Still another means of tracing the author’s view of the relation between the heavenly world and the make-up of the Old Testament religion is afforded in the peculiar meaning he attaches to the predicate ἀληθινός, translated in the English versions by “true,” but more adequately rendered by “veritable.” This is a predicate reserved for the things in heaven because, in contrast to the shadows of the Old Covenant, they constitute the solid reality, the veritable substance. In this characteristic use of the word ἀληθινός Hebrews coincides with the Fourth Gospel. There the Evangelist speaks of the Logos as “the true light,” and our Lord calls Himself “the true vine,” “the true bread,” and defines the latter as “the bread that comes down out of heaven, the bread of God” (6:33). And even more closely approaching the viewpoint of Hebrews is the contrast drawn in the prologue between the law given through Moses, and the grace and truth which came through Jesus Christ, for here, it will be observed, the Christian revelation is characterized as “truth” in distinction from the Mosaic law, to which this predicate does not belong. The meaning is not, of course, that the Mosaic law is untrue or false in the ordinary sense of the word; in fact, this misunderstanding is carefully guarded against by the form of statement employed: the law was given “through” Moses, which implies that Moses in the lawgiving was only the instrument of God, from whom nothing false or untrue can come. “Truth” here means what it means in Hebrews; it expresses the heavenly character of the Christian realities of revelation and redemption in which the higher world directly communicates itself, and the opposite of “the true” is the typical, wherein the connection with the heavenly world is present only in a mediated, shadowy form. And Jesus, because He is the center and exponent of this great projection of the supernatural into the lower world, is called “the Truth.” In the well-known answer to Thomas concerning the way to the place whither Jesus is going, our Saviour declares that He Himself personally is the way. His way is into heaven, and through identification with Him the disciples can reach the same goal. But our Lord further explains this fact, that the way to heaven lies through Him, from His being “the truth,” and “the life,” which means nothing else than that the veritable higher world has come down in Him, and that particularly the heavenly life has made its appearance on earth in His Person. All this is but the statement in a more general form of what the Epistle to the Hebrews affirms with specific reference to the sphere of priesthood and sacrifice.
A couple of very instructive examples of the twofold relation in which the epistle places the things of the Old Covenant as on the one hand looking upward to the world of heaven, on the other hand looking forward to the New Covenant, may be found in what it teaches about the figure of Melchizedek and about the conception of the promised rest. In the historical sequence of things Christ is said to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Here we have the ordinary correspondence between type and antitype, the former pertaining to the Old, the latter to the New Covenant. To Melchizedek belongs the first, to Christ the later appearance on the scene of history. But in the third verse of the eighth chapter the author reverses this relation, representing it in this way, that not Christ was made like unto Melchizedek, but, on the contrary, Melchizedek was made like unto the Son of God. The introduction of the name “Son of God” here is highly significant. It describes Christ in His divine, eternal nature. From this eternal life that places the Son of God above all time and history, the eternity-character enveloping Melchizedek in the record of Genesis was copied, that thus delineated he might again in the time-perspective of history prefigure the historic Christ. The same observation may be made with regard to the “rest” promised the people of God. The rest of the land of Canaan given to Israel of old was a type of the supreme rest opened up by Jesus in the New Covenant. But this rest of Canaan was by no means the first or original embodiment of the religious idea of rest. Back of it and above it lay in the heavenly world the “sabbatismos” of God spoken of in the account of creation, and which is identical with the Christian rest, since believers are received by God into the rest that is His own. Generalizing this we may say that according to the teaching of the epistle the Old Testament things are both copies and copied from, and the latter because they are the former.
It needs, after what has been said, no lengthy demonstration to show that Hebrews vindicates by this philosophy of history in the most satisfactory manner the identity and continuity of the Old Covenant with the New. Still it is not a work of supererogation to call attention to this. The concrete purpose for which the epistle was written gave occasion for placing great emphasis on the superiority of the New Covenant to the Old. And this undoubtedly is also the proximate purpose in the mind of the author when he formulates that antithesis: there the shadow, here the image itself. But the antithesis would be overdrawn and the author’s mark overshot if we were to interpret this as meaning the old has only the shadow of the new. As we now know, the author’s real intent is this: the old has only the shadow of heaven, the new has the full reality of heaven. And therefore to do the author full justice the stress should not be laid exclusively on the statement that there is “only” a shadow, but equally on the fact that there “is” a shadow of the true things of religion under the Old Covenant. The word in the prophets cannot take the place of the word in the Son, but it is a word in which God spoke. The sacrifices and lustrations could not do the work for which alone the priestly work of Christ is adequate, but they were in their own sphere faithful adumbrations and true means of grace, through which a real contact with the living God was actually maintained. When again and again, in pursuance of the immediate end in view, the author declares their weakness and unprofitableness (7:18), this is meant comparatively, but is not intended to void them of all religious efficacy. If taken in an absolute sense, such statements would warrant the inference that the Old Covenant had no spiritual substance at all, that the saints of old moved wholly among shadows, for which no body was yet in existence. This would be the same erroneous impression that is sometimes derived in an even stronger degree from the Pauline statements in which the apostle speaks of the religious life under the law, statements which seem to allow nothing for this life in the way of positive spiritual privilege and enjoyment, and to dwell only on the condemnatory, cursing, slaying function of the law. And yet we know from Paul that he was well-acquainted not only with the objective foreshadowing which the facts of the Christian redemption had found in the Old Testament but also with the subjective prelibations which had been tasted by the saints of those days. And so it is in Hebrews. With whatever degree of clearness or dimness they might themselves apprehend the fact, God stood in spiritual relations to the people of Israel; they were not cut off from the fount of life and blessedness. Through the shadows and ceremonies and all the instrumentalities of the flesh, God controlled with a sure and sovereign hand the religious destinies of each member of His covenant people. Not only under the influence of special inspiration were a David and other psalmists or a Jeremiah enabled to take to themselves prophetic draughts of the waters of life, which their vision saw springing up in the coming age; there was a direct and contemporaneous interaction between the redemptive approaches of God in the religious forms of that day and the believing and unbelieving responses with which they were met on the part of man. Instructive in this respect is the description given by the author of the dealings of God with the people during the wilderness journey and the people’s attitude during that journey to the rest that had been promised. So far as the form was concerned, this promise had come to them only through the medium of the σάρξ; it was enveloped in the prospect of the inheritance of the land of Canaan that God had held out from of old and renewed at the time of their redemption from Egypt. And yet it is clearly the author’s conviction that far deeper and more tremendous issues were decided on that occasion with reference to each of the participants in the history than the mere question, who of them would survive to enter the promised land. Through the shadowy forms, in the midst of which the actors moved, a great drama of belief and unbelief was enacted, the outcome of which was by God reckoned decisive in the eternal sphere. It was not only from the typical but from the everlasting rest that the unbelievers were excluded when God swore that fearful oath that they should not enter in. And those who believed were then and there given the right of entrance into all that the divine rest did mean and would come to mean in the future. The author is so vividly impressed with this that he does not content himself with comparing this Old Testament method of procedure with the method now pursued under the new dispensation, but approaches the comparison from the opposite end. He does not say, they as well as we, but we as well as they have had an evangel preached unto us, whence also he is able to hold up the unbelief of the Israelites as a warning example to the readers of his own day. No more striking proof than this could be afforded of the fact that he regarded the same spiritual world with the same powers and blessings as having evoked the religious experience of the Old and the New Testament alike.
