Hebrews 6.4-6: The Impossibility of Repentance

Greetings from the land of Saguaros and Scorpions. Recently Hebrews 6 has become a text used to claim that a Christian that is "erring" has simply become a "non-Christian." This person would have to be baptized anew. There are many disturbing things about this horrendous abuse of God's word but the basic rejection of the text from its setting is mind blowing. This text makes no such claim. Just a couple of observations on the nature of repentance that I think should be made:

The "Old Testament" Sub-Text/MATRIX for the Preacher's Church

First, Hebrews 6.4ff and 10.26 have a specific historical, situational, and literary context. These are either rejected or minimized to our own peril. In both contexts the "sin" under consideration is outright REJECTION of the Messiah. The sin that is "willfully" (10.26) persisted in in the context of Hebrews is the rejection of Jesus' mission, his ministry, and his cross. There is no salvation here because the very basis of the removal of sin (the Cross) is being rejected.

Second, the term "adunatos" (translated as "impossible" in most English txts) needs some reflection and study. A couple of things need to be recognized.

The author (really the PREACHER, that is Hebrews is an ORAL composition, cf. 13.22) engages in rhetorical flare (hyperbole) for the sake of emphasis. Just as Paul would say the Gospel had been preached to the whole world there are very few that would suppose that is a literal statement. This is not only an effective communication device in oral presentation it is also figures in many narrative passages in the Scriptures.

What is meant by adunotos? and for whom? F. F. Bruce cites the great commentary by Spicq (unfortunately never translated into English) as "when understood of man in relation to the moral plane, should be translated as 'incapable'; the impossibility in question is subjective and relative, due reservation being made with regard to divine intervention, and it is in this sense that Hebrews conceives the impossibility, not of the apostate's pardon, but of his turning" (Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 118).

It is not impossible for God to forgive. He is eager to forgive and relent. The Preacher 'to the Hebrews' was not ignorant of these wonderful texts in his Septuagint:

"Who is a God like you, canceling iniquities, and passing over the sins of the remnant of his inheritance ... for he delights in mercy" (Micah 7.18, LXX)

Texts like the one above could be multiplied but the one that matters most is the Golden Text of the entire Bible ... found in the Torah itself. It is God's self-revelation

"the LORD passed by before his face, and proclaimed, The LORD God, pitiful and merciful, longsuffering and very compassionate and true ... mercy for thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin" (Ex 34.6-7, LXX)

The God of Israel delights in mercy.

The issue, however, is not God. It is the arrogant rejection of the Messiah by those who had once claimed allegiance to him.

Third, and I consider this to be both a neglected though crucial point. The Preacher "to the Hebrews" is in constant dialogue with the Hebrew Bible he knows in the Greek translation, the Septuagint. There are five "warning" passages in Hebrews other than 6.4ff (begins at 5.11). Each one has a specific example from the LXX in mind. They are

1) 2.1-4 disobedience to the Torah
2) 3.7-4.13 failure at Kadesh-barnea
3) 10.19-39 disobedience to Torah
4) 12.14-29 failure of Esau/listen to God's voice at Sinai (25-26)

The background for 6.4-6 remains the episode at Kadesh-barnea. This sad episode was paradigmatic of unbelief and rebellion (see for example Deut 1.19-35; Ps 106.21-27; Damascus Document 3.6-9; 2 Esdras 7.106 and Paul in 1 Cor 10.5-10 in addition to the ones cited in this post). It is related narratively in Num 13-14 and is interpreted in Psalm 95 (quoted explicitly in 3.7-11). It figures in the Levitical prayer in Nehemiah 9 as well. The story is the "subtext" or the "matrix" from which the Preacher exhorts his audience. Linguistically and semantically the parallels for a Jewish audience steeped in the "Old Testament" ring loud and clear. And a "word picture" usually conveys MORE than simply the word but the associations with it. (For more on this kind of "Cultural Literacy" that communicators of all kinds assume see my previous post "Cultural Literacy: Improving Our Bible Reading") Here are a few examples:

Enlightened

Neh 9.12 "by day you led them with a pillar of cloud, and by night a pillar of fire TO GIVE THEM LIGHT" (the linguistic parallel in the Greek of Nehemiah 9 and Heb 6 is not accidental)

Neh 9.19 "...to shine on the way they were to take ..."

Having tasted the heavenly gift

Neh 9. 15 "you gave them bread from heaven" (see Ps 105.40 & 78.24)

Having become partakers of the Holy Spirit

Neh 9.20 "You gave your good Spirit to instruct them" (cf. Isa. 63.11)

etc, etc.

The Preacher assumes a typological relationship between his audience and the people of Israel in the wilderness. The Preacher's congregation is on a journey or pilgrimage toward the promised land just like their ancestral fathers. The Exodus event is the "lens" through which our preacher views his own sojourn ... in other words he has situated and found his own Gathered fellowship in the Story and he assumes the biblical narrative directly address his congregation's needs (talk about the authority of the "Old Testament!!). I believe this is even why he uses the Tabernacle imagery rather than the temple because the Exodus narrative is the matrix for speaking to his own pilgrim people. The wilderness generation experienced all these things (God's good word, provisions & miraculous powers, the presence of God's Spirit among them) and they responded not in joyous gratitude but in unbelief and rebellion. His hearers have also experienced these things. Here is the sin they are in danger of:

The deliberate and calculated rejection of the Messiah

The danger is not simply a "return to Judaism" as some Gentiles have imagined (or some mistaken doctrinal understanding). Jewish believers were never asked to "leave" Judaism in the first place. Gentiles believers are grafted into the Israel. The danger is nothing less than the rejection of the once accepted Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Son of God.

What a dreadful place to find oneself - and by choice! This is not a mere mistake on their part. This is not a failure to understand certain teachings ... it is rejection and shaming the Jewish Messiah again.

Impossible? Oral Rhetoric?

Now if, as I believe is true, the Preacher is preaching from, and out of, the LXX and applying that to his audience (as all good preachers must do) then the rest of that LXX informs us on the hyperbolic nature of the "impossibility" of repentance. It was not Impossible (literally) for Israel to repent and thus receive the gift of grace. Israel, as the Hebrew Preacher knows all to well, existed by and through God's grace. Perhaps the greatest example of God's grace for incredibly obtuse people is seen in the story of Hosea and Gomer and then in the king named Manasseh. The Hebrews' Preacher would even have known (without a doubt) that prayer that was in the LXX known as the Prayer of Manasseh where God is described as "the God of those who repent" (v. 13e). Manesseh is the wickedest king in history according to Kings. Yet he becomes the grand example of the mercy of God in Chronicles. Part of that magnificent prayer of repentance reads ...

O Lord, according to your great goodness
you have promised repentance and forgiveness
to those who have sinned against you,
and in the multitude of your mercies
you have appointed repentance for sinners,
so that they may be saved ...

And now I bend the knee of my heart,
imploring you for your kindness.
I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned,
and I acknowledge my transgressions.
I earnestly implore you,
forgive me, O Lord, forgive me! ...

For you, O Lord, are the God of those who repent ...

[F]or unworthy as I am, you will
save me according to your great mercy.

So our Preacher is not saying that it is literally impossible for a person to renew their repentance but he is saying ... and warning seriously ... that like the children of Israel in the wilderness that rejection of God and his covenant (or Jesus in the case of his audience) is to place ourselves in a dangerous. Those who choose to reject become like Pharaoh ... God waits in eager expectation to be loving and gracious. Grace is not beyond God. He even forgave those with the blood of Jesus on their hands at his crucifixion ... and for those who reject will find him to be equally merciful IF they are able to turn to him again.

Two Valuable Resources:

Dave Mathewson, "Reading Heb 6:4-6 in Light of the Old Testament," Westminster Theological Journal 61 (1999): 209-225

Scot McKnight, "The Warning Passages of Hebrews: A Formal Analysis and Theological Conclusions," Trinity Journal 13 (1992): 21-59

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Jewish Traditions & Hebrews 11: A Lesson in Authorial Givens

In light of an insightful comment made by Kevin Burt on my Jesus the Jew and Hanukkah post, I have decided to expand upon his insight in Hebrews 11. Most students realize that the Hebrews' Writer mined the Septuagint for framing his exhortation. But some do not realize that the Writer mines more than the canonical text but also uses Jewish traditions preserved in what we today call the Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical books. These allusions are often missed by today's student because of an unfamiliarity with these traditions but the early church did recognize them.

What follows below is a sampling of those traditions. I have cited the tradition that is in the text and then a source for it.

The Traditions of Hebrews 11

1) Song of our Faithful Ancestors by Ben Sira provides the form and basic structure mined by the Hebrews' Writer (Sirach 44-50).

2) The Akedah (Heb 11.17-19) or “Binding” of Isaac was an important part of Jewish liturgies especially New Year’s. Pre-Hebrews allusions to the story are in Wis. Of Sol. 10.5; Sirach 44.20f; 4 Macc. 13.12; 16.20; etc.

3) “Quenched the fury of fire” (Heb 11.34). This refers to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3.13ff (of the LXX). Specifically what is now called “the Prayer of Azariah.” In this we read:

“Now the king’s servants who threw them in kept stoking the furnace with napththa, pitch, tow, and brushwood. And the flames poured out above the furnace forty-nine cubits, and spread out and burned those Chaldeans who were caught near the furnace. But the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace to be with Azariah and his companions, and drove the fiery flame out of the furnace . . .” (Azariah vv. 23-26).

4) Tortured and refused to be released (Heb 11.35). The Seven Brothers of 4 Maccabees 5-16; especially 15.12-15, 20; 16.14.

“Nevertheless, though so many factors influenced the mother to suffer with them out of love for her children, in the case of none of them were the various tortures strong enough to pervert her reason. But each child separately and all of them together the mother urged on to death for religion’s sake. . . This mother, who saw them tortured and burned one by one, because of religion did not change her attitude. She watched the flesh of her children being consumed by fire, their toes and fingers scattered on the ground, and the flesh of the head to the chin exposed like masks. . . When you saw the flesh of children burned upon the flesh of other children, severed hands upon hands, scalped heads upon heads, and corpses fallen on other corpses, and when you saw the place filled with many spectators of the torturings, you did not shed tears . . . because of her faith in God . . .

O mother, soldier of God in the cause of religion, elder and woman! By steadfastness you have conquered even a tyrant, and in word and deed you have proved more powerful than a man. . .

5) Sawn in two (Heb 11.37). The Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah 5.11-14:

“And they seized Isaiah the son of Amoz and sawed him in half with a wood saw. And Manasseh, and Belkira, and the false prophets, and the princes and the people, and all stood by looking on. And to the prophets who we were with him he said before he was sawed in half, ‘Go to the district of Tyre and Sidon, because for me alone the LORD has mixed the cup . . . Beliar did this to Isaiah through Belkira and through Manasseh, for Sammael was very angry with Isaiah from the days of Hezekiah . . . And he did as Satan wished.”

6) They went around as animals and hid in caves (Heb 11.37-38). The Maccabean martyrs in 2 Maccabees:

“But Judas Maccabeus, with about nine others, got away to the wilderness, and kept himself and his companions alive in the mountains as wild animals do; they continued to live on what grew wild, so they might not share in defilement” (2 Macc 5.27)

“Others who had assembled in the caves nearby, in order to observe the seventh day secretly, were betrayed to Philip and were all burned together, because their piety kept them from defending themselves in view of their regard for that most holy day.” (2 Macc 6.11)

“during the festival of booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals” (2 Macc 10.6).

Regardless of how one feels about the canonicity of these sources, a knowledge of them can certainly help us see the NT text clearer than before.

I have a whole series that I have done in the past on the Apocrypha and recommend a deep study of them for any one who seeks to understand NT Christianity or the early church.

Another lesson that is driven home through such study is that even such a writer as the one to the Hebrews' was Jewish and thought like a Jew. Even as he contrasts the new and older covenant he does so using distinctly Jewish ideas ... rather than repudiating his heritage he lives and breathes that heritage. We Gentile Christians have much to learn from him.

Shalom,
Bobby Valentine

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