Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews VI. 4-6. 435
Now, of him who has already passed over those stages in the
Christian course and then falls away, it is here said that " it is impossible
again to renew him/' i. e., the state of grace out of which
he has fallen (the nerdvoia, conversion)* cannot he again restored in
him ; he is and remains lost. We must not shrink from these words
or attempt to explain them away. The author assuredly does not
mean (as some of the more ancient commentators thought) that
such a one is not to be again baptized, although he may notwithstanding
be saved ;
just as little does he mean that only men cannot
save him, hut God notwithstanding may. He lays it down quite
absolutely, " it is impossible to renew him again to conversion."
This is one of those passages which speak of the so-called sin
against the Holy Ghost, or more correctly of a fall that leads into
irrecoverable perdition. It is well known, that on this subject
there was a difference between the predestinarian Calvinists and the
Lutherans, a difference extending even to the exegesis itself. The
Calvinists founded their view on the passage in Matth. xii. 31, seq.,
in which Christ warns the unbelieving Jews against committing the
sin against the Holy Ghost which can never be forgiven ;
further, on
the passage 1 John ii. 19, where John says of certain individuals
who had fallen away from Christianity to Gnosticism :
" They are
gone out from us, but they were not of us ; for if they had been
of us they would have continued with us." Both passages were
used by the Calvinists as a proof of the theorem that, a, one who
is really born again cannot fall away, b, consequently he who falls
away cannot have been really born again—a theorem which, we may
observe, is not necessarily a consequence of the absolute doctrine
of predestination, but is also conceivable independent of it. But
how now is this to be reconciled with our passage Heb. vi. 4-6 ?
with this passage in which we are taught that there may be a falling
away from a state of faith in the fullest and most proper
sense of the term. Calvin laid emphasis on the word yevodjj.evoi ;
individuals are here spoken of who had but tasted a little of the
gifts of grace, and had received only " some sparks of light.''
But whoever is not blinded by dogmatical prejudices must peiceive,
that the aim of our autbor is evidently and assuredly not
to say : the less one has tasted of the gifts of grace the more
easily may he be irrecoverably lost, but precisely the reverse ; the
more one has already penetrated into the sanctuary of the state of
grace, by so much the more irrecoverably is he lost in case he should
fall away.
Our passage, therefore, unmistakeably declares the possibility
that a regenerate person may fall away. But does it not herein
contradict what is said in 1 John ii. 19. Not in the least ! If in
* Others foolishly think that the state of Adam before the fall is here meant.