Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Barnabas Lindars on εἰς τὸ παντελὲς in Hebrews 7:25


Commenting on the phrase εἰς τὸ παντελὲς (KJV: "to the uttermost") in Heb 7:25, Barnabas Lindars wrote the following:

‘Always’ (eis to pantales) used only here and in Luke 13.11 in the NT, can mean either ‘to the completion of time’, i.e. ‘always’, or ‘to the completion of the purpose’, i.e. ‘absolutely’ (so NEB). ‘Always’ (better ‘for all time’) seems to me preferable because the point is that atonement is available to the readers both now and to the end. (Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews [New Testament Theology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 78 n. 78, emphasis in bold added)

In other words, for Lindars, the phrase is not a statement that, contra many Calvinists, that the believer could never lose their salvation and cease to draw to the Father through Christ (which flies in the fact of sound exegesis of Heb 6:4-6 and 10:26-29) but that the atoning sacrifice of Christ is available to all those who place their faith in Christ, supportive of universal, not particular/limited atonement.