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Hebrews 6:4-6 and the Peril of Apostasy Author: Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

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Hebrews 6:4-6 and the Peril of Apostasy Author: Philip Edgcumbe Hughes Journal: Westminster Theological Journal Volume: WTJ 35:2 (Winter 1973) Article: Hebrews 6:4-6 and the Peril of Apostasy Author: Philip Edgcumbe Hughes Hebrews 6:4-6 and the Peril of Apostasy Philip Edgcumbe Hughes In the Epistle to the Hebrews there are repeated warnings against the danger of falling away into apostasy, expressed variously in terms of drifting away from what we have heard, careless unconcern for the great salvation that is ours in Christ (2:1–3), the development of an evil, unbelieving heart causing one to fall away from the living God, being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin and failing to hold our first confidence in Christ firm to the end (3:12–14), being excluded by disobedience from the rest promised to the people of God (4:1, 6, 11), sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth and thereby facing a fearful prospect of judgment (10:26f, 31), abandoning the Christian struggle because of hardship and affliction (12:1, 3, 7, 12f, 16f), rejecting Him who warns from heaven (12:25, 29), and being led away by diverse and strange teachings (13:9). But nowhere are the readers more strikingly admonished of this peril by which they are threatened than in chapter 6:4–6, where the author solemnly declares that it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the words of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt, and in chapter 10:29, where in similar manner he speaks of the dreadful punishment that will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace.1 It is plain that the author’s concern is not simply lest his readers WTJ 35:2 (Win 73) p. 138 should remain at a standstill on the threshold of the Christian life, immature and unfruitful in the faith they professed (5:11ff), but, something far worse, lest there should be a relapse into unbelief in their midst. The danger of apostasy was real, not imaginary, and the situation called for the gravest possible warning; for loss of confidence and the slackening of the will to contend in the Christian race (10:35f, 12:3) pointed alarmingly to the ultimate possibility of their dropping out of the contest altogether, and in doing so of placing themselves beyond all hope of restoration. Six things are predicated of the spiritual experience of those whom it is impossible to restore again if they rebel against the faith they claimed to hold. 1. They have professed repentance. This should be understood as a resumption of what is more fully stated in verse 1, namely, “repentance from dead works and faith toward God.” Genuine repentance is a once-for- all turning of the back on the old way of life; it is “repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret” (2 Cor 7:10); it is a decisive, unrepeatable moment in the transition from death to life; and as such it belongs to the foundation on which the new life in Christ is erected. Consequently, it is unthinkable that this foundation can be laid over again (6:1). This does not mean that there is no place for repentance on the part of the man who has truly turned to Christ. On the contrary, the sins and shortcomings of which he is daily guilty call for daily repentance and forgiveness; but even so, thanks to the grace of God which enabled him to make the decisive move of turning and trust, he has left behind him his former ungodly life and is on the road that leads to holiness and glory. 2. They belong to those who have once been enlightened (the same expression recurs in 10:32). The verb used here, (φωτιζ́ ειν) is used of the activity of the eternal Word who came into the world to enlighten men (John 1:9) and through faith in whom believers have been enlightened in the very depths of their being (Eph 1:18; cf . 2 Tim 1:10). Satan blinds the minds of unbelievers “to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ”; but in the case of those who have been transformed by the grace of the gospel this satanic darkness has been dispelled by the shining in their hearts of “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:4, WTJ 35:2 (Win 73) p. 139 6; in both of these verses the Greek word translated “light” is the cognate noun φωτισμός, “enlightenment”). This accords closely with what is said in Heb 10:32, where “to be enlightened” evidently corresponds to the experience mentioned in verse 26 of “receiving the knowledge of the truth.” The grace of enlightenment carries with it solemn responsibilities. Thus Paul admonishes the Ephesian Christians: “Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light….Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness” (Eph 5:8, 11; these “unfruitful works of darkness” being the equivalent of the “dead works” from which the Christian professes to have separated himself in Heb 6:1). From at least the second century onwards this expression was interpreted as a reference to baptism. Justin Martyr (165), for instance, states that the term “enlightenment” was used in his day as a synonym for Christian baptism and himself calls the person baptized “the enlightened one” (ὁ φωτισθεις́ , First Apology , 61, 65); and the Peshitta Syriac actually renders the present passage as “who have gone down into baptism.” The baptismal ceremony, besides being the initiatory rite which graphically symbolized the candidate’s repentance from dead works and his resurrection to newness of life in Christ, was also, within two centuries after the apostolic age, the climax of a prolonged period of preparatory instruction; it was, moreover, for the convert to Christianity, the moment when he professed as it were before the world his turning from the darkness of sin to the light of Christ. In the controversy over re-baptism in the fourth century this text was adduced as specifically forbidding the repetition of baptism. And its association with baptism persisted, and, it could be said, became entrenched, so that in the thirteenth century we find Thomas Aquinas explaining that “enlightened” (illuminati ) means enlightened through baptism, and that “baptism is appropriately called enlightenment (illuminatio) since baptism is the principle of spiritual regeneration in which the understanding is illuminated by faith”; and early in the sixteenth century Lefvre d’Etaples asks: “What is ‘who have once been enlightened’?” and replies: “Undoubtedly who have once been baptized; for baptism is termed the sacrament of photismata, that is of enlightenments (photismatum hoc est illuminationum sacramentum) by most of our scholars.” To what extent baptism and WTJ 35:2 (Win 73) p. 140 its significance may have been in the author’s mind as he wrote this passage is a question to which we shall return. 3. They have tasted the heavenly gift. The explanation of “the heavenly gift” as a description of the eucharist has proved attractive to some, especially if the “enlightenment” of the previous clause has been taken as a reference to baptism. On this understanding, the two gospel sacraments are then placed neatly side by side. It is an interpretation, however, which does not appear to have been current in the early centuries; but it has recently been taken up approvingly by Teodorico, who relates the “heavenly gift” to the teaching of Christ in John 6:31ff. where he speaks of himself as the bread of life given by the Father from heaven. F. F. Bruce, too, while conceding that this “heavenly gift” need not be restricted to the eucharist, suggests that “it may indicate the whole sum of spiritual blessings which are sacramentally sealed and signified in the Eucharist.” But it is doubtful whether “tasting” is intended here in a physical sense, that is, of consuming the eucharistic elements, especially as its usage in the clause after next (“tasted the goodness of the word of God”), within this same sentence, is quite clearly metaphorical. (Of the fourteen times, apart from the instance now before us, that the verb γεύομαι occurs in the New Testament seven are literal and seven metaphorical, five of the latter in the sense of tasting, that is experiencing, death.) Many commentators expound the “gift” in a somewhat general sense of the gospel and the benefits it confers. Others are more specific. According to Peter Lombard, for example, it is “forgiveness of sins in baptism”; according to Lefvre d’Etaples, “justification from sins”; according to Thomas Aquinas, grace, which is described as heavenly “because God gives it from heaven”; and similarly Spicq, who asserts that δωρεά is “a technical term almost equivalent to grace.” In harmony with this last interpretation, it seems best to understand “the heavenly gift” as denoting all that God freely and graciously bestows in Christ. 4. They have become partakers of the Holy Spirit. There is much that is attractive in the suggestion that the sequence of “enlightenment,” “tasting the heavenly gift,” and “participation of the Holy Spirit” in this verse corresponds with some exactness to the “instruction about ablutions” (interpreted as relating to Christian baptism) and the “laying on of hands” of verse 2 in WTJ 35:2 (Win 73) p.
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