NOTES for Heb 2:5-6

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.

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. The Lord created the human person a little lower than the angels; He gave him authority over all creation. He destined the human person for glory. Yet we know that sin entered the world, and therefore, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, not everything is now subject to the human person. The order of the world created by God was violated, and it could be restored in only one way. The consequence of sin - death - could be taken upon Himself only by the One who had committed no sin. Anyone else would merely have borne a deserved punishment. He, the only sinless One, bears our sin upon Himself - and in this way returns to the human person the lost freedom and glory, making each of us His brother.

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.

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.