Sunday, April 14, 2019

Is the Father the Addressee of Hebrews 1:10-12?

Quoting Psa 102:25-27, the author of Hebrews wrote:

And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. (Heb 1:10-12)

Some (mainly proponents of Socinian Christology) have argued that the author of Hebrews is addressing, not Jesus in the above passage, but the Father, as this text appears at first blush (correctly, I will note) that Jesus pre-existed and was the agent of the Genesis creation, and this is, of course, in direct opposition to Socinianism. While rejecting readings supporting pre-existence, Christadelphian apologist Andrew Perry notes the weakness of the view that the Father, not the Son, is being addressed in his book defending Christadelphian Christology vis-à-vis the nature of Jesus’ pre-existence (i.e., notional only, not personal):

Some commentators ascribe this utterance to the Messiah who says to the Father that he laid the foundation of the earth. However, this suggestion fits badly with the argument in Hebrews 1 which is centred on things that are said of the Messiah. This quotation from Psalm 102 is the largest of the OT texts that the author selects, and it would break the structure of his argument to read it as referring to the Father, especially as the author concludes his reasoning with a quote from Psalm 110 which is an undisputed example of something said to the Messiah. This last quote is tied to the opening quotation of the author’s reasoning by the phrase "said he at any time”, and this link encloses the whole piece as assertion spoken to Christ. (Andrew Perry, Before He was Born [4th ed.; Tyne and West, U.K.: Willow Publications, 2013], 114 n. 1, emphasis in original)

Thomas Farrar, a former Christadelphian who is now a Roman Catholic, has done a good job at showing the author of Hebrews believed in the personal pre-existence of Jesus based on this text, as well as interacting and refuting Christadelphians such as Perry in his paper:


Such is also consistent with the overwhelming body of scholarship on this pericope. Note the following from B.W. Bacon in his discussion of the LXX text used by the author of Hebrews in Heb 1:10-12:

Indeed, we shall not be going too far if with Bruce we say: "It is possible that the writer (of Hebrews) regarded this text (Ps 102, 25-27) as messianic because in his view creation was the work of the preexistent Christ. But it is equally possible that he ascribed creative agency to Christ out of regard to this and other similar texts believed to be messianic on other grounds.” (B.W. Bacon, “Heb. 1:10-12 and the Septuagint Rendering of Ps. 102:23,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 3, 1902, 280-285, here, p. 285)


I quote Bacon as some other proponents of Socinian Christology abuse his article to support the belief that Heb 1:10-12 is speaking of the New Creation merely, such as Anthony Buzzard’s paper accessible here. Obviously, Bacon believes Heb 1:10-12 teaches the personal pre-existence of Jesus and his being the agent of the Genesis creation.