The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Though many of Cardinal Vanhoye’s books have been translated from French into English, this volume is the first to provide translations of some of his most significant essays, which have been collected from across the span of his lengthy career. The collection begins with an introduction by the editors, which not only establishes the significance of V.’s work but also situates it within a number of Councils and Commissions. Indeed, “Vanhoye’s primary achievement has been to align his central research interests with matters of great significance within the church” (p. 9).

The book is divided into three sections, and the first, “Priesthood and Sacrifice,” begins with a consideration of “Christ as High Priest in Hebrews 2.17–18.” Hebrews’ innovative priestly christology primarily was occasioned by the need to more explicitly express the mediatorial aspects of the Christ-event. In that priestly mediation, humanity and God are “perfectly joined to each other,” and their relationship is “firmly sealed forever” in Jesus’s “being” (p. 32). Structural issues are prominent in “The Place and Meaning of Hebrews 5.1–10,” while in “The teleiōsis of Christ: Chief Point of Hebrews’ Priestly Christology,” the result of Jesus’s τελείωσις (“making perfect,” not “perfection”) is located in “a profound transformation of the human being, which really does usher humanity into heavenly intimacy with God” (p. 69). The next three essays all focus on what V. considers the structural center of Hebrews, 9:1–14. In both “‘By the Greater and More Perfect Tent’ (Hebrews 9.11),” and “Earthly Sanctuary and Heavenly Sanctuary in the Letter to the Hebrews,” V. argues persuasively that the preposition διά in 9:12 should be construed instrumentally. Thus, the “greater and more perfect tent,” “by means of which” Jesus entered the heavenly sanctuary, is his resurrection body, which V. describes as “nothing other than human nature entirely shot-through and transformed by the Spirit of God” (p. 96). One might question, however, if Hebrews would use a term like σκηνή (“tent”), with its connotations of transience, to describe Jesus’s eternal resurrection body. In “Eternal Spirit and Sacrificial Fire in Hebrews 9.14,” the fire from heaven in Lev 9:25 illuminates the role of the “eternal Spirit” in Jesus’s “self” offering. The final essay in the first section, “Historical Recollection and Theological Creativity in the Letter to the Hebrews,” is perhaps the best in the collection. A “big picture” view of the author’s creative effort is provided, and the [End Page 538] essay abounds with the sort of insights that can be offered only by a scholar who has spent decades listening to this “word of exhortation.” The author’s priestly christology provides the best example of Hebrews’ creativity. That creativity, however, is rooted in “two recollections,” the OT cult and the Christ-event. The ancient Jewish conception of priesthood and cult is interwoven with the Christ-event, transforming Jesus’s death into “an act of priestly mediation.” Unlike the early church’s “royal-messianic” christology, this priestly christology is devoid of military-political dimensions, and instead more appropriately focuses attention on “the relationship between God and his people” (pp. 152–53).

The second section, “Thematic Studies,” begins with “The Law in the Letter to the Hebrews.” V. maintains that Hebrews’ critique of the law is all-encompassing, and not solely focused on cultic laws (cf. pp. 169, 176). Moreover, the replacement of the Mosaic law by “laws” divinely “written on the heart” (8:10; 10:16) not only involves an internal/external distinction but also may entail entirely different laws, “laws not yet known but that will be given” in an ongoing and relational manner by God (p. 174), and which, as 10:4–10 suggests, convey God’s “will” (pp. 177–78). In “The God of the New Covenant in the Letter to the Hebrews,” V. notes that...