"But this Christ or Redeemer took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, that is, human nature, that in the nature which sinned he might make the expiation required"
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Clarke’s sentence is doing surgical work on a theological pressure point: if redemption is meant to be morally intelligible, it has to be anatomically specific. “Took not upon him the nature of angels” isn’t decorative piety; it draws a hard boundary around the scope of salvation. Angels don’t supply the raw material of the human problem. They haven’t inherited the same vulnerability, appetite, mortality, or historical entanglement. So a Redeemer who shows up as something cleaner, higher, less embodied would be a category error.
The phrase “seed of Abraham” narrows the claim even further. Clarke anchors salvation not in a floating, generic “humanity,” but in a lineage, a covenant story, a people shaped by law, failure, promise, and identity. It’s incarnation as legal argument: God doesn’t solve sin by bypassing the courtroom; he enters it, under the same statutes and consequences. The blunt clause “in the nature which sinned” is the hinge. Expiation isn’t merely a display of divine power; it’s a kind of representative repair. The subtext is anti-escapist: the fix must occur inside the cracked vessel, not by replacing it with an angelic alternative.
Contextually, Clarke’s Methodist-era rational piety comes through. He wants atonement to feel coherent, not mystical handwaving. The sentence reads like a rebuttal to any spirituality that treats the body and history as inconveniences. Clarke insists they are the whole point.
The phrase “seed of Abraham” narrows the claim even further. Clarke anchors salvation not in a floating, generic “humanity,” but in a lineage, a covenant story, a people shaped by law, failure, promise, and identity. It’s incarnation as legal argument: God doesn’t solve sin by bypassing the courtroom; he enters it, under the same statutes and consequences. The blunt clause “in the nature which sinned” is the hinge. Expiation isn’t merely a display of divine power; it’s a kind of representative repair. The subtext is anti-escapist: the fix must occur inside the cracked vessel, not by replacing it with an angelic alternative.
Contextually, Clarke’s Methodist-era rational piety comes through. He wants atonement to feel coherent, not mystical handwaving. The sentence reads like a rebuttal to any spirituality that treats the body and history as inconveniences. Clarke insists they are the whole point.
Quote Details
| Topic | Bible |
|---|---|
| Source | Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible — note on Hebrews 2:16 (Adam Clarke's Commentary). |
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