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sanguinis sui limite aperiret.’ dia; tou' katapetavsmato" ]...There can be no doubt that the ‘veil’ is here regarded as excluding from the Divine Presence and not (as some Fathers took it) as the door by which the Divine Presence was approached. Comp. Heb. 6:8; 9:8.

The way into the holiest place can now be traversed. The veil is not indeed removed so long as we live on earth, but we can pass through it in Christ. Comp. Matt. 27:51 and parallels.

How then are we to understand the words which follow, th'" sarko;" aujtou' ?

These words are by common consent taken either as dependent on tou' katapetavsmato" , ‘the veil, that is the veil of His flesh’ ( i.e. consisting in His flesh), or as in apposition with it, ‘the veil, that is, His flesh.’ In both cases ‘the flesh’ of Christ is presented as that through which He passed, a veil which for a time shut off access to God.

Such a thought is strange and difficult; but it becomes in some degree intelligible if ‘the flesh’ of Christ is used in a strictly limited sense to describe His humanity under the limitations of earthly existence, of temptation and suffering, as in St Paul's phrase ginwvskein kata; savrka Cristovn (2 Cor. 5:16). In favour of such a sense the words in Heb. 5:7 may be quoted ejn tai'" hJmevrai" th'" sarko;" aujtou' and (with less point) 2:14 kekoinwvnhke ai{mato" kai; sarkov" . The word (‘flesh’) being thus understood, it can be said that Christ passed through ‘the flesh’ which He assumed, which did actually to common eyes hide God from men, into the presence of God; but the greatest care must be taken to guard against the error of supposing that in ‘passing through,’ and thus leaving behind, His ‘flesh,’ Christ parted with anything which belongs to the full perfection of His humanity.

It must also be observed that, if this interpretation be adopted, it seems to be necessary to connect dia; tou' katap. .. t. sarko;" aujtou' closely with ejnekaivnisen , and to confine the expression to the action of Christ. For it is most unlikely that the Apostle would describe Christ's ‘flesh’ as a veil hiding God from men, through which they too must pass, though it is true that His humanity did, during His historic Presence, veil His Godhead, and that, in one sense, ‘the flesh profiteth nothing.’

Still even with these restrictions this interpretation is hardly satisfactory. It remains surprising that ‘the flesh’ of Christ should be treated in any way as
a veil, an obstacle, to the vision of God in a place where stress is laid on His humanity (
ejn tw'/ ai{mati jIhsou' ). And we should certainly expect to find a complete parallelism between the description of the approach of Christ to God and the approach of the believer to God.

These difficulties point to a different view of the construction by which the clause tou'tj e[stin th'" sarko;" aujtou' is connected with oJdovn (and not with tou' katapetavsmato" ), ‘a way through the veil, that is, a way consisting in His flesh, His true human nature.’ The whole clause oJdo;n ... katapetavsmato" will thus become a compound noun, ‘a fresh and living way through the veil.’

This construction appears to be followed by our Early English translations: ‘ by the new and living way which He hath prepared for us through the veil, that is to say (Gen. om. to say ) by His flesh ’ (Tynd., Cov.,
G.B., Gen.). The ‘by’ is omitted in the Bishops' Bible. Perhaps Vigilius Tapsensis (
c. Varim. i. c. 27; Migne P. L. 62.371) gives the same


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