is about. First, Heb. 2.1-4 functions a bit like a propositio or central contention and it pertains to the danger of ignoring "such a great salvation". Second, there is passing remark in Heb. 12.15, "See to it that no one misses the grace of God that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many". In light of that, I think the author recognizes that the church he writes to is an ecclesia mixta, that is to say that it includes peoples who have varied levels of adherence and association with the Christian faith. The author exhorts his audience to have a community that is aware of the warnings of neglecting the salvation that is offered, but there is also an exhortation to make sure that the grace of God will have a magnetic effect upon fence sitters and have a pruning effect upon everyone.

Peter T. O'Brien on Hebrews

Peter T. O’Brien. The Letter to the Hebrews. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.

This hefty gem just arrived on my desk and I'm reading through it with great satisfaction. Of course, what we all want to know first is what O'Brien thinks of the warning passage in 6.4-8. O'Brien closes his discussion of this section with the words: "Apostasy is a real danger that threatens the community, even though the author of Hebrews does not save that members have already abandoned their faith. But there is no way back from such an abandonment to a renewal of the initial act of repentance. They must avoid the danger at all costs; the point of the warning, and of the encouraging words of vv. 9-12, is to urge the listeners to persevere in faith and obedience" (p. 227). With respect to the "joy" of Jesus in Heb 12.2, O'Brien comments: "Jesus' assumption of the position at the right hand of God represents the joy set before him for the sake of which he endured shame and death. It is the prize that came to him at the end of his race. 'His session at the right hand is the guarantee of the absoluteness of Christ's exaltation and thus the utter security of those who have placed their hope in him' [F.F. Bruce]. When believers, who are still running their race, fix their eyes on Jesus and rely on him for support and help, they know that he is the perfecter of faith who is seated at God's right hand, having endured the cross and shame for them. His exemplary fidelity is understood so as to encourage them to persevere in faithfulness" (p. 458). On the "eternal covenant" of 13.20, O'Brien states: "The new covenant is that eternal covenant: our author uses the adjective eternal in relation to salvation (5:9), judgment (6:2), redemption (9:12), the Spirit (9:14), and inheritance (9:15), all of which are intimately related to the new covenant" (p. 535).

Authorship of Hebrews

The authorship of Hebrews is a funny question. The eastern church attributed it to Paul, Origen was ambivalent about it, suggestions have included Barnabas and Apollos, but a small cohort of scholars have suggested Luke's authorship of Hebrews or else Pauline authorship via Luke. There has been interesting proposals on this topic of late. One contribution is David Allen, Lukan Authorship of Hebrews (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, forthcoming 2010) - which I have not read yet. The other contribution to the subject is an essay by Andrew W. Pitts and Joshua F. Walker entitled "The Authorship of Hebrews: A Further Development in the Luke-Paul Relationship" which is forthcoming in S.E. Porter (ed.), Paul's Social Relations (Pauline Studies 7; Leiden: Brill, 2010). I spoke to Andrew Pitts about their essay and he answers my questions below:

1. What started your thinking about the Pauline "source" of Hebrews?

We began working on this project during the 2008 annual meeting of the ETS-SBL meetings in Providence and Boston. At the meetings, we talked about the different features of Hebrews that point to authorship—style, vocabulary, its apparent oral qualities, theological viewpoints and manuscript tradition, among others. We had always thought that a Luke-Paul collaboration was possible and so we set out to examine various strands of evidence to see what direction they might point in. The somewhat recent trend toward understanding Hebrews in an oral context seemed to have some significant implications for authorship. If Hebrews is a speech, then it may have had stenographer (speech recorder). The content and manuscript (external) evidence pointed to Paul while the linguistic and literary (internal) evidence seemed to us to indicate Lukan involvement. This theory seemed to handle the bulk of the evidence presented on this matter, evidence which was often dichotomized into Luke only and Paul only data. But both sets of data, to our mind, seemed significant and neither could be easily side-stepped. We found, then, that a Pauline origin best explained the main content of Hebrews, accounting for elevated style of the document via Luke’s involvement.

2. What is the basic thesis of your chapter on the authorship of Hebrews?

The evidence we examine suggests that Hebrews likely represents a Pauline speech, probably originally delivered in a Diaspora synagogue, that Luke documented in some way during their travels together and which Luke later published as an independent speech to be circulated among house churches in the Jewish-Christian Diaspora. From Acts, there already exists a historical context for Luke’s recording or in some way attaining and publishing Paul’s speeches in a narrative context. Luke remains the only person in the early Church whom we know to have published Paul’s teaching (beyond supposed Paulinists) and particularly his speeches. And certainly by the first century we have a well established tradition within Greco-Roman rhetorical and historiographic stenography (speech recording through the use of a system of shorthand) of narrative (speeches incorporated into a running narrative), compilation (multiple speeches collected and edited in a single publication) and independent (the publication of a single speech) speech circulation by stenographers. Since it can be shown (1) that early Christians pursued parallel practices, particularly Luke and Mark, (2) that Hebrews and Luke-Acts share substantial linguistic affinities and (3) that significant theological-literary affinities exist between Hebrews and Paul, we argue that a solid case for Luke’s independent publication of Hebrews as a Pauline speech can be sustained. We don’t claim to have “solved” the problem of authorship in terms of absolutes or certainties, but we do think that this is the direction that the evidence points most clearly.

3. Could you summarize what it is about Hebrews that indicates that it is Pauline and what suggests that there is a Lucan hand involved?

To begin with, the oral literary setting for the letter, assumed by most these days, in tandem with evidence for Luke documenting Paul’s speeches in Acts is suggestive of a Luke-Paul collaboration in speech publication. Paul clearly delivered speeches on a number of occasions, some of which are documented by none other than Luke. This establishes a firm historical context for a Luke-Paul collaboration, in which Luke would record and publish Paul’s speeches, already existed in the early Church. There are speeches of others in the apostolic circle (esp. Peter) and beyond (e.g. Stephen), but Luke shows a clear preference in his history for documenting Pauline speech material. And we have further precedent for the early Christian documentation of apostolic speeches later converted in the style of the recorder in the Mark-Peter collaboration—at least, if we take Papias’s account seriously, who informs us that Peter functioned as something of a stenographer in the production of Mark’s Gospel. This is significant in light of the fact that Hebrews is the only document in the New Testament thought by many to be a single independently published speech (i.e. sermon, synagogue homily, etc.). If we begin with the contemporary assumption that Hebrews is a speech or sermon of some kind, this opens up new avenues of exploration for the authorship question that seem to us to point toward a Pauline origin with Lukan involvement.

With regard to the external evidence, we should probably expect a fairly high level of the reception history to document a Pauline origin since the scribes, stenographers and historians that circulated such speeches were rarely credited with authorship or if they were, it was merely as a co-author, as we see in many of Paul’s letters. And this is exactly what we find. We immediately think of P⁴⁶ (200 A.D.), for example, the earliest Pauline canon, which situates Hebrews in the middle of the Pauline corpus. But P⁴⁶ is only one part of a much wider body of external evidence. A number of further manuscripts favor locating Hebrews immediately after the Pauline letters to the churches and before those written by Paul to individuals, as we find in אB C H I P 0150 0151, a Syrian canon from c. 400 (Mt. Sinain Cod. Syr. 10) and six minuscules from the eleventh century (103). Perhaps such an organization represents the shift in register: from (1) letters to churches to (2) a speech to a church(es) to (3) letters to individuals. The early Eastern fathers also consistently identify Hebrews with Paul. Eusebius records the views of both Clement of Alexandria (Eccl. hist. 6.14.2-3) and Origen (Eccl. hist. 6.25.13) to this effect. When we turn to the primary sources for Origen, the view remains the same. Origen constantly attributes Hebrews to Paul when he cites the document (Princ. 1; 2.3.5; 2.7.7; 3.1.10; 3.2.4; 4.1.13; 4.1.24; Cels. 3.52; 7.29; Ep. Afr. 9). Origen even proposes something like a collaborative hypothesis when he says: “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” (Eusebius, Eccel. hist. 6.25.11-14, NPNF²).

We also find it difficult to imagine another person in early Christianity with the background necessary to produce such a composition. We don’t have enough information to make solid judgments regarding the abilities of many proposed authors (Barnabas, Pricilla, Apollos, etc.). A number of Pauline theological features seem evident to us in the Hebrews as well, which many seem to grant. In our chapter, we shore this point up in great detail. One striking feature we observe, for example, is that parallel citation strategies are employed in Hebrews and Paul’s speeches in Acts—for example, the use and exegesis of Pslam 2. A number of other parallel theological features both in Paul’s letters and his speeches in Acts find a direct correlate in Hebrews. In our chapter, we examine these in detail.

In addition to historical considerations, it is the language and style of Hebrews that we find most indicative of Luke’s involvement. Allen goes as far as to suggest that no volume in the New Testament is more similar in its language to Luke-Acts than Hebrews. We lean heavily upon much of his evidence and a collection of additional evidence that we bring to the discussion from our own research in establishing this point.

4. How does a stenographer differ from an amanuensis?

The proposal that perhaps most closely resembles ours is suggested in a footnote by Black when, in attempting to account for the linguistic evidence in Allen’s dissertation on the Lukan authorship of Hebrews, he suggests Luke was perhaps Paul’s amanuensis. The problem with this proposal is that it assumes, contrary to the dominant perspective in scholarship that Hebrews is a letter. Even if this is not the assumption, Black’s idea remains underdeveloped and is not robust enough to in his explanation to make a compelling case. In distinction from Black, we argue that Hebrews is a Pauline speech, independently documented and circulated by Luke, probably based upon his work as a stenographer—a more precise secretarial function related to speech recording rather than the broader domain of amanuensis that Black argues for. J.V. Brown, almost a century ago, advanced a theory similar our proposal when he argued that Paul authored the text but Luke edited and published its final form. Again, we believe a more convincing case can be made through establishing a historical framework in Greco-Roman and early Christian practice in which Luke, as he was accustomed to doing, somehow attained or documented first hand Pauline speech material and published it as an independent speech to be circulated in early Christian communities within the Diaspora. Such a practice is referred to in Greco-Roman historiography and rhetoric as stenography.

5. What do you think of Claire Rothchilds thesis that Hebrews is "Pauline Pseudepigraphy"?

Rothchilds’s thesis (Hebrews as Pseudepigraphon: The History and Significance of the Pauline Attribution of Hebrews [Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2008 ) remains unconvincing for at least two reasons. First, if someone was attempting to pass Hebrews off as a Pauline letter, then why leave out many of the standard components of Paul’s other letters, such as basic epistolary structure and formulas? It seems to us to be too unique of a document to be an attempted Pauline forgery. If it was a forgery of a Pauline letter, this Paulinist sure did a bad job. But such a situation seems highly unlikely given the composer’s skill and education in literary production. Second, from a very early date the Christian community accepted this letter as an authentic Pauline letter—substantiated by the external evidenced provided above. To overturn this evidence, a significant case would need to be made, a case which Rothchilds fails to deliver on.

6. What are the implications of your thesis for the study of the formation of the NT Canon?

Good question! It seems that the inclusion of the document in a number of primitive canons implies the reception of the document at a very early stage as part of Christianity’s sacred literature. Our theory also helps ground the document’s status in the authorship criterion, which remained a decisive issue in these discussions. We could, then, imagine a reception history similar to Mark’s Gospel under Peter’s authorship or of Luke’s Gospel in light of his connection to Paul.

7. What is Veritas Evangelical Seminary where you teach?

Veritas was recently started here in Temecula, Southern California (just south of Los Angeles and just north of San Diego), where my wife (Amber) and I (Andrew) are from. When Amber and I returned to Temecula from doing Ph.D. studies (New Testament) in the Toronto area at McMaster Divinity College, the president of Veritas, Joe Holden, contacted me to discuss the Dean and Associate Professor of Biblical Studies position there, which was at that time available. He desired to bring more strength and rigor to the biblical studies department at Veritas. I was eventually offered the job and serve in this position now. It certainly is in a great location!

Peter O'Brien on Hebrews

I'm looking forward to the appearance of Peter O'Brien's Hebrews commentary in the PNTC series. It will be interesting to see if this will eclipse Craig Koester (AB) and David deSilva (SR) as my running favourites. Back in 2004 I had lunch with Peter O'Brien and discussed Hebrews 6 with him and I enjoyed his remarks about a warning geared towards the community in general not to allow God's grace to be received in vain. Any way, Eerdmans has a 77 page excerpt of the book here (HT Andy Naselli).

F.F. Bruce on the Warning Passage

F.F. Bruce's NICNT commentary on Hebrews says the following on Heb. 6.4-6:

The reason why there is no point in laying the foundation over again is now stated: apostasy is irremediable. Once more our author emphasizes that continuance is the test of reality. In these verses he is not questioning the perseverance of the saints; we might say that rather he is insisting that those who persevere are the true saints. But in fact he is stating a practical truth that has verified itself repeatedly in the experience of the church. Those who have shared the covenant privileges of the people of God, and then deliberately renounce them, are the most difficult persons of all to reclaim for the faith. It is indeed impossible to reclaim them, says our author. We know, of course, that nothing of this sort is ultimately impossible for the grace of God, but as a matter of human experience the reclamation of such people is, practically speaking, impossible. People are frequently immunized against a disease with a mild form of it, or with a related but milder disease. And in the spiritual realm experience suggests that it is possible to be "immunized" against Christianity by being innoculated with something which, for the time being, looks so like the real thing that it is generally mistaken for it. This is not a question of those who are attached in a formal way to the profession of true religion without having experienced its power; it is blessedly possible for such people to have an experience of God's grace which changes what was once a matter of formal attachment into a matter of inward reality. It is a question of people who see clearly where the truth lies, and perhaps for a period to conform to it, but then, for one reason or another, renounce it (p. 144).

Perseverance in Hebrews

In my Greek Texts class we are working our way through Heb. 5.11-6.12 and looking at apostasy and perseverance in the letter. I also preached on this passage in chapel this week under the title"Once Saved, Always . . .?" It seems to me that the passage is clearly talking about people who profess Christian faith (of some form) and are part of the believing community (to some degree). The language used of the persons (enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, shares in the Holy Spirit, tasted the goodness of God’s word and powers of age to come) I think clearly refers to those who are in a Christian community and profess faith and enjoy its benefits, they are on track for salvation and yet their status seems to remain in question. In fact, the author of Hebrews is perhaps himself unsure about their spiritual state, but through the effect of his warnings he hopes that he is able to keep them on course.

Does this passage teach that you can lose your salvation? Yes and No! On the one hand, the persons warned are inhabiting a murky inbetween state wavering in belief and committment, they know and experience enough of salvation to be moving in the right "heavenly direction", but they perhaps are not fully convinced or fully committed to Christ. They risk losing that which a good start should assure them of. On the other hand, the author of Hebrews stresses at numerous points that genuine believers will persevere to the end (Heb. 6.11; 10.39).

In the end, I don't like the bumper sticker theological slogan: "Once Saved, Always Saved" precisely because it can give a false sense of assurance to people who should not have it. A better stock standard phrase might be once saved, always saved, if saved! Overall, addressed to the community, the warning passages in Hebrews 5.11-6.12 teach: (1) That God's grace should be recieved but not presumed upon, (2) Genuine assurance is available to those who genuinely profess faith in Christ, (3) Those who fall away cannot be brought back, (4) the future element of salvation in Hebrews (see David deSilva on this) means that we should speak of eschatological security, rooted in God's faithfulness, rather than eternal security.

John Piper has a good sermon on The Doctrine of Perseverance: The Future of a Fruitless Field which includes this illustration that I found powerful and threatening in a godly way.

I've told the story once before of the vulture who spotted the corpse of a fox on a big hunk of ice floating down the river toward Niagara Falls. He flies to the ice, lands, and begins to eat the fox. He watches the falls approaching and hears the warnings of danger, but he tells himself that he has wings and is free and does not need to pay attention to such warnings. He is destined for the sky. At the last minute he finishes his feast and spreads his wings but he can't fly because his talons have frozen in the ice and he is dragged over the falls to his destruction. And so it will be with people who have heard the warnings of Scripture to abandon their worldly lusts and pursue holiness, but who say, "I have wings, I am a Christian. I can fly anytime I want to." The day will come when they may try and will not be able to repent because they are so hardened and addicted to the world they can't even feel one genuine spiritual affection (12:17).

Bibliographical Resources on this I recommend:

McKnight, Scot. ‘The Warning Passages of Hebrews: A Formal Analysis and Theological Conclusion,’ TrinJ 13 (1992): 21-59.

DeSilva, D.A. ‘Hebrews 6:4-8: A socio-rhetorical investigation (Part 1),’ TynBul 50 (1999): 33-57.

DeSilva, D.A. 'Hebrews 6:4-8: A Socio-Rhetorical Investigation (Part 2),' TynBul 50 (1999):225-37.

Bateman, Hermann (ed.)., Four Views on the Warning Passages in Hebrews (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2008) [esp. G.H. Guthrie's conclusion which is worth the price of the book].

Schreiner, Thomas R. New Testamant Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008.

New Covenant in Hebrews

This is out from Princeton Theological Monographs and it sounds interesting:

Who Needs a New Covenant? Rhetorical Function of the Covenant Motif in the Argument of Hebrews

By Michael D. Morrison

The blurb reads: "Although covenant is a major theme in Hebrews, Morrison contends all mention of covenant can be deleted without damaging the coherence of the epistle or its christological conclusions. What role, then, does the covenant motif have in the epistle? The arguments in Hebrews are aimed at a Jewish audience—they ignore the needs and religious options relevant to Gentiles. For the readers, the Sinai covenant was the only relevant conceptual competitor to Christ. First-century Jews looked to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants as the basis of their obligations to God and God's promises toward them. Although most Jewish writers merged these covenants as if they were one, the author of Hebrews does not—he retains the Abrahamic promises while arguing that the Mosaic covenant is obsolete. The covenant concept supports the exhortations of Hebrews in two ways: (1) it provides the link between priesthood, worship rituals, and other laws, and (2) it enables the author to argue for allegiance to the community as allegiance to Christ."

Craig Koester on Hebrews 1

According to Craig Koester:

"Reading Heb 1 is something like looking at a mosaic that depicts the image of a person. The artist creates the mosaic by selecting various types of stones and arranging them in a way that conveys the subject's likeness. Those who look at the mosaic generally do not ask where the individual pieces came from or how each piece functioned elsewhere, but whether the arrangement of the stones conveys a genuine likeness of the person being portrayed. Similarly, to read Heb 1 on the author's own terms is to ask whether the mosaic of OT quotations is a faithful representaton of the exalted Christ."

- Hebrews (AB), p. 198.

Propositio of Hebrews

Does Hebrews have a propositio? (Actually, does any NT doc have a propositio, but that is another matter). Recently, Ben Witherington has argued that since Hebrews is a piece of epideictic rhetoric it has no propositio. But if I had to press one passage that certain does fit the function or role of a propositio in Hebrews, it would have to be Heb. 2.1-4:

1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. 2 For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, 3 how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, 4 while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will (ESV).

I'd love to check out what Lincoln says in his intro to Hebrews but I don't have it on hand. This passage could be no more than a piece of exhortation following the collage of OT quotes about the preeminence of Christ, but it does have a rather programmatic feel for the rest of the letter.

The Rhetoric of Hebrews

What kind of rhetoric is Hebrews? David deSilva argues that it is deliberative rhetoric for those who are considering apostacizing and epideictic rhetoric for those who are continuing on in the faith. Sounds balanced to me.