point to a confession of the matchless glory of God, that has come to be in permanent liturgical use in the Church. It corresponds to the whole tendency of our Epistles, as these strive to fix the apostolic doctrine, as the Church's possession, that the individual form of doctrine which has been nowhere more sharply expressed than in Paulinism, should here pass. into the general form of Church confession. PART FOURTH. THE EARLY APOSTOLIC DOCTRINAL SYSTEM IN THE POST-PAULINE PERIOD. INTRODUCTION. § 111. The Epistle to the Hebrews. THE Epistle to the Hebrews demands and justifies what had become unavoidable in view of the threatened apostasythe complete separation of the Judaeo-Christian mother Church from national and ecclesiastical fellowship with Judaism (a). The older conception, which ascribed it to a disciple of Paul, or saw in it the production of a phase of a later development of Paulinism, could not account for its peculiarities of teaching (b). The teaching of our Epistle as a more mature form of early apostolic Judaeo-Christianity in all its extent, was first set forth with full intelligence by Boehm (c). The Hellenistic author belongs to a tendency within Judaism, to which the most important point in the old covenant was the priestly institution for atonement, and his method of teaching is formally determined by his Alexandrian education (d). (a) The Epistle to the Hebrews, written no doubt shortly after the middle of the seventh decade, and whose readers are certainly to be found neither in Alexandria nor in Rome, but in Palestine, and specially in Jerusalem, transplants us into the circumstances of the mother Church as she was developing after the passing away of the first generation of Christians, who had seen the Lord Himself. The apostles were already dead, or had left Jerusalem. James, the Lord's brother, had suffered a martyr's death. The Church as yet held fast to the 150 law of the fathers, as the first apostles had themselves done once, and as is evidently presupposed in the apostolic council (§ 43, d). But the consciousness of the motives which had originally justified this firm retention of it, and which even Paul had acknowledged as such (§ 87, b), were fading away. The longer, the more must the prizing of the legal institutions, in particular, the means of salvation given in them, lead to the depreciation and denial of those given in Christianity, especially if the supposition, on which such could alone be offered, became doubtful. But faith in the Messiahship of Jesus, which by the hope of His advent immediately at hand had for the first time removed the contradiction between the Messianic times promised by the prophets and the appearance of the Promised One in the historical present, must have become wavering, when, with the unexpectedly long delay of the advent, the hope of the commencement of the final consummation and the fulfilment of the promises grew faint. Meanwhile Zealotism within unbelieving Judaism, which was getting more hopelessly hardened, was increasing, and the persecution of the Jews who believed on Messiah was multiplying from their side. The bond of national fellowship, which was once maintained with a view to work for Israel's conversion now become without a purpose, could be maintained now only at the cost of the denial of the Christian faith, which did not appear to fulfil to its confessors the expectations raised in them. In such circumstances, there began to gain ground increasingly a critical tendency to fall away from Christianity, to a complete relapse to Judaism. Only a decided separation of the Judaeo-Christian mother Church from her former national and religious fellowship with the Jewish Church, as it had already completely taken place by the Jewish Christians in the missionary regions of Paul (comp. § 105, d), could prevent this threatened danger. While the Epistle to the Hebrews summons to this decisive step, it contains also an exposition of the motives which must justify and compel Jewish Christianity finally to break with its past. (b) The critical dispute as to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has led, in the first place, to a more exact examination of its special teaching. In general, the view remains dominant, that the Epistle was not written by the Apostle Paul himself, but by one of his disciples. From this point of view, one is content partly to point out the essential points of agreement in the method of its teaching with the Pauline, and partly to note some contrasted peculiarities. In this mind Neander deals with our Epistle in the Appendix to his exposition of the Pauline doctrine (pp. 838-858 [E. T. ii. 1-14, Bohn's translation]); so do Schmidt, only more briefly (ii. pp. 356-359 [E. T. 513-518]), and Lechler (pp. 159-163), and van Oosterzee (§ 43). Lutterbeck (pp. 245251) has, in a way somewhat more thorough, presented from our Epistle the teaching of Apollos as that of a strong follower of Paul (comp. lately Hilgenfeld in his Zeitschrift, 1872, 1). Messner has in the most thorough and comprehensive way from this standpoint treated of the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who, to be sure, acknowledges a certain affinity with Petrine teaching (comp. p. 57), but he yet ascribes the Epistle to a disciple of Paul. A further step was taken by the Tübingen school, who ascribed our Epistle to a later phase of development of Paulinism, by which it seeks to set forth Christianity as the true Judaism (comp. Köstlin in his Joh. Lehrbegriff, II. i. 4, pp. 387-472), or to harmonize Paulinism with Judaism by the passing over of the latter to the former (comp. Schwegler, ii. pp. 304-325), or to make it acceptable to Judaism by the rejection of all that is offensive in it (Schenkel, § 26, 27). Reuss (ii. pp. 265-290 [E. T. ii. 238-261]) similarly regards it as the first production of the theology of transition from Paulinism to the Johannean; and Baur, in his Lehrbegriff (pp. 230-256), seeks to show it to be the first step towards removing the antithesis between Paulinism and the Judaism of the Apocalypse, by which he throws the ambiguity of his interpretation of it on the author himself (p. 248). The latest productions of Pfleiderer (pp. 324-366 [E. T. 51-95]) and Immer (pp. 399-421) see in it a Paulinism coloured by Alexandrian influences. But so long as one starts from Paulinism for a full comprehension of the teaching of our Epistle, one cannot thoroughly account for its peculiarities. (c) David Schulz had already in his commentary (Der Brief an die Hebräer, Breslau 1818) declared the general view of our Epistle to be essentially distinct from the Pauline, and to be throughout Jewish; but he found, as it could not be otherwise with his one-sided exaggeration of this view, only contradiction (comp. De Wette, über die symbolisch-typische Lehrart des Br. a. d. Heb., in der theologischen Zeitschrift von Schleiermacher, De Wette, und Lücke, 1822, 3, pp. 1-51). For the first time, in consequence of the movement set agoing by the Tübingen school, was the central thought of it again taken up by Plank (Judenthum und Urchristenthum, in den theologischen Jahrbüchern, 1847, 2, 3, 4), who regarded our Epistle as a complete counterpart, proceeding from Jewish Christianity, to the Pauline view. Köstlin also (in den theologischen Jahrbüchern, 1853, 1854) modified his opinion (comp. note b), in the direction that the Epistle does not represent the Pauline school, but the general apostolic Christianity, influenced no doubt by Paul, and that it represents a Jewish Christianity spiritually transformed by the impulse of Paulinism. More accurately, Ritschl designated the form of doctrine in our Epistle as a stage in the later development of the early apostolic form of doctrine, by which he, moreover, narrowed the influence of Paulinism on the Christology (pp. 159-171). This correct conception of our Epistle lies at the basis of the thorough and luminous exhibition of its teaching by Riehm (der Lehrbegriff des Hebräerbriefs, Ludwigsburg, 1858, 1859, 2 Ausg. 1867; comp. especially pp. 861-863), only that he estimates somewhat higher the influence of Paulinism (p. 865 sq.). Biblical theology has not to answer the difficult historical question, how far the peculiarities of doctrine demand or justify the assumption of an influence of Paul upon the author; it has only to verify its coincidences. with Paulinism, which yet in no way by themselves justify the conclusion of a direct or indirect influence of Paul. It has, however, to start from the fact, overwhelmingly established from every side by Riehm, that the roots of the views of doctrine of our Epistle lie, in the early apostolic Jewish Christianity, in its difference from Paulinism; and this assumption, on the ground of which we range the discussion of our Epistle in this place, will be most clearly confirmed to us in the exhibition of its doctrine throughout; comp. moreover, Kluge, der Hebräerbrief, Auslegung und Lehrbegriff, Neuruppin 1863. |