What is the Chierographon, the Handwritten Certificate of Debt?
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WHAT IS THE “CHEIROGRAPHON,” THE HANDWRITTEN RECORD OF DEBT? “Most commentators interpret the ‘cheirographon’ either as the ‘certificate of indebtedness’ resulting from our transgressions or a ‘book containing the record of sin’ used for the condemnation of mankind. Both renderings, which are substantially similar, can be supported from rabbinic and apocalyptic literature. ‘In Judaism,’ as stated by E. Lohse, ‘the relationship between man and God was often described as that between a debtor and his creditor.’ For example a Rabbi said, ‘When a man sins, God writes down the debt of death. If a man repents, the debt is canceled (i.e. declared invalid). If he does not repent, what is recorded remains genuine (valid).’ In the Apocalypse of Elijah is found the description of an angel holding a book, explicitly called a cheirographon, in which the sins of the seer are recorded. On the basis of these and similar examples, it is quite obvious that the cheirographon is either a ‘certificate of indebtedness’ or the ‘recordbook of sins’ but not the law of Moses, since the latter, as is wisely pointed out by Weiss, ‘not a record book of sins’ “What Paul then is saying by this daring metaphor is that God has ‘wiped out,’ ‘removed,’ and ‘nailed to the cross’ through the body of Christ (which in a sense represents mankind’s guilt), the cheirographon, the instrument for the remembrance of sin...[W]hat God destroyed on the cross was not the legal ground (law) for our entanglement into sin, but the written record of our sins. By destroying the record of sins, God removed the possibility of a charge ever being made against those who have been forgiven.” Samuele |
