_THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF RENEWAL._
"Of Whom we have many things to say, and hard of interpretation,
seeing ye are become dull of hearing. For when by reason of the time
ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that some one teach you
the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are
become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food. For every
one that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word of
righteousness; for he is a babe. But solid food is for full-grown
men, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to
discern good and evil. Wherefore let us cease to speak of the first
principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection; not laying again
a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of
resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we
do, if God permit. For as touching those who were once enlightened
and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy
Ghost, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to
come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto
repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh,
and put Him to an open shame. For the land which hath drunk the rain
that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them for
whose sake it is also tilled, receiveth blessing from God: but if it
beareth thorns and thistles, it is rejected and nigh unto a curse;
whose end is to be burned."--HEB. v. 11-vi. 8 (R.V.).
In one of the greatest and most strange of human books the argument is
sometimes said "to veil itself," and the sustained image of a man
battling with the waves betrays the writer's hesitancy. When he has
surmounted the first wave, he dreads the second. When he has escaped out
of the second, he fears to take another step, lest the third wave may
overwhelm him. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has proved that
Christ is Priest-King. But before he starts anew, he warns his readers
that whoever will venture on must be prepared to hear a hard saying,
which he himself will find difficult to interpret and few will receive.
Hitherto he has only shown that whatever of lasting worth was contained
in the old covenant remains and is exalted in Christ. Even this truth is
an advance on the mere rudiments of Christian doctrine. But what if he
attempts to prove that the covenant which God made with their fathers
has waxed old and must vanish away to make room for a new and better
one? For his part, he is eager to ascend to these higher truths. He has
yet much to teach about Christ in the power of His heavenly life.[83]
But his readers are dull of hearing and inexperienced in the word of
righteousness.
The commentators are much divided and exercised on the question whether
the Apostle means that the argument should advance or that his readers
ought to make progress in spiritual character.[84] In a way he surely
means both. What gives point to the whole section now to be considered
is the connection between development of doctrine and a corresponding
development of the moral nature. "For the time ye ought to be
teachers."[85] They ought to have been teachers of the elementary
truths, in consequence of having discovered the higher truths for
themselves, under the guidance of God's Spirit. It ought to have been
unnecessary for the Apostle to explain them. At this time the "teachers"
in the Church had probably consolidated into a class formally set apart,
but had not yet fallen to the second place, as compared with the
"prophets," which they occupy in the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles."
A long time had elapsed since the Church of Jerusalem, with the Apostles
and elders, had sat in judgment on the question submitted to their
decision by such men as Peter, Barnabas, Paul, and James.[86] Since then
the Hebrew Christians had degenerated, and now needed somebody--it
mattered little who it might be,[87]--to teach them the alphabet[88] of
Christian doctrine.
Philo had already emphasised the distinction between the child in
knowledge and the man of full age and mature judgment. St. Paul had said
more than once that such a distinction holds among Christians. Many are
carnal; some are spiritual. In his writings the difference is not an
external one, nor is the line between the two classes broad and clear.
The one shades into the other. But, though we may not be able to
determine where the one begins and the other ends, both are tendencies,
and move in opposite directions. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the
distinction resembles the old doctrine of habit taught by Aristotle. Our
organs of sense are trained by use to distinguish forms and colours. In
like manner, there are inner organs of the spirit,[89] which distinguish
good from evil, not by mathematical demonstration, but by long-continued
exercise[90] in hating evil and in loving holiness. The growth of this
spiritual sense is connected by our author with the power to understand
the higher doctrine. He only who discerns, by force of spirited
insight, what is good and what is evil, can also understand spiritual
truths. The difference between good and evil is not identical with "the
word of righteousness." But the moral elevation of character that
clearly discerns the former is the condition of understanding also the
latter.
"Wherefore"--that is, inasmuch as solid food is for full-grown men--"let
us have done[91] with the elementary doctrines, and permit ourselves to
be borne strongly onwards[92] towards full growth of spiritual
character."[93] The Apostle has just said that his readers needed some
one to teach them the rudiments. We should have expected him, therefore,
to take it in hand. But he reminds them that the defect lies deeper than
intellectual error. The remedy is not mere teaching, but spiritual
growth. Apart from moral progress there can be no revelation of new
truths. Ever-recurring efforts to lay the foundation of individual piety
will result only in an apprehension of what we may designate personal
and subjective doctrines.
The Apostle particularises. Repentance towards God and faith in God are
the initial graces.[94] For without sorrow for sin and trust in God's
mercy God's revelation of Himself in His Son will not be deemed worthy
of all acceptation. If this is so, the doctrines suitable to the
initial stage of the Christian life will be--(1) the doctrine of
baptisms and of laying on of hands, and (2) the doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead and of eternal judgment. Repentance and faith
accept the gospel of forgiveness, which is symbolised in baptism, and of
absolution, symbolised in the laying on of hands. Again, repentance and
faith realise the future life and the final award; the beginning of
piety reaching forth a hand, as runners do, as if to grasp the furthest
goal before it touches the intermediate points. Yet every intermediate
truth, when apprehended, throws new light on the soul's eschatology. In
like manner civilization began with contemplation of the stars, long
before it descended to chemical analysis, but at last it applies its
chemistry to make discoveries in the stars.
This, then, is the initial stage in the Christian character,--repentance
and faith; and these are the initial doctrines, baptism, absolution,
resurrection, and judgment. How may they be described? They all centre
in the individual believer. They have all to do with the fact of his
sin. One question, and one only, presses for an answer. It is, "What
must I do to be saved?" One result, and one only, flows from the
salvation obtained. It is the final acquittal of the sinner at the last
day. God is known only as the merciful Saviour and the holy Judge. The
whole of the believer's personal existence hovers in mid-air between
two points: repentance at some moment in the past and judgment at the
end of the world. Works are "dead," and the reason why is that they have
no saving power. There is here no thought of life as a complete thing or
as a series of possibilities that ever spring into actuality, no thought
of the individual as being part of a greater whole. The Church exists
for the sake of the believer, not the believer for the sake of the
Church. Even Christ Himself is nothing more to him than his Saviour, Who
by an atoning death paid his debt. The Apostle would rise to higher
truths concerning Christ in the power of His heavenly life. This is the
truth which the story of Melchizedek will teach to such as are
sufficiently advanced in spirituality to understand its meaning.
But, before he faces the rolling wave, the Apostle tells his readers why
it is that, in reference to Christian doctrine, character is the
necessary condition of intelligence. It is so for two reasons.
_First_, the word spoken by God in His Son has for its primary object,
not speculation, but "righteousness."[95] Theology is essentially a
practical, not a merely theoretical, science. Its purpose is to create
righteous men; that is, to produce a certain character. When produced,
this lofty character is sustained by the truths of the Gospel as by a
spiritual "food," milk or strong meat. Christianity is the art of holy
living, and the art is mastered only as every other art is learned: by
practice or experience. But experience will suggest rules, and rules
will lead to principles. The art itself creates a faculty to transform
it into a science. Religion will produce a theology. The doctrine will
be understood only by the possessor of that goodness to which it has
itself given birth.
_Second_, the Apostle introduces the personal action of God into the
question. Understanding of the higher truths is God's blessing on
goodness,[96] and destruction of the faculty of spiritual discernment is
His way of punishing moral depravity.[97] This is the general sense and
purport of an extremely difficult passage. The threatened billow is
still far away. But before it rolls over us, we seem to be already
submerged under the waves. Our only hope lies in the Apostle's
illustration of the earth that bears here thorns and there good grain.
Expositors go quite astray when they explain the simile as if it were
intended to describe the effect on moral character of rightly or wrongly
using our faculty of knowledge. The meaning is the reverse. The Apostle
is showing the effect of character on our power to understand truth.
Neither soil is barren. Both lands drink in the rain that often comes
upon them. But the fatness of the one field brings forth thorns and
thistles, and this can only mean that the man's vigour of soul is itself
an occasion of moral evil. The richness of the other land produces
plants fit for use by men, who are the sole reason for its tillage.[98]
This, again, must mean that, in the case of some men, God blesses that
natural strength which itself is neither good nor evil, and it becomes a
source of goodness. We come now to the result in each case. The soil
that brings forth useful herbs has its share of the Creator's first
blessing. What the blessing consists in we are not here told, and it is
not necessary to pursue this side of the illustration further. But the
other soil, which gives its natural strength to the production of
noxious weeds, falls under the Creator's primal curse and is nigh unto
burning. The point of the parable evidently is that God blesses the one,
that God destroys the other. In both cases the Apostle recognises the
Divine action, carrying into effect a Divine threat and a Divine
promise.
Let us see how the simile is applied. The terrible word "impossible"
might indeed have been pronounced, with some qualification, over a man
who had fallen under the power of evil habits. For God sets His seal to
the verdict of our moral nature. To such a man the only escape is
through the strait gate of repentance. But here we have much more than
the ordinary evil habits of men, such as covetousness, hypocrisy, carnal
imaginations, cruelty. The Apostle is thinking throughout of God's
revelation in His Son. He refers to the righteous anger of God against
those who persistently despise the Son. In the second chapter[99] he has
asked how men who neglect the salvation spoken through the Lord can hope
to shun God's anger. Here, he declares the same truth in a stronger
form. How shall they escape His wrath who crucify afresh the Son and put
Him to an open shame? Such men God will punish by hardening their
hearts, so that they cannot even repent. The initial grace becomes
impossible.
The four parts of the simile and of the application correspond.
_First_, drinking in the rain that often comes upon the land corresponds
to being once enlightened, tasting of the heavenly gift, being made
partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasting the good word of God and the
powers of the world to come. The rain descends on all the land and gives
it its natural richness. The question whether the Apostle speaks of
converted or unconverted men is entirely beside the purpose, and may
safely be relegated to the limbo of misapplied interpretations. No doubt
the controversy between Calvinists and Arminians concerning final
perseverance and the possibility of a fall from a state of grace is
itself vastly important. But the question whether the gifts mentioned
are bestowed on an unconverted man is of no importance to the right
apprehension of the Apostle's meaning. We must be forgiven for thinking
he had it not in his mind. It is more to the purpose to remind ourselves
that all these excellences are regarded by the Apostle as gifts of God,
like the oft-descending rain, not as moral qualities in men. He mentions
the one enlightenment produced by the one revelation of God in His Son.
It may be compared to the opening of blind eyes or the startled waking
of the soul by a great idea. To taste the heavenly gift is to make trial
of the new truth. To be made partakers of the Holy Ghost is to be moved
by a supernatural enlightening influence. To taste the good word of God
is to discern the moral beauty of the revelation. To taste the powers of
the world to come is to participate in the gifts of power which the
Spirit divides to each one severally even as He will. All these things
have an intellectual quality. Faith in Christ and love to God are
purposely excluded. The Apostle brings together various phases of our
spiritual intelligence, the gift of illumination, which we sometimes
call genius, sometimes culture, sometimes insight, the faculty that
ought to apprehend Christ and welcome the revelation in the Son. If
these high gifts are used to scoff at the Son of God, and that with the
persistence that can spring only from the pride and self-righteousness
of unbelief, renewal is impossible.
_Second_, the negative result of not bringing forth any useful herbs
corresponds to falling away.[100] God has bestowed His gift of
enlightenment, but there is no response of heart and will. The soul does
not lay hold, but drifts away.
_Third_, the positive result of bearing thorns and thistles corresponds
to crucifying to themselves the Son of God afresh and putting Him to an
open shame. The gifts of God have been abused, and the contrary of what
He, in His care for men, intended the earth to produce, is the result.
The Divine gift of spiritual enlightenment has been itself turned into a
very genius of cynical mockery. The Son of God has already been once
crucified amid the awful scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary. The agony and
bloody sweat, the cry of infinite loneliness on the Cross, the tender
compassion of the dying Jesus, the power of His resurrection--all this
is past. One bitterness yet remains. Men use God's own gift of spiritual
illumination to crucify the Son afresh. But they crucify Him only for
themselves.[101] When the sneer has died away on the scoffer's lips,
nothing is left. No result has been achieved in the moral world. When
Christ was crucified on Calvary, His death changed for ever the
relations of God and men. When He is crucified in the reproach of His
enemies, nothing has been accomplished outside the scoffer's little
world of vanity and pride.
_Fourth_, to be nigh unto a curse and to be given in the end to be
burned corresponds to the impossibility of renewal. The illustration
requires us to distinguish between "falling away" and "crucifying the
Son of God afresh and putting Him to an open shame."[102] The land is
doomed to be burned because it bears thorns and thistles. God renders
men incapable of repentance, not because they have fallen away once or
more than once, but because they scoff at the Son, through Whom God has
spoken unto us. The terrible impossibility of renewal here threatened
applies, not to apostasy (as the early Church maintained) nor to the
lapsed (as the Novatianists held),[103] but to apostasy combined with a
cynical, scoffing temper that persists in treading the Son of God under
foot. Apostasy resembles the sin against the Son of man; cynicism in
reference to the Son of man comes very near the sin against the Holy
Ghost. This sin is not forgiven, because it hardens the heart and makes
repentance impossible. It hardens the heart, because God is jealous of
His Son's honour, and punishes the scoffer with the utter destruction of
the spiritual faculty and with absolute inability to recover it. This is
not the mere force of habit. It is God's retribution, and the Apostle
mentions it here because the text of the whole Epistle is that God has
spoken unto us in His Son.
But the Hebrew Christians have not come to this.[104] The Apostle is
persuaded better things of them, and things that are nigh, not unto a
curse, but unto ultimate salvation. Yet they are not free from the
danger. If we may appropriate the language of an eminent historian, "the
worship of wealth, grandeur, and dominion blinded the Jews to the form
of spiritual godliness; the rejection of the Saviour and the deification
of Herod were parallel manifestations of the same engrossing
delusion."[105] That the Christian Hebrews may not fall under the curse
impending over their race, the Apostle urges them to press on unto full
growth of character. And this he and they will do--he ranks himself
among them, and ventures to make reply in their name. But He must add an
"if God permit." For there are men whom God will not permit to advance a
jot higher. Because they have abused His great gift of illumination to
scoff at the greater gift of the Son, they are doomed to forfeit
possession of both. The only doomed man is the cynic.
FOOTNOTES:
[83] Chap. v. 11.
[84] Chap. vi. 1.
[85] Chap. v. 12.
[86] Acts xv.
[87] =tina= (v. 12).
[88] =stoicheia=.
[89] =aisthêtêria=.
[90] =gegymnasmena=.
[91] =aphentes= (vi. 1).
[92] =pherômetha=.
[93] =teleiotêta=.
[94] =themelion=.
[95] Chap. v. 13.
[96] Chap. vi. 7.
[97] Chap. vi. 8.
[98] =di' hous=.
[99] Chap. ii. 3.
[100] =parapesontas= (vi. 6). Cf. =pararyômen= (ii. 1).
[101] =heautois=.
[102] Apart from the exigencies of the illustration, the change from the
aorist participle to the present participles tells in the same way. It
is extremely harsh to consider =anastaurauntas= and =paradeigmatizontas=
to be explanatory of =parapesontas=. The former must be rendered
hypothetically: "They cannot be renewed after falling away if they
persist in crucifying," etc.
[103] The apostates, or deserters, were not identical with the lapsed,
who fell away from fear of martyrdom. Novatian refused to restore either
to Church privileges. The Church restored the latter, but not the
former. Cf. Cyprian, Ep. lv. _ad fin._
[104] Chap. vi. 9.
[105] Dean Merivale, _Romans under the Empire_, chap. lix.