Blessed Epiphanius said: Being a type of Christ, Melchizedek blessed the root of the Jews, Abraham. How much more does the Truth, Christ, bless and sanctify all who believe in Him. — Blessed Epiphanius
The saying of Blessed Epiphanius has three characters and one argument. Abraham is the root, Melchizedek is the type, Christ is the Truth. If the type blesses the root, how much more does the Archetype bless all that grows from it. This is the reasoning of the Epistle to the Hebrews: from the lesser to the greater.
The lesser is blessed by the greater. „Without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better” (Heb. 7:7). Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the most high God, brings out bread and wine and blesses Abraham (Gen. 14:18-20). A blessing cannot be given to oneself: whoever blesses himself becomes his own greater and his own lesser, which is to say, nothing. The philosophy of language has a name for this kind of word, the performative utterance (J. L. Austin), which does not describe a thing but does it. Scripture knew it from the beginning: eu-logia is the „good word” that does the good. Psychology confirms the thirst beneath it. Esau’s cry, „Bless me, even me also, O my father” (Gen. 27:34), is the cry of one who was never mirrored by an affirming gaze (Winnicott, Kohut). A blessing is not praise. Praise measures the deed; a blessing comes from a fullness that does not depend on the deed.
The shadow and the Truth. Melchizedek is „made like unto the Son of God” (Heb. 7:3). He is not the Son, but made like Him. The Law has „a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things” (Heb. 10:1), and its ordinances are „a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Col. 2:17). St. Cyprian sees in Melchizedek’s bread and wine the type of the Eucharist. Epiphanius speaks this word in his struggle with the Melchizedekians, who exalted Melchizedek above Christ (Panarion 55): the type turned against the Archetype. Plato describes the same error in the cave of shadows mistaken for things (Republic VII), but there man climbs alone toward the sun; here the Truth descends into the cave. Pilate asks „What is truth?” (John 18:38) while standing before Him, for the Truth is not a proposition but a Person (John 14:6). The same inversion works today on another scale. Psychology calls it idealization: the one who points to something is taken for what he points to. A spiritual father, a teacher, a therapist are types; they serve as long as they point beyond themselves.
The root and the branches. „If the root be holy, so are the branches” (Rom. 11:16). The Epistle to the Hebrews says that Levi, still in the loins of Abraham, paid tithes to Melchizedek (7:9-10): the whole people was blessed in the root. The same logic of solidarity stands behind the word „as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). And Christ blesses not only the root but also the grafted shoots, the wild olive: those „of faith” are the sons of Abraham, and the blessing of Abraham comes on the Gentiles in Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:7-9, 14). The boundary of the blessing is not blood but faith, that is, the consent to receive.
Sanctification, not only approval. The saying has two verbs: He blesses and He sanctifies. Humanistic psychology (Rogers) knows the first, unconditional acceptance. The Fathers know the second as well. The prodigal son is embraced before any accounting, but he is not left in rags: he receives the best robe, the ring and the shoes (Luke 15:20-22). „Sanctify them through thy truth… and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth” (John 17:17, 19). Blessing without sanctification is flattery; sanctification without blessing is moralism. And whoever remains thirsty for the blessing of men, for approval and an audience, has not yet received the greater one: „How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another?” (John 5:44). Vainglory, in Evagrius’s language, is a blessing begged from those who do not have it to give.
The last movement of Christ on earth is a blessing: „while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51). Melchizedek brought bread and wine; the Truth gives Himself, Body and Blood. Whoever receives Him no longer has to wander among shadows.
