So in that light we look at Hebrews 7. It is an exquisitely fine, inspired (in every sense of the word) piece of argumentation aimed at its particular immediate audience--an audience perfectly competent to register, if not appreciate, not only every overt point but the string of between-the-lines implications.
Before we go on, give a thought to this: who are these Gospel-of-the-Law adherents teetering on schism from the Church of the apostles? These are men who have paid a price for their faith in Jesus. These are very likely old "school pals" of a person like Saul of Tarsus. They all know each other by name, and have histories together. These "Christian Chasidim" could have suffered threat to their very lives coming from Paul before Paul's conversion, when he was hellbent on the obliteration of the Way. They would consider themselves Paul's elder brothers in the faith of Jesus, certainly not indebted to him in the least; if anything, he ought to accord them a certain reverence for their prior wisdom, their suffering at his hands, and their magnanimity in forgiving him when he, too, finally saw the Light. These are not people to whom any of the fine points of the Law or its relevance to the person of Christ are obscure. The writer of Hebrews knows this full well. He weaves oblique allusions, subtle ironies, even what one might call rather abstruse extrapolations of principle into his argument, appearing (so it seems to me) to do so with perfect confidence that his readers are going to GET IT.
Mostly, to the point here, the Hebrews writer knows why the Melchizedek Argument is going to knock the wind right out of these men. It is simply shattering.
While we may revel in the shattering brilliance of the argument, we ought also to register the heart-wrenching tragedy that the whole situation has reached this stage, this impasse. The writer is addressing his fellow sufferers for Jesus, people he's prayed with, supped with, wept with, shared the wonder of the Resurrection with, and they are about to shake the dust off their feet and abandon him and the Church forever. To say the least, they are not enjoying this, either. They never wanted it to come to this. But they are sure they're right and they cannot back down. Consider the blank wilderness that confronts them, too, if they finalize this break. To be no longer part of the Church of Christ's apostles, yet unable ever to fully meld back into their old Jewish milieu because of the faith they once professed, a faith they likely continue to hold, in their own way, in Jesus. They will not be welcome in the old neighborhood. Nobody is having fun here.
We need first to dismiss the notion that the writer is actually pointing to Melchizedek as a Christophany, a supernatural manifestation of the pre-incarnate Son. That's not what he means by Melchizedek's being without beginning or end, without parentage. (Supporting this, by the way, is the fact that it would be an intolerable tautology for Christ to be appointed a priest forever in the order of...well, Christ, if you start with the notion that Melchizedek is Christ. No, it simply doesn't work.) The writer is pointing out that this Melchizedek is what we might call today totally non-contextual. He doesn't fit anywhere (including--take note--the Mosaic Law, a point surely not lost on the first readers). He pops up for one moment in the sacred history, designated a priest and king, with titles that etymologically resound with Righteousness and Peace, he blesses...as if he had the authority to do so...Abraham and, prospectively in Abraham genetically speaking, all Israel (and, we should add, all of Abraham's children by faith--hardly reading too much into it, considering Paul's Epistle to the Galatians), and then disappears into nowhere. He is, in the revelatory history, without beginning or end, father or mother, birth or death, or genealogy of any kind. He's utterly anomalous, not just because the Scripture doesn't include his detailed bio (there are many others like that, after all) but because someone so anomalous and unexplained dares to play such an exalted role, and with God's full backing. There was literally no explaining it...at least, not until Christ appeared and BECAME the necessary, "ah hah!" context that had been missing. But that's where this is heading, and I'm getting ahead of myself.
So, back to the text. Not a verse-by-verse, word-by-word study of Hebrews 7 but an attempt to grasp what the writer is "really saying," as it were, to his readers between the lines. Or to put it another way, how this chapter answers the objections and arguments we can deduce, actually FROM this chapters and other NT passages, that these "Christian Chasidim" were firing at the Gospel of Grace, of Promise, of Faith.
Melchizedek is a BIG PROBLEM. First, because his fleeting appearance as priest, king, blesser, and receiver of tithes is utterly anomolous and, like God's promise to Abraham (see Galatians!), precedes the Law. Whatever this event means, it isn't Law-dependent. Its parameters (again, like the Promise) are completely different; if anything, its parameters envelop, and therefore exceed, the Law.
Melchizedek is "like the son of God" in that, like Adam the son of God, he comes out of nowhere in the text. And boy does he grab the stage before completely disappearing from the story! It is vitally important for us to get our heads around why this is SO important in the fierce theological battle raging between this writer and his audience. To many of us today, I suspect, the notion that the writer is "merely" talking about the literary context ("Melchizedek pops up suddenly in the text and just as suddenly pops out of it--wow!") seems like a pasty, boring Wonder-Bread sort of interpretation compared to the far more exotic, mystical alternative, that Melchizedek is a Christophany. But such an impression arises from a disastrous failure to register what a life-and-death issue the TEXT and the LAW were to this writer's readers. There is nothing "mere" about this to them! This TEXT is the Word of God (remember?) telling us that this man Melchizedek is a priest and king of the Most High God, a figure enjoying status and prerogative to bless the father of faith, Abraham and, by association, all the children of Abraham, including all those who will become, by faith, children to the the "father of all nations" (do you catch the scintillating hints lurking here, behind nearly every utterance, that would have tortured the sensibilities of this epistle's first readers?), and the TEXT is saying all this about Melchizedek wildly outside the least context of LAW, the holy law of God given to Moses wherein (ostensibly alone) all legitimate designation of priesthood might be found. Melchizedek is, frankly, an existential crisis for the coherency of God's Word...unless something comes along to make sense of him.
So, no, there's nothing "mere" about the Melchizedek Conundrum, even dismissing the notion of Christophany. What the conundrum says about the text, the law, and the divine plan of redemption is literally life-and-death stuff for both the writer and his readers. This is a hill worth dying for.
Throughout this entire argument, the challenge resonating between the lines is, "You can't make sense of Melchizedek without Jesus, and if you can't make sense of him, you can't make sense of anything else--it ALL falls apart...so if you abandon Jesus, what have you got left to go back to?"
This is NOT, by the way, because Melchizedek is a "proof text." There are no scriptures that "proved" Jesus. On the contrary, Jesus proved the scriptures. The very event He represents (as scholars like to put it, "the Christ-Event"), unveiled the truths that were "lurking" there in the sacred history all along. Without Jesus, no one would, in all likelihood, have really understood what a conundrum Melchizedek was. But as we like to say these days, there are those things that, once you've seen them, you can't un-see them. Jesus reveals and resolves the Melchizedek Conundrum all at once. Because of Him, you SEE it and it make sense. As C.S. Lewis said of his faith, he believed in Christ as he believed in the sunrise--not only because he could see it but because, by it, he could see everything else.
The hint in verse 6 is devastating: "Melchizedek who does not share their ancestry...." Just like the floods of unwashed Gentiles streaming into the people of Christ, uncircumcized, eating unclean meats, not observing the sacred feasts and holy days. This text is so loaded with hot-button triggers it ain't funny (not funny at all, actually). We'd have had to be inside those readers' heads to fully "feel" how devastating a text this is.
If these "Christian Chasidim" were writhing with aggravation at "goyim" claiming to be "the children of Abraham," then you can very well sense what an infuriating hint it was for this writer to underline the fact that Melchizedek, a king, priest of the Most High God, blesser of--hence superior to--Father Abraham, "does not share" the ancestry, not only of the Levites but of ANY of the Jews.
To put it mildly, this is no warm-up to any suggestion by the writer that "hey, fellas, maybe we can meet each other halfway on this?" It's only going to get (depending on your point of view) worse.
In verse 8 the writer "handles" Melchizedek as only a Jewish mind steeped in the study of, and rhetoric of, the Law possibly could. And as only such a Jewish mind also steeped in Christ Himself could. With a stiletto-like thrust he refers to Melchizedek as "alive," in contrast to the "mortal" Levites who go on and on receiving tithes from the people. So what's the stiletto-like point here? And in what sense can we possibly call Melchizedek "alive"? Well, he's "alive" because he never dies in the text! Again, don't pooh-pooh that as ridiculously obvious, or "scraping." The writer clearly doesn't consider it that because he's walloping his readers over the head with it. Again, this is all about the TEXT and the LAW and what that means about GOD. Melchizedek came from no order (like the Dominicans or the Franciscans or the Levites). The text says nothing about the beginning or end of his priesthood, or rules of succession or inheritance. Unlike the "mortal" Levites, Melchizedek has no antecedents or heirs in the sacred history. He is, as it were, a timeless event. We never see him dead in the story. The Levites, we see them regularly dying and passing on their apparently endless labor of sacrifice from one generation to the next, all as neatly outlined in the Law. Melchizedek, outside the Law and superior to Abraham, transcends all such orders or sequence. That's...a problem. A big one. The Law makes no provision for it. What, therefore, IS it?
And God made the problem only worse. Thank God.
But before we discuss how God made it "worse," let's quickly point out the obvious: the double entendre is hardly subtle in the reference to Melchizedek as "alive." If Melchizedek remains forever alive "literarily," the Risen Christ is explosively, shatteringly, forever alive LITERALLY, and the thrumming-throbbing resonances between the Melchizedek Event and Christ the Event of all events come crashing in, overwhelming the epistle's readers. For that is always and endlessly the inescapable FACT: Jesus is alive, and no Law encompasses or controls that great Fact of all facts any more than the Law could prescribe or control Melchizedek. Until you have seen Christ like that, you can never see Melchizedek either.
Well, that would already have been quite enough of a conundrum, I suppose, but wouldn't you know it: God wasn't satisfied to "leave well enough alone." He chose to go full-on blatant. Just in case, I am surmising, none of us would have gotten the point otherwise.
Which we probably wouldn't have.
With a tone I am tempted to call mischievous, the writer sneaks up to his next, devastating point by provoking something like cognitive dissonance first. He asks why, if the Levitical priesthood is so great ("perfect"), God would need to establish a different priesthood?
"Wait, what are you talking about? WHAT different priesthood?"
"Hey, I'm really glad you asked that. I did mention this already but maybe you weren't reading closely. Psalm 110:4? Remember? 'You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek'?"
And when you work out the terribly close-knit logic of what the writer is saying in Hebrews 7:11-17 (in the course of which he leaves much unsaid, knowing his first readers are filling it in even as they grind their teeth), it seems to come out like this:
"God said He'd make Somebody Else into a DIFFERENT KIND of priest, an eternal one, completely outside the order of the Law. That's the order of Melchizedek. If God NEEDED a priest outside the order of the Law and the Levites, it was because the order of the Law and the Levites was NEVER competent to get the REAL THING that had to be done, DONE. God made Jesus (Who all this was really written about) that High Priest. And THAT, my dear, beloved, erring brothers, is the answer to your objection that Jesus can't be the Priest of God since He's not from the tribe of Levi. Guess what: Melchizedek wasn't EITHER. And Jesus is the FULFILLMENT of God's oath to make Someone Else a priest of Melchizedek's order, and the REALIZATION of the fact that the priesthood of Christ and the Promise to Abraham BOTH precede, transcend, exceed and are therefore superior to the Law."
Next: Melchizedek 3
