Hebrews Lesson 84 April
5, 2007
NKJ
Psalm 119:9 How can a
young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.
We are in Hebrews 7. Now as we
get into the next few verses in Hebrews, we have to have a little review of
what is going on here. Chapter 7 is the
beginning of a lengthy section dealing with the significance of Jesus Christ’s
high priesthood. He is our High
Priest. What does that mean? Why is that significant? How does that affect the believer’s
life? This is a foundation for us
because in His priestly ministry as part of His mediatorial ministries, He is
seated at the right hand of the Father.
By virtue of our position in Christ, we are seated at the right hand of
the Father with Him. We are in Him and we are all believer priests because of
that identification with Jesus Christ.
Now the question that apparently was at issue with these Jewish
background believers that were the object of this epistle is that they had
questions about the significance of Christ’s priesthood and how He could even
be a priest because He is not from the tribe of Levi. So how does all of this work out? I have got about 6 points of review here to
get our minds back into this particular topic.
So let’s just pick up the argument.
The interesting thing here is in these first 10 verses there is no
mention of Jesus Christ. There is no
mention of the Lord at all. He is
building a tight intricate argument leading up to recognition that there is another
and a superior priesthood than the Levitical priesthood and a superior priesthood
to the Levitical priesthood. Once he can
establish that (which he does in these 10 verses) then he will transition to
applying that to the Lord Jesus Christ.
So he begins with an explanation in verse 1.
NKJ
Hebrews 7:1 For this
Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham
returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him,
He had just mentioned Melchizedek at the end of chapter 6.
He reminds them that he is the King of Salem because this puts him in a
position of authority over Abraham. He
is a ruler. He is more than simple
aristocracy. He was the King of Salem,
an older term for the city of
This is El Elyon as He is described in the Old Testament. He is a royal priest.
Most of what we have in these first 4 verses is a rehearsal of what
occurred back in
Genesis 14.
This is very important. He
blesses him. It is a specific kind of blessing indicating the superiority of
Melchizedek over Abraham because he blesses him.
NKJ
Hebrews 7:2 to whom also
Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated "king of
righteousness," and then also king of
That is to Melchizedek.
Now this tithe that Abraham gave
was as I pointed out before a freewill gift. It is a one time thing. It is a tithe not from all of Abraham’s
possessions but from that which was taken (the plunder that was taken) when he
defeated the Chedorlaomer alliance. He
gives that as a tribute. This was
standard operating procedure in the ancient world. When there was a ruler, an emperor, or a king
and when someone had victory of this type, then a tribute was paid.
Remember that Abraham doesn’t own any land in the
His name is first translated King of Righteousness and then King of
Salem meaning King of Peace. These are
titles. It is brought up to the writer
of Hebrews to emphasize his royalty and thus his authority and superiority to
Abraham. That is where his argument is
going in these 10 verses. On the basis
of what happens, it shows that Abraham and thus anyone who comes from Abraham
(thus anyone who is Abraham’s descendents) is inferior or subordinate to the
king. This is why he can say that the
Levitical priesthood is subordinate to the Melchizedekean priesthood.
NKJ
Hebrews 7:3 without
father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor
end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.
This is a description of Melchizedek to reinforce the fact that his
priesthood is not based on genealogy.
It doesn’t mean that he didn’t have parents. It doesn’t mean that he was deity - that this
was the pre-incarnate Christ. That is
not true because he was flesh and blood.
The pre-incarnate Christ when He appears in the Old Testament isn’t true
humanity. He is a human. But the text doesn’t describe his
parentage. The Old Testament record doesn’t
give his father or mother in the sense that he has to have a particular lineage
in order to qualify for priesthood which the Levitical priesthood had. His birth and death aren’t mentioned. Why is that important? Under the Levitical qualifications for a
priest, a priest did not take office (was not inaugurated in his office) until
he was 30. When he was 50 he had to
retire. He only had 20 years of
service. So time was a factor in the
service of a Levitical priest. But time
is not a factor for Melchizedek. It
didn’t matter when he was born or when he died.
This isn’t a factor. So the kinds
of qualifications that you have in the Mosaic Law to qualify a serving
Levitical priest were not mentioned anywhere in Scripture. They are not relevant to the Melchizedekean
priesthood.
He is made like the Son of God. It is a comparative statement. It doesn’t say he is the Son of God. If it were the pre-incarnate Christ(because
He is eternally the Son of God) (We have studied that out of Psalm 2) the
writer of Hebrews would have to say that he was the Son of God. He couldn’t say the Son of God is like the
Son of God if Melchizedek were the pre-incarnate Christ. It is clear that Melchizedek was a human
being. He says that he would remain a
priest continually. Once again there
weren’t temporal factors indicating when his priesthood would end. Now all of
that is important for laying out the conclusion that he is going to get to in
verse 4 through 10.
Then in verse 4 he says…
NKJ
Hebrews 7:4 Now consider
how great this man was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth
of the spoils.
This man is Melchizedek. He wants
his readers to think about this. He uses
the word theoreo which is used some 58 times in the New Testament. A lot of times in the gospels it simply
refers to looking and seeing something.
But in many cases it has a greater sense. It is a present active
imperative which means that they are being commanded to stop and think. We are all going to concentrate on this for
just a minute. There are just a few
verses in the Old Testament – Genesis 14 and in Psalm 110 that mention
Melchizedek.
But let’s stop a minute and concentrate and focus on what the text tells
us. That is the idea of theoreo –
to examine something closely, to visually examine it or inspect it for a
purpose. Thus it came to refer to the
act of mentally focusing on, concentrating on, observing the details of
something. So we are going to take a
little time to concentrate on what the text tells us in the Old Testament about
Melchizedek and what the implications are.
So the writer of Hebrews says, “Let’s think about how great this man was
to whom even the patriarch Abraham (as great as Abraham was) had someone who
was greater.”
He gave a 10th of the spoils as a tribute to Melchizedek
indicating the superior position that Melchizedek had and Abraham clearly
recognized that he was the social and political inferior to Melchizedek. So Abraham gave a tithe of the spoils – paid
tribute to Melchizedek.
Let’s go on and build a little application. Let’s move on top of
that. In verse 5 we read….
NKJ Hebrews 7:5 And
indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a
commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is,
from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham;
Now we are going to shift to the descendents of Levi – to Levitical
priests.
By virtue of what? By virtue of
birth. That was all to be qualified to
be a Levitical priest. You had to fit
certain physical qualifications. You had
to be born from the tribe of Levi and you had to be qualified physically. You couldn’t have various deformities or
health problems. If so, you were
disqualified.
You didn’t have to be regenerate.
There is no qualification that says these guys had to be saved. They had to get up on Shabbat and had to give
their testimony of how they had come to understand who the Messiah of Israel
was and to trust in Him for salvation.
There is no spiritual qualification.
It is all the physical qualifications to serve in the tabernacle or
later in the temple. They were the sons
of Levi who receive the priesthood and they have a commandment to receive
tithes from the people according to the laws.
This refers to the mandates in the Mosaic Law which we studied in the
last two or three lessons as we studied the doctrine of tithing and
giving. There were three tithes spelled
out in the Mosaic Law. Leviticus 27:30
explains the overall law of the tithe.
So the Levitical priests were commanded to receive certain tithes that
were mandated according to the law – that is from their brethren.
Notice the point that he is making here.
It is one that can easily go passed you.
On the one hand, you have the Levitical priests. On the other hand, you have the other 11
tribes in Israel. Now they are all equal
because they are equally sons of Jacob.
None was superior to another.
That’s his point here. They were
to receive tithes from their brethren even through they had all come equally
from the loins of Abraham. There is no
superiority in the relationship between the Levitical priests and the
descendents of Judah or Benjamin or Issachar or Simeon or any of the others.
Then he says…
NKJ
Hebrews 7:6 but he whose
genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him
who had the promises.
In other words, there is going to be a contrast now that the one whose
genealogy is not derived from them is an allusion to Melchizedek. He is restating the fact that Melchizedek’s
ancestry is unrelated to Levi.
Melchizedek preceded Levi in time. He is not descended from
Abraham. There is a complete distinction
between Melchizedek and the Levites.
The point he is making is that Levi received tithes because they were
mandated to do so under the Mosaic Law.
That’s not the case with Melchizedek.
Melchizedek received tithes on a different basis. The basis is that he is superior to Abraham
because of his position as the royal high priest, the King of Salem, the King
of righteousness having the title Melchizedek (which was probably a title as I
pointed out before not a personal name).
You have this same kind of thing.
There is another Canaanite mentioned later on in the time of Joshua. His name was Adonaizedek meaning lord of
righteousness. So this apparently were the dynastic titles among the leaders in
these various Canaanite city-states.
So the point of verse 6 is that Melchizedek had no relationship to the
Levites. He received tithes from Abraham
and blessed him who had the promises. Who is “him who had the promises?” That’s Abraham. The promise refers to the Abrahamic Covenant,
the promise of land, seed and blessing that God made to Abraham as part of an
eternal covenant. Remember, I have been
emphasizing the point that it is not simply a difference between conditional
versus unconditional which is how all of us were trained to think (in terms of
the covenants). It’s really an issue of
permanent verse temporary.
There are conditions. The Jews
could not enjoy the blessing of being in the land if they were
disobedient. Right? They had to be obedient. So there is a condition. To enjoy the blessing of Abraham, but there
is not a condition for having that as a basic unending promise. So the Abrahamic Covenant, the land covenant,
the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant are all permanent covenants and the
Mosaic Covenant was designed to be a temporary covenant that would be
superceded by the New Covenant when Jesus Christ came.
So his genealogy received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had
the promises. He blesses Abraham because he is in a position of authority. The thing that the writer is emphasizing from
verses 1-6 now is this authority relationship.
He is the King of Salem, the King of Righteousness. He is the royal high priest. It is Abraham that pays tithes. It is Abraham that pays tribute. It is Melchizedek who blesses Abraham. All of that is simply to set up this whole
thing that he is getting ready to apply.
Now we come to verse 7. We
recognize that Abraham understood that he was inferior to Melchizedek. Melchizedek was in that position of
authority.
So now we read…
NKJ
Hebrews 7:7 Now beyond
all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better.
Actually it is the idea of greater.
The emphasis there is on authority.
So that is our conclusion. The
lesser is blessed by the greater. That is our principle. You may think that we are belaboring the
point, but when we get to the last part of it he is making sure that his audience
understands that Abraham is not equal to Melchizedek. If you were a Jew and you had been taught to
honor Abraham and always taught how great Abraham was as the father of the
Jewish people, this was something that was going to have to be driven home. There is this gentile priest-king who not
only not simply equal to Abraham; he was superior to Abraham. That was really cutting at the core of Jewish
pride as it existed in the first century.
Now he is going to start tying things together. We read here that opening of the verse as it
is translated in the New King James…
NKJ
Hebrews 7:8 Here mortal
men receive tithes, but there he receives them, of whom it is witnessed
that he lives.
Now with the “here” and “there”, he is really using these in terms of
talking about the argument.
“You have got this point, this point, and this point. Now here…”
It sounds like he is almost talking. As I said in the introduction I
think that this was probably originally a message, a sermon as opposed to an
epistle laid out like one of the Pauline epistles and then later it was written
down and mailed.
So he is saying, “Okay. Look at
this point. Now we are going to compare
it to that point.”
That is a literal translation; however the New American Standard
translates it “in this case” which brings out the idea a little better. It is a little easier to understand. It says…
NAS Hebrews 7:8 And
in this case mortal men receive tithes, but in that case one receives them,
of whom it is witnessed that he lives on.
Now let’s take a little time to translate this so we can understand it
better. In this case – that is the case
of who? Now that is an interesting
question.
“Mortal men”. Now does that refer
to Abraham receiving tithes or is it referring to the Levites? It is referring to the Levites. Why do I say that? Because, you have a plural noun here. You
have anthropoi which is the plural of anthropos in the
Greek. Every time you go through this
section, the passed three or four verses, the plural always refers to the
Levites. The singular refers to
Melchizedek or to Abraham.
So you have here, that is in the
sense of now. Now in this case as things
exist under the Mosaic Law with the Levitical priesthood, moral men. That is literally men capable of death. That would be the literal translation.
So he is saying, “In this case, that is in the case of Levitical
priests, men capable of death.’ Men who
are what? Temporary. He has just been talking about this contrast
in terminology with Melchizedek that back in verse 3. He was a priest continually. Now the verbiage in here – we have to stop
and talk about this a minute. The
verbiage here really sounds strange to our way of talking. It sounds like he is talking about the fact
that Melchizedek doesn’t die (that he just goes on living) and the Levites are
dying. That is not what he is talking
about. He is talking idiomatically. That which doesn’t die is that which is
permanent. That is the emphasis of the
idiom. That which doesn’t die is
permanent. That which is subject to
death is that which isn’t permanent. It
is subject to cessation. It is
temporary. That is where he is going
with this contrasting terminology.
It is temporary. They are going to
die. Their priesthood ends at a
particular time. It is a temporary
thing. They receive tithes, but in this
case (with Melchizedek) he receives them.
Of whom (that is Melchizedek) it is witnessed, literally. We have our word martureo.
While there is testimony that he lives.
This is once again – I said it sounds strange to us. It reads weird to us, but the point of it is
that the testimony is that he lives. It
is a Jewish idiom expressing the point that the Melchizedekean priesthood lived
on whereas the Levitical priesthood died.
One is permanent; one is impermanent.
One is temporary. That is the thrust of verse 8 that the men subject to
death received tithes. They were subject
to temporary ministry. But, the one of
whom it is witnessed, he lives. He goes on.
His type of priesthood was a permanent priesthood.
Now we are going to make another application. This is where it is applied to the present
situation.
He says in the New King James he translates it…
NKJ
Hebrews 7:9 Even Levi, who
receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak,
Now this is a really interesting verse.
Some interesting things have been done with this verse over the course
of the development of theology and our understanding of doctrine. So we have to address some of those
particular issues. The first thing we
need to note is the phrase (that we have at the end in the New King James) “so
to speak” is the first phrase in the Greek.
They don’t wait until the end.
The first thing he says is, “And as a matter of speaking”, as a way of
talking. It is the only time we have
this idiom in the Greek New Testament.
What it means is – okay, I am going to say something in a strange way
here in order to make a point. In other
words he is not talking literally. But
down through the course of time in church history there have been theologians
who have taken this literally and used this to support the view that body and
soul are both transmitted physically through procreation. This is how this verse is used. This is almost proof text for the view known
as Traducianism. We will get into that
in just a minute. It misses the whole
point. Number 1, the writer himself says
that this is an unusual way of speaking.
“I am just making a point. I am
talking almost allegorically or figuratively here.”
First of all the term Levi is also used in a figurative or allegorical
manner here, a representative manner.
Levi never literally received tithes from anybody. It was his descendents. The first Levite to ever receive tithes was
going to be Aaron and the Levites at the time they were camped out around Mt.
Sinai and the Mosaic Law was first instituted.
So there is no literal action where Levi received tithes. In fact what we
have seen in our study of Genesis is that Levi and Simeon were partners in
crime literally at Shechem. They were
responsible for the slaughter of all the Shechemites. They were not wonderful brothers. They have their particular set of
problems. So Levi wasn’t a very
honorable person, certainly not a spiritual giant.
Even in a manner of speaking, Levi received tithes and paid tithes
through Abraham.
Now there are those who come along and say, “See what this shows if we
take it literally is that somehow Levi was actually present in Abraham because
it says that Levi paid tithes. Not
Abraham, but Levi did it because he is physically in the loins of Abraham. But as I am pointing out and belaboring this
point is that the text says it is a figure of speech, a manner of
speaking.
Secondly, even Levi is used in a non-literal sense.
The third point we need to observe here is that the writer is merely
recognizing (This is the interpretation of the passage.) that the descendents
of a man are represented in many cases by the ancestor. The descendents of a man are clearly
represented by the ancestor so that if God enters into a contract with Noah,
that contract is not voided by Noah’s death.
It is still in effect for Noah’s children and Noah’s great-grandchildren
and for all of humanity all the way down to the present. The same thing is true when God entered into
a contract with Abraham. Abraham was
representing all of his descendents.
That contract is still in effect in relation to all of Abraham’s
descendents. That would be one biblical example.
A second biblical example would be in the book of Joshua. This would be when Joshua was about 7 or
8. Joshua is in the still in the
northern campaign. There is a group of
Canaanites who lived in the city of Gideon.
They were scared to death because they watched what happened at
Jericho. They saw what happened at
Ai. So they dress up. They put on all of their costume to make it
look like they are homeless. They
traveled a long distance and put on their old clothes and smeared dirt all over
their bodies and they looked like they have been traveling on the dirty dusty
road for days and days and days.
They come to Joshua and they say, “See we have come from a long
distance. We are scared to death about
what you are going to do so we want to enter into a contract (a covenant) with
you that you are not going to kill us.”
Joshua failed to consult God.
He said, “Oh great! We are going
to take them at their word. We are going
to enter into a covenant with them.”
Then Israel got disciplined by God because of this because they were
Canaanites from just over the other side of the ridge. Joshua failed to consult God, but he had
entered into a peace treaty with them that he would. So all the Jews from that point on were still
responsible for what their ancestor had done in terms of fulfilling that
contract. In the same way the United
States at various times in its history has entered into various treaties and
contracts with other nations and subsequent generations are still responsible
for living up to the terms of those
contracts established by previous generations.
So that is all that is going on here.
It is just a figure of speech for talking about the fact that the
ancestor to the Levitical priest represented them.
We could formulate it this way.
Abraham as the father of the Jewish people was greater than Levi who was
one of his descendents. If Abraham paid
tribute to Melchizedek, then Melchizedek was obviously greater than
Abraham. So if Abraham was greater that
his descendents, then that would mean that Melchizedek would also be greater
than his descendents. It is a very
simple argument that Levi as a descendent of Abraham was represented by his
ancestor in the paying of the tithes. It
is not to be taken literally. The writer
even says that. As I stated earlier this
verse is a foundational verse for those who believe that the soul is generated
and passed on to the next generation by the parents.
So that leads us to an important discussion of how the soul is
originated and transmitted to you in the process of birth. That is the question. We will probably spend the rest of tonight
and next week talking about this because it is important.
It is as fresh as the news today.
Last night Rudi Giuliani was apparently interviewed on 60 Minutes or one
of these shows. He was asked if he would
support federal funding of abortion. So,
abortion gets back in the news and there is a lot of discussion about this
today, back and forth as it always is.
It is a touchy subject for a lot of people. We have to go to the Scripture. We have to talk about what the Scripture says
and what the Scripture does not say in relationship to this particular topic. So we will take some time to go through this
in detail to make sure we fully understand what the Scripture says because this
topic is important. It is often
misunderstood today. It is sort of a
case of reverse exegesis. Because of the
turmoil of abortion since Roe vs. Wade in 1973, a lot of theologians who have
held one view flipped just because of that decision.
Not because of exegesis, but because all of a sudden they thought, “Well
if I hold this position that is going to justify abortion.”
Nobody came along and said, “No, this is not true.”
It is shallow superficial thinking based on the emoting of the problems
of our culture. So let’s deal with this
in a nice logic, rational manner and try to keep subjectivity out of it.
How is the soul passed from one generation to another? Is it done by procreation? Or, is it passed on directly and immediately
by God as He so created at the instant of birth and simultaneously imparted to
a newborn baby at the time of birth.
Two important terms that you have to understand in this discussion are
mediate and immediate. Immediate means
directly – that God directly creates the soul at the point of birth and passes
it on simultaneously. The word mediate
involves secondary causes - that God does it; but He does it through secondary
causes.
For example we can say, “God creates everybody’s human body.”
David does that in Psalm 139.
But, it is done mediately or through secondary causes of procreation and
through the process of sex creates human bodies as they go from generation to
generation.
So we have to understand the difference between mediate and
immediate. Mediate involves secondary
causes; immediate is God’s direct creation.
So we have to go through this.
Now the second thing that is important is understanding the terminology
and its historical background. History
is important because it brings a lot of perspective to what is going on today.
One of the reasons we have problems in the current debate is because there
hasn’t been enough attention paid in my opinion to the historical background.
So history is important because as Hegel pointed out, “If we ignore
history, we are doomed to repeat it.”
Of course that frequently happens.
There are two positions (actually there is a third position that I am
going to briefly identify) that have been a part of Christian thinking. The first view comes directly out of
Platonism and it involved the pre-existence of the soul. Everybody’s soul is up in heaven for a long
time and it is not until God creates a body that He pushes the soul down into
the body and that just came out of paganism.
So nobody who has ever been serious about the Bible other than allegory
held that view so we are just going to pass by it.
The two views that have really dominated through church history are
Traducianism and creationism. Those are
the terms. Traducianism comes from the
Latin word traducere meaning to transfer. That is where it derives. This view teaches that both the material body
and the immaterial soul are transmitted through physical procreation. Now what is important about this is that the
first person to really articulate this (once again the context of neo-Platonism
which tended to overemphasize the spiritual in the early part of the church)
was Tertullian. Now Tertullian is kind
of a mixed bag. Most of you haven’t spent
a whole lot of time reading Tertullian.
He is not in your top 10 list.
You haven’t gone down to catch him on the latest paperback rack at
Barnes and Noble. But Tertullian was
important because you use a word that he coined all the time. That is the word trinity. He coined the word trinitos in Latin
to refer to the fact that God is one is essence and three in person. Prior to that time they didn’t have that
word. So see when you can think about
the trinity and use the word trinity, you can think about God in ways that Paul
could never think about God. Isn’t that
interesting? When you think the word
hypostatic union, you are using concepts that were worked out in church history
and you are using technical vocabulary that is much more precise than anything
the Apostle Paul had available to him.
Isn’t that interesting? It gives
you something to kind of chew on for awhile.
God wants us in the process of studying His word to do that – to
understand that to develop it, to coin vocabulary to express the concepts of
His Word so that we can build a systematic theology and understand all of the
relationships that are going on within His Word. So there is nothing wrong with coining words
to represent biblical concepts because the church has been doing that from the
very beginning. Words like trinity and
rapture are not words that are found in the original text, but are coined to
accurately represent and identify concepts that are in the text.
But Tertullian was a mixed bag.
Tertullian was a Montanist. Now
you all know what a Montanist were, don’t you?
In the early church you had the same basic problems that you had all
through Scripture all through church history.
You always had in the middle your biblicists, such as they are from
generation to generation. Then there is
one group that always wants to take away from the Bible.
This is the group that takes out their razor blade and says, “Well,
Jesus didn’t say this. This really isn’t
the truth. That really isn’t the truth.”
They want to chop everything up.
We would call those the liberals of the day. This is the original Jesus Seminar. In the second century that was represented by
a guy named Marcion. Marcion was a rabid
ant-Semite. So he thought that anything
in the Bible in the New Testament that spoke positively about Jews couldn’t be
a part of the New Testament. So he got
rid of Matthew and Mark and about a third of Luke and got rid of John and all
but 11 of Paul’s epistles and everything else.
So he was the first to really come up with a canon. You see the church always forms theology in
the context of false teaching.
Once somebody said, “This is it.
This is all there is to the Bible.”
Everybody else stood around and said, “You are wrong. But, wait a
minute. You have a good question
there. What is the New Testament?”
So they finally began to work through the issue of canonicity. It is always in the context of error.
So Marcion came along and he said, “Nah.
We got to get the razor blade out and we just have a few little books
here.”
He is the proto-liberal.
Then on the other extreme we have those who want to add to the
canon. Those want to add new
revelation. We call those today
charismatics.
“God spoke to me.”
We have got tongues and revelation and prophecy and all of this other
stuff going on. So we always have the
Montanists who were proto(that means early, primitive) -charismatics. They were following a guy who came out of
what we now call Turkey or Anatolia who was the son or formerly he had been a
priest of Cybele. This was the Cybele or
mother-child cult that dominated in the area of Western Turkey. Of course the priests and priestesses of the
Cybele Addis cult spoke in gibberish. It
was a very mystical, mystery
religion. So he came out of that
so not unlike a lot of charismatics today he had his two priestesses with
him. He talked about how God is
continuing to give him revelation. So
you see you always have a problem with those who want to take away from
Scripture and those who want to add to Scripture.
Tertullian was a mild Montanist.
So he had his problems in the area of understanding a number of
important doctrines. This is very early
in the church. We are talking about
dates from 155 to 220. So positively he
contributes the terminology for the trinity; negatively he provides the
problems with Montanists and some other things.
He wrote a lot and he has some other issues. That ought to give you a little idea of who
he was. Just because he said something
doesn’t make it so. He was the first to
say that the soul was transmitted through procreation. Guess what!
It is because his view was that the soul was material – not immaterial.
I didn’t slur that. He thought the soul
was just as material as your big toe or your thumb or your left arm or your
right arm. His view that the soul is
transmitted through sexual activity and procreation was an outgrowth of his
understanding that there really isn’t anything immaterial. That was part of his reaction to
neo-Platonism. That is very important to
understand and a lot of people don’t understand that. You never find people emphasizing that even
those who are proponents of traducianism.
Now the other view is called creationism. This isn’t scientific creationism or biblical
creationism in opposition to evolutionism. This is a term that has been used
for centuries that teaches the view that only the body is generated physically
or through procreation, but the soul is directly and immediately created by God
and imparted to the infant at birth. It
is an ancient view. It was the dominant
view. This is what most people don’t
understand today.
If you a traducianist even today, you are in the minority in terms of
church history. Up until the middle of
the 19th century William G. T. Shedd who was very well-known and
respected conservative Presbyterian theologian wrote that he was a
traducianist. He said that this was a
minority position.
“Everybody else is a
creationist.”
But he was a traducianist. Now if
you listen most of the Moral Majority you read an article Israel My Glory
that came out in this month’s issue written by Reynold Showers who is a well
respected theologian who is with the Friends of Israel wrote a whole article
taking the traducianist view. So this
is very popular today. It became the
politically correct evangelical position after Roe v. Wade.
You come along and say you are a creationist and people say, “How can
you hold that position?”
Well, let’s see. In all of church
history probably 90% of theologians – Catholic, most Lutherans up until the 18th
century, Presbyterians, - almost everybody was creationists. They didn’t have the political pressure of
the abortion debate. They were just
dealing with the text. As you can see,
my argument is going to be that the popularity of the traducianist position has
been forged in the context of the politics of the day apart from exegesis.
So for creationists, the body is created indirectly by God and the soul
is created directly by God and imparted at the time of birth.
Now let’s see the historical background here. Tertullian was the first to coin the word for
Traducianism. Luther held to a
traducianist position. Later he shifted
to creationism. In the Lutheran Concord
of the 16th century, they held to a creationist position. They later changed it and went back. William G. T.
Shedd held to a traducianist position.
Louis Sperry Chafer held to a traducianist position.
Chafer gets through with his whole traducianism versus creationism and
says, “The evidence in pretty equal, but I am going to say that it tips very
slightly towards traducianism.”
A lot of more contemporary systematic theologies that have come out in
recent years don’t even discuss the issue. I was pulling books off my shelf by
systematic theologies that have been written in recent years and thumbing
through the index and they don’t even have a reference to this debate in their
index.
In creationism, Jerome who was
the early church father who translated the Bible (the Hebrew Old Testament and
the Greek New Testament) into Latin (the Vulgate) was a creationist. He believed that life began at birth.
Who really honors Saint Jerome?
He translated the Vulgate. He is
one of the major fathers for the Roman Catholic Church, isn’t he? So is Thomas Aquinas, the angelic
doctor.
Thomas Aquinas said in his Summa Theologica, “It is heresy to
think that the soul is transmitted through the semen.”
This is the doctor of theology.
They call him for the Roman Catholic Church. He said that traducianism was heresy.
John Calvin was a creationist.
Charles Hodge a very famous 19th century theologian and many
others were creationists as well as I pointed out. Shedd recognized that nearly every theologian
up to his time was a creationist. It was
unusual to be a traducianist. Augustine
was a creationist most of his life. When
he got into some arguments with Pelagius he began to waffle a little bit, but
he never could convince himself that traducianism had a case. He started becoming uncertain on his
creationist views, but he could never convince himself that the traducianist
view could be supported. That gives you
the historical background to this debate.
One of the reasons I bring that out is because many people who hold to a
creationist view today think that somehow this is an odd view.
They hear this taught and they say, “Well, I have never heard that. Every evangelical that I have ever heard said
that the soul was present from conception.”
That is not a recent view, but its popularity among biblical students is
very recent. It is a 20th
century phenomenon. I point out this
history so that people realize that there is significance to this historical
debate. If you take a creationist
position, you are not some wild-eyed liberal weirdo that never heard of.
I talked to seminary guys when I was in seminary that had never heard
anybody who took this position. It was
an eye opening thing for them.
Let’s bow our heads in closing prayer.