Hebrews
+ NewThe Deity of Christ — Hebrews 1:1-4
Heb 1:1-4 opens with the Son as "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature," who "upholds the universe by the word of his power." The Son is not a creature but the eternal heir of all things. Athanasius marshalled this text against any subordination of the Son, and Nicaea confessed him 'true God from true God'. The catena of Old Testament quotations that follows in Hebrews 1 applies divine titles directly to Christ. The creative agency of 1:2-3 matches the Logos of John 1:3 and the cosmic Christ of Col 1:16-17. Aquinas treats the Son's consubstantial glory as the basis of his priestly mediation, which Hebrews will develop in chapter 9.
Christ Our High Priest — Hebrews 9
Heb 9:11-14 presents Christ entering "the greater and more perfect tent... by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption." The earthly tabernacle was a copy; Christ ministers in the true sanctuary. Aquinas read Christ's priesthood as the perfect fulfillment of the Levitical types, and Owen built his entire theology of the atonement on Hebrews' priestly logic. The once-for-all sacrifice of 9:26 ends the cycle of repeated offerings. The chapter is a sustained meditation on the Day of Atonement in Lev 16:14-15, and its new-covenant frame fulfills Jer 31:31. The blood that inaugurates the new covenant reappears at the Lord's Supper in 1Cor 11:25.
The Eternal Generation of the Son — John 5:26
John 5:26 is a key text for eternal generation: "as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself." The Son's life is the Father's own life, eternally communicated. Nicaea confessed the Son 'begotten, not made,' eternally from the Father, and Augustine guarded this against any temporal subordination. Aquinas treated generation as an eternal act of the divine intellect. The mutual life of Father and Son connects to the Logos who was with God in John 1:1 and to the radiance of God's glory in Heb 1:3. Generation is eternal, not an event within time.
The Day of Atonement — Leviticus 16
Lev 16:14-22 prescribes the Day of Atonement: blood sprinkled on the mercy seat, and a second goat sent into the wilderness bearing the people's iniquities. Propitiation and removal of sin are enacted in one rite. Aquinas read the two goats as together prefiguring Christ's one sacrifice, and Owen drew on this chapter for the nature of substitution. The mercy seat (kapporet) is the meeting place of holiness and mercy. Hebrews makes this the controlling type for Christ's priesthood in Heb 9:11-14, and Paul calls Christ the hilasterion — the mercy seat — in Rom 3:25. The scapegoat's burden anticipates the Servant of Isa 53:6.