Hebrews 5:11–14

Hebrews 5:11 — "About him we have many words to say, and hard to interpret, seeing you have become dull of hearing."

The Greek word translated "dull" is nōthroi (νωθροί), meaning sluggish, lazy, or torpid — the same word used in Hebrews 6:12 to warn against spiritual sloth. Critically, the author does not say that the subject matter is hard; he says it has become hard for them — a distinction that shifts responsibility squarely onto the readers. The phrase "about him" refers to the high-priestly identity of Christ after the order of Melchizedek, introduced in 5:6 and 5:10, a theme the author is anxious to develop but finds blocked by the audience's diminished receptivity. The difficulty is not intrinsic to the Word but extrinsic — a problem of spiritual hearing, not of content. This mirrors the prophetic complaint in Isaiah (6:9–10) and Christ's own lament over hardened ears (Matthew 13:15), situating this community within a long biblical pattern of hearing without perceiving.

Hebrews 5:12 — "For although by this time you should be teachers… you again need to have someone teach you the rudiments."

The phrase "by this time" (dia ton chronon, διὰ τὸν χρόνον) underscores the dimension of elapsed time: this is a community with sufficient years in the faith to have reached catechetical and apostolic maturity. The "rudiments of the first principles" (ta stoicheia tēs archēs, τὰ στοιχεῖα τῆς ἀρχῆς) denotes the ABCs of Christian doctrine — likely the foundational teachings enumerated in Hebrews 6:1–2: repentance, faith, baptismal instruction, laying on of hands, resurrection, and judgment. The stunning reversal is signaled by the word "again" (palin): they have not merely stalled but regressed, sliding back to an earlier stage of formation. The metaphor of milk versus solid food (gala vs. brōma stereon) was a common pedagogical image in Greco-Roman philosophical instruction (Epictetus, Philo), but the author invests it with specifically theological weight. Milk here is not condemned — it is appropriate and necessary for infants — but it becomes a symbol of failure when it remains the only diet of those who should have long since moved beyond it.

Hebrews 5:13 — "For everyone who lives on milk is not experienced in the word of righteousness, for he is a baby."

The word "experienced" (apeiros, ἄπειρος) means inexperienced or untested — someone who has never been exercised or trained. The "word of righteousness" (logos dikaiosynēs) is a rich phrase that likely refers not simply to moral instruction but to the full proclamation of God's justifying work in Christ — the mature kerygma in its doctrinal depth, including the priestly and sacrificial teaching that the author is straining to deliver. To remain a spiritual infant (nēpios) is, in the Pauline and Hebraic tradition, to be vulnerable, unstable, and easily led astray (cf. Ephesians 4:14 — "tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine").

Hebrews 5:14 — "But solid food is for those who are full grown, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil."

"Full grown" (teleiōn, τελείων) shares a root with the Greek word for perfection or completion, a governing theme in Hebrews (cf. 2:10; 5:9; 7:19; 10:14; 12:23). It does not mean sinlessness but mature, integrated discipleship. The phrase "by reason of use" (dia tēn hexin, διὰ τὴν ἕξιν) implies habitual practice — the Greek hexis is the equivalent of Aristotle's concept of a formed moral habit (habitus in scholastic Latin). The faculty being trained is the moral and spiritual faculty of discernment — the ability "to discern good and evil," an echo of the wisdom literature and of the Edenic tree of knowledge, suggesting that genuine spiritual maturity restores something of the ordered discernment lost at the Fall. Typologically, the passage moves from the wilderness-wandering of an infant Israel, fed on manna, to the settled inheritance of a people mature enough to "eat the food of the land" (Joshua 5:12).

Catholic tradition has found in this passage a rich theology of spiritual and doctrinal formation. Origen, one of the earliest commentators on Hebrews, distinguished between the psychikoi (those who receive only the surface sense of Scripture) and the pneumatikoi (those who penetrate to its spiritual depths) — a distinction that maps directly onto the milk/solid food contrast here. Origen's threefold sense of Scripture (literal, moral, allegorical) is itself a pedagogical program for moving from milk to meat.

St. Thomas Aquinas, drawing on this passage in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 1, a. 7), links the "solid food" of mature faith to the intellectus fidei — the deeper understanding of revealed truth that flows not from new revelation but from deeper penetration of what has already been given. The Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes this: "The faith seeks understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum), and growth in this understanding is both a right and a duty of the baptized (CCC 158).

The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§25) calls all the faithful to "frequent reading of the divine Scriptures," adding that "ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ" (quoting St. Jerome). This directly responds to the Hebrews diagnosis: a Church whose members cannot move beyond elementary catechesis is a Church that has failed to appropriate the gift of the Word.

The concept of habitus in verse 14 resonates profoundly with Aquinas's theology of the virtues (ST I-II, q. 49–54): mature discernment is not an act but a habit — a second nature formed by repeated, grace-assisted practice. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§73), specifically invokes spiritual maturity as essential for missionary discipleship, warning against a superficial Christianity unable to withstand the challenges of secular culture — precisely the community Hebrews addresses.

This passage confronts the contemporary Catholic with an uncomfortable question: After all these years, have I grown? Many Catholics receive their last serious religious formation at Confirmation in adolescence and never return to systematic engagement with Scripture, theology, or the Church's living Tradition. The result is a faith that remains permanently on milk — sincere, but fragile and underdeveloped.

Concretely, this passage is a call to pursue what the Church calls mystagogy — ongoing, deepening initiation into the mysteries of the faith. This might mean reading the Catechism seriously for the first time, engaging a parish Bible study, taking up the Church Fathers, or sitting with the Sunday readings contemplatively rather than passively. It is also a challenge to Catholic parents, catechists, and clergy: the formation we offer others must move people toward teleiōsis, wholeness, not merely keep them compliant.

The "discernment of good and evil" in verse 14 speaks urgently to an age of information overload and moral relativism. A mature Catholic faith is not mere rule-following but a trained spiritual perception — the kind of formed conscience that can navigate novel ethical terrain, media manipulation, and ideological pressure with clarity and charity. That discernment is a muscle; it must be exercised.