Heb 11 and Incarnation - Moyter

8/13/2019 Heb 11 and Incarnation - Moyter

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EQ 77.3 (2005), 235-247Not apart from us (Hebrews 11:40): physicalcommunity In the Letter to the Hebrews

t v otyerSteve Motyerteaches NewTestamentan dHermeneuticsat London School of Theologywhere he is also ourse Leade r for theTheology and ounsellingprogramme. He iscurrently writing the Iwo Horizons comm entary onHebrews.KEY WORDS: Hebrews person personho od Christ inc arn atio n hum anity de athblood physicality solidarity fa i th .

Introduction and a thesisThis series of essays on per son hoo d takes its starting-po int in a series of semi-nars held for faculty, research s tud en ts an d som e visiting scholars in the springof 2001. When Ivn otethis paper, in the sequence of the seminars,Iwas able tointerac t particularly with the pa per s by Peter Hicks and Meic Pearse, which w erepub lished in an earlier issue ofE Q and also to some ex tent with tha t by CornelBoingeanu, which is sched uled for publication in a future issue.Our deliberations thus far had focused around the definition and descrip-tion of person hood .Howcan it be som ething shared by God and h um an beings?What constitutes this com mo n personhood ?Areangels, too, to be thou ght of aspersons ? Webegan by considerin g the traditional view tha t it is our rationality- our status as creatures of logos- which defines ou r personhoo d: and we dis-cussed together a paper by Steve Bachmann which argued that this is too indi-vidualistic an approach, and tha tweneed to supplem ent rationality with moral-ity andwith relationality asequally essential to our person hood .This same trio - rationedity, morality (or virtll) and relationality - appearthrou gh Peter Hick s descriptive analysis, also: with his added em phas is on theway in which, until Locke, reason and morality were not divorced, but felt to co-inhere w ith each other. And he also illustrates the way in which the m ore recentappearance of the third (relationality) arises from the fragmentation of the sci-ences, followed by a movement to reintegrate the now divided human personand to see us as a system w ithin a system w ithin a system.

Ifweare to seek some kind of hierarchy w ithin these three, I would suggesttha t rationality and m orality are foun dational to relationality. Eor itisrationalityand morality which e nable u s to recognize that our relationsw ith other humansM. Pearse, Problem? What problem? Personbood, late modern/postmodern


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236 EQ Steve Motyerhave a different quality from our relations with animals or inanimate ohjects.We classify other human beings differently, and then structureour relations withthem according to different mores.But are these three sufficient in themselves to define personhood? All threeare strangely disembodied, strangely unemotional, and strangely unspiritual.In them selves - in term s of Peter Hicks s analysis - they are Aristotelian ratherthan Platonic, supplying a definition based not on revelation, but on what wesee ourselves to be, and avoiding a spirit-fiesh dualism. However, these threecould be defined in suchaway as to contain embod imen t, spirituality and e mo -tions (what the Puritans called the affections )- We could suggest (a) tha t ou rrelationality d epend s u pon our em bodim ent and em braces our ( spiritual ) re-lationship with God, (b) that all our mental processes including our emotionshave a fundamentally physical basis in the chem istry of the brain, and (c) thatthe moral will expresses itself almost wholly in terms of the structuring of rela-tions between em bodied hu m an beings (and between hum an beings and God),and com m end s relational qualities (e.g. the fruit of the Spirit ) which are bo themotional states and strategies for action in relationship. But, rather than ex-tending the definitions like this, it would seem more appro priate to supp lem entthese three in someway, in order to encom pass mo re of what we find ourselvesto be . But with what?

In one of the early sem inars we had an inconclusive discussion as to whe therthere is some kind of nature or substance which fundamentally distinguisheshu m an from all other being, and w hich we instinctively recognise in each otherapart from our shared rationality, morality and relationedity. Some resisted thissuggestion, becau se they wanted to argue that, justasrelationalityis fundamen-tal to God in his trinitarian being, so it is to us - that is, that o ur natu re is notsome kind of hu m an substance , but tha t we are fundamentally constituted bythe relations in which we find ourselves (both with others and with God). It issom ething along these lines for which Alistair McFadyen argues in A all toPer-sonhood where he defines hu m an beingas a structu re of address and response ,in which the image of God in us forms an ontolo gical... universal structure ofhu m an being to which all hu m an p ersons correspond w ithout exception asde-fined by their relations. ^This is an a ttractive view, which would allow us to escape from Meic Pearse sghastly Hegelian d ialectic betw een essence and relationeility, by simply strikingout the former. And clearlyit istru e to say, as he so powerfully does, thatwecan tultimately separate personhoo d and identity, and th at ou r identities aresociallyconstructed (hence all the misery and Angst in our post-modern rootlessness).We only know who we are in relation to others. eare indeed defined by our


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Notapart from us (Hebrews 11:40) EQ 237relationships in the sense thatweareshaped forgoodorill, ythe sexual, famil-ial,social, politicaland ofcourse spiritual relationsinwhich w e are located.ButMeic Pearce willnot let usleavego of'essence' (althoughhe says wecanneverknow it and shouldn't lookfor it ),and I amsurehe isright.Ifpersonhoodisconstructed solely in relational terms, thenwe end updenying personhoodtothe relationally destitute. There mustbe something to which social 'shaping 'isadded,anunderlying stuff which caneitherbe ruinedorre-buUtby ourrela-tions- a stuff which makesitpossiblefor us tosay decisively that certain waysof relatingwillbe wrongforus,andothers rightforus ,because we are 'ma de'tobeinon eway,and not inanother.

McFadyen doesnotaddress this.Infact,heseemsto me to confuse 'shaping'with 'definition'.Buthaving objectedto him onthese groundsIneedto makeaproposal: whatisthis 'stuff'? Isuggest quite simply thatour physicality formsafourth 'element'to add torationality, m oralityandrelationality. I suggest tha titis notonly essential,but also profoundly biblical toincludeour physicalityinour understanding of hum an personhood.McFadyen deals with our physicality quite extensivelyin hisdiscussionof'The creation of individuality in God's image' (his firstchapter), because he takesgender relations between male andfemaleas astructural paradigmofhumanlife."*But his repea teduse ofthe word 'paradigm 'inthis section reveals tha tthephysicalityof male-female relatedness isincidentalto his fundamental thesisabout hum an being.Itsimplypictureshelpfullyfor us the basic 'structures'(an-other favourite word)of all human relating- thestructureofdistinctionandrelation indialogical encounte r.' 'Ourphysicality seem s strangely incidentaltowhat we are,onhis account of hu m an being. Gnosticism loom s large, again.And Gnosticism looms large also in the Orthodox account which CornelBoingeanu describesinhis pape r shortly tobepublishedin EQ.O rthodox theol-ogy fails to ask wh ether there are any d istinctlyhuman aspectsorcomp onents ofpersonhood w hich would distinguish our person hood from that ofthe holy Trin-ity in hiseternal perichoretic dance- andalso fromthe'personhood'ofthean-

McFadyen,Personhood 36.The section 'The imageasmaleandfemale' occup iespp31-39.McFadyen, Personhood 38. The physicality of human personhood is everywhere


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38 EQ Steve Motyergels. Twosuch com ponents immediately suggestthemselves:(a) that as h um ansin Christweare and vll always beredeemedpersons, thatis,shape d by a historyof alienation and suffering, and by the exp erience of rescue; and (b) that, un der-lying this history and experience, we are and will always be embodiedpersons,thatis,faced (now, atleast with the challenge of learning obedien ce and worshipthrough frail lips and han ds and in th e context ofphysic lrelationships.

Incarna tion and salvation in HebrewsThese th oug hts lead us nicely to H ebrews. Hebrews is not necessarily, initself,an obvious dialogue-partner for thinking about these questions, but my owncurrent interest in this amazing letter naturally takes me there: and I find thatHebrews has a great deal to say abo ut the m . Hebrews drama ticallyqualifies forinstance, the extent to which those two features of our hum an person hood - ourexperience of alienation and rescue, and our inescapable physical weakness- really separate us from divine person hoo d.Ifelt quite horrified about the mar-ginalisation of the incarnation in the Orthodox account, as Cornel Boingeanurelayed it to us. The emphasis in Hebrews is quite the reverse. Here we evenfind Jesus dramatically pictured as himself und ergoing a process of red em ptionthrough which he 'learned obedience':

In the days ofhisfiesh, he offered up prayers an d su pplications, w ith loudcries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and hewas heard be cause of his reverent subm ission. (Heb.5:7-8And equally dramatically Hebrews m akes Jesus' hum anity, his sharing of ourfiesh and blo od (Heb. 2:14), a pe rm an en t fea ture of his identity, for - as we willsee -hedoes not leave it behind w hen h e enters th e MostHoly Placeas our 'fore-runner'.AsHigh Priest he isoneofus(Heb.5:1,etc). For the author of Hebrews, aperm ane nt change has been introduced into God, signalledbythe 'sitting' of theSon at the right ha nd of the majesty on high (1:3, etc): and we may s um m arisethat change by saying that, as a result of the incarnation, flesh and blood havebee n taken into deity.

In one of the seminars Conrad Gempf pointed out that our discussions needed todevelop a distinction between 'humanness' and 'personhood', and to ask in whatsense angels are 'persons'. If personhood is defined by bearing 'the image of God',then presum ably angels are not perso ns. But biblically they exhibit 'person al' traits:self-consciousness, individuality, language, response of obedience and worship... Yet if the angels are 'persons', then clearly physicality can only be a contingentcom pon ent of perso nho od. And yet it is so fundamental to our experience of humanpersonhood that we cannot ignore it.Iwould wa nt to affirm, w ith Schwobel, that 'infaith th e destiny of hum ani ty to live as created in the image of God is recreated as lifein the image of Christ' ('TWelve Theses', 151 - his 6th thesis): but if the image of God


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Notapart from us (Hebrews 11:40) EQ 39This entails an u nde rstand ing of'flesh' which do es not see it as essentially in-imical to 'spirit'. It used to be held that Hebrews works with a Platonic dualism,seeing the earthly tabernacle as a 'shadow ' of 'the greater and m ore perfect tentnot m ade by hands , thatis,not of this creation'(9:11).'But this view has nowgiv-

en way to som ething m uch mo re Jewish (andAristotelian?),in which the polarityis not between 'flesh' and 'spirit' (or 'earth' and 'heaven') but between 'holy' and'profane', and the tab ernac le forms a kind of 'transition zo ne' between the two.On this m odel it is quite possible for Jesus as High Priest to pass as flesh into therealm of the sacred, where God dwells.Sowhen H ebrews 9:14says:'...how muchmorevllthe blood of Christ, who through the eternalSpiritoffered himself w ith-out blem ish to God, purify our consc ience from dead works to worship the livingGod ' - the reference to 'Spirit' does n ot imply that Ghrist left his flesh beh ind inorder to make his offering. Rather, 'the eternal Spirit' provides the m eans and thecontextbywhich the sacrifice of Jesus' flesh for us actually works,and by whichhe is actually able to 'enter the Holy Place ...through his own blood (9:12). Thephra ses 'throug h his own blood' an d 'throug h the etern al Spirit' (9:12 and 14) arecognate with each other, and the Spirit (ofGod works in and through the (bro-ken) flesh of Ghrist to enab le 'eternal redem ption' to take place.

This provides a fascinating understanding of physicaiity which embraces'spirituality' defined as the capacity to enjoy aloving person-to-personrelation-ship withGod or, as Hebrews puts it, the capacity to 'worship the living God'from a pure 'conscience'. Once again, we must resist a dualistic interpretationwhich sees'conscience""asbelongingto a'spirit' side of our fabric, divorced fromthe physical. This is because the 'dead works' which defile the co nscience, andfrom which it has bee n cleansed by the blood of Jesus, illustrate precisely this'cross-over' where sins ofthe flesh imping e with deadly effect on the realm of thesacred. Robert Gordon argues tha t the 'dead wo rks' of Hebrews 6:1 and 9:14 arespecifically the 'hig h-ha nde dsins'of Num bers15:30-31,for which no atone m entwas possible.'" 'High -han ded ' sins were distinguished fTom other sins by beingdeliberate(i.e. conscientious) acts of rebellion. Rabbinic theology m aintain ed7 One of the m ost persuasive representatives of this view is J.W. Tho m pson, w ho ha sdevoted several essays toit:e.g. 'Hebrew s9and Hellenistic Co nce pts of Sacrifice',JBL98 (1979), 567-78; '"That w hich can no t be shaken": Some Metaphysical A ssum ptionsin Heb12:27',JBL94(1975), 580-87.8 See Richard D. Nelson, Raising Up a FaithfulPriest. C omm unity and Priesthood inBiblical Theology (Louisville: W estm inster/Jo hn Knox, 1993). 'Transition zon e' ishis phrase. The reference to the 'cherubim of glory' over the Ark in Heb. 9:5 pointsto this 'transitional' quality of ta hagia:God's glory is really present in this physicallocation.9 Avital Hebrews term : see also 9 :9,10:2,10:22,13:18.10 R obertRGordon,Hebrews (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 101-102; alsoidem, 'Better Promises: TWo Passages in Hebrews Against the Background of the


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4 EQ Steve Motyerthat such sins could n ot be aton ed for by sacrifice, bu t onlybyrepen tance - onlyan act of conscience could atone for an act of conscience. But Hebrews workswith a more holistic anthropology. 'Works which produce (physical] death' (i.e.'dead works') necessarily involve the whole pe rson - as in the case of the y oungm an who im med iately illustrates Num bers 15:30-31 by being stoned for gather-ing sticks on th e sab bath (Num . 15:32-36). His physical action w as motivated byinner, deliberate rejection of thewillof God, and in su ch a case a m erelyphysicalanim al sacrifice could n ot aton e.

But Jesus doesatone for such sins. So the conscientiousself-offering of hisbodybecomes the perfect sacrifice designed to m eet our need of body-spirit pu-rification. This is beautifully expressed thro ugh th e qu ota tion of Psalm 40:6-8 inHebrews 10:5-7, especially with its chan ge (probably de liberate) of the LXX'ears'into 'bod y'." God does not desire animal sacrifices, but he ha s prepared a 'body'for Christ, through w hich hiswill willbedone.Andso,'It is by God's will that wehave been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ on ce for all'(Heb. 10:10). The new and living way into th e Most Holy Place has b een op en edfor us 'through the curtain, that is, throug h his fiesh' (Heb. 10:20), because hisfiesh is the essential pre-requisite for salvation. Only flesh can die

Since, therefore, the children sheure flesh and blood, he himself likewiseshared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the onewh o has th e power of death, th at is, the devil, and free those w ho all theirlives were held in slavery by the fear ofdeath.(Heb. 2:14-15)Death is therefore the focus of the work of salvation in Hebrews. This is so,despite the concentration on issues of sin and purity. The Honours List in He-brews con cern s those w ho in different ways were victorious, no t over sin, butover death an d th e fear of it.' Im purityislife-threatening - thisiswhy it must bedealt with. The conn ection between the Devil, impu rity and d eath is illustratedin 11:28, where 'by faith [Moses] held th e Passover and the sprinkling of blood ,so that the Destroyer might not touch their first-born'." Already, 'by faith' andby 'blood', the power of death is being held at bay. God, too, is a Destroyer be-fore whom Moses shrinks, according to Deuteronomy 9:19 quoted in Hebrews12:21.'*He is a 'consu ming fire' (12:29).Here we m ust ask: wh at exactly is 'death', and how d oes th e d eath of Christdeliver us fromit?This leads us into ou r next sec tion.

11 It is just possible that soma for otia represents anLXX textual variant, but it seemsmore likely that the author has taken it upon himself to clarify a nonsensicaltranslation ('sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but you prepared ears for me')by treating 'ears ' aspars prototofor the w hole body.12 This is one of the insights which distinguishes Robert G ordon's recent com me ntary:Gordon,Hebrews 17-19.


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Not apart from us Hebrews 11:40) EQ 2 4Incarnation, death and solidarity

If Hebrews offers us a definition of dea th, th en it would emerge throu gh its con-nectio n with this notion of 'destruction'. 'We are no t m arked by shrinking backto destruction eisapoleian), but by faith, so as to gain our souls eisperipoi-esinpsuchesy. (10:39). Believers who reject Christvallexperience 'a storm of firewhich will consume his adversaries' (10:27). Following through his gardeningm etapho r in 6:7-8, the authorwritesthat thosewhore-crucify the Son of God arelike the earth in Genesis 3:17, 'rejected a nd nearly cursed, des tined for bu rnin g'(6:8). The picture of the two-edged sword in 4:12-13, allegorized so enthusiasti-cally in prayers before serm ons,isactuallyahorrifying image of radical d ismem -berment before the judgment ofGod:the fate of all who disobey, illustrated inthe p receding verses by the E xodus generation 'whose b odies fell in the w ilder-ness ' (3:17).

Hebrews could so easily make u se of a distinction be tween physical and spir-itual death: or between the first and second death, as in Revelation 20:6, 21:8.But it does no t. In fact it seem s to eschew such an idea in9:27:'i tisapp ointe d form ortals to d ie once, an d after that the judgment.' * This actually c reates a bit ofa problem for the eschatology of Hebrews, for on the on e han d we read that thedead heroes of faith 'are not to be perfected apart from us' (11:40) - suggestingthat they are somehow he ld in suspen sion u ntil the end of the earthly story - buton the o ther ha nd w e then mee t them described as 'the spirits of the righteous,made perfect' already with Christ on Mount Zion, to which we have already'dravm near' (12:22-23). distinction betw een two d eaths, or rather a time-gapbetween physical death and final resurrection, would resolve this tension. Andof course we find such a distinction elsewhere in the New Testament, not just inRevelation.'^ Why n ot in Hebrews?I suspect that the answer lies in Hebrews' radically monistic anthropology.Physical death is destruction of the person. Even though judgment takes placea/irerdeath (9:27), no thin gismade of any 'gap' between d eath an d judgm ent. Forthe point of the com me nt in 9:27 is to em phasize the tight connection betwee nthe two com ings ofChrist:he was sacrificed for sin 'at the fulfilment of the ages'(9:26),which is abo ut as 'eschatological' an exp ressionas wecould ask for. Andso - the im plicationis- his second com ing can not be 'the fulfilment of the ages'.It is as tightly bou nd to his first as death is to judg m ent, and as the em erging ofthe High Priest from the Most Holy Place is to the sprink ling of blood w ithin. Infact there is a strong implication in this passage th at Christ's second app earanc e'to save those who are eagerly waiting for him' (9:28) is not just the end-of-the-age 'Day' (10:25), but an individual post-mortem appearance to save us in the

15 This is all the more rem arkable, in th e light of the m any apoca lyptic features of


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Notapart from us (Hebrews 11:40) EQ 243has no b iblical footholds and th ere is thu s no pressureto find it here, especiallysince a less techn ical interpre tation is perfectly possible. 2:14-15 moves seam-lessly into a presentatio n of aton em en t in very biblical term s, involving priest-hood and the expiation of sin. In fact the structure of the paragraph 2:14-18,with its repeated three-fold patte rn, pu ts 2:14a in clear parallel with 2:17a, whichcan no t be interpre ted in terms of an inca rnatio n of the children. In simplifiedterms:

A He becam e like us (14a, 17a)B So that{hind)he m ight deal with our problem (14b-15,17b)C For{gar) he wanted to help us {epilambanesthaiIIboethein, 16,18)But this leaves us with the intriguing question: do verses 4and 7imply thatwe were children or brothers before the incarnation of the Son, and that hisincarnation was motivated by this kinship? If so, what sort of kinship was it?Or was the kinship actually established by the incarnation, even though theseverses seem to put it the othe r way round?To answer this we need to go back to Psalm 8, the source from which thiswhole argum ent flows (2:5ff). This is a creation Psalm, reflecting on th e role as-signed to hu m ank ind in the c reation stories. This is a role assigned by God, inwhich th e place of hum ank ind vis-a-vis the rest of creation is one of rule wh ichshares the glory of the Creatorhimself The notion of glory is of course cogna tewith tha t of image . This pointism ade for Psalm 8itself by ArturWeiser,^ and wecan see how the dev elopm ent of the th em e of glory in Hebrews 2 is parallel tothe Pauline application of the term ima ge to Jesus in a closely parallel context,Colossiansl:15ffThe author then suggests that this glory of humankind is only (yet) to beseen in Jesus, who has reached this position of rulership at the end ofhiscareeras Saviour, because of the suffering of dea th (2:9). He has been m ad e perfectthrough sufferings, and th us is able to lead m any sons to glory (2:10) - tha t is,to lead us to the perfection of our true hum anity, ma de like him in the image ofGod .Soto be ofone with him (2:11) refers,Isuggest, to our com m on b earing ofthe image of God : som ethingwhich, for h im as for us, is realised fully at th e endof the history of inca rnatio n, bo th his and ou rs.

Solidarity with Christ...We have a kinship with him, therefore, which is defined in our shared relation-ship to God: we are both of God, bear ing his image and grow ing into that like-ness . But that still leaves us to ask. How exactly does this kinship work salvation,so that the presence of the Son in fiesh, blood an d de ath actually chan ges dea thto life for these children ? Clearly itisby repairing the breach between them andGod (atoning for their sins, 2:17), bu t to say this is simplytoreword the question:bywhat kind of solidarity be tween the Sanctifier an d the sanctified (2:11) doe shis action achieve atonement forthem ?


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44 EQ Steve MotyerWhen M cFadyen addresses this issue, he com es up with an essentially aulineanswer, although he ap proaches it throug h the m etap hor o f'call' - helpfully pic-tured forusin the literal, physical call ofthe first disciples, who left their n ets andfollowed Jesus.Herealises, of course, that a gap needs to be bridged b etween the

physical 'call' received by the first disciples and the 'call' of Christ to us today,and in order to bridge this gap he suddenly introdu ces the notio n of'spirit':Individual identity is attributable to a person's spirit of com m unication ...An individual's spirit organises his or her co m m unication and relatednesswhich, through communication, becomes formed and structured into anindividual entit y... The Holy Spirit may th en be conceived as the organi-sational energy of communication ... which, through co-inherence withthe Word, the ordering logos, prod uces op en forms of individual and com -m unal life. ^He is clearly tending here towards (or smuggling in?) a 'realist' descriptionof human and divine being (we have a 'S/spirit'), while struggling to maintainhis definition of perso nho od asessentiallyrelational.But of cou rse: if the com -munication gap between the physical, earthly church and the risen Ghrist is tobe bridged, don't we need some kind of 'substance' out of which to constructthe bridge? 'Spirit' is an obvious candidate, even though it rather underminesMcFadyen's overall case about an essentially relational personhood. This is alsothe way in which Paul bridges the gap :You are not in the fiesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of Ghrist dwells inyou...W henwe cry'Abba,Father ', itisth at very Spirit bea ring witness w ithour spirit that we are children ofGod.(Rom.8:9,15fThe 'call' of Ghrist is mediated to us by the Spirit of Ghrist (who for Paul ismuch more than some kind of 'organisational energy of communication'). ButHebrews does not do this. The pneumatology of Hebrews is fascinating, but itdoes not focus on m ediating salvation betw een the Saviour and th e saved.If we fire the q uestion at Hebrews: What med iates salvation between theSaviour and the saved? - the answer will certainly be 'faith'. The vital passage in

10:19-25, which draws the 'conclusions' from the whole central section of theletter, focuses aroun d th e exh ortation 'let us draw nea r with a true heart, in fullconv iction of faith' (10:22). It is faith w hich enables us to see th e truth abou t Je-sus NBall the references to 'sight' in chap ter11),and th en to turn th at sight intopersevering obedien ce. Faith is the app rop riate h um an respon se to the faithful-ness and word ofGod('for faithful is he who promised', 10:23). Without faith, orafter the renunciation of faith, forgiveness is impossible.And solidarity with the Church

I want to suggest that, for Hebrews, our shcuing of flesh and blood with eachother, and with Jesus, extends to a sharing with all others who have believed,


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Wotapart from us Hebrews 11:40) EQ 245about our common humanity, expressed throug h our shared physicality, whichmeans that when faith comes to fruition in us, a bond across space and time iscreated that joins us in love and w orship with each o ther. The hero es of faithin Hebrews 11 are introduced, n ot just as encouraging illustrations of wh at th eauth or m ean s by faith wh ich leads to the salvation of our sou ls (10:39), bu t aswitnesses who gather arou nd us like the spectators at the games (12:1). Indeedthey are part of the sam e contest, who have no t received the promise, becauseGod inten ded som ething bette r involving us , so that they might no t be perfectedapart from us (11:40).Having been critical of Orthodox theology earlier in this paper, it is nice tosaysome thing more positive at the end. Orthodoxy emp hasizes the com m unionof the chu rch on ea rth with the glorified church in heaven. The Orthodox theo -logian Michael Pomazansky especially underlines this feature of Orthodox the-ology, regarding it as a truth w hich has b een forgotten, ignored or com pletelyrejected in the great part of what is called Christianity. ^ And on a t least threeoccasions in his DogmaticTheology Pomazansky uses Hebrews 12:22-23 as aproof-text for this view.^I suggest that th e picture of appro ach to Moun t Zion in 12:22-24 - mo delledon the notion of pilgrimage to Zion but using specifically cultic language whichcasts the readers in the role of priests - has a realistic edge to it. It is not justan evocative picture of life in Christ. Christian believers m u st /e ar b ecau se theystan d on the very threshold of heavenitself-the M ost Holy Place.The Wayintothat Place stands open before them , and they have boldness to enter becau se ofthe blood of Jesus (10:19). They draw near to th e veil, wh ich is the fiesh of Jesus,wh ere they must wo rship in a way pleasing to God, with reverence and fear(12:28). Thus,on this side of the veil, they worship in harm ony w ith the myriadsof angels in festal array , and also with the spirits of the righteou s mad e perfect(12:23). Spirits here does not indicate a disem bodied existence, but an em bod -ied existence suitable for hab itation beyond the veil.Wemay think of the risenbody of the LordJesus, which was as physical as before crucifixion, bu t now ableto appe ar and disappear atwill-i.e.capable of relationship w ith the whole peo-ple ofGod both on the m oun tain a nd at its foot.So want to argue for a n u nd ersta ndin g of fiesh , or of physicality, which doesnot treat it just as an illustration o r index of our relatedness but sees it as theactual arena of our encounter with Christ in the Spirit, on both sides of death.And suggest that Hebrews helps us toward such an und erstan ding , in the highlysuggestive way in which it presen ts our relationship both w ith Jesus and with th ewider com m unity of faith.


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24 6 EQ Steve MotyerSome conclusions

So, pro m pted by Hebrews, I wan t to argue for th e following as a contribu tion toour understand ing of personh ood (bearing in mind the focus of this pape r on/luman personhoo d, i.e. anthropology): that faith forms an organising centre for our rationality, morality and rela-tionality (reason, will, and togethe rness).Weare designed to live in relationshipsof trust and love, and to organise our refiection on God and the world aroundthe experience of such relationships. Faith is both refiection (confession) andaction (trust). that our relationships are irreducibly physical, because all our m ental andemo tional processes and our contact both with each other and with God d epe ndon our physical nature. Our spirituality does not arise from a spirit withinwhich is separablefi omhe body and continue s after death. that our shared physicality extends beyond the relationships of immedi-ate contact. At the most basic level there is a physical unity of human being,signalled by our genetic heritage which bind us to all others of the sam e race ,both past and present. that this physical c orpora teness com es to fullest and deep est expression inthe chu rch, where faith binds us deeply together, both w ith each other a nd w iththe No1Human Being, Jesus Ghrist.Worship is the archetypal expression of thisfaith and togetherness. that this physical unity in faith also binds u s to the church in glory , thecompany of those for whom judgment and salvation are past, who are alreadyperfected with Ghrist, and to wh om we draw nea r in wo rship. that we must conceive of a typeof physicality (and con seq uen t together-ness ) w hich is illustrated by the risen body of Jesus, and his entry into th e heav-enly temp le bearing his own blood . His victory over his own physical dissolu-tion (because he is the Son ofGod is the basis of our hope (faith, trust) that thedestru ction of our bodies will not be the end ofus, but will be a m om ent of re-con stitution, introducing us into a relationship of imm ediate con tact with him . and, we may add, that this kind of physical togetherness matches whatqua ntum physics now tells us about the nature o fthe relationships that bind ourworld together at sub-atomic level. The particles out of which atoms are madeare held together by enormous and apparendy immaterial forces. These parti-cles, as described by quantum physics, can have location and velocity but notboth at the same time - so that amazingly, in experiments conducted in accel-erators, particles can communicate with separated parts of themselves acrossconsiderable distances.^^ I am not suggesting, of course, that this mysteriousshading into the immaterial at the sub-atomic level can be equated with spiritor Spirit: rather th at it can b e read theologically as an index of the ope nne ss ofthe ma terial world. In its very substance it points beyo nditself.The goalposts of


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Not apart from us (Hebrews 11:40) EQ 2 4 7down the old spirit-flesh dualism, an d to allow for a conception of matter w hichpermits the m utual pen etration of m atter and spirit, body and God. The au thorof Hehrews would b e at hom e in this world

AbstractIn the context of a wider discussion of the nature of 'personhood', this articleargues that Hebrews deepens and refines our understanding of personhood byits presen tation of the incarna tion of Christ, and of our physical bonde dne ss orsolidarity with him, and with the rest of the ch urch.

The Idea ofaChristian University:Essays on Theology and Higher EducationJeff Astley, Leslie Francis, John Sullivan and Andrew Walker (eds)

Today the academyisin a state of turmoil, torn apart by market-drivenpressures, systematic under-funding by central government, demoralisedand impoverished standards, over-worked and highly stressed staff,increased student num bers and an ever widening division betweenresearch-led and teaching-led institutions.In this timely and provocative collection of essays, scholars fromAustralia, Canada, the tJK and theUS re-examine the idea ofaChristianuniversity and offer a radical alternative vision for the future of theacademy. Theologians from Anglican, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestan ttraditions engage both with the historic roots from which the idea of theChristian university em erges and with the contemporary challenges andopportunities faced by higher education today.

Contributors include Professor Sam Berry, Professor David Carr, Dr GavinD Costa,Dr Gerard Loughlin, Dr Patricia Meilone, Professor Ian M arkham,Professor Adrian Thatcher and Dr Elmer Thiessen.

IS N 1 84227 260 81229xl45mm 1272pp I 19.99


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Heb 11 and Incarnation - Moyter

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