Fr. Stephen: Okay, so we will go ahead and get started. And when we get started in just a moment, we’ll be starting St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews. Last time was just the big, long introduction, which I’m not going to now repeat, because then we would just keep doing that over and over again and never get to the actual book. But by the time people are hearing this, the recording of that will also be available to go back and listen to. The one thing that’s very pertinent is, as I mentioned last time, not really an epistle in the same sense as the epistles of St. Paul that we’ve been reading so far, and the reason that’s relevant tonight is that, when we pick up here in Hebrews 1 verse 1, we’re just going to drop right into it. We don’t have the usual introductory material that we’ve seen, that all of St. Paul’s epistles tend to have, where he identifies himself: “Paul, an Apostle to dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera”; all that’s not here. We just go straight into it. The other thing I’ll reiterate, because again, this is also pertinent, is, we talked about how, genre-wise, part of the reason for that is that this isn’t really a letter; this is more a written-down homily or sermon that’s being sent to someone. That’s why we have some of the things you’d see at the end of a letter at the end, but we don’t have the things at the beginning.

In particular, I said last time—I argued last time—that the epistle as a whole is really, sort of, a commentary, a sermon, a homily, on Psalm 110 – 109 in the Greek numbering, if you’re looking it up in an Orthodox Study Bible. And we’re going to see, St. Paul is going to work his way through that psalm and quote it throughout, and he’s also going to—in the way that is typical at this time, the first century B.C., first century A.D., in Jewish circles when they’re doing this kind of thing—he’ll also, then, bring in other passages of Scripture to support their interpretation and the point that they’re making about the interpretation in the main passage in question. This is super-common. If you look at a collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls, you see this all over the place, where they’ll go – they’ll do a verse, and then they’ll start describing it, and then you’ll get twenty-three other passages of scripture all interlaced in the interpretation, showing how it connects to everything, and then you get verse 2. And it works through that way. And so, we’re going to see, there are going to be a bunch of different subtopics and applications of things as we work our way through, sort of, as the interpretation goes.

So, the outline of it is very different than the outline of one of St. Paul’s epistles. It’s not just a straight argument like St. Paul’s epistles; he “seeds” his themes into the opening, and then he develops each of those themes in turn; you could outline it, if you wanted to, with bullet points. You can’t really do that with Hebrews, because, again, he’s sort of working his way through and interpreting this psalm. So, the outline, or the structure, is more the structure of the psalm than some kind of logical, “Here’s my three points about this, and then three sub-points about that.” So, all that said, and I think it’ll be clear as we get into it—unless there are any other questions, comments, late-breaking news, interesting tweets somebody wants to read—we’ll go ahead and start in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 1, verse 1.

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.” Which is a great, interesting translation. We’ll pause there even though the sentence isn’t over. This is one of those nice Greek sentences that goes on for a page and a half. But we’ll cut it here.

So, we start with “God,” and when we see just “God” in this way in the New Testament, and especially in St. Paul, we’re talking about God the Father. This becomes obvious when he speaks about “His Son.” So, God, at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets. The fathers here are the fathers of the faith. It’s all these Old Testament folks, all of the ancestors in faith. We know that St. Paul, from when we were going through First Corinthians, is not primarily thinking – well, nobody at this time in history is thinking genetically, but, even genealogically, per se, in that strict way. This is fathers in the faith, “our forebears.” And He spoke to them in the past by the prophets. But notice, he doesn’t say, “He spoke to them in various ways, including the prophets.” The prophets are not one of the ways. There are various ways through the prophets. So, the prophet, by definition here, is the one through whom God is communicating. So, what are the different ways that prophets communicated? Well, we know, first of all, there’s different words for “prophet” in the Old Testament, but that includes people who see visions. That includes people who wrote. In the traditional Jewish naming – we tend to name the Old Testament books in English by genre, so they’ll talk about “historical books,” and “prophetic books,” and “wisdom literature,” and that kind of thing, but in the traditional Jewish naming, the Hebrew naming, all those historical books—Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, or First through Fourth Kingdoms—all that stuff is considered “prophets.” It’s usually called “the former prophets.” And then the prophetic literature they would call “the latter prophets.” Yessir.

Interlocutor 1: I have a question because if those historical books are included, the prophets are almost all of the people we know of in the Old Testament, so who are the fathers if – I mean, David counts as a prophet under this, and so…

Fr. Stephen: And then the common people, who are being ruled over by David, would be the fathers.

Interlocutor 1: Okay. So, fathers in the faith doesn’t–

Fr. Stephen: It’s not the way we use “Church Fathers.”

Interlocutor 1: Okay. It doesn’t mean “the big guys.”

Fr. Stephen: Right, it means “forebears.”

Interlocutor 1: Right, all the people, then.

Fr. Stephen: So, you have Moses the prophet, and then you have the people. And then that pattern continues, so you have Joshua; even though we don’t normally think of Joshua in terms of “prophet” per se, he is one, and the book of Joshua is one of the prophets. And this naming is carried through, when you look at, like, the Saints calendar in the Orthodox Church, all those Old Testament figures are referred to as prophets. Those major ones, the Old Testament saints, are referred to as prophets. You’ll sometimes see, “The Prophets and Apostles,” to cover the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that’s why – because of that inclusion, that’s why you see what we call the “Old Testament” referred to in the New Testament as “the Law and the Prophets.” That’s not skipping the historical books; that’s including them.

So, that’s a way. The way in which Joshua was a prophet is a little different than the way Moses was, and the way Samuel was, and the way Isaiah was, but they were all the means through which God communicated to the people. But there’s always this human intermediary. And that human intermediary, that prophet, is a prophet in part because he has this direct communication with God. That’s part of what makes them a prophet: Moses talks to God face-to-face; David has this – we have the Psalms, et cetera. Jeremiah, Isaiah, they have this more direct contact with God, and then the rest of the people do it through that human intermediary.

So, that is in the past. But verse 2: Now He “has in these last days spoken to us by His Son,” so we’ll reiterate, “last days” – sometimes it’s translated as “latter days” – don’t confuse this with Latter Day Saints; this isn’t our Mormon friends, but that’s where they get it. We’ve talked before about how there’s very clearly, when you read the Old Testament prophets, this idea of a Messianic age. It’s not just “The Messiah’s going to show up, and that’s it. Then the dead are all going to rise, and everybody’s going to be happy from then on out. Then all the bad people are going to get tossed, and it’s done.” And we talked about how Daniel 7 refers to this as “a long time.” There’s the enthronement of the Son of Man, and then there’s “a long time,” and then the devil is judged and the wicked are judged. It appears all over the place. Isaiah, Ezekiel.

And so, the New Testament authors, as they come to understand that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, is the Messiah, is the Son of Man, and they understand that his Ascencion was that enthronement from Daniel 7, they say, “Okay, well, now’s the ‘long time’. Now’s this period of time.” St. John in Revelation is going to describe this as “a thousand years.” It’s this period where Christ rules, but he rules in the midst of his enemies, and that’s part of Psalm 110. The first verse of Psalm 110 is, “The Lord said to my Lord–” which is literally, in the Hebrew, “Yahweh said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” “Sit at my right hand, be enthroned,” like we see in Daniel 7, “until I make your enemies your footstool.” So, there’s this period of time when he’s ruling in the midst of his enemies.

So, when they talk about this being the last days, this being the latter days—and we’re going to see this as we get into the general epistles after Hebrews a lot; St. John is going to say, “Brethren, these are the last days”—that’s what they mean. They mean we’re in this final time period before end end. Before the Last Judgment. We’ve now entered into this period. That’s as opposed to their fellow Jews who hadn’t accepted Jesus as the Christ, as the Messiah, who are still looking forward to that period. They still think we’re in the previous period. So, that’s the point of identifying, “in the last days.” And so, when he says here, “in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,” it’s him speaking through the Son that makes this the last days. Now this transition has happened. Now this is different.

Right off the bat, right off the bat, he’s just tacitly made the argument he’s going to be making through most of the first two chapters, which is, if he’s saying that there’s now been this transition, there’s now been this drastic change between the old epoch, the last age, and this new epoch—I won’t call it a new age because then people will freak out—but this last age, these last days, there’s been this big transition, then that means, whoever he’s calling the Son—and we, of course know who that is—but whoever he’s calling the Son can’t be a human prophet. Because then there would be no change. There would be zero change. So, he’s drawing a disjunction. And if the disjunction is between, there’s a particular human person who has a direct communication with God and then he passes that on to everyone else, and now the Son is something different than that, what does that imply? Because God is still speaking to us in both cases. So, if it’s no longer through a human intermediary, that means the Son himself, when we experience the Son, when the Son speaks, it’s God himself speaking. Because otherwise it wouldn’t be different. It wouldn’t be different; it would be the same: God talks to somebody, and that person talks to us.

So, he’s already tacitly implied that – now, he’s going to be making this argument, like I said, through the first couple of chapters, but he’s already implied it just with that, with this first transition. His first contrast. Then he says two things about the Son: “whom He,” God the Father, “has appointed heir of all things”—so God the Father has appointed him the heir of all things, number one, and then number two—“through whom also He made the worlds,” which, again, is an interesting translation. This is essentially – in some cases this is translated, “through whom He made the ages.”

Interlocutor 1: That would be different.

Fr. Stephen: Right. Well, it’s the same word, and a lot of this is a western preference over against an eastern preference. So, the Western preference, at least in English, has been to translate this as “worlds.” So, you get, like, “World without end,” at the end of prayers. And your like, “World without end? What does that…” and we have, “Unto ages of ages,” usually, in our English translation. They’re translating the same thing. They’re translating the same idea. How much do I want to play with Latin?

The way that happens is that the idea of the seculorum doesn’t mean what “secular” means now. St. Augustine, in City of God, when he’s contrasting the city of God and the city of man, he’s contrasting the Kingdom of God and this world, he talks about how – he kind of invests that world that we usually just translate, “world,” “secular,” “worldly,”—seculorum—he invests that with the idea that the Kingdom of God, the City of God, is unchanging and eternal, and always the same. Remember, St. Augustine’s a Platonist [laughter]. Whereas this world, this seculorum, is always changing and in flux, and sort of goes through these cycles. And he’s writing City of God at the time that the Western Roman Empire is collapsing. He’s kind of saying, “Hey, this is the way this world works. Empires rise; empires fall. Kingdoms rise; kingdoms fall. But over above this is the Kingdom of God, which is eternal and unchanging and lasts forever.” And he’s juxtaposing those things. And so, the western translations are influenced by that concept. So, it becomes “World without end,” but what that’s trying to indicate is an age, like an age without end, as opposed to the ones of this world, that do. So, that’s how you get “world without end” versus “ages of ages,” which look nothing like each other, but are actually trying to get at the same sort of concept.

So, when this is saying that “through Christ God the Father created the aeons [αἰῶνας],” that’s a way of saying, “through whom He created everything.” All the ages – not just this age, the Messianic Age, but all the previous ages, the age before the flood, everything. And so, why does he list these two things? Well, that thing is the one he lists second, but that’s – if everything, if all of the ages, if all of the creation is created by God the Father through the Son, then that means what? He has to be eternal, too. Because he’s not part of any of those. He doesn’t belong to any of those. And he wants to say that second because the first thing he says, “He has appointed Him the heir of all things” – well, “appointed” makes it sound like there’s been some kind of change. And he just said there’s been this transition in how God speaks. So, the part about the Father creating all the ages through the Son is to clarify that he’s not saying, like, “Oh, that was plan A with the prophets, and now here’s plan B.” Or, “these are two different things,” or, “the Son just appeared on the scene now,” or, “the Son is part of this last age.” So, he’s not part of it, but it’s marked by the appearance of the Son through whom…

Interlocutor 1: All things were made.

Fr. Stephen: …God speaks, through whom all things were made, and who is now the heir of all things. The heir of all things means he’s going to inherit all things. So, if he is the one through whom all things were created and he’s the heir of all things, [whispering sardonically] that’s kinda like saying he’s the alpha and the omega. It’s almost like the New Testament authors were all on the same page. Sorry, modern scholarship.

Anyway, [laughter]–

Interlocutor 2: Well, this would’ve been written before the Gospel of John, right?

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Interlocutor 2: So that language in the Gospel of John was…

Fr. Stephen: Right, and St. John using that alpha and omega language is actually being drawn from the Greek translation of Isaiah. So, he’s getting it from somewhere in the Old Testament, too. None of the New Testament authors are making any of this up; they’re connecting the dots. All the dots are there in the Old Testament, and now that they have personally encountered Christ as Apostles, now they can see how the dots connect, whereas before it was kind of hard to tell. You can connect dots in a lot of different ways.

And so, this idea of inheritance is important – I hammered on this, I know, a lot, years ago when we were going through St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, but “inheritance” is the word that’s used in the Torah and especially in Joshua, and it’s used less after that, it shows up in the prophets, but especially in that earliest, what’s sometimes called the “Hexateuch” if you throw in Joshua. Especially in those books, “inheritance” is the word that’s always used to refer to all of the promises of God to Abraham, which includes stuff about the land but is definitely not limited to stuff about the land, and we’re going to get into that more in Hebrews later on. But all the promises about, “Your descendants will become like the stars of heaven,” all of those promises are referred to as “the inheritance.”

And so, saying that the Son is the heir of all things not only means he, at the end – it’s not just through him, but for him, which is true, but it’s going beyond that to connect the whole idea of salvation, as it was understood at the time, with the Son. Because we talked about, when we were going through St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, that the heir, the firstborn, the firstborn son, the heir, received the entire inheritance. When the father died, the firstborn son got everything. It didn’t get shared out; it didn’t get divvied up. Everything went to the heir, to the firstborn son, and then he apportioned it out as he saw fit. We see this reflected a bunch of times in the Bible – notably, there’s a point where somebody comes to Christ as he’s traveling and preaching and says, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me,” because apparently his brother had decided to just hold onto it for a while. And Christ tells him, “Don’t worry about that; come follow me, be my disciple, let him have the money, who cares.” But that’s how it worked.

So, when Christ is called the heir like this, it’s not because God the Father is going to pass away and Christ is going to take over; it’s heir as in, he’s the one who receives all those promises, and then he’s the one who distributes those to his fellow heirs, to his brothers and sisters. So, that’s how that imagery is used in the New Testament. So, saying he’s the heir is not just the “for whom”—it includes that—but also it means he’s the one through whom the inheritance is going to be received by anyone who receives it. And that’s why the word “appointed” there is used. The birthright idea. So, it’s not just that the Son is the means by which the Father communicates to us, he’s also the means by which we receive blessings, including the blessing of salvation, from him. So, everything, now, is through the Son. Indeed, as it been from the beginning. Everything is through the Son.

So, verse 3: “…who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged out [sic] our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” We’ll stop again – we’re still in the same sentence, folks. So, first, right now, who is the Son? Part of this is why he’s called “the Son.” What does sonship mean? Because he’s just said all the ages were created through him. So, if he’s also eternal, why would he be called the Son? Why would you have a father-son relationship between two eternal persons? So, he is “the brightness of His glory” – “His” is added, but in this case, I think, correctly, that it’s God’s glory that he’s talking about, not just “the brightness of glory in general,” like he’s shiny. But he is “the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.”

So, we’ll start with “the brightness of His glory.” What’s that getting at there? Well, there are two different words in the Old Testament that both get translated “glory.” Not just in English – in Greek. The word “doxa” [δόξα] gets used for both of them. One of them is “kavod” [כבוד], which is the word that, for example, Moses uses when he asks to see God’s glory, and God says, “You can’t see me and live.” The word “kavod,” even though it’s translated “glory” there, literally means, “weight,” “heaviness,” so it’s often used for ideas like substance or essence that we would use in English. The weight, the mass. That’s not the word that’s in view here. The other word is “shekhinah” [שכינה] in Hebrew, which is glory like the fiery cloud that fills the Temple. That kind of glory. The way we usually think of glory, like the nimbus that’s around a Saint, the halo, or Moses’ face reflecting God’s glory when he came down the mountain. That’s the kind of glory that’s in view here. So, “the brightness of His glory.” So, it’s God’s glory, and Christ is the brightness. What is that trying to imply? Well, can you separate those two things?

Interlocutor 1: No.

Fr. Stephen: Can you take glory and separate out the brightness? You can talk about it separately. It’s separable in speech. We can talk about those like they’re two separate things, but they aren’t two separate things. So, this is one analogy that’s being used. And you will sometimes see similar analogies, that are based off of this kind of thing, in the Church Fathers, when they’re talking about the Holy Trinity. They’ll talk about light and head, and you can’t separate – and they’re all analogies. You don’t want to press them literally, but that has a Biblical basis here, that those kind of analogies – or a word and breath and that. Yes?

Interlocutor 1: I’ve got a different translation here in the Revised Standard, and it appears to be the same thing: “…bears the very stamp of His nature.”

Fr. Stephen: That’s the second part.

Interlocutor 1: That’s…

Fr. Stephen: That’s the “express image.”

Interlocutor 1: Okay. It was like… “where is that here?”

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, that’s their translation of the second part that we’re about to talk about now, the “express image of His person,” and that’s because the Greek word “character” is actually there and they’re trying to keep it. And the idea that’s being conveyed in the Greek, “what does express image mean?” is that it’s like if you have a signet ring and you’re making a stamp, or a foot making a footprint. That there’s no difference; they’re the same. The image on a seal and the image in the wax are the same.

So, those are paired together why? Well, because that second image is of two separate things that match and are identical, and the first image is of two inseparable things. So, again, just like we saw before, with “who is appointed the heir, but through whom He created all things,” we have the same kind of thing here. The Father and the Son are inseparably one, but also, the Son is the image of the Father. The exact image of the Father. And it’s worth noting that it’s not vice-versa. This isn’t interchangeable; it’s not, “the Son is the image of the Father, and the Father is the image of the Son.” Those aren’t interchangeable things. This Son is the image of the Father, because the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son.

We have to be clear about that because in the West in general, and in our contemporary times all over the place, the doctrine of the Trinity has gotten really loose in terms of how people talk about it and think about it. But the Fathers are reading this, and this is where they’re getting some of these things – right here. And so, again, these two points are made not to say, “Oh, well, this is this weird contradiction that no man can understand,” but this is the approach that the Ecumenical Councils are going to take to the doctrines. Because on one hand it’s true, we can’t comprehend the Holy Trinity as humans. We can’t comprehend the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation as humans. But what you can do is you can sort of put a little fence around, you can put a guardrail around, “Okay, we know the truth is in here. So, if you go too far in this direction, you’re going to mess up. If you go too far in the opposite direction, you’re going to get messed up. But if you go too far this way you’ll get messed up, and too far the other way, you’re going to get messed up.” And so, this is a way – and, again, this is where they get it, in the Ecumenical Councils, this way of speaking, this is an example of it here in the Scriptures, in Hebrews. So, you say, on the one hand, inseparable; on the other hand, the Son is the image of the Father. So, you have these two things that are both true statements, so you know the truth is in here, and if you go outside those parameters – no, no, no, no, no. You’ve got to come back this way. And these two aren’t at the expense of each other.

“…and upholding all things by the word of His power.” So, the question here in interpretation—and I notice the Orthodox Study Bible leaves this super-vague—is who the “His” is. Who the “His” is. Is this saying that the Son upholds all things by the word of his power? Or is it saying the Father upholds all things by the word of his power? I’m going to argue that it’s saying the Father does, because the Son is the word of his power.

Interlocutor 1: So, it’s saying the Father upholds things through the Son.

Fr. Stephen: Through the Son. We already had “created” – we already had alpha; we already had omega; now we’ve got the rest of the alphabet in between is also through Christ. So, this is again reinforcing that idea: everything that the Father does, he does through the Son.

“…when He had by Himself purged our sins.” [laughter] So, that translation – the way we use, “by Himself,” makes it sound like “without any help.” “He did it all by himself.” So, is he now saying, “The Son did this all by himself, without the Father”? Well, obviously not, because he just said the exact opposite. So, the “by”—the word B-Y—that can be used a lot of different ways. “I went by the store.” “I went there by car.” So, there’s lots of different ways that that “by” can be used.

And so, here I’m going to say that what he’s saying is, “when he had, by means of himself, purged our sins” – and that’s as opposed to what? By means of something else. Because when you have this language of purging of sin, this is language from the Day of Atonement ritual. Some people translate the whole kifur [כפר] verb family in Hebrew – some people translate that now as “purge.” Instead of “the Day of Atonement” they call it “the Day of Purgation” because the words mean “to wipe” or “to smear.” And so, this is something that’s going to be developed – there’s going to be a whole bunch about the Day of Atonement later in the book of Hebrews. So, Christ doesn’t use something else or some other means. He doesn’t go and grab two goats on the Day of Atonement and do the ritual at the Temple. He’s not part of the earthly priesthood. He doesn’t do that. He does it by means of himself. Through himself. And that’s going to be expanded on as we go on.

But after he had done this, he “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” “Right hand of the Majesty on high,” of course, is talking about the Father on high. So, this is enthronement. Now, notice: he sat down at the right hand. Remember Psalm 110 or 109, verse 1: “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” And this is the enthronement of the Son of Man in Daniel 7. So, after he completes this, he sits down; he is enthroned at the right hand of the Father.

Verse 4: “…having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” So, we’re finally now at the end of the first sentence. The first paragraph and section here. So, that language is important, and he’s going to come back to it because it’s a reference to, in the Old Testament, “who is man that you are mindful of him; the son of man… you made him a little lower than the angels but crowned him with glory and honor.” That’s going to get interpreted later on. So, we are seeing some of the later themes seeded in here, but not in the same way St. Paul typically does it, but they are here. So, he’s now above all the angels. As a human on earth, we are not above the angels, but he is now above the angels, “as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” And that’s going to be developed here, too.