False convert
Other interpreters have sought to
address the impossibility of repentance in Hebrews 6 by stating that those who
fall away were not true Christians to begin with and so cannot return to
repentance. Philip Hughes, for example, says: ‘the whole issue of this passage
may be said to revolve around the question whether the internal reality, to which
the external rite [of baptism] is designed to testify, is truly present or not.’
Accordingly, if a person truly apostatizes, then they must not have been truly
regenerate to begin with and so cannot repent.
However, this ‘false convert’
interpretation, as it might be called, also has several problems. For one
thing, it is not clear why, if an unregenerate person repented falsely before,
it becomes impossible for him or her to return to Christ and repent truly
afterwards.
. . .
In addition, it is important to
note how the language of the passage focuses on the impossibility of a person
being restored ‘again’ to repentance (6:6). In itself, this word ‘again’
implies that the second repentance under consideration in these verses (which
the passage says is impossible) is actually of the same essential nature as the
first repentance that the people in the passage had already experienced before.
As Nicle puts it, the people being discussed in these verses had a first experience
of repentance ‘which it would be essential to renew’ if they were to be saved. After
all, ‘if the repentance that these apostates had experienced were not truly
godly sorrow . . . it is hard to see why it would be desirable to renew it’
anyway. In principle, then, the issue at hand in the passage does not seem to
lie in the deficiency of the first repentance as such (otherwise, why try to be
renewed to it anyway?), but in the fact that, though the first repentance had great
value and would in theory be desirable to repeat, it is nevertheless impossible
under the circumstances described for that to happen. In other words, the key
issue in these verses is not why repeating the same repentance as before is not
even worthwhile since it was a false repentance anyway, but why repeating the
same repentance as before, though desirable in theory, is still said to be
impossible to do.
In addition, this critical
weakness in the false-convert interpretation suggests that the problematic of
Hebrews 6:4-6 are not adequately articulated through a controlling interpretive
interest in theological topics such as divine election, inward regeneration,
and true or false conversion, with which many scholars have been preoccupied.
As important as those topics are in some biblical texts, it seems apparent that
other interpretive categories need to be primary when reading this passage,
given the details of its wording. More specifically, it is crucial for any interpretation
of this passage to explain how a change in situation could come about for some
people, from an original situation in which a repentance was experienced that
was good and desirable in itself, to a new situation in which repentance of the
same basic kind, while in theory still desirable, is also no longer possible or
savingly efficacious. (Marcus A. Mininger, Impossible to be Restored?
Temptation and Warning in the Epistle of Hebrews [New Studies in Biblical
Theology 64; London: Apollos, 2025], 42-43, italics in original)
