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The Destiny of the Soul
William Rounseville Alger
CHAPTER II.
DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE IN THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.
THE Epistle to the Hebrews was written by some person who was originally a Jew, afterwards a zealous Christian. He was unquestionably a man of remarkable talent and eloquence and of lofty religious views and feelings. He lived in the time of the immediate followers of Jesus, and apparently was acquainted with them. The individual authorship it is now impossible to determine with certainty. Many of the most learned, unprejudiced, and able critics have ascribed it to Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew, a compeer of Paul and a fellow citizen of Philo. This opinion is more probable than any other. Indeed, so numerous are the resemblances of thoughts and words in the writings of Philo to those in this epistle, that even the wild conjecture has been hazarded that Philo himself at last became a Christian and wrote to his Hebrew countrymen the essay which has since commonly passed for Paul's. No one can examine the hundreds of illustrations of the epistle gathered from Philo by Carpzov, in his learned but ill reasoned work, without being greatly impressed. The supposition which has repeatedly been accepted and urged, that this composition was first written in Hebrew, and afterwards translated into Greek by another person, is absurd, in view of the masterly skill and eloquence, critical niceties, and felicities in the use of language, displayed in it. We could easily fill a paragraph with the names of those eminent in the Church such as Tertullian, Hippolytus, Erasmus, Luther, Le Clerc, and Neander who have concluded that, whoever the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was, he was not Paul. The list of those names would reach from the Egyptian Origen, whose candor and erudition were without parallel in his age, to the German Bleek, whose masterly and exhaustive work is a monument of united talent and toil, leaving little to be desired. It is not within our present aim to argue this point: we will therefore simply refer the reader to the thorough and unanswerable discussion and settlement of it by Norton.1
The general object of the composition is, by showing the superiority of the Christian system to the Hebrew, to arm the converts from Judaism to whom it is addressed against the temptations to desert the fulfilling faith of Christ and to return to the emblematic faith of their fathers. This aim gives a pervading cast and color to the entire treatment to the reasoning and especially to the chosen imagery of the epistle. Omitting, for the most part, whatever is not essentially interwoven with the subject of death, the resurrection, and future existence, and with the mission of Christ in relation to those subjects, we advance to the consideration of the views which the epistle presents or implies concerning those points.
1 Christian Examiner, vols. for 1827 29.
It is to be premised that we are forced to construct from fragments and hints the theological fabric that stood in the mind of the writer. The suggestion also is quite obvious that, since the letter is addressed solely to the Hebrews and describes Christianity as the completion of Judaism, an acquaintance with the characteristic Hebrew opinions and hopes at that time may be indispensable for a full comprehension of its contents.
The view of the intrinsic nature and rank of Christ on which the epistle rests seems very plainly to be that great Logos doctrine which floated in the philosophy of the apostolic age and is so fully developed in the Gospel of John: "The Logos of God, alive, energetic, irresistibly piercing, to whose eyes all things are bare and open;" "first begotten of God;" "faithful to Him that made him;" inferior to God, superior to all beside; "by whom God made the worlds;" whose seat is at the right hand of God, the angels looking up to him, and "the world to come put in subjection to him." The author, thus assuming the immensely super human rank and the pre existence of Christ, teaches that, by the good will of God, he descended to the world in the form of a man, to save them that were without faith and in fear, them that were lost through sin. God "bringeth in the first begotten into the world." "When he cometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared for me." "Jesus was made a little while inferior to the angels." "Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise partook of the same;" that is, in order to pass through an experience like that of those whom he wished to deliver, he assumed their nature. "He taketh not hold of angels, but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham:" in other words, he aimed not to assist angels, but men. These passages, taken in connection with the whole scope and drift of the document in which they are found, declare that Jesus was a spirit in heaven, but came to the earth, taking upon him a mortal frame of flesh and blood.
Why he did this is the question that naturally arises next. We do not see how it is possible for any person to read the epistle through intelligently, in the light of an adequate knowledge of contemporary Hebrew opinions, and not perceive that the author's answer to that inquiry is, that Christ assumed the guise and fate of humanity in order to die; and died in order to rise from the dead; and rose from the dead in order to ascend to heaven; and ascended to heaven in order to reveal the grace of God opening the way for the celestial exaltation and blessedness of the souls of faithful men. We will commence the proof and illustration of these statements by bringing together some of the principal passages in the epistle which involve the objects of the mission of Christ, and then stating the thought that chiefly underlies and explains them.
"We see Jesus who was made a little while inferior to the angels, in order that by the kindness of God he might taste death for every man through the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor." With the best critics, we have altered the arrangement of the clauses in the foregoing verse, to make the sense clearer. The exact meaning is, that the exaltation of Christ to heaven after his death authenticated his mission, showed that his death had a divine meaning for men; that is, showed that they also should rise to heaven. "When he had by himself made a purification of our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." "For this cause he is the Mediator of the new covenant, that, his death having occurred, (for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant,) they which are called might enter upon possession of the promised eternal inheritance." The force of this last passage, with its context, turns on the double sense of the Greek word for covenant, which likewise means a will. Several statements in the epistle show the author's belief that the subjects of the old dispensation had the promise of immortal life in heaven, but had never realized the thing itself.2 Now, he maintains the purpose of the new dispensation to be the actual revelation and bestowment of the reality which anciently was only promised and typically foreshadowed; and in the passage before us he figures Christ the author of the Christian covenant as the maker of a will by which believers are appointed heirs of a heavenly immortality. He then following the analogy of testamentary legacies and legatees describes those heirs as "entering on possession of that eternal inheritance" "by the death of the Testator." He was led to employ precisely this language by two obvious reasons: first, for the sake of that paronomasia of which he was evidently fond; secondly, by the fact that it really was the death of Christ, with the succeeding resurrection and ascension, which demonstrated both the reality of the thing promised in the will and the authority of the Testator to bestow it.
All the expressions thus far cited, and kindred ones scattered through the work, convey a clear and consistent meaning, with sharp outlines and coherent details, if we suppose their author entertained the following general theory; and otherwise they cannot be satisfactorily explained. A dreadful fear of death, introduced by sin, was tyrannizing over men. In consequence of conscious alienation from God through transgressions, they shuddered at death. The writer does not say what there was in death that made it so feared; but we know that the prevailing Hebrew conception was, that death led the naked soul into the silent, dark, and dreary region of the under world, a doleful fate, from which they shrank with sadness at the best, guilt converting that natural melancholy into dread foreboding. In the absence of any evidence or presumption whatever to the contrary, we are authorized, nay, rather forced, to conclude that such a conception is implied in the passages we are considering. Now, the mission of Jesus was to deliver men from that fear and bondage, by assuring them that God would forgive sin and annul its consequence. Instead of banishing their disembodied spirits into the sepulchral Sheol, he would take them to himself into the glory above the firmament. This aim Christ accomplished by literally exemplifying the truths it implies; that is, by personally assuming the lot of man, dying, rising from among the spirits of the dead, and ascending beyond the veil into heaven. By his death and victorious ascent "he purged our sins," "redeemed transgressions," "overthrew him that has the power of death," in the sense that he thereby, as the writer thought, swept away the supposed train of evils caused by sin, namely, all the concomitants of a banishment after death into the cheerless subterranean empire.
2 xi. 13, 16, et al. See chap. x. 36,
It will be well now to notice more fully, in the author's scheme, the idea that Christ did locally ascend into the heavens, "into the presence of God," "where he ever liveth," and where to receive the promise most plainly means to obtain the thing promised, as it does several times in the epistle.
So Paul, in his speech at Antioch, (Acts xiii. 32, 33,) says, "We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again" that by this ascent he for the first time opened the way for others to ascend to him where he is, avoiding the doom of Hades.
"We have a great High Priest, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God." "Christ is not entered into the most holy place, made with hands, the figure of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." Indeed, that Jesus, in a material and local sense, rose to heaven, is a conception fundamental to the epistle and prominent on all its face. It is much more necessary for us to show that the author believed that the men who had previously died had not risen thither, but that it was the Savior's mission to open the way for their ascension.
It is extremely significant, in the outset, that Jesus is called "the first leader and the bringer to the end of our faith;" for the words in this clause which the common version renders "author" and "finisher"3 mean, from their literal force and the latent figure they contain, "a guide who runs through the course to the goal so as to win and receive the prize, bringing us after him to the same consummation." Still more striking is the passage we shall next adduce. Having enumerated a long list of the choicest worthies of the Old Testament, the writer adds, "These all, having obtained testimony through faith, did not realize the promise,4 God having provided a better thing for us, that they without us should not be perfected," should not be brought to the end, the end of human destiny, that is, exaltation to heaven. Undoubtedly the author here means to say that the faithful servants of God under the Mosaic dispensation were reserved in the under world until the ascension of the Messiah. Augustine so explains the text in hand, declaring that Christ was the first that ever rose from the under world.5 The same exposition is given by Origen,6 and indeed by nearly every one of the Fathers who has undertaken to give a critical interpretation of the passage. This doctrine itself was held by Catholic Christendom for a thousand years; is now held by the Roman, Greek, and English Churches; but is, for the most part, rejected or forgotten by the dissenting sects, from two causes. It has so generally sunk out of sight among us, first, from ignorance, ignorance of the ancient learning and opinions on which it rested and of which it was the necessary completion; secondly, from rationalistic speculations, which, leading men to discredit the truth of the doctrine, led them arbitrarily to deny its existence in the Scripture, making them perversely force the texts that state it and wilfully blink the texts that hint it. Whether this be a proper and sound method of proceeding in critical investigations any one may judge. To us it seems equally unmanly and immoral. We know of but one justifiable course, and that is, with patience, with earnestness, and with all possible aids, to labor to discern the real and full meaning of the words according to the understanding and intention of the author. We do so elsewhere, regardless of consequences. No other method, in the case of the Scriptures, is exempt from guilt.
3 Robinson's Lexicon, first edition, under [NAC]; also see Philo, cited there.
4 Ch. x. 36.
5 Epist. CLXIV. sect. ix., ed. Benedictina.
6 De Principiis, lib. ii. cap. 2.
The meaning (namely, to bring to the end) which we have above attributed to the word [NAC](translated in the common version to make perfect) is the first meaning and the etymological force of the word. That we do not refine upon it over nicely in the present instance, the following examples from various parts of the epistle unimpeachably witness. "For it was proper that God, in bringing many sons unto glory, should make him who was the first leader of their salvation perfect [reach the end] through sufferings;" that is, should raise him to heaven after he had passed through death, that he, having himself arrived at the glorious heavenly goal of human destiny, might bring others to it. "Christ, being made perfect," (brought through all the intermediate steps to the end,) "became the cause of eternal salvation to all them that obey him; called of God an high priest." The context, and the after assertion of the writer that the priesthood of Jesus is exercised in heaven, show that the word "perfected," as employed here, signifies exalted to the right hand of God. "Perfection" (bringing unto the end) "was not by the Levitical priesthood." "The law perfected nothing, but it was the additional introduction of a better hope by which we draw near unto God." "The law maketh men high priests which have infirmity, which are not suffered to continue, by reason of death; but the word of the oath after the law maketh the Son perfect for evermore," bringeth him to the end, namely, an everlasting priesthood in the heavens. That Christian believers are not under the first covenant, whereby, through sin, men commencing with the blood of Abel, the first death were doomed to the lower world, but are under the second covenant, whereby, through the gracious purpose of God, taking effect in the blood of Christ, the first resurrection, they are already by faith, in imagination, translated to heaven, this is plainly what the author teaches in the following words: "Ye are not come to the palpable mount that burneth with fire, and to blackness and tempest, where so terrible was the sight that Moses exceedingly trembled, but ye are come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to God, and to the spirits of the perfected just, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the lustral blood which speaks better things than that of Abel." The connection here demonstrates that the souls of the righteous are called "perfected," as having arrived at the goal of their destiny in heaven. Again, the author, when speaking of the sure and steadfast hope of eternal life, distinguishes Jesus as a [non-ASCII characters], one who runs before as a scout or leader: "the Forerunner, who for us has entered within the veil," that is, has passed beyond the firmament into the presence of God. The Jews called the outward or lowermost heaven the veil.7 But the most conclusive consideration upon the opinion we are arguing for and it must be entirely convincing is to be drawn from the first half of the ninth chapter. To appreciate it, it is requisite to remember that the Rabbins with whose notions our author was familiar and some of which he adopts in his reasoning were accustomed to compare the Jewish temple and city with the temple and city of Jehovah above the sky, considering the former as miniature types of the latter. This mode of thought was originally learned by philosophical Rabbins from the Platonic doctrine of ideas, without doubt, and was entertained figuratively, spiritually; but in the unreflecting, popular mind the Hebraic views to which it gave rise were soon grossly materialized and located. They also derived the same conception from God's command to Moses when he was about to build the tabernacle:
7 Schoettgen, Hora Hebraica et Talmudica in 2 Cor. xii. 2.
"See thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount." They refined upon these words with many conceits. They compared the three divisions of the temple to the three heavens: the outer Court of the Gentiles corresponded with the first heaven, the Court of the Israelites with the second heaven, and the Holy of Holies represented the third heaven or the very abode of God. Josephus writes, "The temple has three compartments: the first two for men, the third for God, because heaven is inaccessible to men."8 Now, our author says, referring to this triple symbolic arrangement of the temple, "The priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service, but into the second went the high priest alone, once every year, not without blood; this, which was a figure for the time then present, signifying that the way into the holiest of all9 was not yet laid open; but Christ being come, an high priest of the future good things, by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal deliverance." The points of the comparison here instituted are these: On the great annual day of atonement, after the death of the victim, the Hebrew high priest went into the adytum of the earthly temple, but none could follow; Jesus, the Christian high priest, went after his own death into the adytum of the heavenly temple, and enabled the faithful to enter there after him. Imagery like the fore going, which implies a Sanctum Sanctorum above, the glorious prototype of that below, is frequent in the Talmud.10 To remove all uncertainty from the exposition thus presented, if any doubt linger, it is only necessary to cite one more passage from the epistle. "We have, therefore, brethren, by the blood of Jesus, leading into the holiest, a free road, a new and blessed road, which he hath inaugurated for us through the veil, that is to say, through his flesh." As there was no entrance for the priest into the holiest of the temple save by the removal of the veil, so Christ could not enter heaven except by the removal of his body. The blood of Jesus here, as in most cases in the New Testament, means the death of Jesus, involving his ascension. Chrysostom, commenting on these verses, says, in explanation of the word [non-ASCII characters], "Christ laid out the road and was the first to go over it. The first way was of death, leading [ad inferos] to the under world; the other is of life," leading to heaven.
The interpretation we have given of these passages reconciles and blends that part of the known contemporary opinions which applies to them, and explains and justifies the natural force of the imagery and words employed.
Its accuracy seems to us unquestionable by any candid person who is competently acquainted with the subject. The substance of it is, that Jesus came from God to the earth as a man, laid down his life that he might rise from the dead into heaven again, into the real Sanctum Sanctorum of the universe, thereby proving that faithful believers also shall rise thither, being thus delivered, after the pattern of his evident deliverance, from the imprisonment of the realm of death below.
8 Antiq. lib. iii. cap. 6, sect. 4; ibid. cap. 7, sect. 7.
9 Philo declares, "The whole universe is one temple of God, in which the holiest of all is heaven." De Monarchia, p. 222, ed. Mangey.
10 Schoettgen, Dissertatio de Hierosolyma Coelesti, cap. 2, sect. 9.
We now proceed to quote and unfold five distinct passages, not yet brought forward, from the epistle, each of which proves that we are not mistaken in attributing to the writer of it the above stated general theory. In the first verse which we shall adduce it is certain that the word "death" includes the entrance of the soul into the subterranean kingdom of ghosts. It is written of Christ that, "in the days of his flesh, when he had earnestly prayed to Him that was able to do it, to save him from death, he was heard," and was advanced to be a high priest in the heavens, "was made higher than the heavens." Now, obviously, God did not rescue Christ from dying, but he raised him, [non-ASCII characters], from the world of the dead.
So Chrysostom declares, referring to this very text, "Not to be retained in the region of the dead, but to be delivered from it, is virtually not to die."11 Moreover, the phrase above translated "to save him from death" may be translated, with equal propriety, "to bring him back safe from death."
The Greek verb [non-ASCII characters], to save, is often so used to denote the safe restoration of a warrior from an incursion into an enemy's domain. The same use made here by our author of the term "death" we have also found made by Philo Judaus. "The wise," Philo says, "inherit the Olympic and heavenly region to dwell in, always studying to go above; the bad inherit the innermost parts of the under world, always laboring to die."12 The antithesis between going above and dying, and the mention of the under world in connection with the latter, prove that to die here means, or at least includes, going below after death.
The Septuagint version of the Old Testament twice translates Sheol by the word "death."13 The Hebrew word for death, maveth, is repeatedly used for the abode of the dead.14 And the nail of the interpretation we are urging is clenched by this sentence from Origen: "The under world, in which souls are detained by death, is called death."15 Bretschneider cites nearly a dozen passages from the New Testament where, in his judgment, death is used to denote Hades.
Again: we read that Christ took human nature upon him "in order that by means of [his own] death he might render him that has the power of death that is, the devil idle, and deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." It is apparent at once that the mere death of Christ, so far from ending the sway of Death, would be giving the grim monster a new victory, incomparably the most important he had ever achieved. Therefore, the only way to make adequate sense of the passage is to join with the Savior's death what followed it, namely, his resurrection and ascension. It was the Hebrew belief that sin, introduced by the fraud of the devil, was the cause of death, and the doomer of the disembodied spirits of men to the lower caverns of darkness and rest. They personified Death as king, tyrannizing over mankind; and, unless in severe affliction, they dreaded the hour when they must lie down under his sceptre and sink into his voiceless kingdom of shadows.
11 Homil. Epist. ad Heb. in hoc loc.
12 Quod a Deo mitt. Somn., p. 643, ed. Mangey.
13 2 Sam. xxii. 6; Prov. xxiii. 14.
14 Ps. ix. 13. Prov. vii, 27.
15 Comm. in Epist. ad Rom., lib. vi. cap. 6, sect. 6.: "Inferni locus in quo anima detinebantur a morte mors appellatur."
Christ broke the power of Satan, closed his busy reign, rescued the captive souls, and relieved the timorous hearts of the faithful, by rising triumphantly from the long bound dominion of the grave, and ascending in a new path of light, pioneering the saints to immortal glory.
In another part of the epistle, the writer, having previously explained that as the high priest after the death of the expiatory goat entered the typical holy place in the temple, so Christ after his own death entered the true holy place in the heavens, goes on to guard against the analogy being forced any further to deny the necessity of Christ's service being repeated, as the priest's was annually repeated, saying, "For then he must have died many times since the foundation of the world; but, on the contrary, [it suffices that] once, at the close of the ages, through the sacrifice of himself he hath appeared [in heaven] for the abrogation of sin."16 The rendering and explanation we give of this language are those adopted by the most distinguished commentators, and must be justified by any one who examines the proper punctuation of the clauses and studies the context. The simple idea is, that, by the sacrifice of his body through death, Christ rose and showed himself in the presence of God. The author adds that this was done "unto the annulling of sin." It is with reference to these last words principally that we have cited the passage. What do they mean? In what sense can the passing of Christ's soul into heaven after death be said to have done away with sin? In the first place, the open manifestation of Christ's disenthralled and risen soul in the supernal presence of God did not in any sense abrogate sin itself, literally considered, because all kinds of sin that ever were upon the earth among men before have been ever since, and are now. In the second place, that miraculous event did not annul and remove human guilt, the consciousness of sin and responsibility for it, because, in fact, men feel the sting and load of guilt now as badly as ever; and the very epistle before us, as well as the whole New Testament, addresses Christians as being exposed to constant and varied danger of incurring guilt and woe. But, in the third place, the ascension of Jesus did show very plainly to the apostles and first Christians that what they supposed to be the great outward penalty of sin was annulled; that it was no longer a necessity for the spirit to descend to the lower world after death; that fatal doom, entailed on the generations of humanity by sin, was now abrogated for all who were worthy. Such, we have not a doubt, is the true meaning of the declaration under review.
This exposition is powerfully confirmed by the two succeeding verses, which we will next pass to examine. "As it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time, without sin, for salvation unto those expecting him." Man dies once, and then passes into that state of separate existence in the under world which is the legal judgment for sin. Christ, taking upon himself, with the nature of man, the burden of man's lot and doom, died once, and then rose from the dead by the gracious power of the Father, bearing away the outward penalty of sin.
16 Griesbach in loc.; and Rosenmuller.
He will come again into the world, uninvolved, the next time, with any of the accompaniments or consequences of sin, to save them that look for him, and victoriously lead them into heaven with him. In this instance, as all through the writings of the apostles, sin, death, and the under world are three segments of a circle, each necessarily implying the others. The same remark is to be made of the contrasted terms righteousness, grace, immortal life above the sky; 17 the former being traced from the sinful and fallen Adam, the latter from the righteous and risen Christ.
The author says, "If the blood of bulls and goats sanctifies unto the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who having18 an eternal spirit offered himself faultless to God, cleanse your consciousness!" The argument, fully expressed, is, if the blood of perishable brutes cleanses the body, the blood of the immortal Christ cleanses the soul. The implied inference is, that as the former fitted the outward man for the ritual privileges of the temple, so the latter fitted the inward man for the spiritual privileges of heaven. This appears clearly from what follows in the next chapter, where the writer says, in effect, that "it is not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take away sins, however often it is offered, but that Christ, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down at the right hand of God." The reason given for the efficacy of Christ's offering is that he sat down at the right hand of God. When the chosen animals were sacrificed for sins, they utterly perished, and there was an end. But when Christ was offered, his soul survived and rose into heaven, an evident sign that the penalty of sin, whereby men were doomed to the under world after death, was abolished. This perfectly explains the language; and nothing else, it seems to us, can perfectly explain it.
That Christ would speedily reappear from heaven in triumph, to judge his foes and save his disciples, was a fundamental article in the primitive Church scheme of the last things. There are unmistakable evidences of such a belief in our author. "For yet a little while, and the coming one will come, and will not delay." "Provoke one another unto love and good works, . . . so much the more as ye see the day drawing near." There is another reference to this approaching advent, which, though obscure, affords important testimony. Jesus, when he had ascended, "sat down at the right hand of God, henceforward waiting till his enemies be made his footstool." That is to say, he is tarrying in heaven for the appointed time to arrive when he shall come into the world again to consummate the full and final purposes of his mission. We may leave this division of the subject established beyond all question, by citing a text which explicitly states the idea in so many words: "Unto them that look for him he shall appear the second time." That expectation of the speedy second coming of the Messiah which haunted the early Christians, therefore, unquestionably occupied the mind of the composer of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
17 Neander, Planting and Training of the Church, Ryland's trans. p. 298.
18 [Non-ASCII characters] is often used in the sense of with, or possessing. See Wahl's New Testament Lexicon.
If the writer of this epistolary essay had a firm and detailed opinion as to the exact fate to be allotted to wicked and persistent unbelievers, his allusions to that opinion are too few and vague for us to determine precisely what it was. We will briefly quote the substance of what he says upon the subject, and add a word in regard to the inferences it does, or it does not, warrant. "If under the Mosaic dispensation every transgression received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, first proclaimed by the Lord?" "As the Israelites that were led out of Egypt by Moses, on account of their unbelief and provocations, were not permitted to enter the promised land, but perished in the wilderness, so let us fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." Christ "became the cause of eternal salvation to all them that obey him." "He hath brought unto the end forever them that are sanctified." It will be observed that these last specifications are partial, and that nothing is said of the fate of those not included under them. "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, . . . if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance. . . . But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, even things that accompany salvation." "We are not of them who draw back unto the destruction, but of them who believe unto the preservation, of the soul." "If we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there is no longer left a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment, and of fiery indignation to devour the adversaries." "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." "If they escaped not who refused him that spoke on earth, [Moses,] much more we shall not escape if we turn away from him that speaks from heaven," (Christ.) In view of the foregoing passages, which represent the entire teaching of the epistle in relation to the ultimate destination of sinners, we must assert as follows. First, the author gives no hint of the doctrine of literal torments in a local hell. Secondly, he is still further from favoring nay, he unequivocally denies the doctrine of unconditional, universal salvation. Thirdly, he either expected that the reprobate would be absolutely destroyed at the second coming of Christ, which does not seem to be declared; or that they would be exiled forever from the kingdom of glory into the sad and slumberous under world, which is not clearly implied; or that they would be punished according to their evil, and then, restored to Divine favor, be exalted into heaven with the original elect, which is not written in the record; or, lastly, that they would be disposed of in some way unknown to him, which he does not avow. He makes no allusion to such a terrific conception as is expressed by our modern use of the word hell: he emphatically predicates conditionality of salvation, he threatens sinners in general terms with severe judgment. Further than this he has neglected to state his faith. If it reached any further, he has preferred to leave the statement of it in vague and impressive gloom.
Let us stop a moment and epitomize the steps we have taken. Jesus, the Son of God, was a spirit in heaven. He came upon the earth in the guise of humanity to undergo its whole experience and to be its redeemer. He died, passed through the vanquished kingdom of the grave, and rose into heaven again, to exemplify to men that through the grace of God a way was opened to escape the under world, the great external penalty of sin, and reach a better country, even a heavenly. From his seat at God's right hand, he should ere long descend to complete God's designs in his mission, judge his enemies and lead his accepted followers to heaven. The all important thought running through the length and breadth of the treatise is the ascension of Christ from the midst of the dead [non-ASCII characters]into the celestial presence, as the pledge of our ascent. "Among the things of which we are speaking, this is the capital consideration, [non-ASCII characters] the most essential point, "that we have such a high priest, who hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." Neander says, though apparently without perceiving the extent of its ulterior significance, "The conception of the resurrection in relation to the whole Christian system lies at the basis of this epistle."
A brief sketch and exposition of the scope of the epistle in general will cast light and confirmation upon the interpretation we have given of its doctrine of a future life in particular. The one comprehensive design of the writer, it is perfectly clear, is to prove to the Christian converts from the Hebrews the superiority of Christianity to Judaism, and thus to arm them against apostasy from the new covenant to the ancient one. He begins by showing that Christ, the bringer of the gospel, is greater than the angels, by whom the law was given,19 and consequently that his word is to be reverenced still more than theirs.20 Next he argues that Jesus, the Christian Mediator, as the Son of God, is crowned with more authority and is worthy of more glory than Moses, the Jewish mediator, as the servant of God; and that as Moses led his people towards the rest of Canaan, so Christ leads his people towards the far better rest of heaven. He then advances to demonstrate the superiority of Christ to the Levitical priesthood. This he establishes by pointing out the facts that the Levitical priest had a transient honor, being after the law of a carnal commandment, his offerings referring to the flesh, while Christ has an unchangeable priesthood, being after the power of an endless life, his offering referring to the soul; that the Levitical priest once a year went into the symbolic holy place in the temple, unable to admit others, but Jesus rose into the real holy place itself above, opening a way for all faithful disciples to follow; and that the Hebrew temple and ceremonies were but the small type and shadow of the grand archetypal temple in heaven, where Christ is the immortal High Priest, fulfilling in the presence of God the completed reality of what Judaism merely miniatured, an emblematic pattern that could make nothing perfect. "By him therefore let us continually offer to God the sacrifice of praise." The author intersperses, and closes with, exhortations to steadfast faith, pure morals, and fervent piety.
There is one point in this epistle which deserves, in its essential connection with the doctrine of the future life, a separate treatment. It is the subject of the Atonement. The correspondence between the sacrifices in the Hebrew ritual and the sufferings and death of Christ would, from the nature of the case, irresistibly suggest the sacrificial terms and metaphors which our author uses in a large part of his argument. Moreover, his precise aim in writing compelled him to make these resemblances as prominent, as significant, and as effective as possible. Griesbach says well, in his learned and able essay, "When it was impossible for the Jews, lately brought to the Christian faith, to tear away the attractive associations of their ancestral religion, which were twined among the very roots of their minds, and they were consequently in danger of falling away from Christ, the most ingenious author of this epistle met the case by a masterly expedient.
19 Heb. i. 4 14, ii. 2; Acts vii. 53; Gal. iii.
20 Heb. ii. 1 3.
He instituted a careful comparison, showing the superiority of Christianity to Judaism even in regard to the very point where the latter seemed so much more glorious, namely, in priesthoods, temples, altars, victims, lustrations, and kindred things."21 That these comparisons are sometimes used by the writer analogically, figuratively, imaginatively, for the sake of practical illustration and impression, not literally as logical expressions and proofs of a dogmatic theory of atonement, is made sufficiently plain by the following quotations. "The bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest for sin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach." Every one will at once perceive that these sentences are not critical statements of theological truths, but are imaginative expressions of practical lessons, spiritual exhortations. Again, we read, "It was necessary that the patterns of the heavenly things should be purified with sacrificed animals, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." Certainly it is only by an exercise of the imagination, for spiritual impression, not for philosophical argument, that heaven can be said to be defiled by the sins of men on earth so as to need cleansing by the lustral blood of Christ. The writer also appeals to his readers in these terms: "To do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." The purely practical aim and rhetorical method with which the sacrificial language is employed here are evident enough. We believe it is used in the same way wherever it occurs in the epistle.
The considerations which have convinced us, and which we think ought to convince every unprejudiced mind, that the Calvinistic scheme of a substitutional expiation for sin, a placation of Divine wrath by the offering of Divine blood, was not in the mind of the author, and does not inform his expressions when they are rightly understood, may be briefly presented. First, the notion that the suffering of Christ in itself ransomed lost souls, bought the withheld grace and pardon of God for us, is confessedly foreign and repulsive to the instinctive moral sense and to natural reason, but is supposed to rest on the authority of revelation. Secondly, that doctrine is nowhere specifically stated in the epistle, but is assumed, or inferred, to explain language which to a superficial look seems to imply it, perhaps even seems to be inexplicable without it;22 but in reality such a view is inconsistent with that language when it is accurately studied. For example, notice the following passage: "When Christ cometh into the world," he is represented as saying, "I come to do thy will, O God." "By the which will," the writer continues, "we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus." That is, the death of Christ, involving his resurrection and ascension into heaven, fulfils and exemplifies the gracious purpose of God, not purchases for us an otherwise impossible benignity.
21 Opuscula: De Imaginibus Judaicis in Epist. ad Hebraos.
22 That these texts were not originally understood as implying any vicarious efficacy in Christ's painful death, but as attributing a typical power to his triumphant resurrection, his glorious return from the world of the dead into heaven, appears very plainly in the following instance, Theodoret, one of the earliest explanatory writers on the New Testament, says, while expressly speaking of Christ's death, the sufferings through which he was perfected, "His resurrection certified a resurrection for us all." Comm. in Epist. ad Heb. cap. 2, v. 10.
The above cited explicit declaration is irreconcilable with the thought that Christ came into the world to die that he might appease the flaming justice and anger of God, and by vicarious agony buy the remission of human sins: it conveys the idea, on the contrary, that God sent Christ to prove and illustrate to men the free fulness of his forgiving love. Thirdly, the idea, which we think was the idea of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Christ, by his death, resurrection, and ascent, demonstrated to the faith of men God's merciful removal of the supposed outward penalty of sin, namely, the banishment of souls after death to the under world, and led the way, as their forerunner, into heaven, this idea, which is not shocking to the moral sense nor plainly absurd to the moral reason, as the Augustinian dogma is, not only yields a more sharply defined, consistent, and satisfactory explanation of all the related language of the epistle, but is also which cannot be said of the other doctrine in harmony with the contemporary opinions of the Hebrews, and would be the natural and almost inevitable development from them and complement of them in the mind of a Pharisee, who, convinced of the death and ascension of the sinless Jesus, the appointed Messiah, had become a Christian.
In support of the last assertion, which is the only one that needs further proof, we submit the following considerations. In the first place, every one familiar with the eschatology of the Hebrews knows that at the time of Christ the belief prevailed that the sin of Adam was the cause of death among men. In the second place, it is equally well known that they believed the destination of souls upon leaving the body to be the under world. Therefore does it not follow by all the necessities of logic? they believed that sin was the cause of the descent of disembodied spirits to the dreary lower realm. In the third place, it is notorious and undoubted that the Jews of that age expected that, when the Messiah should appear, the dead of their nation, or at least a portion of them, would be raised from the under world and be reclothed with bodies, and would reign with him for a period on earth and then ascend to heaven. Now, what could be more natural than that a person holding this creed, who should be brought to believe that Jesus was the true Messiah and after his death had risen from among the dead into heaven, should immediately conclude that this was a pledge or illustration of the abrogation of the gloomy penalty of sin, the deliverance of souls from the subterranean prison, and their admission to the presence of God beyond the sky? We deem this an impregnable position. Every relevant text that we consider in its light additionally fortifies it by the striking manner in which such a conception fits, fills, and explains the words. To justify these interpretations, and to sustain particular features of the doctrine which they express, almost any amount of evidence may be summoned from the writings both of the most authoritative and of the simplest Fathers of the Church, beginning with Justin Martyr,23 philosopher of Neapolis, at the close of the apostolic age, and ending with John Hobart,24 Bishop of New York, in the early part of the nineteenth century. We refrain from adducing the throng of such authorities here, because they will be more appropriately brought forward in future chapters.
23 Dial. cum Tryph. cap. v. et cap. lxxx.24 State of the Departed.
The intelligent reader will observe that the essential point of difference distinguishing our exposition of the fundamental doctrine of the composition in review, on the one hand, from the Calvinistic interpretation of it, and, on the other hand, from the Unitarian explanation of it, is this. Calvinism says that Christ, by his death, his vicarious pains, appeased the wrath of God, satisfied the claims of justice, and purchased the salvation of souls from an agonizing and endless hell. Unitarianism says that Christ, by his teachings, spirit, life, and miracles, revealed the character of the Father, set an example for man, gave certainty to great truths, and exerted moral influences to regenerate men, redeem them from sin, and fit them for the blessed kingdom of immortality. We understand the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews really to say in subtraction from what the Calvinist, in addition to what the Unitarian, says that Christ, by his resurrection from the tyrannous realm of death, and ascent into the unbarred heaven, demonstrated the fact that God, in his sovereign grace, in his free and wondrous love, would forgive mankind their sins, remove the ancient penalty of transgression, no more dooming their disembodied spirits to the noiseless and everlasting gloom of the under world, but admitting them to his own presence, above the firmamental floor, where the beams of his chambers are laid, and where he reigneth forever, covered with light as with a garment.
