Relapsing Without Rejecting? Cultic Attraction and the Purpose of Hebrews: A Response to Madison N. Pierce

Why was Hebrews written? Madison Pierce has argued that the traditional ‘relapse theory’—that the author warns his audience against returning to Judaism—rests on anachronistic assumptions and a supersessionist reading of Jewish ritual, and that Hebrews’ concern is instead malaise and a failure to persevere. This article accepts much of her critique yet resists her conclusion. Examined closely, the scholarship she labels ‘strong’ holds no single evaluation of the Levitical cult, and her category of ‘weaker’ readings excludes a qualified relapse position that recent German scholarship sustains. Hebrews’ sustained cultic argument, moreover, points to a more specific crisis than weariness: an unresolved consciousness of sin (συνείδησις) that the earthly cult genuinely but provisionally addressed. Hebrews warns not against Judaism itself but against seeking definitive purgation in the earthly cult rather than in Christ’s heavenly ministry. The danger is failure to advance, not relapse into Judaism.