NOTES for Heb 1:10-14

In today’s reading, the apostle Paul gives examples of Old Testament faith and offers a very interesting interpretation of Abraham’s conduct. Perhaps it seems perfectly obvious to us, raised in a Christian culture, that if we believe in God, we also believe in the resurrection of the dead. Yet even in Paul’s time this was by no means obvious. It was still less obvious in Abraham’s time. Strictly speaking, Abraham had no particular grounds for believing in the resurrection. For a person of that time and culture, immortality was attained precisely through one’s children; Abraham could not imagine any other continuation of life. But Paul says that Abraham trusted God, who had promised that Isaac would be the father of a great nation, so completely that he did not doubt for a second that the promise would be fulfilled even if Isaac were offered as a sacrifice. How could this be? Does it really matter how? Abraham does not think about how it will happen; he simply accepts as a fact that God’s words cannot contradict one another—which means that somehow they will be reconciled... And this trust is credited as righteousness.

For a correct understanding of the meaning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is important to remember by whom and when it was written. According to the view commonly accepted today among biblical scholars, the author of the epistle was not Paul himself, but one of his disciples, and it was written after the apostle's martyrdom. He was apparently executed in the second half of the 60s. Most likely, the Epistle to the Hebrews came into being after A.D. 70, which became a turning point in Jewish history, and in many ways in world history as well. In that very year, after the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots, Judea was crushed, and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed to the ground in the literal sense of the word.

In scale this catastrophe was comparable to the catastrophe of 587 B.C., when the city and the Temple were destroyed by the Babylonian army and the period of the seventy-year Babylonian captivity began for the Jewish people. Such events inevitably produce a crisis: social and political, as well as religious. And the crisis experienced in the 70s by the Jewish people and the Synagogue could not help affecting the Church, which at that time was still predominantly Judeo-Christian both in composition and, more importantly, in worldview: Judeo-Christian views and traditions shaped the mentality of both the earliest Christian Church and, in part, the early Christian Church.

Meanwhile, one of the signs of the religious crisis was mystical messianism, which was rapidly replacing political messianism both in circles around the synagogue and in circles around the church. Later this messianism gave rise to numerous gnostic schools and movements. And if political messianism saw the Messiah as an ordinary man, an earthly ruler acting according to God's will, mystical messianism was more ready to see in him some superhuman being, more like an angel than a man. But the author of the epistle, whose name is unknown to us, never tires of reminding his readers that the Messiah is greater than any angel (vv. 1-4), that the way into the Kingdom was not opened to humanity by angels at all (vv. 5-12), and that angels are merely created spirits performing strictly service functions for God (vv. 13-14). He reminds his readers that the meaning of Christianity is not mysticism, but entering the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world and becoming rooted in it, finding there what no mysticism and no angels can give a human being.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews often turns to the theme of angels and the angelic hierarchy, comparing them with Christ. Such a comparison is characteristic precisely of the author of this Letter: no one besides him gives so much attention to the theme of angels. Why did it suddenly become so relevant? Perhaps because the letter was written after the catastrophe of A.D. 70, when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed as a result of another anti-Roman uprising.

Before A.D. 70, during the life of the apostle Paul, the most widespread form of messianism among the Jews was political messianism. The Messiah was expected as King and liberator, crushing Roman power and restoring an independent and strong Jewish state. But now, after this monstrous catastrophe, mystical messianism came to the foreground. Many people, and no doubt even some Christians, began to see in the Messiah not the Man who contained in Himself the fullness of God, but someone like an angel, a mediator between God and human beings. In that case the Kingdom was viewed as something mystical, having no relation to our world. This is how some understood the Savior's words about the Kingdom that is "not of this world."

Many were also troubled by the fact that Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed, everything the Savior had spoken of as signs of the end times had happened, and yet He Himself was not returning. Perhaps, these people thought, He was not going to return in the way His followers expected. Perhaps He had already come, had come in another world, in His otherworldly Kingdom, while here, in the fallen world, waiting for Him was useless. Then perhaps He would send angels to notify those whom He wished to save and take with Himself.

Meanwhile, in reality, the person of Christ as Savior and mediator between God and the faithful was pushed into the background, while certain "angels," "powers," "principalities," and other real or, more often, imagined entities that replaced and obscured Him moved to the foreground. And the author of the Letter, one of the disciples of the apostle Paul, reminds his readers that, having the Messiah as their Teacher and Savior, the faithful need no one and nothing else. Otherwise, instead of Christ and the Kingdom, there are endless mediators and hierarchies, first "heavenly" ones and then earthly ones. Christianity as life with Christ in His Kingdom disappears. In its place comes a certain religion that promises everything but gives nothing. At least, nothing that Christ can give.

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.

The language of the Letter to the Hebrews differs greatly from that of the apostle Paul's other letters. When speaking to Gentiles, he explains everything with simple examples and in simple language. With Jews brought up on Holy Scripture, he uses quite different arguments and words. The first part of today's passage echoes the parable of the talents (Matt 25:14-30), which poses one of the most important questions for a believer: if we consider God harsh and obey Him out of fear, how much more should we do when we know that He is merciful and good? So it is here: if we obey messengers, how much more must we obey Christ! Continuing what was said in Heb 1, the apostle uses examples from Holy Scripture to show us plainly the obvious superiority of Christ over everything that exists in the material and spiritual world, for He is perfect man and God.