Bibliotheca
Sacra 130 (October, 1973) 305-314.
Copyright © 1973 by
The Blood of Jesus
and His
Heavenly Priesthood in
Hebrews
Part III: The
Meaning of "The True Tent" and
"The
Greater and More Perfect Tent"
Philip
Edgcumbe Hughes
THE TENT AS THE INCARNATE BODY OF CHRIST
A number of commentators have
interpreted these two expres-
sions as signifying the body
or humanity of Christ. Owen, for
example, expounds "the true tent" of
Hebrews 8:2 as meaning "the
human nature of the Lord Christ himself,"1
explaining that "he is the
only way and means of our approach unto God in holy
worship,
as the tabernacle was of old,"2
that "the human nature of Christ
is the only true tabernacle wherein God would
dwell personally and
substantially,'''3 and that
"we are to look for the gracious presence
of God in Christ only."4 Bengel is among those who are of a similar
mind. The rather long and involved sentence which
comprises He-
brews 9:11-12 may be paraphrased as follows:
After coming (to earth) as high
priest of the good things fulfilled by
his coming,
Christ achieved our eternal redemption and then entered
once and
for all into the sanctuary, through the greater and more
perfect
tent not made with hands, that is not of this creation, and
(he did so)
not through the blood of goats and bullocks but through
his own
blood.
EDITOR'S
NOTE: This is the third in a series of articles entitled "The
Blood
of Jesus and His Heavenly Priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews,"
which were the W. H. Griffith Thomas Memorial
Lectures given by Dr.
Philip
Edgcumbe Hughes at
1972.
1 John Owen, An Exposition to the Epistle to the Hebrews (
1869), VI, 18.
2 Ibid., VI, 19.
3 Ibid., VI, 21.
4 Ibid., VI, 23.
305
306 / Bibliotheca Sacra — October 1973
Chrysostom and some later patristic authors,
including Theodoret,
Primasius, and Ecumenius,
understood this "greater and more per-
fect tent" to denote
the body which the Son assumed in the incarna-
tion, and this understanding
has had distinguished advocates ever
since.
The justification for this
interpretation is sought in the symboli-
cal usage of the term "tent" (skhnh<) elsewhere in the New Testa-
ment. Christ Himself spoke
of His body as "this temple" (nao<j)
which He would raise up in three days (John 2:19-22;
cf. Mark 14:58;
1
5:29) — the allusion being primarily to His resurrection from the
dead, but also, more cryptically, to the impending
cessation of the
temple worship which was historically the successor of
the tent wor-
ship in the wilderness and functionally synonymous
with it. John
describes the incarnation of the Word as the
"pitching of his tent"
(e]skh<nwsen) in our midst (John
1:14). Paul calls our present mortal
body "our earthly tent dwelling" (h[
e]pi<geioj h[mw?n oi]ki<a tou?
skh<nouj)
and also quite simply "the tent" (to<
skh?noj) (2 Cor. 5:1, 4).
Peter
uses the same metaphor when he refers to his
approaching death
as "the laying aside of his tent" (h[
a]po<qesij tou? skhnw<matoj
mou?) (2
Peter
1:13, 14). And, in a manner reminiscent of John 2:19 ff., Paul
writes of the body of the Christian as the temple or
sanctuary of
the Holy Spirit (nao<j) (1 Cor.
6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16).
On the basis of this symbolism,
then, "the true tent" of Hebrews
8:2
and "the greater and more perfect tent" of Hebrews 9:11 are
interpreted as a manner of speaking of the human
body by means
of which Christ accomplished our eternal
redemption, for it was
this body that enabled Him to function as our high
priest and in
particular to offer Himself in our place on the
cross. This "tent" can
be described as "true" or "greater
and more perfect" in comparison
with the tabernacle of old because of the eternal
perfection of the
atonement which has been procured through its
instrumentality. But
the fuller definition of Hebrews 9:11, namely, that
it is "not made
with hands, that is, not of this creation,"
raises some problems. For
while the qualification "not made with
hands" suggests a contrast
with the former tent which, though erected in
accordance with the
divine pattern, was a human construction from earthly
materials,
the explanation of this phrase as meaning "not
of this creation"
would appear to call in question the genuineness of
that humanity
supposedly designated as "the greater and more
perfect tent," and
therefore to render doubtful the reality of the
Son's identification of
Himself with mankind.
The "Tents" in
Hebrews / 307
Theophylact,
indeed, in the eleventh century, states that this
text was adduced by heretics as proof that Christ's
body was of a
docetic or ethereal character.5
Heretical conclusions of this kind
were customarily countered, however, by the
explanation that the
miracle of the virgin birth afforded adequate
justification for defin-
ing Christ's humanity as
being "not of this creation." It is the ex-
planation given, for example, by
Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth
century; and Cornelius a Lapide,
in the seventeenth century, gives
a good summary of this type of exegesis (without
himself ap-
proving it):
This is the greater tabernacle
because in it God the Word is and
dwells and
all the fulness of the Holy Spirit; it is more
perfect
because it
achieves greater things than did the old Mosaic taber-
nacle and sanctifies and saves those who enter into
it. This taber-
nacle is not made with hands, nor of this creation,
because the flesh
of Christ
was not conceived by the work of man but by virtue of
the Holy
Spirit.6
Turning
to the Protestant commentators, Owen does not specifically
mention the virgin birth, but his explanation of
"not of this creation"
is to the same effect: "Although the
substance of his human nature
was of the same kind with ours," he writes,
"yet the production
of it in the world was such an act of divine power
as excels all
other divine operations whatever. . . . in its constitution and pro-
duction it was an effect of the
divine power above the whole order
of this creation."7 Calvin
expounds the phrase more vaguely. While
admitting that the body of Christ "was
certainly created of the seed
of Abraham and subject to sufferings and
death," he maintains that
at this point the author "is not concerned
here with the material
body or its quality but with the spiritual power
which comes to
us from it."8 His exegesis of the
"tent" concept in terms of Christ's
body is, however, very plainly stated, as follows:
The word sanctuary is properly and
fittingly applied to the body
of Christ
because it is the temple in which the whole majesty of
God dwelt. He is said to have made
through His body a way to
ascend into
heaven because He consecrated Himself to God in that
5 Theophylact Expositio in Epistolam ad Hebraeos ix. 11.
6 Cornelius 'a Lapide, Commentarri in Scripturam Sacram (Lyons and
Paris,
1864)., IX, 949.
7 Owen, VI, 271.
8 John Calvin, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews
and the
First and Second
Epistles of St. Peter,
trans. by William B. Johnston. Calvin
Commentaries,
ed. by David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand
Rapids, 1963), XII, 120.
308 / Bibliotheca Sacra — October 1973
body: in it
He was sanctified to be true righteousness and in it He
prepared
Himself to make His sacrifice.... He has entered heaven
through His
own body because He now sits on the right hand of
the Father.
He intercedes for us in heaven because He has put
on our
flesh and consecrated it as a temple to God the Father and
has
sanctified Himself in it to make atonement for our sins and
gain for us
eternal righteousness.9
Owen
seems to be no less confident that this is the correct interpre-
tation, as the following
excerpts show:
This tabernacle, whereby he came a high priest,
was his own
human
nature. . . . Herein dwelt "the fulness of the
Godhead
bodily,"
Col. ii.9,--that is, substantially; represented by all the
pledges of
God's presence in the tabernacle of old. This was that
tabernacle
wherein the Son of God administered his sacerdotal
office in
this world, and wherein he continueth yet so to do in
his
intercession.
. . . The human nature of Christ, wherein he discharged
the duties
of his sacerdotal office in making atonement for sin, is
the
greatest, the most perfect and excellent ordinance of God; far
excelling
those that were most excellent under the old testament.10
There is, undoubtedly, much that is
attractive in this line of
interpretation. But, well suited
though it may be to teaching which
is found elsewhere in the New Testament, there are
reasons for
regarding it as exegetically inappropriate within
the present context
of the Epistle to the Hebrews. For one thing, in
the passages cited
in support of this interpretation the association
between the tent,
or the temple, and the body is clearly indicated;
but there is no such
indication in our epistle. For another, when Christ
speaks of raising
in three days a temple not made with hands
("he spoke of the temple
of
his body," as the evangelist explains in John 2:21), it is clear
that He intended the glorified body with which He
rose from the
dead (John 2:22); and likewise when Paul teaches
that, even though
his present earthly tent dwelling should be
dismantled in death,
the Christian has "a building from God, a
house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens," he too is
referring to that ultimate
transformation in which the believer
is invested with a glorified body
similar to that of the risen Jesus. Guided by
this understanding,
exegetical consistency would surely demand that
"the true tent"
and "the greater and more perfect tent"
should be explained as
referring (if indeed this is what our author
means) not to the body
assumed by Christ at
9 Ibid.
10 Owen, VI, 266, 267.
The "Tents" in Hebrews / 309
His
resurrection — not, of course, that there are two bodies, but
two different states of the same body: the one
humble, the other
exalted; the one earth-bound, the other
transcendental (as Paul
teaches in 1 Cor.
15:42 ff.).
THE TENT AS THE CHURCH
Another interpretation, which starts
virtually from the same
premise but follows a somewhat different course,
is that which makes
use of the Pauline identification of the church as
the body of
Christ
(Eph. 1:22 f.). Cornelius a Lapide, indeed, takes our
author
to be speaking of the church quite simply, without
any allusion
to the concept of the body of Christ. Thus he
writes on Hebrews 9:11:
I conclude that this tabernacle is
the
here on
earth, pilgrim and militant, which Christ himself founded,
of which he
said in ch. 8:2 that it is a tabernacle set up by the
Lord and not by man; for this is
identical with the description here,
"a
tabernacle not made with hands, not of this creation," in other
words, not
the product of human skill and fashioning, as was the
first
tabernacle fashioned by Bezaleel. For the tabernacle
fittingly
represents
the Church ... in which Christ in dying on the cross
offered
himself to the Father, as a victim for the sins of men; and
just as the
high priest used to go from and through the holy place
into the
holy of holies, so Christ (and we with Christ) passed from
his Church
militant here on earth to the Church heavenly and
triumphant.11
The
step of linking the concepts of "body" and "church" is delib-
erately taken by, Westcott,
whose search for "some spiritual antitype
to the local sanctuary"12 is
controlled by the prerequisites which
demand that it must both "represent the Presence
of God" and also
"offer a way of approach to God"13 —
requirements which he be-
lieves are met in the redeemed
and perfected humanity which is
the community of the church. He states:
Through this glorified Church
answering to the complete humanity
which
Christ assumed, God is made known, and in and through
this each
believer comes nigh to God. In this Body, as a spiritual
erally enjoy the Divine Presence. . . . It enables us
to connect re-
deemed
humanity with the glorified human Nature of the Lord,
and to
consider how it is that humanity, the summing-up of Crea-
tion, may become in Him the highest manifestation of
God to finite
11 Cornelius a Lapide, IX, 949.
12 Brook Foss Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews (
p. 259.
13 Ibid., p. 258.
310 / Bibliotheca Sacra — October 1973
being, and
in its fulness that through which each part is
brought
near to
God.14
But this interpretation, too, has
its problems. It is reached by
using one metaphor (the tent for the body) as the
basis for another
metaphor (the body for the church), with the
consequence that the
exegesis has a distinctly mystical quality. It
reflects, moreover, a
characteristic tendency of Westcott's
thought in accordance with
which Christ is regarded, evolutionistically,
as Consummator Mundi,
the one in whom the whole unfolding process
achieves its culmina-
tion--hardly the perspective
of the writer of Hebrews! And in any
case it is difficult to see what sense there could
be in saying, as
according to Westcott's understanding we must
suppose the author
of our epistle to be saying, that "through
the greater and more per-
fect tent," that is His
body understood as signifying the church,
Christ
entered once for all into the sanctuary; for, however rightly
Christ
may be said to work or minister through the church, there
is no way in which one can speak of His having
entered into the
heavenly sanctuary through the church; the church
is not the means
of his entry into the heavenly sanctuary, but, to
the contrary, He
is the means of the church's entry, and it is
precisely on the ground
that we have a great High Priest in the sanctuary
above that those
who constitute the church are invited confidently
to draw near to
the throne of grace through the new and living way
which He has
opened for us (4:14-16; 10:19-22).
The comparable opinion that the
sanctuary into which Christ
enters is the souls or hearts of God's people is open
to criticism
of the same order. This explanation is found as
early as the fourth
century in Ambrose (in his comments on 8:2) and
in Gregory of
Nazianzus (Ad
Julianum, alluding to 8:2). In our own day it has
received the approval of F. F. Bruce, who writes
as follows (on 9:11):
What then is the nature of the
spiritual temple in which God dwells?
When Stephen maintained that
"the Most High dwelleth not in
houses made
with hands," he confirmed his statement by quoting
Isa. 66:1 f. But in that
same prophetic context God declares that
in
preference to any material
and of a
contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word."
And this
means that
He prefers to make His dwelling with people of that
character,
as is shown by the similar words of Isa. 57:15:
"For thus
saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity, whose name
is Holy: I
dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that
is of a
contrite and humble spirit." Our author stands right in this
14 Ibid.,
p. 260.
The "Tents" in
Hebrews / 311
prophetic
tradition when he affirms that the people of God are
the house
of God: "whose house are we, if we hold fast our boldness
and the
glorying of our hope" (3:6).15
This,
however, unexceptionable though it may otherwise be theo-
logically, is still a questionable exegesis of the
passage in question.
The
affirmation of Hebrews 3:6 is not the same as the affirmation of
Hebrews
9:11; and, though the people of God are described as a
"house" (or "household"), they are not
anywhere called a "tent."
"The
thought of our author must be distinguished here from that of
the Fourth Evangelist and from that of Paul,"
writes Montefiore (on
8:5).
"For Paul the congregation of Christians formed the
of God (1 Cor. iii.16; 2
Cor. vi.16; Eph. ii.21). According to the
Fourth
Evangelist, Jesus when he prophesied that in three days he
would raise up the temple, was speaking ‘of the
temple of his body’
(John ii.21). But for our author,
heaven is to be identified with the
heavenly sanctuary, and Jesus entered it at his
ascension."16
As a matter of curiosity, it may be
mentioned that the sixteenth
century Roman Catholic scholar Catharinus attempted to explain
"the greater and more perfect tent" as a reference to
the Virgin
Mary,
through whom Christ appeared as our high priest in this
would. If this raises even more acutely the question
of the under-
standing of the definition "not of this
creation," no doubt the Roman
Catholic
apologist would propose that the answer is to be found in
the dogmas of the immaculate conception and the
assumption into
heaven of the Virgin Mary — but this in turn would
raise other
and more serious questions.
THE TENT AS A HEAVENLY TABERNACLE
Another view, which maintains a
close analogy between what
is said here about Christ and the action of the
high priest in the
wilderness tabernacle, supposes that as the high
priest of old passed
through the holy place into the holy of holies
so our High Priest is
envisaged as passing "through the greater and
more perfect tent"
(corresponding to the holy place) before "he entered
once for all
into the sanctuary" (corresponding to the holy
of holies). On this
interpretation, Christ at His
ascension passed through the outer
chamber of the heavens, that is, beyond this
earth where the altar
of the cross was situated, and entered into the
inner chamber of
15
F. F.
Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids,
1964), pp.
199-200.
16
Hugh Montefoire, A Commentary on the
Epistle to the Hebrews (Lon-
don, 1964), p. 137.
312 / Bibliotheca Sacra — October1973
God's
own presence. Thus over a century ago John Brown ex-
pounded Hebrews 9:1 l as follows:
Our Lord offered His sacrifice on
the earth, as the Jewish high
priests did
without the tabernacle; and having offered His sacrifice
on the
earth, He passed through the visible heavens, as they passed
through the
outer tabernacle, into the heaven of heavens, of which
the most
holy place was an emblem. He entered into the holy place
[by which
the writer evidently means the holy of holies] through
the visible
heavens, which are represented in the Old Testament
Scriptures as the tabernacle of
Jehovah His outer court, through-
out which
are scattered displays of grandeur and beauty worthy
of the
antechamber of the great King, the Lord of hosts, a taber-
nacle certainly greater, more magnificent, more
perfect, more highly
finished,
than the Mosaic tabernacle, with all its curious embroidery
and costly
ornaments, — a tabernacle formed immediately by the
hand of God,
who "in the beginning stretched out the heavens as
a
curtain."17
Among our contemporaries both Hering and Spicy propound a
similar interpretation. According to the former:
"The tabernacle is
presented here as the way, the sanctuary as the
destination. . . . He
passes through the holy place, identified as heaven,
in order to enter
into the holy of holies."18 And
according to the latter: "Jesus, after
his resurrection and by means of his ascension,
passed through the
heavens to arrive at the presence of God."19
Spicq refers to Hebrews
4:14,
"we have a great high priest who has passed through the
heavens," and to Hebrews 7:26, where it is
asserted that he is
"exalted above the heavens" (cf. Eph. 4:10). Another
advocate of
this interpretation is Helmut Koester, who offers
the following ex-
planation of the expression
"the sanctuary and the true tent" (8:2):
This is not a hendiadys, but
expresses that Christ's office includes
both the
service in the sanctuary of heaven itself (ta<
a!gia) and
the
entering by passing through the heavenly regions (h[
skhnh<)
the
ascension! It also becomes clear here that the author of Hebrews
is more
interested in the opening of the way into the heavenly
sanctuary
than in the performance of a service within the sanctuary
of
heaven."20
The
judgment of the last sentence is surprising; leaving that aside,
however, it is true that the term ox vrj is used in our epistle of the
holy place through which the levitical
high priest passed to enter
17 John Brown, An Exposition of the Epistle of the Apostle
Paul to the
Hebrews, ed. by David Smith
(New York, 1862), I, 394-95.
18 Jean Hering, L'epitre aux Hebreux (Neuchatel and Paris, 1954), p. 84.
19 C. Spicq, L'epitre aux Hebreux
(3rd ed.; Paris, 1952-53), II, 256.
20 Hemut
Koester, " ‘Outside the Camp’: Hebrews 13:9-14," Harvard Theo-
logical Review,
The "Tents" in
Hebrews / 313
the holy of holies (h[ prw<th skhnh<), 9:2,6,8, and perhaps
21), yet it is
also used of the holy of holies (9:3) and of the
tabernacle in toto
(8:5; 13:10). The description of h[ skhnh< in 8:2 as a]lhqinh<, "the
true tent," well defines the sanctuary of which
Christ is now the
minister, but is scarcely appropriate as a
description of the heavenly
regions through which the ascending Lord passed.
Besides, if the
latter interpretation were correct, one would have
expected the way
to be mentioned before the destination. And,
further, that a hen-
diadys is indeed intended by
"the sanctuary and the true tent" is
confirmed by the singular number of the pronoun h!n in the relative
clause which follows—h{n e@phcen o[ ku<rioj:
our author could hardly
have meant that the Lord set up only a heavenly holy
place, espe-
cially as the focus of his
attention is on the high priestly entry of
Jesus into the heavenly holy of holies. In fact, throughout
these
chapters our author's perspective does not
include the concept of
a holy place above, as distinct from the holy of
holies, precisely
because, now that the curtain between the two
has been abolished
and the way opened up by him for all into the
heavenly holy of
holies which is the sanctuary of God's presence, the
distinction no
longer exists.
The ineptitude of this
interpretation appears, too, from the
fact that the qualification of Hebrews 9:11,
"not made with hands,
that is, not of this creation," applies just as
little to the visible
heavens as it does to our earth, since both
belong equally to "this
creation" and both are praised throughout
Scripture as the works
of the divine Creator (Gen. 1:1; Ps. 19:1, etc.).
This consideration
alone is enough to disqualify the distinction made by
those who
propose this type of interpretation. The analogy
between the old
and the new must not be pressed too far, for there
is a radical
change in the situation as the result of the sacrifice
which the
incarnate Son offered on the cross. The rending of
His flesh at
vary was accompanied by the rending of the curtain
which separated
the holy place from the holy of holies (Heb. 10:20;
Mt. 27:51).
This
symbolized, as we have already observed and as Hebrew 9:8
plainly indicates, the abolition of the outer
chamber and the removal
of the barrier which hitherto had excluded the
people from entry
into the chamber of God's presence. Now the way is
clear for all
God's
people, who together in Christ constitute a holy priesthood
(l. Pet. 2:5), to approach with boldness the throne of divine
grace.
This
is the new and living way of which our author speaks in
Hebrews 10:19 f.
314 / Bibliotheca Sacra — October 1973
CONCLUSION
It is our understanding, then, that
the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews means here not two things but one; that
is to say, that
the sanctuary into which Christ has entered is the
same as that tent
which is described as "true" and
"greater and more perfect." The
correctness of this judgment is confirmed by the
assertion of
Hebrews
9:24 that "Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made
with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven
itself, now
to appear in the presence of God on our
behalf," in which we find
the sanctuary into which Christ has entered defined
by precisely
the same terms that are used to define the tent in Hebrews 8:2 and
Hebrews
9:11, namely, true and not made with hands. This linguistic
correspondence shows in a striking
manner that the "sanctuary" and
the "tent" are one and the same thing. In
Hebrews 8:2 our author
declares that Christ our High Priest is now
"in heaven," where
He
ministers "in the sanctuary which is the true tent," and in He-
brews 9:11-12 that He entered into the heavenly holy
of holies
through His entry into "the greater and
more perfect tent." If there is
a suggestion of a distinction in the latter
passage, it is no more than
this, that, in conformity with the imagery of the
wilderness taber-
nacle, Christ is envisaged as
entering the true tent (of heaven) which
contains the true sanctuary (of God's presence).
But as the curtain
which divided the tent into two chambers has now been
abolished,
it is easy to see how in the true order of things
tent and sanctuary
can be treated as synonymous terms.
The contrasts and correspondences to
which we have drawn
attention may be presented schematically as
follows:
|
The
Mosaic tabernacle "on
earth" (8:4 f.) "an earthly sanctuary"
(9:1) "set up by man" (8:2) "made with hands" "of this creation"
(9:11) "a sanctuary made with hands" (9:24) "a copy and shadow"
(8:5) "a copy" (9:24) |
The
heavenly reality "in heaven" (8:1) "set up by the Lord"
(8:2) "not made with hands" "that is, not of this
creation" (9:11) "not a sanctuary made with
hands" (9:24) "the true tent" (8:2) "the true sanctuary"
(9:24) "the greater and more perfect
tent" (9:11) "heaven itself" (9:24 |
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