Hebrews 7:3Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Why, then, is he without father, without mother? Why does he have neither beginning of days nor end of life? Why? Because Scripture makes no mention of this.

What does this mean? As he is without father because there is no genealogy for him, so Christ is such in reality. Here the beginninglessness and endlessness of the Son is disclosed.

As we do not know the beginning of days or end of life of Melchizedek because it is not written, so we do not know this concerning Jesus. Yet with Him it is not because it is unwritten, but because He truly has neither.

The first is a type, and therefore it is merely not written of him. The latter is the truth, and therefore He truly has neither.

As with the names, the first has only the title king of righteousness and king of peace, while the latter has the reality itself. So here also, the first has only the titles, but the latter has the reality.

How then is it said of the Son that He has a beginning? Here the Son is called without beginning, not in the sense that He has no cause. That is impossible, for He has the Father. Otherwise how would He be Son?

Rather, He has no beginning or end of His being. Made like the Son of God. In what does this likeness consist? In this: we know neither the beginning nor the end of either.

But of the first we do not know because it is not written. Of the second we do not know because He does not have them. This is the likeness.

If they were alike in everything, then one would not be the type and the other the truth. Both would be types. The same may be seen in pictures.

There is in them a certain likeness, and also unlikeness. In a simple outline there is a certain likeness of form. But when colors are applied, the difference is clearly revealed. There is likeness and unlikeness.

Nor can the mind grasp the Mother who bore Him on earth, properly speaking, the manner of His birth. That is, it cannot grasp how the Virgin gave birth without travail, and the like.

Therefore Christ is in reality without father and without mother. Melchizedek is without father and without mother not in reality, for that is impossible, but in the sense that Scripture does not mention his parents.

Therefore the expression "without genealogy" serves as an explanation of the other expression, "without father and without mother." The Apostle is saying, as it were: I said of Melchizedek that he is without father and mother because Scripture has no genealogy for him and does not mention his lineage.

"Having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever." Understand this in the same sense as what was said before.

As a man, Melchizedek certainly had both a beginning of days and an end of life. But since we know neither when he was born nor when he died, in our understanding he is as though he has neither beginning nor end.

Christ, however, as God, truly has no beginning, for He is without beginning in relation to the beginning of time, although He has the Father as His beginning, as cause. Nor does He have an end, for He is immortal. In a word, He is eternal.

Where, then, are the Arians? Let them hear that the Son has no beginning. Paul resolves this question for us in this sense.

If anything troubles us, it is this: how is Christ a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, when Melchizedek died and was not a priest forever?

We shall resolve this difficulty by saying that Christ, as eternal and immortal, is truly Priest forever. For even now, we believe, He offers Himself for us each time through His priests.

He does this especially as Mediator for us before the Father. At that time He accomplishes for us the highest and most mystical sacred rite, offering Himself to us in bread and drink in a wondrous manner beyond all understanding.

It is said of Melchizedek that he has an eternal priesthood, not because he is eternal, for he died. Rather, Scripture does not indicate his end, from which we could know when his priesthood ceased.

With the first, the names are only titles: Melchizedek, that is, king of righteousness, and king of Salem, king of peace. But with Christ there is the reality itself.

So also the phrase "having neither beginning of days nor end of life" applies to the first Melchizedek only because it is not recorded, for he was a type. It applies to Christ in reality.

If the likeness were in every respect, then there would be no type and truth. Either both would be type, or both would be truth.

Do we not see this also in paintings? There too a simple outline already has likeness in comparison with a finished painting, since the characteristic features are faintly represented by lines.

Yet it also has unlikeness, since the painting, through colors, has received a more distinct and clearer appearance.

I greatly marvel, beloved, that reverence for the divine Abraham turned them aside from striving for what is useful and fitting, and removed them from arguments necessary for seeking the truth.

Presenting Melchizedek as a likeness and image of Emmanuel, they do not look at the quality of the matters, nor do they examine the form of the priesthood. Instead, they investigate the nature of the persons to whom this office belongs.

Anyone may justly object to them: what prevents Abraham from receiving the blessing from Melchizedek, even as from a man, though the latter is not presented as superior to him?

For it is not the nature of each of them that is examined, but the meaning of their actions. The words of truth are shown to be higher than the riddles contained in the shadows.

That it would be quite senseless not to set what is signified against the shadows, but rather to investigate the nature of the persons involved, can be seen from the following.

Aaron was the chosen president and leader of the holy tabernacle, crowned with the highest honors of the priesthood. But how was he consecrated? A ram was slain, and the tip of his right ear, his hands, and his feet were anointed with its blood.

Thus he was consecrated to the priesthood. If it is good to dwell on the nature of those who sanctify and those who are sanctified, I would say to these people: is it not better to pass from the image and shadow to the beauty of the truth?

This concerns how the lesser is blessed by the greater. What is greater here? Let them say. Shall we then place Aaron below a ram? A rational being is consecrated by an irrational animal.

We may say that the man chosen for priesthood is sanctified by sheep's blood. The ashes of a heifer, when sprinkled upon those who partake of them, sanctify them unto purity of the flesh.

What then does all this mean? What is the depth of this meaning? All these actions were types and images, and, so to speak, a prior indication of sanctification in Christ.

The type is discerned in the actions, not in the nature of those who sanctify or are sanctified. For, as I recently said, the greater is blessed by the lesser, if the nature of man is higher than the nature of a heifer and a ram.

Therefore let them not be ashamed that Abraham, who is much higher than Melchizedek, is blessed by him, as it is said. The type was victorious, not the nature of the one who blessed.

I also marvel that, while they present him as a likeness and image of the Son, they nevertheless consider him an angel because he has neither mother nor father. Yet Christ in a certain manner had both Father and Mother.

He had a Mother on earth, the Holy Virgin. He also had, and has, a Father in heaven, God. But I think images must be drawn according to their prototypes.

Since the divine Paul said of Melchizedek that he has neither beginning of days nor end of life, they strain to affirm and say that he is an intelligent power and a sacred minister.

They do not understand that they overlook what is necessary: nothing created can be without beginning in time. Whatever has been brought into being has a beginning both of life and of days.

What, then, was the purpose of blessed Paul's discourse? Or how does he present Melchizedek as an image and likeness of Christ? Let us therefore remove the mind from this foolishness of thoughts, consider the matter now, and say what is possible.

Nowhere did Sacred Scripture indicate that he was without father or without mother, without genealogy, or without beginning of days or end of life. What then, someone may perhaps say? Did the divine Paul deceive us?

We do not say this. May it not be! He speaks the truth. Even more, as a skillful initiator into mysteries, he receives the narrative about this matter as arranged by the divine economy, and raises it to the type of Emmanuel's glory.

God-inspired Scripture declared to us only that Melchizedek was a priest. It did not name his family, nor from what father or mother he came.

Nor do we find any account of the number of years to which he lived, or what succession of priesthood he is shown to have had.

Thus the narrative about him portrays for us, as it were, the eternity and beginninglessness of Christ, insofar as He is considered as God. By beginninglessness I mean with respect to quantity, that is, in time, for He Himself is the Maker of the ages.

It also points to the uninterrupted continuity of His priesthood. Therefore blessed Paul says of Melchizedek that "having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever."

Above all and before all, observe what has been said, and you will not err in the lofty and lowly names. Jesus Christ is yesterday and today bodily, the same spiritually and unto the ages of ages (Heb 13:8). Amen.

The letter gives way, the spirit prevails. The shadows pass away, and truth takes their place. Melchizedek comes. He Who is born without mother is born without father. First without mother, then without father. The laws of nature are broken. The world above must be filled.

From this the Apostle concludes that from the priesthood of the Church of the uncircumcised, blessing came upon the priesthood of the synagogue of the circumcised.

As for the words of Scripture, You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek (Ps 109:4; Heb 7:17), the mystery of our faith is signified and foretold by the word order.

This order is kept not through Aaron's whole burnt offerings of irrational victims, but through the offering of bread and wine, that is, the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus.

We have received that Melchizedek as a priest of God and type of Christ. But he is only the type, while This One is in truth, for the type is a shadow of the truth.

That one is king by the name of the city of Jerusalem. This One is King in the reconciliation of the whole world, for it is written: God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor 5:19).

In this His eternal divine nature is proclaimed. For since the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, the unity of Their essence and operation is not denied.

But the Master Christ possesses each of these properties by nature and in very reality. He is without mother as God, because He was begotten of the Father alone. He is without father as man, because He was born of the Mother alone, that is, the Virgin.

He is without genealogy as God, for He has no need of genealogy, since He was begotten of the unbegotten Father. He had no beginning of days, because His birth is eternal. He has no end of life, because His nature is immortal.

For this reason the Apostle did not liken the Master Christ to Melchizedek, but Melchizedek to Christ. Melchizedek is the image of Christ, and Christ is the truth of the image.

Yet in the priesthood it was not Melchizedek who was likened to the Master Christ. Rather, the Master Christ is a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. It belongs to man to serve as priest, and to God to receive what is offered.

Yet the Only-begotten Son of God, having become man, became also our High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek. He did not receive a higher rank, but concealed the dignity of the Godhead and accepted abasement for our salvation.

Thus He is called the Lamb (Jn 1:29), sin (2 Cor 5:21), a curse (Gal 3:13), the way (Jn 14:6), the door (Jn 10:9), and very many other such names.

The Apostle said of Melchizedek that he remains a priest continually, because he did not hand the priesthood on to his children, as Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas did. Whoever hands this lot to another seems to be deprived of rank, when another begins to possess its exercise.

But there is another meaning here. Just as by Moses we mean not only the lawgiver, but the law itself, so by Melchizedek we name both the person and the work, the priesthood. And the priesthood belongs to the Master Christ, Who has endless life.

He is without father according to His humanity, for as man He was born of one Mother only. He is without mother as God, for He was begotten of the one eternal Father only. He is without genealogy, again as God, but as man He has a genealogy.

The Evangelist says, The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Mt 1:1). The divine Luke also indicates His genealogy (Lk 3:23ff.).

In the same way, as God, He has neither beginning of days, for He was born before the ages, nor end of life, for He has an immortal and impassible nature.

But as man He had a beginning of days, for He was born under Caesar Augustus. He also had an end of life, for He was crucified under Caesar Tiberius.

The saying that he has "neither beginning of days nor end of life" bears witness to knowledge that circumscribes the properties of all time and eternity. It also bears witness to contemplation that surpasses the being of every material and immaterial essence.

The words, "being made like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever," perhaps indicate the steadfastness of a most Godlike virtue. They also indicate a divine attention toward God, able to preserve the noetic eye from closing.

For it belongs to virtue to stand against nature. It belongs to true contemplation to stand against time and age. Thus the first remains enslaved to nothing that comes after God, and is held by nothing, since it knows God alone as its Parent.

The second remains uncircumscribed. It is detained by nothing that has a beginning and an end, since it images God, Who is the limit of every beginning and end. By an ineffable rapture He draws to Himself every intellect of those who understand.

From these, I mean from knowledge and virtue, the divine likeness is manifested. Through them the unshaken love for God alone is preserved in those who are worthy. Because of this love, the dignity of sonship, bestowed in a manner befitting God, is granted to them.

This dignity is to intercede without ceasing before God and to stand before Him. The divine likeness itself, which intercedes for them, is granted for supplication.

Therefore, as I rightly suppose, he should not be named according to time and nature. According to these the great Melchizedek naturally ended his life, but he had already surpassed them and left them behind through life and reason.

Rather, as the word of God has determined for him, he should be named according to that by which he rationally transformed himself, I mean according to virtue and knowledge.

For those whose will, γνώμη, has valiantly overcome through virtue the law of nature, which is exceedingly hard to overcome, and whose movement of mind through knowledge flies undefiled above the properties of time and age, are rightly named not by the traits of what they have left behind.

They are named rather by the magnificence of what they have received, by which and in which alone they exist and are known.

For we too, when we naturally attend to visible things, know and name them from the colors of their bodies. For example, we call illuminated air light, matter ignited by fire fire, a whitened body white, and other things in the same way.

If, then, divine Melchizedek consciously preferred virtue to nature and to all that is according to nature, because of the good choice of the dignity present in us, and surpassed every time and age through knowledge, what follows?

By contemplation he consciously left behind everything that comes after God, being detained by none of the things whose end is perceived. Through the Word, by grace, in the Spirit, he arrived at the divine, beginningless, and immortal realities of God.

He truly bears within himself unharmed the likeness of the God Who begot him. For, in general, it is proper to every birth to make what is born the same as the one who begot it. "That which is born of the flesh," He says, "is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (Jn 3:6-7).

Therefore it is fitting that natural and temporal qualities, such as father, mother, genealogy, beginning and end of days, should not possess him. He had already been completely freed from them.

Rather, he should be named according to the divine and blessed marks, after whose image he transformed himself. Neither time, nature, word, intellect, nor anything else attains them. In general, nothing among existing things attains them.

The great Melchizedek is depicted as "without father and without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life." The true word of the God-bearing men about him has clarified this for us.

This is not according to created nature, which came from non-being, by which he both began to be and came to an end. It is according to divine and uncreated grace, which exists eternally above every nature and every time, and proceeds from the eternally existing God.

According to this grace alone he is wholly known as one who consciously has been born.

Scripture likely presents him as the only one of this sort because he was the first to become, by virtue, above matter and form. This may be shown by the words "without father and without mother, and without genealogy."

By knowledge he passed beyond everything under time and age, and everything whose being began in time from creation and is not foreign to the category of temporal being. He did not stumble in any way on the divine path accomplished by thought.

This is perhaps what is meant by "having neither beginning of days nor end of life." He clothed himself in God Himself in a singular, hidden, quiet, and, in a word, unknowable manner, with every abstraction of the mind from beings.

He was wholly qualified and transformed in quality by the whole God. This may be understood by the words, "being made like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever."

For each of the saints is named an image of God, Who gave him whatever good he especially chose. In this sense, this great Melchizedek, through the divine virtue he acquired, was counted worthy to be an image of Christ God and of His ineffable mysteries.

To Christ all the saints are raised together, as to the Archetype and Cause of the manifestation of every good in each of them. This is especially true of Melchizedek, since more than all the others he bears in himself the first outlines of Christ.

The interpretation applies to the Lord what is said of Melchizedek. For only our one Lord and God, Jesus Christ, is by nature and truth "without father," "without mother," and "without genealogy," and has "neither beginning of days nor end of life."

He is "without mother" according to His immaterial, bodiless, and wholly unknowable, heavenly, pre-eternal birth from the Father. He is "without father" according to His earthly and temporal birth in the flesh from His Mother, whose manner cannot be determined by conception through seed.

He is "without genealogy" because the manner of both His births is inaccessible and incomprehensible to all. He has "neither beginning of days nor end of life" because He is without beginning and without end, and wholly incomprehensible as God by nature.

He "remains a priest forever" because He is not made to cease by any death of malice or nature, since He is God and the giver of every life, by nature and by virtue.

Do not think that anyone is deprived of this grace because the word of God says of the great Melchizedek alone that he possesses it. God has equally implanted in all, by nature, the power, δύναμις, for salvation.

Thus everyone who wishes can make divine grace his own. Nothing prevents the one who wishes from becoming Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, and, in general, from transferring all the saints into himself.

This is not by a change of names and places, but by imitation of the modes of their virtues and way of life.

XXVII (V, 23). Another contemplation concerning Melchizedek.

Therefore everyone who has "put to death the members that are upon the earth" (Col 3:5), and has extinguished all his "mind of the flesh" (Rom 8:6), and has completely cast off every bond with it, by which the love owed to God alone is divided among many objects, has become like the great Melchizedek.

He has renounced all fleshly and worldly marks for the sake of divine grace, so that he can say with the blessed Apostle Paul, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (Rom 8:35), and what follows.

Such a man has become without father, without mother, and without genealogy, like the great Melchizedek. He is no longer held under the authority of flesh and nature, because of the union with the Spirit of God that has come to him.

Melchizedek is a type through the silence of history about his origin and death. Christ is truly without beginning and without end in His very being.

Indeed, Christ has no father according to His earthly birth, for He was born of the Virgin. According to His pre-eternal and higher being, He has no mother. First of all He is without mother, says Gregory the Theologian, and afterward without father.

But being made like the Son of God, he remains a priest continually. He was made like Him in being without lineage, without beginning, and immortal.

Yet while he is like Him in this, he is not like Him in his essence. Such is the property of a type: in one respect it is like that of which it is a type, and in another it is unlike.

He remains a priest forever because of the silence concerning his death. He is considered not to have died only in this sense.

Nor do we know whether anything said about other priests under the law applies to him at all.

It is said of Melchizedek that, being made like the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. How, then, does Melchizedek remain a priest? This is the question, and the answer is as follows.

As the Apostle sometimes calls the law Moses, so here he calls now the man simply Melchizedek, and now the priesthood itself. Therefore, if Melchizedek is made like the Son of God through the priesthood in Christ, he remains forever, not as a mortal man, but as a worthy pattern of priesthood.

Those also are wrong who regarded him now as Enoch, now as Shem, whose genealogies are known to us, or as an angel. Melchizedek was a king and priest.

What matters is that Melchizedek is the first in Holy Scripture to be called a priest, and specifically a priest of God Most High. He appears as one who received the priesthood from God Himself.

Before Melchizedek the Bible does not mention priests. After him they do not appear soon among the Egyptians, Midianites, and other peoples. The priesthood under the law, established by God, comes still later.

It is surely by virtue of Melchizedek's priestly dignity that Abraham receives blessing from him and gives him a tithe of the spoils.

But he was made like the Son of God, that is, Melchizedek was. The promised Messiah was to appear on earth at the appointed time as the great High Priest, bringing down heavenly blessing upon men.

He was also to appear as King of the kingdom of virtue and righteousness, as author of peace, and as Son of God by nature.

Therefore God clothed one of the Canaanite kings of Salem, namely Melchizedek, with high priestly dignity. By his name, his royal rank, and his extraordinary high priesthood, which no one had before or after him, he prefigured all that would one day be revealed most perfectly in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He remains a priest continually, that is, Melchizedek does. But does he remain in his own person? No, he remains in the person of Jesus Christ, his prototype.

Melchizedek himself, of course, died long ago and served as high priest only during the brief span of his earthly life. But since his priesthood was to be transformed into the higher and more perfect priesthood of Jesus Christ, which is eternal, the Apostle said that Melchizedek, in Christ Jesus, remains a priest forever.