Thursday, October 22, 2020

Does F.F. Bruce Support Anthony Buzzard's Interpretation of Hebrews 1:10-12 and Reading of B.W. Bacon's 1902 Article?

 

In Anthony F. Buzzard's Abuse of B.W. Bacon,  “Heb. 1:10-12 and the Septuagint Rendering of Ps. 102:23" (1902), I discussed Anthony Buzzard's abuse of Bacon's article to support his (eisegetical) reading of Heb 1:10-12. In this article, I wish to discuss his appeal to F.F. Bruce's commentary on Hebrews (New International Commentary on the New Testament; rev ed.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990).

 

Commenting on Heb 1:10-12, and how Jesus is, in the theology of Hebrews, the personal agent of the Genesis creation, Bruce wrote:

 

The words in which the psalmist addresses God, however, are here applied to the Son, as clearly as the words of Ps. 45:6f. were applied to him in vv. 8 and 9. What justification can be pleaded for our author's applying them thus? First, as he has already said in v. 2, it was through the Son that the universe was made. The angels were but worshiping spectators when the earth was founded (Job 38:7), but the Son was the Father's agent in the work. He therefore can be understood as the one who is addressed in the words:

 

Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth;

And the heavens are the work of thy hands. (p. 62)

 

Commenting on the application of Psa 102 to Jesus, Bruce does not understand it merely as about the New Creation:

 

But to whom (a Christian reader of the Septuagint might well ask) could God speak in words like these? And whom would God himself address as "Lord," as the maker of earth and heaven? Our author knows of one person to whom such terms could be appropriate, and that is the Son of God. (pp. 62-63)

 

The footnote for the above further confirms thus:

 

It is unlikely that this passage is primarily responsible for our author's description of the Son in v. 2 as the one through whom God made the universe--a description which probably owes more to Prov 8:22-31 than to any other OT passage--but it could be taken as corroborative testimony of the identification of Wisdom in Prov 8:22ff with the Messiah. (63 n. 103--Prov 8:22-31, the same text Bacon appeals to in his article to support Jesus as agent of the Genesis Creation, is not talking about the New Creation, but the Old)

 

Anthony Buzzard is forced to abuse Bruce in an attempt to support his misreading of Bacon’s 1902 article and his eisegesis of Heb 1:10-12 to defend his anti-biblical Christology, one that rejects the personal pre-existence of Jesus.