ETS 2009 – New Orleans
I was very excited to learn that two of my friends will be giving talks at this year’s ETS meeting in New Orleans. Feeding on Christ’s own Joel Heflin and Bring the Books’ Josh Walker have submitted papers that have been accepted. Joel will be delivering a paper on Herman Bavinck, and Josh will be speaking on the oh-so-wonderful topic of the authorship of the book of Hebrews. I think Josh’s paper is entitled, "New Perspective(s) on the Guy who Wrote Hebrews" (Sorry for ruining the surprise!). You can read more about Josh’s proposal here . Just for the record, I think Josh is entirely wrong, but at least most of the Reformers and Puritans have his back! If you can go to ETS this year, I would strongly encourage you to stop in to hear Joel Heflin and Josh Walker on their respective subjects.
About Post Author
So who wrote Hebrews, Nick? 🙂
Thanks for the information, Nick. I wish I could be there, but can’t afford to go this year.
God the Holy Spirit! I would recommend everyone reads Geerhardus Vos’, “The Teaching of the Epistle of the Hebrews” (http://www.wtsbooks.com/product-exec/product_id/4667/nm/Teaching_of_the_Epistle_to_the_Hebrews_Paperback_) for the reason of authorial anonymity. You will find the absolute best analysis of the book there. Here is a portion out of his chapter “Hebrews, the Epistle of the Diatheke,” The Princeton Theological Review Vol. 13 No. 4 (1915), pp. 587-632. It explains the reason for the lack of authorial clarity. The point of the book is that “God has spoken.” Vos noted:
“It is not accidental, that the first sentence with which the writer opens his discourse reads: “God having spoken … spake.” It is as a speaking God that he grasps Him and desires to bring Him in touch with the readers. And the word also that is employed
in this first sentence and prevailingly afterwards to describe the revelation-speech of God deserves notice in this connection. It is the verb λαλειν, a verb used in the New Testament with reference to the speech of God outside of Hebrews only in John and Acts and which brings out most strikingly the idea of familiar intercourse, denoting speech not primarily for the purpose of conveying information but for the purpose of maintaining fellowship. Further the verb διαλεγεσθαι, expressive of the two-sided mutually responsive speech that takes place between God and man may here be mentioned as entering into the author’s vocabulary. Because the divine word is not merely for instruction or salvation but brings God personally near to the believer, it becomes in itself an object of enjoyment, hence the Epistle speaks of tasting the good word of God (vi. 5). And it is further in agreement with this personal, practical view taken of revelation when, throughout, the direct provenience of the word from God is emphasized. In a very striking way God regularly appears as the speaking subject in the quotations made from the Old Testament. Where Paul contents himself with the formula, “as it is written,” or “as the Scripture says,” Hebrews prefers to make the affirmation of the divine authorship explicit and employs the formula “God says.” That this is not the result of meaningless habit, but possesses doctrinal significance, appears from the cases, where, rhetorically considered, it would be unnatural to introduce God as the speaking subject, since in the passage quoted He is the Person spoken of. Even in such cases the author insists upon emphasizing that the statement about God came from the mouth of God Himself. It is God who said “the Lord shall judge His people” (x. 30). And so vivid is the realisation of this supreme fact of the direct divine authorship of Scripture that what we call the secondary authors, that is, the writers of the Biblical books, are, again in distinction from Paul’s custom, scarcely ever mentioned. The only case where the name of a Bible writer is introduced is chap. iv. 7, and even here the phrase is not “David saying” but “God saying in David.” There are even passages where pains seem to have been taken to bring out the relative unimportance of the secondary authorship by more positive means than the mere omission of the writer’s name. In a couple of instances use seems to have been made for this purpose of the indefinite pronoun “some one” and the indefinite adverb “somewhere”: ” One has somewhere testified saying” (ii. 6);” For He hath spoken somewhere of the seventh day on this wise” (iv. 4). By this manner of statement the impression is conveyed that in view of the authority wherewith God invests every word of Scripture the human instrumentality through which the divine word was mediated becomes a matter of little or no importance. As a matter of fact the word of revelation is so literally to the writer’s mind the word of God that it is represented as having been spoken by God being locally present in His messengers : “God of old times spoke unto the fathers in the prophets”; “God said in David.” The conception is not instrumental, as if “in” were a Hebraizing construction for “by means of”; it should rather be compared with the similar form of statement by our Lord to the disciples: “it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you” (Mat. x. 20), and by Paul who offers to the Corinthians a proof of Christ speaking in him (2 Cor. xiii. 3).
But, while this immediateness of the approach of God to man through His word is made a characteristic of all revelation, and found illustrated in the Old Testament Scriptures, the writer evidently associates it in the highest degree with the New Covenant. Over against the many portions and the many modes in which the ancient speech of God came to the people in the several prophets, he places that uniform and undivided revelation that was concentrated in Him who is a Son. The purpose for which the author draws this contrast is precisely to exalt the New Covenant by reason of the absolutely unmediated and most intimate union with man upon which in it through Christ God’s revelation-speech has entered. Revelation in a Son is superior to that in prophets and superior to that in angels because as Son of God Christ is the effulgence of the divine glory and the expressed image of the divine substance, in no wise differing from God Himself, so that to hear His voice is to hear in the most literal sense God’s own voice and to come in direct touch with the divine life expressing itself in the divine word. It is characteristic of the Epistle that, in connection with the revealing office of Christ, it places all the stress upon His divine nature, whereas in connection with His priestly office, the reality of His human nature is strongly emphasized. Both features are explainable from the covenant-idea. In regard to the priestly function we shall have occasion to show this later on. At this point it may be observed that the ideal revelation, if it is to fulfill its covenant-purpose of establishing real contact between God and man, can have no other than a strictly divine Mediator. Otherwise the bearer of the divine word would intervene between the covenant-God and the covenant-people and stand as a barrier to the close union contemplated. The perfect identification of Christ with God, therefore, is necessary to the belief that the Son has brought the highest and final revelation and raised the covenant-intercourse to a point beyond which it cannot be perfected. This can be observed most clearly perhaps on the negative side. Repeatedly the readers are warned in the Epistle that unbelief over against the New Testament revelation and rejection of its Gospel are a far more serious offense and must be followed by far more tremendous consequences than a similar line of conduct under the old dispensation. “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that were heard, lest haply we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation (ii. 1-3)?” And “A man that hath set at naught Moses’ law dieth without compassion on the testimony of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith He was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace” (x. 28- 30)? “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not when they refused Him that gave oracles on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that gives oracles from Heaven” (xii. 25, 26). In such passages the revelation mediated by angels and by Moses and by the prophets is represented as imposing a lesser degree of responsibility than that mediated by Christ. Now the reason for this cannot lie in the fact that the angelic or Mosaic or prophetic message was insufficiently authenticated as to its divine origin or less completely derived from God. On the contrary the author explicitly states that the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, βεβαιος, and the same thing is emphasized regarding the Mosaic revelation at Sinai: neither of these could be disobeyed with impunity. But neither of these two, nor even the prophetic word, could be placed on a line with the revelation in Christ because here the word spoken comes invested with the divine majesty which it derives from the unique organ of its transmission, the Son of God. The measure of responsibility here evidently is not the truthfulness of the message, for that is alike in all true revelation, but the closeness of contact with God that is effected. Under the Old Testament there was not that immediateness and directness which the author claims for the self-disclosure of God in Christ. Between God and the people there stood the angels and Moses; between God and us stands only the Son. And, strictly speaking, even this is an incorrect form of statement which fails to reproduce the author’s intent at its most vital point: as regards Christ, no intervention between God and us in the matter of revelation can be affirmed. By Christ’s activity in this sphere absolutely nothing is detracted from the immediacy of the divine approach to man. Hence “the word of Christ” (vi. 1) is spoken of in precisely the same sense as is ordinarily connected with “the word of God,” and in which “the word of Moses” or “the word of the prophets” could never be referred to. A stronger proof of the author’s belief in the deity of our Lord than this whole representation that God spake under the Old Covenant through intermediate organs but under the New Covenant in Christ directly cannot be conceived.”
Dr. Shaw,
I wish I could be there as well. I don’t think I will have time. I wish I could have heard your talk last year. By the way, glad to see you posting on your blog again. I will put some links to it soon.
Had to be Luke.