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Christian Ecology in the Letter to the Hebrews
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2024
Abstract
This paper proceeds from a discourse analytical perspective and asks what we can learn from Hebrews 1-2 concerning the relationship of humanity to creation through Christ. First, the exordium is examined to reveal a descent–ascent motif for the incarnate Son who is the one through whom God creates (1:2) and who sustains everything by his powerful word (1:3). The paper then explains how the Son’s sacrificial activity is subsumed within this theology as we look at the catena of scriptural citations found in the rest of chapter 1, where the catena deepens the theology of the exordium by presenting the same events in reverse order. However, towards the end of the catena, when we would expect a reference to the Son and his having inherited a name greater than the angels (1:4), we instead hear about how the angels are sent to serve humanity who inherit salvation. This enables the discourse to move on to chapter 2 and the purpose of Christ’s descent to lead humanity heavenward to glory (2:10). This paper uncovers how that glory is the Son’s own glory and posits a process of theosis by which humanity shares in the Son’s sustaining role over creation.
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.
References
1 Angela Costley, Creation and Christ, WUNT II:527 (Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, 2020), p. 86.
2 New information is generally seen as having a certain prominence. An argument against such prominence here might be that the description comes at the end of the clause and therefore is not a point of departure, or theme, to use the linguistics term, for the sentence. However, according to Halliday, the given/new distinction is the property of the information unit, whereas theme and rheme belong more properly to the constituents of the clause, i.e., the central grammatical unit. Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, ‘Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English, Part 2’, Journal of Linguistics, 3 (1967), 199–224, here 204. To some extent, it is possibly helpful to refer more to the Prague School of linguistics. Notably, in the Prague School, the term theme corresponds to the ‘established’ information in the clause, i.e., what is already known to the audience, whereas the rheme corresponds to the newly asserted or focal information. Here, ‘through whom he made the ages’ could be focalised new information. See Steven E. Runge, Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), pp. 200–04. See also Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, Introduction to Functional Grammar, 4th edn, revised by and enl. Christian Matthiessen (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 115. On the concept of heir as connected to the idea of sonship, see Ceslas Spicq, L’Épître aux Hébreux, vol. 2 (Paris: Lecoffre, 1952), pp. 2, 5. The connection of ‘heir’ and ‘son’ is usual in the New Testament (e. g. Gal 4:7). See also Costley, Creation, pp. 86, 93, on which I draw here.
3 Costley, Creation, p. 86. I go on to say that: ‘The depiction of the Son as the “one through whom he [God] also made the aeons” stands out among the designations of the Son in the exordium since it is not connected to the depiction “Son” by a participle, as in those personal details given in vv. 3–4, which recall his nature, but rather by a prepositional phrase, “through whom”. The phrase “through whom he made the aeons” modifies the description of the Son, but it does so specifically in respect of his relationship to God. The phrase “through whom he made the aeons” in fact extends the description of the one through whom God spoke, following on from the description of him as one “appointed heir”, to qualify him more specifically, and thus emphasise and reiterate his close relationship to God still further’. Ibid., p. 93.
4 Costley, Creation, p. 97.
5 Ibid., p. 91.
6 Ibid. See Craig R. Koester, Hebrews, Anchor Bible Commentaries 36 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 97.
7 Costley, Creation, p. 96.
8 Costley, Creation, p. 104. Harold Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), p. 41. See also Ole Jakob Filtvedt, ‘Creation and Salvation in Hebrews’, ZNW, 106 (2015), 280–303.
9 Costley, Creation, pp. 104–05. Attridge, Hebrews, p. 41.
10 Ibid. See also Costley, Creation, p. 105, and Spicq, L’Epitre, vols 2, 6, and 9 on the incarnational theme in the exordium, where he addresses the union of Father and Son. See also Hans-Friedrich Weiss, Der Brief and die Hebräer, KEK 13 (Göttingen: Vandenhoech & Ruprecht, 1991), p. 142.
11 Is it God’s word or the Son’s, though? On the one hand, God is the subject of the sentence, at least up until the end of v. 2, and some have argued that his being subject should be extended through to verse 3. Thus, perhaps God sustains the world through the Son, his Word, in the same way he created it (for instance, Lane reads the text this way, William Lane, Hebrews 1–8, WBC 47A and 47B (Dallas, TX: Word Publishers, 1991), p. cxxxix; or, the description can be taken to suggest that the Son sustains the world through his own powerful word (e. g., Attridge, Hebrews, p. 45). However, I suggest it is the Son’s word. Hebrews 1:1–2 has God as the subject, but 1:3–4 has the Son as subject, as indicated by the nominative relative participle, which refers back to him. See Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 97; John P. Meier, ‘Structure and Theology in Heb 1:1–14’, Biblica, 66 (1985), 168–89, here, 171.
12 Costley, Creation, p. 169.
13 See Costley, Creation, pp. 161–97 for a fuller exploration of the Catena, key points of which I summarise here.
14 See Attridge, Hebrews, p. 53.
15 Costley, Creation, p. 183. The Son is specifically designated as a king in his own right in 1:8 by the mention of the sceptre ‘of his kingdom’.
16 For my reasoning, see Costley, Creation, pp. 184–85.
17 Another possibility for the source of the citation is LXX Ps 96. See Costley, Creation, p. 185.
18 Costley, Creation, p. 187.
19 In this section, I summarise some of the key points from Costley, Creation, 188–195 and add some new remarks.
20 See Costley, Creation, p. 135ff.
21 Costley, Creation, p. 190.
22 For an explanation of how features of the psalm itself permit such a move, see Costley, Creation, p. 191ff.
23 Interestingly, in chapter 4, the salvific rest is likened to the rest at the end of creation in 4:3, which may again point back to the catena in chapter 1.
24 The Masoretic Text has ‘how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens’ (Ps 8:1 NRSV). The LXX renders this with ‘how admirable is your name in all the earth, because your magnificence was raised beyond the heavens’ (v.2 New English Translation of the Septuagint). In the Hebrew, the merism, or all-encompassing contrast, of earth and heaven is intended to testify to God’s creation of all that exists. Konrad Schaefer, Psalms, Berit Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), p. 23. However, in the LXX, the Lord is glorified specifically because his magnificence has been lifted above the heavens. This might be significant for Hebrews’ interpretation, which links the psalm to Christ’s exaltation (2:9), and it may be that the author of Hebrews interprets the Lord of the psalm prophetically in respect of the Son in a case of transdiegetization whereby the text has been picked up and applied to a new situation. See Costley, Creation, p. 206.
25 For a detailed discussion of this change in vocabulary, see Dale F. Leschert, Hermeneutical Foundations of Hebrews: A Study in the Validity of the Epistle’s Interpretation of Some Core Citations from the Psalms, NAPBR 10 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1994), pp. 88–91.
26 See Small, Characterization, pp. 273–74.
27 In this paragraph, I summarise key points from Costley, Creation, p. 211. The phrase forms a ‘distant hook’, joining units of the same genre, here exposition, to each other, even though there is an intervening unit of another genre (2:1–4 being an exhortation). This suggests that there is some form of interrelationship between the sections in which the distant hook words are found. See Guthrie, Structure, p. 100 and Costley, Creation, pp. 209–12.
28 Costley, Creation, p. 213. On p. 218, I discuss how some scholars do not see Hebrews as having a Christological reading of the psalm. Blomberg disagrees with the suggestion in 2:5–9, does not support 2:1–4, and refers directly back to 1:13–14. He argues that this would cause tension for the reader because 1:13 indicated that this promise of ‘submission under feet’ remained unfulfilled. If God did not subject the coming world to angels, he argues, it means God did subject it originally to someone else. The obvious suggestion is Adam and Eve, as per Gen 1:26–30. Part of the controversy surrounds the use of the phrase ‘Son of Man’ and whether it might be Christological, but this title is not used elsewhere in Hebrews, leaving arguments either way. Koester also comments on the ambiguity over the ‘him’ in verse 8 and says it need not necessarily be understood as referring to Christ as in v.9 and could still refer to humanity, ‘man’ in the psalm. See Craig Blomberg, ‘“But we see Jesus”: The Relationship Between the Son of Man in Hebrews 2:6 and 2:9 And the Implications for English Translations’ in A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in Its Ancient Contexts, ed. by Richard Bauckham et al., LNST 387 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), pp. 88–99, here, p. 90, and Koester, Hebrews, p. 215. For my own position, see Costley, Creation, p. 219, where I argue that it is unlikely to be Adam and Eve as the psalm references Gen 1. In v. 8 with the birds of the air and fish. In this creation story, animals are created before humanity, and thus humanity is not born into a world to come, but one that has already been filled. I also point out that uses of the word mellõ in Hebrews, or derivatives thereof, are otherwise eschatological:
29 What is more, this same glory is now held out to humanity, who become partakers in a heavenly calling in 3:1, which is part of another creation reference in 3:1–6.
30 ‘God’s glory’ was itself frequently used as a Jewish expression of an emanation of his being in the Old Testament and Second Temple writings.
31 Costley, Creation, p. 123.
32 It might be possible that Hebrews conceives of some kind of ‘fall’, even though this is not explicitly stated in the text. See Costley, Creation, p. 224ff. for a discussion of possible Second Adam theology in Hebrews.