What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (32)

The purpose of this series is to show how conclusions drawn from an isolated proof text may lead you astray theologically. Today’s post illustrates just how far this can go when you add unsupported supposition to supposition. The result is the theological equivalent of a house of cards. By the time you work your way up to the attic, you find yourself asking questions for which there cannot possibly be any definitive answers.

The remedy is to say, “Let me think about that some more” way back in the basement, where there’s still a chance to construct a solid foundation for future inquiry.

Building Card Houses

A well-known passage in Hebrews 6 gets examined through a pair of Calvinist spectacles:

“In Heb 6, an infamous apostasy passage, individuals who partake of various new covenant blessings later fall away. O[ne o]f these blessings is described as ‘tasting the heavenly gift’ which is almost universally believed to be a reference to the Lord’s Supper. But on the Calvinist side of things, those without faith do not spiritually partake of Christ through the elements, but instead eat and drink judgment upon themselves. Do non-elect covenant members partake of Christ’s true body and blood? Or is it possible for someone [to] temporarily experience blessings from the supper which later turn into judgment? Because it sure seems like the non-elect envisioned in Heb 6 took the Lord’s Supper and were blessed by it — however temporarily.”

Terminology like “non-elect” is Calvinist lingo to be sure, but it gets at an observation worth keeping in mind, which is that the apostates described in Hebrews were never genuine believers. That is an uncontroversial assertion if we read the passage carefully:

“For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things — things that belong to salvation.”

Many Christians have tripped over this passage and even questioned their security in Christ because of it. Our Calvinist friend has not done so, and good for him. The evidence is right there in verse 9, where the writer of Hebrews asserts his belief that those to whom he writes are genuinely saved. We can conclude several things from this, including that distinguishing between believers and religious unbelievers is difficult, but then we could have got that from Matthew 13. What is evident from Hebrews is that it is possible to be “enlightened”, to “taste the heavenly gift”, to “share in the Holy Spirit”, and to “taste the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come” … and all without ever truly knowing the Lord or experiencing his salvation. No wonder angels can’t easily tell wheat from weeds!

So then, our starting point with this passage is that all the experiences listed in verses 4 through 6 may be common to believers and unbelievers. When the latter “fall away” from a profession of faith, it is not because Christ has failed to secure them, but because they were never his in the first place. They are the rocky ground that receives the word with joy, yet has no root in itself and falls away at the first sign of difficulty.

Still, we have to concede that verses 4-6 contain language that requires interpretation and, as we well know, not all interpreters come to precisely the same conclusions.

Tasting the Heavenly Gift

First, the Greek word translated “tasted” may, in certain contexts, mean “to have consumed”, but the NT writers also frequently use it to indicate sampling as opposed to consuming. We use it the same way in English when we speak of a “wine tasting”, which is not at all the same thing as a drinking binge. This is most definitely the case with the usage of geuomai in Matthew 27:34 and John 2:9, and especially with Hebrews 2:9, where it says that the Lord Jesus “tasted” death for everyone; he was the lone Son of Adam upon whom death had no grip. He gave himself to death and exited the grave the moment he pleased, sampling death and in effect saying, “No thanks.” So then, the danger for the Hebrews to whom the letter is addressed is that they might only have sampled the “heavenly gift” (as well as the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, concerning which the word “tasted” is also used), rather than made these part of their substance.

What then is the “heavenly gift” of which the writer speaks? Prior to coming across the above comment yesterday, I had never once heard these words applied to the Lord’s Supper, let alone that this is “almost universally believed” to be the correct interpretation. In fact, there is a compelling case to be made that something other than the Supper is in view.

Our Savior plainly calls himself the “gift of God”, as do the New Testament writers. Other “heavenly gifts” in the New Testament include the Holy Spirit, miraculous powers, salvation, imputed righteousness and God’s grace. All these are described with the very same Greek word the writer to the Hebrews uses here, of which the heavenly gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus are by far the most frequently mentioned. Other than imputed righteousness, all these gifts may be “tasted” but not fully received. (The righteousness of Christ, once imputed to the sinner, is never rescinded.)

Almost Universally Believed?

As far as the commentators are concerned, William MacDonald believed the heavenly gift is the Lord Jesus himself. Ellicott believed salvation through the gospel was in view. Vincent thought the gift was the Holy Spirit, and believes the very next phrase in the passage is intended to amplify this point. Again, all these “heavenly gifts” are possible to witness and even sample without receiving personally.

While we may be grateful for the Lord’s Supper, and while it certainly points to heavenly realities, none of the writers of the New Testament ever refers to it as a gift. Rather, it is a command: “Do this in remembrance of me.” In perusing the major commentaries on this verse, I could not find a single writer who thought the Lord’s Supper was the intended meaning of “heavenly gift”. The statement that this is “almost universally believed” is therefore highly questionable.

So then, what we actually have here is a phrase whose meaning is the subject of considerable debate, about which dogmatism is unwarranted. Consequently, any discussion from Hebrews about what the unsaved may experience as a result of participating in the Lord’s Supper is perched atop a very shaky foundation. It is far likelier than not that the Supper is not referenced at all in this passage.

Eating and Drinking Judgment

Furthermore, even if the Lord’s Supper were the intended meaning of “heavenly gift”, the writer also appears to misunderstand Paul’s teaching in Corinthians about eating and drinking judgment upon oneself. That subject was more fully explored in a recent post, so I won’t recycle it here, but basically Paul’s corrective to the Corinthians has to do with genuine believers who participate in the Supper while despising the church of God and humiliating their brothers and sisters in Christ, failing to value them as Christ does. It is these who are “eating and drinking judgment” on themselves because they participate “without discerning the body”, meaning their fellow believers. That these were genuine Christians making this grave error is evident from the judgment Paul refers to: some have “fallen asleep”. That phrase is a metaphor for Christian death that is never used of unbelievers. How could Christ be the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” if some of these sleepers were unregenerate?

The question of the unsaved participating in the Lord’s Supper never comes up once in 1 Corinthians 11. I see no scriptural evidence there or anywhere else that taking the bread or cup naively or without being spiritually enlightened as to their meaning poses any kind of danger to the unsaved.

Desperately Seeking Concord

When confronted with difficult or unfamiliar phrases in scripture, we are always wise to start with a concordance to see how the Bible’s writers have used the words and phrases we are seeking to interpret in other contexts. After all, it’s “concord” we are after, right?

In both these cases of apparent misunderstanding, the problem is a failure to search the scripture to see if it interprets itself. Any comparable language we find in the word of God is likely to be significantly closer to the truth than our own conjectures pulled out of thin air, or our own subjective impressions about theological consensus (which in this case appear to be quite wrong). When we pile one conjecture on another, we end up with a house of cards, posing theological questions for which there can be no answers because those asking them fail to comprehend the terminology with which they are formulated.