Clough Hebrews Lesson 31
Principles of exegesis; words “impossible” & “enlightened” – 6:3-4
We left off with Hebrews 6:2 so beginning at verse 3, “And this will we do, if God permit,” now what it is it that he’s going to do? He’s going to do what he started to do in 6:1 and that is “let us go on unto maturity,” “let us go on onto the state of maturity.” And he is saying that they are going to go on to this state of maturity by going on to very difficult doctrine. And we cite it as the reason that we could infer from that we could infer from that, in verse 1, the “Therefore,” obviously the word “therefore” implies that there is no other way to go on to a state of maturity with these particular believers, except by going into advanced doctrine, and this in turn implies that there’s something going on with this group of believers that is kind of unusual, at least it’s different from 1 Corinthians 3 where Paul felt he didn’t have to go on to advanced doctrine, he could go over the basics again. And from verse 1 you recall we made a series of inferences about what was going on with these particular believers. Tonight we’ll begin to see those inferences be confirmed as we go deeper into this passage.
In other words, the author in verse 3 is trying to go on to this advanced state of maturity but he has an inner hesitation. Somehow he knows that at least with some of those who are listening it will be frankly impossible. There’s just no other word for it, it will be impossible. So he says we will do it if God permits. Now we know these particular believers had been taught out of the Old Testament and their teaching followed six propositions or at least 6 areas that are enumerated at the end of verse 1 and throughout verse 2.
Review once again, these six items are in three pairs: the first and second; the third and fourth, and the fifth and sixth. The first and second are truths that deal with the switch over in dispensations. In other words, these truths are something that had to be clarified, the air had to be cleared that believers who had been brought up under the Old Testament system had to do these two things, these were involved. Repentance from dead works we interpreted on the basis of Hebrews 9:12, 14 as repentance or changing their whole way of thinking about the Old Testament instruction, that the Law that had been given under the Old Testament was bona fide, the ceremonies were legitimate up until Jesus Christ rendered the whole system obsolete. So they had to adjust to this recent work of God and that adjustment is called repentance; repentance from the obsolete system. In other words, the dispensational switch over.
And a faith toward God, this means faith upon God, it was epi, the Greek preposition, not eis, and this indicates trust upon the God to lead from age to age, so that you’ll have one dispensation so that you’ll have one dispensation, another dispensation and a third dispensation and so on that above all those differences in dispensations there’s one unifying purpose to history and that when God changes from dispensation to dispensation He is doing so with a fully rational comprehensive plan known to Him.
Then the second two truths, the third and fourth in verse 2, the doctrine of baptisms we interpreted to be the typology, notice it says the doctrine of baptisms, and the word doctrine is used with this one but not used with the first two truths, it doesn’t mean the first two truths aren’t doctrine, it means doctrines of baptisms or what is taught by the Old Testament ceremonies, that is typology. So the next two develop typological truth from the Old Testament.
The first one, the doctrine of baptisms, the doctrine of ceremonial washings as we interpreted how baptismoi is used, the Greek plural noun, not the Greek singular noun, and the other two places in the New Testament where that occurs, Hebrews 9:10 and Mark 7:4 both refer to ceremonies, not Christian baptism. So with all due apologies to Derek Prince the point here has nothing to do with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The laying on of hands here, again we interpreted this to be part of Old Testament ceremonies of Leviticus 1, 2, 3 and 4 where this is the identification of the person’s sin upon the sacrifice, so the hand would be laid on the sacrifice as identification.
And it comes to my mind while we’re on this
concept of identification and laying on of hands, if you get the Reader’s
Digest there’s a condensation in this month’s issue by Alex Haley who’s a black
author and he is writing a history, it’s a fascinating history, all of you who
are interested in Biblical customs would be very much interested in that
condensation because he goes back and he traces his roots, his tribal roots as
a black man in this country, he tries to trace it as far back as he can and he
gets to this unknown black man who came to this country as a slave and nobody
in his family knows, except he was called the African and called by a certain
name. Well, he goes over to
Now the fascinating that you’ll find if you read this condensation is, that’s exactly what the Biblical norm would be for a culture, for going into the village the, I forgot the technical name, of the griots, there was a technical name of this old man would recite the tradition of the village, and he could recite, well, when this man sat down with him he recited the history of that village back to 1750. He could tell who married who all the way back to that point. He could tell significant things about each person’s life all the way back 200 years. And the only reason why he stopped then was because that’s when they found the link with this other man’s family. But the oral tradition is phenomenal and Alex Haley when he writes this he says as I listened to the interpreter interpretation this griots history, he said what struck me was its Biblical pattern, so and so took a wife and begat so and so; so and so took a wife and begat so and so.
So it’s a good modern day confirmation of
Biblical culture and the reason this is significant is because liberal critics
of the Bible often say that when you pick up the Bible and you read these
genealogies that so and so begat so and so and so and so begat so and so and
all the rest that nobody could remember that.
Well, interestingly here you have a modern day illustration of a living
oral tradition in
But the point was also in this story is there is a laying on of hands because as he comes there and these people identify that he is part of them, the women come up to him with their babies and they put the baby in his hands, after he touches it they take the baby away and every woman in the village comes up to him with her baby and puts it in her hands and then takes it away. And he didn’t understand what they were doing until he came back to this country and talked to an anthropologist and he pointed out that they were identifying physically with him and because they can’t think abstractly, or they don’t like we do, we would think of (quote) “identity,” we have an “identity” with them. The natives don’t think that abstractly, they think of something concrete so to make it real they have to physically touch and this makes it very, very concrete.
Well, the laying on of hands here in the Old Testament was a way of getting around abstraction. When a person had the heifer or whatever it was that had to die for your sins you actually had to come up and touch the skin of that animal while it was still breathing. And then you had to stand there and watch it slaughtered for you. So this is a very concrete way of teaching the blood atonement.
Then the last two truths, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment were doctrines associated with the finality of the Messiah, that is there’s nothing beyond Him. Once you’ve been face to face with Jesus Christ you have to go one way or the other, you have to submit or you have to rebel, and depending on which way you go, obviously, there are these two destinies.
Now passing on to verse 3 he says we’re going to go on beyond those basic doctrines “if God permits.” At this point someone’s going to ask well, why can’t we go on to the basic doctrine so may I say this for those of you who aren’t against marking up your Bible, you can do yourself a big favor if you will underline verse 3 because it’s verse 3 that should capture your attention, not verses 4, 5 and 6. Verses 4, 5 and 6 are simply an explanation of verse 3, so if you’ll emphasize verse 3 then you’ll see what verses 4, 5 and 6 are doing. The trouble with it is, everybody because of the big controversy writes immediately on verses 4, 5 and 6 without seeing the context. So once again, verses 4, 5 and 6 are an explanation of verse 3. What are they supposed to explain?
All right, principle of interpretation: when we get through with verses 4, 5 and 6, however we’re going to interpret it, if it’s going to be a correct interpretation it has got to answer verse 3. Verse 3 sets us up; if our interpretation of verses 4, 5 and 6 don’t make a sensible answer to the problem of verse 3 then we’ve got the wrong interpretation. So this acts as a control going into the passage that whatever we do must settle the issue raised by verse 3. And what was the issue raised by verse 3? The issue raised by verse 3 is: why is it that some people cannot be taught advanced doctrine. That’s the issue of verse 3; why is it that some people identified with the Christian community can’t mature, can’t go on, and there is no hope for them. Why is this? Verses 4, 5 and 6 must answer the question: why is it that some in this community cannot go on, there’s no hope for them.
Hebrews 6:4 begins with gar, those of you studying Greek as I said before and if we ever get time for an exegesis class, those particles are the most important things you will ever learn about the Greek language when it comes to studying the New Testament and applying this and learning to interpret the Bible correctly. Those little particles are what sets forth the units of thought so it’s nice to know your verbs, it’s nice to know your nouns, but when you’re working with the logical progression of thought through the New Testament mark off the sections by these particles. It’ll make things a lot easier for you. gar, then, it’s a signal that everything that follows is an explanation of what preceded.
Now before going into verses 4, 5 and 6, and we’re going to be on them for some time because this is a hard passage and I’m going to take advantage of its difficulty to illustrate for you how exegesis is done and to show you how different true exegesis is from kind of sitting here with a Bible and pausing and thinking well now, Holy Spirit give me some illumination on this passage, and thinking after 15 minutes ah, the Holy Spirit has taught me thus and such. That is not the way exegesis is done. Exegesis is done logically and it requires brain power to work with the text.
So before we start with the text we’re going to analyze the four basic views, I’m going to set each of these four views to you, we’re going to eliminate two of those views so we’re left with just two. Then we’re going to ask what is the determining factor that we’re looking for that’ll shift us toward one view of shift us toward the other view. In other words, before we get into these verses, based on the 1900 years of controversy surrounding them, can we, before we start even, can we know what we’re looking for. See, if you don’t know what you’re looking for you’re not going to find it. You can go through here, we can analyze the subject, the predicate, we can analyze the tense, whether it’s singular, plural, all the rest of it, beautiful, only one problem you don’t know what about all that is significant suddenly in the issue. So before we start we’re going to define the issues.
Here is the first view, I’ll give you the four views, four major views, there’ll always be somebody coming up with a new one somewhere along the line. If there are any views there will always be n + 1 found some place. But there are four major views. The first one is what we will call the Arminian view; this dates back to the second century and Tertullian. I put that in there because I’m going to show you that that has large bearing on that whole viewpoint, the Arminian view, dating back to Tertullian, church father of the second century. What is the Arminian view of Hebrews 6. [someone answers] All right, specifically the Arminian view says that believers who apostasize, and by believers they mean regenerate believers, believers who are genuinely regenerate, who apostacize lose their salvation—(dash) and a long dash ––– forever. Now I put the long dash in there for this reason: let me go back over the Arminian view just to make sure you’ve got it and you know it.
The Arminian view is that that believers who are genuinely regenerate lose their salvation, (dash) ––– forever. I put the dash in there because most Arminians don’t add the word “forever,” the smart ones do. The well intelligent trained theologians know this passage is teaching a very, very serious thing. Most Arminians aren’t aware of that so they’ll simply say this passage teaches a believer can lose his salvation and not be upset by it because you can get it back again tomorrow. Wrong. If this passage teaches loss of salvation it teaches once lost, always lost. So the Arminian viewpoint, seriously considered, is something that I have found few Arminians willing to buy. They always say you can lose your salvation but they’re very unwilling to say that once you’ve lost it you can’t it back again. Yet if that is the view of this passage there’s only one way to take it: once lost always lost.
The second view we will call the Calvinist view, though we believe that it’s the author’s use, Calvin didn’t originate it. this says that this passage is a warning to a mixed crowd and is talking about professing believers, believers who are not genuinely regenerate. Again, the Calvinist position, this is a warning directed at a mixed crowd which contains some unregenerate believers. Now that’s a term which sounds like it’s contradictory, an unregenerate believer. It is possible for people to trust in Christ for false reasons; it is a false belief and a false faith. If you wish an example out of the Gospels, John 6. When the people flocked around Jesus Christ and they trusted Him for physical food because He could feed them, and He said you are trusting Me for false reasons. Don’t come to Me because I can give you physical bread; come to me because I can give you spiritual bread. So Jesus Christ attracts people who are not regenerate and you can see multitudes in the Gospel narratives in all four Gospels. So the Calvinist view is that it’s a warning to a mixed community having unregenerate believers or followers.
A third view which is also a Calvinist view but I’ll call it the hypothetical view, it is put forward by Calvinists, it’s a modification of the classical Calvinist position, and it states that this passage only teaches a hypothetical falling away. Let me direct you to verses 4, 5 and 6 for a moment; follow as I read through: [4] “For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, [5] And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, [6] If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” The way the King James translators translated it, they followed the hypothetical case; see the “if,” so they were following this viewpoint. They made the conditions, notice verse 4, verse 5 and then you start into verse 6 and the whole series of commas depicting characteristics of these people and they separate the last one, “if they fall away,” so all the other commissions are real except the last one, “if they fall away,” in other words, that falling away is a hypothetical falling away which isn’t real. It’s just if they could but they won’t, then they can lose their salvation.
Now I want to eliminate this viewpoint right away. All of the conditions specified in verses 4, 5 and 6a, the first part of 6, are a series of aorist participles; those of you who have a Greek text, what do you notice before the first aorist participle? What part of speech? You should see a tous there, in verse 4. So you have a series of participles that look like this. Those of you who don’t take Greek don’t just tune out here, this is an important point I’m going to make and you can understand it even though you don’t have Greek. There are a series of five participles, one right after the other and they are preceded by an article, those, or these, those and then there’s a series of listings. All those five participles are tied together in a chain when you see happen. The significance is that it starts with an article; visualize a series of beads, and you’ve got a needle with a string and you’re putting that string through the beads; you’ve got five beads on the string. The article is the needle that goes through the beads and links them all. So the article wraps up the five participles as a set of participles. This means that you can’t just take the fifth one to be a conditional participle because it happens to suit your fancy. If you’re going to take the last participle as a conditional participle, to be logical you’d have to take them all as conditional participles. You can’t take one out of that set and change it and shift it all around just because you have a few difficulties; it’s not allowable by the rules of syntax.
So that’s the first reason we reject the hypothetical view. That last participle, “falling away” is not conditional, it’s not hypothetical, it’s not “if.” It is “they have fallen.” So the second point is that last participle is an aorist, it is a past, and it means these people have already fallen, so it’s obviously not hypothetical, they’ve actually done it. These are people who have, in reality, fallen away. So two reasons why we reject the hypothetical view; one, you can’t yank a participle out of its chain like this; two, the participle is aorist in tense which means it’s past anyway. Three, the theological context of the epistle argues against it because the author is not talking about hypothetical fallings away, he’s talking about real one. Turn to Hebrews 12:15, notice in verse 15, “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God,” and then who does he cite as a historic reality of an illustration of a falling away, Esau, verse 16, who sold his birthright, so on and so on. In other words, there is a historic real falling away. So this whole hypothetical view doesn’t fit the grammar and it doesn’t fit the theological context and for that reason we’re dismissing that one right off the back.
The fourth possible viewpoint that has been put forward is that this refers to discipline upon believers, that this passage is talking about believers who fall away who get clobbered by discipline in their life. Notice in the fourth view something has shifted; what? Don’t tell me it’s the believers, that’s obvious. What else has shifted? We’ve dealt with three, you should have in your notes three views and now you come to the fourth view, what do those first three views, how do they treat the judgment versus how the fourth view treats the judgment. [someone answers] All right, it changes, the fourth view changes the act of falling away and the result of falling away. See, the first three views, Arminian and Calvinists, are all agreed that this is talking about a falling away from salvation, excuse me, the result rather, both the Arminian and Calvinist both agree that the result of the falling away is a permanent loss of salvation. In other words, it’s a salvation issue, not a sanctification issue. But you come to the fourth view and now it is a sanctification problem, not a salvation problem. Therefore we can test the fourth viewpoint.
Now you remember
an axiom of interpreting this epistle, what is it about all the warning
passages? Solve them together, don’t
solve them independently because the author in one place is exhorting and he’s
using the same technique throughout his epistle to exhort this group to
move. Now in the other places, if you
turn to Hebrews 2:3 do you suppose it’s sanctification or salvation? Obviously it’s 70 AD and it’s involved with the
physical destruction of
Turn to Hebrews 10:26, a future warning passage. “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, [27] But a certain fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” Notice verse 38-39, “Now the just shall live by faith; but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him, [39] But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” Now the drawing back, then, must be what? It’s a salvation problem, not a sanctification problem. Therefore at this point we discard view 4. Understand why we discard view 4? Because the other warning passages are clearly talking about a salvation problem not a sanctification problem, so why do we all of a sudden pull sanctification out of the air when we hit chapter 6.
So we eliminate views 3 and 4 and that leaves the two competing views and these are the classical views, the Arminian view and the Calvinist view. Now we have one more problem we’ve got to fix and solve before we get to the text. It won’t do us any good to spend all the time we’re going to on the text unless in advance of that we understand what we’re looking for when we go into the text, otherwise we waste our time, we won’t know how to evaluate properly what we’re looking at. So before we get to the text, let’s ask ourselves; look carefully at viewpoint one; look carefully at viewpoint two. Can you see how you can decide between one of those based on the text?
What are you going to be looking for as you go into verses 4, 5 and 6 to resolve whether it’s view one or view two. I don’t expect a complete answer here because I’m going to pull some more out. [someone answers] No, we solved the problem it’s able to fall away because we’ve knocked the third view out; the third view was it was only hypothetically possible to fall away. We’ve eliminated that; there’s another issue though that is clear cut between these two. [someone answers] All right let’s get a little bit more general, a little bit more abstract. What we want to do, let’s write these views down and see where they differ.
The Arminian says loss of salvation; the Calvinist would say exclusion from salvation, so they don’t differ there, so we can’t say on the basis of what it is that they’re falling away from; that won’t solve the problem between the Arminian and the Calvinist because they both agree on this point. But what is it that they don’t agree on? [someone answers] All right, there we go. The Arminian insists they are believers; the Calvinist insists they are unbelievers. There’s the point of tension between those two views so when we read through here that’s the point that we’re looking for. To see if we can tell whether these people are believers or unbelievers. If we can decide that, then we can pick between the two viewpoints.
So now it boils down to a study, letter by letter, and mostly word by word. It boils down, in fact, to one of the most thorough lexical studies we’ve done in the epistle to the Hebrews. So let’s go to Hebrews 6:4. Keep in mind what we’re looking for. We want to find out whether or not these people have to be believers. Now I have in years past conducted several debates by letter with Arminian professors and I have in my desk and in preparation for the Hebrews series a four or five page paper written on these four verses by and Arminian. And in this paper he makes the statement that of all these characteristics that you see listed in verse 4 and 5, he says these characteristics, (quote) “can refer only to saved persons, (end quote). All right now watch it because this is the point we’re testing. Can these things that we’re reading about now, these five participles, can only refer to believers. That’s the crux of the interpretation of this, that’s the issue. We’ve defined what it is we’re trying to look for; now it becomes a matter of just doing the digging with the lexical material.
First, “it is impossible for those,” the word “impossible” looks like this, adumaton, dumaton means ability, “a” before it means not to do anything. Does this mean it is difficult? Can this mean not impossible but just simply difficult. A lot of people would feel that if this word were difficult it would get you out of a lot of difficulties. The problem is in lexical studies, what is your first rule. By the way, before we go any further, what basic tools am I in essence using at this point. Suppose you’re me and you’re faced with this kind of a situation, you’ve got a library full of books, there’s one book you want besides your Bible. What book is it, what’s your tool that you’re going to use from now on? Concordance. And that’s all basically that’s involved, you don’t have to know archeology or anything else, you’re interested in the concordance—how are these expressions used, that’s what you’re interested in. Secondarily you are interested in lexical material but basically it’s the concordance.
Now, the word “impossible.” You would hope, some would anyway, that this just means it’s difficult. When you look up in a concordance and since it’s a Wednesday night class we can afford to be luxurious in explaining why we come to interpretations, obviously I wouldn’t be doing this for 11:00 o’clock service, they don’t even know where the book of Hebrews is, leave alone what it means. But for those of you who come Wednesday nights we presuppose a certain amount of information. And when you look in the concordance where is the first realm that you look for, for word usage. What is the first circle. Here’s the word that’s a problem, Hebrews 6, right there, that’s the word, “impossible.” Now when you begin to look in your concordance what is the data that you first look at? The same book. So the first circle is Hebrews so we look up in our concordance for this word, how is it used in the same book. Two other places it’s used, Hebrews 6:18, “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation,” now could that be taken it is difficult or could that be taken as it is impossible. Obviously it is taken as it is impossible. It occurs in another place in the book, Hebrews 10:4, “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin.” Now should that be translated difficult or impossible. Obviously impossible. And to make a long story short, if you check this out it’s consistent.
So this word, as this author uses it particularly, can only mean one thing, it is absolutely impossible. This is where non-thinking Arminians become scared of their own position. The serious Arminian scholars know that they’ve got to go this way with this passage, once lost always lost. Usually your run of the mill Arminian that you encounter in Church of Christ, or Nazarene, or Methodist circles of something like that, these kinds of people basically are not aware that they’re opening the door, by Arminianism they’re opening the door to saying exactly all that’s said here. So it’s impossible, we’ve decided that. It is impossible?
Now we come to the main structure of verses 4-6, can someone tell me, after the word “impossible,” what the main verb is? Not the participles but the main verb in verses 4, 5 and 6. There’s only one verb in all three of those verses; you’ve got to find which verse it’s in, and what is the main verb; it’s an infinitive? “To renew,” okay, let’s look at the big picture. “It is impossible to renew unto repentance,” that’s your main sentence, so forget all the participles for a moment, just look at the main sentence. “It is impossible to renew unto repentance.”
Now the word “repentance,” we want to get a little fix before we go any further on what this repentance is all about. Where would you recommend that we look to get a little bit more content on this word “repentance” as it’s used in verse 6? Think of your simple rule, we just mentioned it, in the concordance, where is the first place you look? The same book and preferably in the closest context. Now has the word repentance occurred once before somewhere? Where did it occur before? Verse 1, and in verse 1 we’ve already solved the problem in verse 1 so we’re ahead of the game now because we did our homework back in verse 1 and now that homework is going to help us in verse 6. What did the repentance mean back in verse 1. It meant changing one’s whole attitude toward what in particular not just sins but what? the whole Old Testament modus operandi, repentance away from those dead works. Remember why we interpreted that as such, the repentance. So if you want to write your sentence, and you’re taking notes, you put a parenthesis after repentance, (it is impossible to renew unto repentance from dead works). And that’s just to let you know what this repentance is all about here in the context.
Now something else, back in verse 1 the repentance was taught as what? Six things, wasn’t it? All right, if you have room: It is impossible to renew unto repentance, unto faith, unto typology, unto the finality of the Messiah, in other words, the word repentance as it used in verse 6 because it refers back to the first use of the word “repentance” has inside of itself all those six things, that bundle of things. You’ll see this frequently in the New Testament where you’ll have lists of things and then when the author, after he sets forth his list, he wants to refer to the list he’ll use only the first item on his list. That’s why in the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, when Paul uses the word “love” in the New Testament he means all those. But he’s not going to list them all because he’s already listed them once. So therefore he’ll repeat the list by using the label of the first thing. How that happens, incidentally, it comes out of the Old Testament. They didn’t have song titles, illustration, like Psalm 1, Psalm 2, Psalm 3 and so when they wanted to a psalm they’d just refer to the top verse of the psalm, that was the title of the psalm, the first verse.
So in this thing it’s kind of a similar thing that you refer to the whole list by the first item in the list. So the word “repentance” in verse 6 is that whole list of things that he just got through mentioning in verses 1-2, “it’s impossible to renew them again” in all these basic doctrines. Now before we go any further let’s test ourselves. What did we say, if we were correct in our interpretation, had to happen with regard to verse 3? It had to explain, it had to link solidly. Now if we are correct now, and it’s impossible to renew unto repentance unto this, unto this, unto this, unto this, unto this, unto this, does that now explain why “therefore” is used in verse 1? Does it explain verse 3? Obviously it fits beautifully because if it is impossible to renew these people in these things he’s not going to bother to try, is he? That’s why this author at this point is going on, he’s not going to go back because it’s impossible, it would be useless for him to try to go back to renew these people unto all these things again, so he’s not even going to try. If you know you’re not going to win you don’t play the game. So as a teacher he’s not going to bother and try to do with his students what he knows they can’t do ahead of time. So our interpretation so far is consistent with the flavor of how he started the whole thing. If this is what he’s talking about then his teaching package is very understandable. If it really is impossible and not just difficult but impossible, then obviously he’s not going to try it. So we’ve got the main structure down.
Now we come back and we have just about enough time to do one of the participles; let’s go back to the first one. Thinking in terms of the main sentence, “it is impossible to renew unto repentance” and then what would follow this, what do you call this in grammar? What is it, “to renew unto repentance…” direct object. Okay, so what follows is a direct object, “those,” and now what follows are going to be five aorist participles describing the character of the direct object. Who is it that’s acted upon?
Now let’s go to the first one, it says in verse 4, “It is impossible for those who were once enlightened,” now keep in mind what is the issue we’re looking for in ever one of these five participles? What’s the issue; we’ve got the Calvinist over here, we’ve got the Arminian over here, what lexical materials are we looking for to settle the issue. [someone answers] You’re not precise enough. You’ve got to be precise. Precisely what are we looking for? Not just whether they’re believers or not, but let’s be precise. What must be shown to substantiate the Arminian position? [someone answers] That’s the issue, whether they’re true believers or not but how would the lexical data show it. [someone answers] Only refer to believers, catch it. In order for the Arminian to sustain his interpretation he has to sustain the position that these terms can only refer to believers. Remember the quotation in my professor friend’s paper: “These terms can only refer to believers.” So they’ve got to sustain that point. So now when we look at the participle what are we looking for? Specifically when we go to our concordance, we look up this word which I’ll show you what it is in a moment and we look through, it occurs here, it occurs here, it occurs here, it occurs here, it occurs here, what are we looking for every time? What are we looking for an occurrence of? All we need is one. An occurrence of what? Where it refers to unbelievers, got it.
So you pick up your concordance now, you check your words and you work through all of its occurrences to find out if it is in fact true that this term can only refer to believers, because if you can find one place in the Scriptures where it refers to unbelievers then the Arminian position cannot be sustained. All right, now let’s look at what the word is: photizo, it means to enlighten, it’s translated correctly, it is a masculine plural accusative, participle, and it is part of the chain, the five aorist participles in the chain.
Now before we study what that word is, those of you with a Greek text, what is the little thing you see before the aorist participle and it’s translated in your King James “once.” hapax, okay, and by the way, this is a hard “h,” hapax, you’ll hear the expression sometimes a hapax legomenon; a hapax legomenon is a once occurring word, a word that only occurs once. Why do you suppose that grammarians get headaches when they come to a hapax legomenon if it only occurs once in all the material you’ve got? How do you tell what it means? See, this why if you’ve read the paper recently, they’ve just discovered in Asia Minor a stone, a bilingual stone, sort of like the Rosetta stone, when Napoleon soldiers found the Rosetta stone, that’s how they cracked hieroglyphics. Thank God that the people in the ancient world had the same problem we have; they had to translate from one language to the other and on these stones they’d writer the message in two or three languages. And it’s from those stones, fortunately, I forgot what the other languages were in the Rosetta stone, it was hieroglyphics, I think Greek might have been one. And then in Persia there’s a trilingual inscription and fortunately they would write it, say in Aramaic, then they’d write it in, say Akkadian, and they’d write it in another language so then our scientists can come along and they can pick out one language and see how they compare, so they get a control on the thing. Well, if you come to a hapax legomenon you’re in trouble and I’ll clue, some of these participles here are hapax legomenon. And you see, this is why nobody can up to you and tell you these terms have to refer to believers, you can’t prove it because they’re hapax legomenon.
But this one isn’t, this first one. The word hapax doesn’t mean once, it’s stronger than that; it means once for all, only once, or once for all. A very famous passage that Calvin used to give the Catholics in here, where “Christ crucified once and for all,” as against the mass in which Christ was re-crucified; hapax, once and for all. Now let’s read it that way and see what it sounds like. “It is absolutely impossible for those who were once and for all enlightened.” That sounds like a very decisive act, then, doesn’t it, whatever this enlightening is that it only occurs once and is never to occur again. You see that word “impossible” fits with the hapax doesn’t it? It’s impossible to renew them because the enlightening isn’t going to happen again, there’s only one chance, period. Whatever this enlightening is you only get one crack at it and if you blow it you’ve had it. That’s what this passage is talking about, “once and for all enlightened.”
Now let’s look at the word photizo and how it occurs. What are our sources going to be? Where are we going to look this word up do you suppose. We’ve got all the concordances, any concordance you want I’ve got it, so now you tell me, where am I going to look to get some data on this word photizo, to look it up. First I’m going to look where? In Hebrews; okay and extending it outward from Hebrews first, since we don’t know who the author is we can go and encompass the whole mass of information of the New Testament. So one sphere of lexical force material will be the New Testament text; that’s one area I’m going to check photizo. But that’s not the only place we can check photizo because the more data points we have the surer we are interpretation. So we’ll so to New Testament church literature, that’s the literature written in the first and second centuries, to test to see how the church fathers are using photizo. That’s the second source of material. Can anybody think of another area we can go to check out a Greek word? [someone answers] Okay and what is the Old Testament Greek version called? The Septuagint, you’ll see this LXX, Roman numerals for 70 because traditionally 70 men made it. So if you forget how to spell Septuagint and I forget all the time, just put LXX. That’s the word for Septuagint, it’s the Jewish version of the Bible, modern version of the Bible. It was an updated translation, the Ken Taylor version of the Scriptures in Jesus day. It was something that every Jew could read because they knew Greek and a lot of Jews didn’t now Hebrew, if you see Hebrew you know why. So those are three areas we want to check for photizo.
Now we’re going to reorder them chronologically; we’re going to start with the church literature, we’re going to go to the New Testament and we’re going to go to the Old Testament. Now if you look up in church literature for photizo you’ll find that a very peculiar thing happened in the second century. This word started showing up as a synonym for baptism but that doesn’t happen until the second century. I introduced the Arminian viewpoint and I made a point when I was having you copy it down that that viewpoint can be traced back to Tertullian. How do you suppose loss of salvation got into this passage then, based on what we just said is happening to this word in the second century. In the second century photizo starting to mean baptism. Thinking in terms of the persecutions of the church, if you know church history Tertullian was a hard-nose against Christians who defected under pressure. In fact his whole movement was if you guys chicken out when the Roman soldiers come, pfft to you.
Now if photizo did mean baptize, now do you see how salvation gets into the picture, because the church would be baptizing those who obviously professed Christ, so you’ve got a situation in the second century where photizo is starting to mean baptism and once it starts to mean baptism then it’s verily closely identified with salvation and thus you have men like Tertullian talking about those who have been illuminated, i.e. baptized, i.e. trusted in Jesus Christ, and they’re turned away under the Roman persecution, you can’t be readmitted to the church. The church had lots of big fights about this, all the way up until the time of Augustine; there’s the hard-liners in the early church that people who defected under pressure were not worthy of the name of Christ and they just shunned them like they would an apostate, and then there were other people in the church that said no, we have to be gracious and readmit them. That is the word, then, for the church. Okay, so we learned one thing. If photizo means baptize, then the Armenians may have a point.
But let’s go back into the New Testament and see what it means. Summarizing many, many, many hours of study we can say this: photizo in the New Testament shows up three ways. None of these, in none of these does it mean baptize. So baptism, meaning baptism is something that happened after the New Testament was finished; it’s a late development in the word. So we don’t care what Tertullian thinks, we don’t care what the church fathers say about photizo because they’re not using the word the same way the apostles used it.
The three ways
photizo is used, the three central meanings is it means physical life, just a
normal word, you take a light in the room and it illuminates the room. Example: Luke
1 Corinthians 4:5, “Therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart; and then shall every man have praise of God.” In the context this is referring to believers; it is revealing something about believers. But notice the revelation doesn’t occur in the believer’s heart. This is talking about revealing it before the judgment seat of Christ, these are not believers being illuminated, it is their lives illuminated in front of the bema seat. So it’s not quite as simple as saying this is believers being illuminated.
Ephesians 3:9, look in verse 8 to get the kind of run on the verse, “[Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given,] that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, [9] And to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery,” there’s the word photizo. Did Paul preach only to believers? No he didn’t. So here you’ve got a use where he’s talking about bringing illumination to both believer or unbeliever, he wants to make all men see the mystery, not necessarily all believers.
2 Timothy 1:10, “But now is made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has abolished death, and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, [11] Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.” Is Jesus Christ illuminating at this point only believers? He is bringing to light life and immortality through the gospel which Paul is ministering to only believers? No, to Gentiles, to both believers and unbelievers. So out of the three meanings so far one is unambiguously believers but the other two can be unbelievers. That’s enough to sample that second meaning, reveal mysteries.
Now the third meaning, which is at the heart of our controversy is inner illumination. This occurs in three places in the New Testament; one is Hebrews 10:32 but we can’t use that one. Why? In this case we can’t use that one because the whole controversy is about how this man is using the word and that verse doesn’t tell you anything more than this verse does. So that reference is out; it’s there but unfortunately we can’t use it. Another one is Ephesians 1:18, that clearly is believers, “having the eyes of your heart illuminated,” clearly is believers, not unbelievers.
But then turn to John 1:9, not 1 John 1:9 but John 1:9. [“That was the true Light, which lights every man that comes into the world.”] To me this is the one that settles the issue, right here. Jesus Christ lightens all men who come into the world. Do only believers come into the world? Obviously not. So therefore, using sound lexical material without throwing dice, using crystal balls, having mystical experiences, we can come to a conclusion about what the text means. And it doesn’t mean what our Arminian friends insist it must mean, that photizo can only refer to believers, because John 1:9 uses the word precisely the same way for all men.
Now we could illustrate it, go into the Old Testament but let me just show you… the same kind of thing occurs in the Old Testament, let me show you some references that really pin this down in Old Testament teaching. Turn to Judges 13, I’ll give you some references out of the Old Testament where this is the Septuagint, what we’re doing now is we’re going back to the Greek version of the Old Testament to see how that word was used. Judges 13:8, this is the case where they had Samson, Samson’s parents were told they were going to have a baby and they were given certain instructions, “And Manoah entreated the LORD, and said, O my Lord, let the mental attitude of God whom You did send come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child” and guess what, the word “teach” is photizo, to illuminate. And that is the way this word occurs in the Old Testament, it is simply a synonym to teach.
Now are believers
the only ones who are ever taught?
No. In the context of the nation
Now let’s come
back to Hebrews to finish, to conclude one point, and that is can some of you
now guess what this expression does means, “who were once and for all enlightened?” We’ve at least said this can refer to
unbelievers as well as believers so the Arminian position cannot be sustained
on that verse, on that point. [someone
says something] Right, and in particular what is historically correct about
this generation of
So you remember the words in Hebrews 2:3, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him.” The enlightening process are the forty years of address to that nation; believe on that Jewish carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth; He is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. And you haven’t got any other choice, if you blow it the nation’s had it and you’ve had it individually and personally because you had all this. And what had they had according to Hebrews 2:4? Along with the preaching what was happening? They had the sign miracles happening in front of their face; they had all this confirmatory evidence. They had empirical evidence, they had verbal evidence, they had all the kinds of evidence they needed and they rejected. And this author is simply saying when you’ve had that kind of exposure to the revelation of God and you’ve turned your back to it, forget it. If you’ve turned your back to that whatever I say is anticlimactic. And this author knows that what he says would be anticlimactic, it would be less than what had gone before.
Father, we thank You….