Main news for 9 January 2025

It is interesting: why did the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews suddenly start speaking about angels, asserting that God placed not an angel but a human being at the head of creation? It would seem that there is no need to say much about this, for the correctness of the sacred writer's words becomes clear to everyone who has read at least once the first chapters of the Book of Genesis. And yet, clearly, there were certain spiritual tendencies in the Church that forced the author of the epistle to emphasize the thought that the human being is by no means lower than the angel. What was the matter? Most likely, the matter lay in those spiritualistic and gnostic tendencies that began to appear in church life soon after the catastrophe of A.D. 70, when the epistle, apparently, was written. Before the catastrophe, the main problem of the Church and of the circles around it had apparently been political messianism; now, after the collapse of the messianic uprising and the destruction of the Temple, the problem was becoming mystical messianism, perhaps connected with the messianic ideas of certain Jewish sectarian and semi-sectarian movements such as the Essenes. And these movements were characterized by a spiritualization of the image of the Messiah and the Kingdom. The Savior's words that His Kingdom is "not of this world" were understood literally in this environment, so that the Kingdom began to be perceived as something transcendent, having no relation either to our world or to our reality in general. And concerning the Messiah as well, suggestions were put forward that He perhaps had never been a Man at all, that His whole life was something like an angelic manifestation, that His body was illusory, and therefore His crucifixion and His death itself were also illusory. And His resurrection was merely the disclosure of His true, nonhuman nature and its liberation from that appearance of human bodily existence which in reality He did not have and could not have had. And now the Church had to oppose not political messianism, but this kind of bad mysticism, which left only the external form of Christianity, and even that was often seriously distorted. And the author of the epistle has to remind them again and again that at the center of the earthly world stands not a "pure" bodiless angel, but a human being. And God was incarnate not in a "pure" bodiless angel either, but in a Man. He has to remind them so that the Church would not cease to be itself: the body of Christ, filled with the genuine life of the Man who really lived, really died, and really rose from the dead.

Heb 2:5

NOTES

Paul proceeds from the traditional understanding of angelic spirits that was characteristic of the Judaism of his era...

Paul proceeds from the traditional understanding of angelic spirits that was characteristic of the Judaism of his era. In Judaism, angels are only lower created spirits, and specifically ministering and serving spirits who carry out entirely concrete assignments from God. They are close to God, but God did not set before them the broad tasks He set before humanity.

The world has been given into the authority of humanity, not of angels. And not least because, unlike an angel, a human being's spiritual life has a dynamism determined by his relationship with God. Angels, in their present state, possess the entire fullness of life available to them; they do not require spiritual formation - at least this is how the author of the epistle sees them. A human being, however, is constantly in the process of becoming, and precisely for this reason he can in the end become the ruler of the universe, the ruler appointed by God into whose authority the world is given.

But in the fallen state, the human being does not correspond to God's design for him, and the only one who is truly able to subject the world to Himself is the Messiah, for He alone can be called Man in the fullness of human nature. The world submits to the Messiah not only by virtue of His divinity, but also by virtue of His humanity, and even first of all by virtue of His humanity. The fullness of God revealed to the world within human nature is exactly what is needed for the full existence before God's face of both the world as a whole and the human being himself.

And the world's becoming before God is inseparable from humanity's becoming before God and in God - and that means it is inseparable from the person of the Messiah Himself. The being of the universe is connected with the existence of humanity, and the existence of humanity in turn is connected with the existence of the Messiah. This connection is dynamic; it presupposes the becoming of the world and of humanity in Christ and around Christ. Angels, however, play a purely ministering role in this process. They have no need of becoming; they are full in themselves from the beginning, and therefore they surpass the human being in his present state, for fallen humanity has been deprived of the fullness of life. But a human being who has reached the fullness of his life surpasses the fullness of the angel's life - this is one of the main ideas of the author of the epistle.

While affirming the superiority of humanity over the angels, the author of the epistle nevertheless does not forget that this superiority...

While affirming the superiority of humanity over the angels, the author of the epistle nevertheless does not forget that, in the present state both of the world and of humanity itself, this superiority still turns out to be more of a spiritual and metahistorical prospect than a present reality. He understands the words of Holy Scripture that a human being is, in God's eyes, a little lower than the angels as referring more to the future than to the present (vv. 5-8). And, of course, the future in question is not the future of our world, which is being transformed but is not yet transfigured, but the fullness of the Kingdom that will be revealed to the world with the Savior's return. It is no accident that the author of the epistle speaks specifically of Jesus as the One in whom the words of the psalm that he mentions, about a human being in no way inferior to the angels, have been fulfilled (v. 9). For Jesus from the very beginning, from the moment of His conception on earth, already bore in Himself that fullness of the Kingdom which will be revealed to us only at the end of time. In a certain sense one could say that He Himself is the Kingdom, and the whole Church, as the community of people living in this Kingdom, is His continuation in the world that the Church is to transform.

Jesus, in the fullness of His transfigured human nature, reveals in Himself that image of humanity which stands above the angels. And it is He who points the way into the Kingdom for those who seek. Of course, God's revelations can be given to people through angels as well; that is why they are "ministering spirits." But no angel has ever contained the whole fullness of the Kingdom, and no angel has ever become fully part of our human world. Angels are spirits, though created spirits, and human nature is alien to them, as is any nature at all. They can be God's messengers in our world ("angel" properly means "messenger"), but by definition they cannot enter it, always remaining beings from another world in relation to it. The Messiah, however, entered the world as a Man and, despite all His uniqueness, never ceased to be precisely a Man. That is why the revelation of the Kingdom brought by Him into the world is greater than the revelation proclaimed by angels (vv. 1-4): for angels, though also sharing in the Kingdom, still could not become the living embodiment of the Kingdom opened to people. That embodiment is what the Savior became for those seeking the way.

In today's reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews, a psalm is quoted in which the psalmist spoke about the destiny and greatness of the human person...

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