I will wind down my rantings about Calvinism shortly. My last post on this topic dealt with Romans 9, a passage typically used to support a predistinarian view. Hebrews 6, on the other hand is a typically Arminian proof text and with good reason.
As a teenager, I read this passage with terror. I thought I had committed an unpardonable sin and it is a minor testament to the plain reading of this text as not supporting eternal security that I came to that conclusion. The text in Chapter 6:4-6 says:
It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
I stated earlier that I support a view of eternal security that is based not on God's decree, but on the infinite value of Christ's sacrifice. That is - I do not believe one can casually lose his or her salvation. Grace is too gracious and Christ's blood too precious.
What is being spoken of here seems to be something different.
First, the letter is clearly addressed to believers. There are warnings in Chapter 2:1 "We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away."
The writer talks of Christ as a High Priest who sympathizes with his brothers. Or 3:12 "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily". Or 4:3, "Now we who have believed enter that rest"
At the end of Chapter 5 the writer prods the believers to move beyond elementary knowledge and to learn to eat the solid food of mature doctrine. This is how Chapter 6 begins. So it seems an inevitable conclusion that those who are warned in vss 4-6 not to "fall away" are in fact believers.
The key to the passage seems to be the word "fall away" in the context of a Hebrew culture. The entire book relates to the superiority of the sacrifice of Christ over the "shadows" and "foreshadowings' of the Hebrew sacrifice system. The writer, in the immediate context, refers to "elementary teachings" and defines those as repentance, baptism, faith, resurrection and judgment. Basic Christianity. The kind of stuff new converts should know and mature believers should move beyond. But there are those who fall away, or "apostasize". What does this mean?
It means, I believe, that by returning once again to the Hebrew sacrifices, they reject the priceless sacrifice of Christ. This is no small sin, but a willful rejection of a superior sacrifice, the only true sacrifice that leads to life.
The same idea is expressed in 10:26, "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left" This certainly does not mean Christ's sacrifice is no longer effective, but that those who have the knowledge of Christ's sacrifice and deliberately turn away from it can no longer look to the old temple sacrifices to save them. They have been enlightened and must respond to the light they have been given. If they do not trust Christ's sacrifice, they are on their own and face God's wrath.
The point for me is that there is a large place of security, the ability to rest in salvation, that is possible from a non-predestinarian position. One need only consider the value of the sacrifice of Christ and recognize that no sin is so great that it cannot be covered. On the other hand, willful rejection of that sacrifice, trampling on the cross is not merely a sin - it is a rejection of salvation. So security is not absolute. God will not lock us up in heaven.
The conclusion: Anyone who desires to be saved can be. And anyone, Christian or not, who rejects salvation will not be dragged into the Kingdom unwillingly. Salvation then, as I understand it, need not be tied to an unconditional decree that makes human response a predetermined certainty and eternal judgment for others equally certain. Rather, salvation is a gracious gift that is received by faith or rejected in unfaith. Those who believe and do not fall away (willfully reject their faith, following after some other system), are secure.
I have two more issues to address, and then a positive word about Calvinists!
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