Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

—;
Hebrews III. 13. 381
in the sphere of the entire disposition and moral character, as an
abandonment to sins and vices, in which case the man has no longer
in himself any strength to effect a change in himself, but there
remains for him only that salvation which is offered through the
quickening and electrically kindling influence of grace and redemption
;
or, finally, a hardening of the heart may exist also in reference
to this offered salvation itself, the obduracy of positive unbelief; this
is its absolute form, in which the last power of the soul to substantiate
itself is exhausted, the last possible step in the kingdom of
freedom is taken, and this is the proper, most immediate idea expressed
by oKXr]pvveLv as it appears in the New Testament.
It is,
moreover, a fine proof of divine wisdom that this figure of
hardening is applied only in malam partem, and that nothing is ever
said in Scripture of a hardening in what is good. For although that
development of the soul, as we have seen takes place also in the
sphere of the good, it could yet be but very inadequately expressed
by the figure of a hardening, as the good even when, as perfect holiness,
it implies the impossibility of sinning, consequently the highest
degree of internal fixedness, still preserves throughout the character
of the/ree, loving will, and therefore of the highest internal m.0NQableness
and movement.
This state of obdurateness is not always reached by one leap,
and through intentional wickedness, but quite as often, nay oftener,
through dndrr], i. e. through being deceived and self-deception.
Thus the readers of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by their foolish,
one-sided attachment to the Old Testament forms of the theocracy
— by overvaluing what was relative, and regarding it as absolute
were in great danger of making complete shipwreck of faith, and
sinking into this miserable state of obduracy. The remark may
Jiere be made, that in our own day an analogous overvaluing of
things in themselves important, but still only relatively so, as, for
example, of differences in confession, or, it may be, of the extraordinary
gifts of the apostolic time, is possible, and may possibly lead
to the same issue.
This deceit {dndrr]), however, is never such as that, under it, the
man is guiltless and purely passive, purely one who is deceived. On
the contrary, our author speaks with good reason of an drrdrr] Trjg
duapriag, consequently of a being deceived, which implies guilt on
the part of him who is deceived, a self deception. The convictions of
men are, in general, only apparently determined by arguments which
address the reason alone; in reality, they are always substantially
determined through the will. Man's power of perception does not
resemble a mirror which must take up all the rays that fall on it
it rather resembles the living eye, which can open and shut itself,
turn itself hither and thither ; and which also on account of its