Friday, September 29, 2023

Baptismal Regeneration in Haimo of Auxerre (c. 820-875), Commentary on Hebrews

 On Heb 10:15-18 (cf. Jer 31:33-34), Hemo offered the following commentary:

 

For afterward the omnipotent God through the prophet Jeremiah said: But this is the covenant that I will invoke for them after those days, says the Lord: I will give my laws in their hearts, and upon their minds I will write them, and he immediately adds beneath: And their sins I will remember no longer, showing that now the figurative sacrifices made continually were not necessary, which also the Apostle demonstrates when he adds beneath: But where there is forgiveness of sins there is now no required offering for sin. For after this covenant was fulfilled, as God promised through the prophet, immediately those sacrifices received their end since with the coming of the truth the shadow went away. But it ought to be noted that where there is no remembrance of sins that have been forgiven in baptism through faith of the Lord’s passion, there is now no required offering of the Law for sin. (Haimo of Auxerre, In Epistolam Hebraeos PL 117.892, in Benjamin Wheaton, Suffering, Not Power: Atonement in the Middle Ages [Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Academic, 2022], 201-2)

 

As Wheaton noted, in the above passage,

 

Haimo makes clear that Christ’s death on the cross was a sacrifice of expiation that is put into effect by the baptism of a faith-filled sinner. The sacrifices of the old covenant, by the law of Moses, now pass away because they are fulfilled by Christ’s one-time sacrificial death. (Ibid., 202)