As previously <explained, I've enrolled in the University of Notre Dame's Satellite Theological Education Program (STEP) to pursue their Certificate in Doctrine. I am currently taking my third of the required courses: Ecclesiology. This week's topic is Worship.
Our discussion question this week is as follows:
Lumen Gentium 6 mentions “holy temple” as a scriptural image for the Church. How might the Old Testament roots of this image help us understand the place of worship in the Church’s identity? In reflecting on this question, you may find the dedication of Solomon’s Temple in 1 Kings 8 especially helpful.
For background on Lumen Gentium see this post.
In the old Testament the revelation of the Kingdom is often conveyed by means of metaphors. In the same way the inner nature of the Church is now made known to us in different images taken either from tending sheep or cultivating the land, from building or even from family life and betrothals, the images receive preparatory shaping in the books of the Prophets.
The Church is a sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is Christ.(26) It is a flock of which God Himself foretold He would be the shepherd,(27) and whose sheep, although ruled by human shepherds; are nevertheless continuously led and nourished by Christ Himself, the Good Shepherd and the Prince of the shepherds,(28) who gave His life for the sheep.(29)
The Church is a piece of land to be cultivated, the tillage of God.(30) On that land the ancient olive tree grows whose holy roots were the Prophets and in which the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles has been brought about and will be brought about.(31) That land, like a choice vineyard, has been planted by the heavenly Husbandman.(32) The true vine is Christ who gives life and the power to bear abundant fruit to the branches, that is, to us, who through the Church remain in Christ without whom we can do nothing.(33)
Often the Church has also been called the building of God.(34) The Lord Himself compared Himself to the stone which the builders rejected, but which was made into the cornerstone.(35) On this foundation the Church is built by the apostles,(36) and from it the Church receives durability and consolidation. This edifice has many names to describe it: the house of God (37) in which dwells His family; the household of God in the Spirit;(38) the dwelling place of God among men;(39) and, especially, the holy temple. This Temple, symbolized in places of worship built out of stone, is praised by the Holy Fathers and, not without reason, is compared in the liturgy to the Holy City, the New Jerusalem (5*). As living stones we here on earth are built into it.(40) John contemplates this holy city coming down from heaven at the renewal of the world as a bride made ready and adorned for her husband.(41)
The Church, further, "that Jerusalem which is above" is also called "our mother".(42) It is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless Lamb,(43) whom Christ "loved and for whom He delivered Himself up that He might sanctify her",(44) whom He unites to Himself by an unbreakable covenant, and whom He unceasingly "nourishes and cherishes",(45) and whom, once purified, He willed to be cleansed and joined to Himself, subject to Him in love and fidelity,(46) and whom, finally, He filled with heavenly gifts for all eternity, in order that we may know the love of God and of Christ for us, a love which surpasses all knowledge.(47) The Church, while on earth it journeys in a foreign land away from the Lord,(48) is like in exile. It seeks and experiences those things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right-hand of God, where the life of the Church is hidden with Christ in God until it appears in glory with its Spouse.(49)
26 Jn. 10:1-10.
27 Cf. Is. 40:11; Ex. 34:11ff.
28 Cf Jn. 10:11; 1 Pt. 5:4.
29 Cf. Jn. 10:11-15.
30 l Cor. 3:9.
31 1 Rom. 11:13-26.
32 Mt. 21:33-43; cf. Is. 5:1 ff.
33 Jn. 15:1-5.
34 1 Cor. 3:9.
35 Mt 21:42; cf. Acts 4:11; 1 Pt. 2:7; Ps. 117:22.
36 Cf. 1 Cor. 3:11.
37 1 Tim. 3:15.
38 Eph. 2:19-22.
39 Rev. 21:3.
40 1 Pt. 2:5.
41 Rev. 21:16.
42 Gal. 4:26; cf. Rev. 12:17.
43 Rev. 19:7; 21:2 and 9; 22:17
44 Eph. 5:26.
45 Eph. 5:29.
46 Cf. Eph. 5:24.
47 Cf. Eph. 3:19.
48 Cf. 2 Cor. 5:6.
49 Cf. Col. 3:1-4.
1 Kings 8 states, in relevant part:
When the priests left the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the LORD so that the priests could no longer minister because of the cloud, since the glory of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD. Then Solomon said, “The LORD intends to dwell in the dark cloud; I have indeed built you a princely house, the base for your enthronement forever.”
We see here an implication that the Temple is the literal residence of God, although God’s presence therein was intangible and invisible. This suggests a metaphor in which the Church is the House of God.
Pope Francis has spoken about this image of the Church as Temple, explaining that:
The Church is the "House of God", the place of his presence, where we can find and meet the Lord; the Church is the Temple where the Holy Spirit dwells, who animates, guides and sustains it. If we ask ourselves: where can we meet God? Where we can enter into communion with him through Christ? Where can we find the light of the holy spirit that lights up our lives? The answer is: in the People of God, among us, who are the Church. Here we will find Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father.
Instead of being built of physical bricks and mortar, however, the members of the Church are the living stones that have been erected upon Jesus who's serves as the cornerstone. Again, Pope Francis spoke to that metaphor:
The Apostle Paul says to the Christians of Ephesus: "You are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also come built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God” (Eph 2:20-22). How beautiful this is! We are the living stones of God's building, deeply united to Christ, who is the cornerstone, and is also a keystone among us. What does this mean? It means that we are the temple, we are the living Church, the living temple and when we are together the Holy Spirit, too, is present, who helps us to grow as Church. We are therefore not isolated, but we are the People of God: this is the Church!
Interestingly, however, later in 1 Kings 8 Solomon's prayer at the Temple's dedication suggests an alternative understanding of God's relationship to the Temple:
“Is God indeed to dwell on earth? If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this house which I have built! Regard kindly the prayer and petition of your servant, LORD, my God, and listen to the cry of supplication which I, your servant, utter before you this day.May your eyes be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, My name shall be there; listen to the prayer your servant makes toward this place. Listen to the petition of your servant and of your people Israel which they offer toward this place. Listen, from the place of your enthronement, heaven, listen and forgive.
Here we see the Temple not as God's physical home on Earth--for it is impossible that God could be contained in a creation of Man--but as the place where the people gathered to worship God. Again, Pope Francis' remarks at the Papal audience on June 26, 2013 speak to that metaphor:
In Jerusalem, the great Temple of Solomon was the site of the encounter with God in prayer; inside the temple there was the Ark of the Covenant, a sign of the presence of God in the midst of the people ...: a reminder of the fact that God was always present in the history of his people, he had accompanied them on their journey, he had guided their steps. The temple calls to mind this history: we too, when we go to the temple [church] must remember this story, each one of us his own history, how Jesus found me, how Jesus has walked with me, how Jesus loves me and blesses me.
In addition to remembering our own history with the Lord, of course, the Temple metaphor calls to mind the history of the community of believers that stretches across space and time. The liturgy calls to mind the way in which God has guided our steps.
Update: My friend, UCLAW colleague, and rabbi to be Jonathan Zasloff sent along these very helpful comments:
If I understand you right, I think that there are really two senses of “Temple” here.
The original Holy Temples, called Beit Ha-mikdash, in Hebrew, were certainly seen in some way as God’s home on earth. Thus Exodus 25:8: “And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I might dwell among them.” As with a lot of Hebrew words, the preposition traditionally translated as “among”, b-tocham, can be read as “within them,” and as a modernist I prefer that, but traditionally it is read that way.
By the time of the Middle Ages, the commentators were clearly uncomfortable with this sort of anthropomorphism. Maimonides basically devoted the entire first volume of the Guide of the Perplexed to knocking down any attempts to think that the Bible in any way suggested anthropomorphism. The commentator Samuel ben Meir said that all this line means is that God speaks out of there. Isaac Abarbanel (one of my favorites) queried whether it makes any sense to think of the Exodus line that way in light of Isaiah 66:1 (“Heaven is My throne and Earth is My footstool”) and 1 Kings 8:27, where King Solomon after consecrating the Temple (technically the First Temple) says, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!”
The 17th century Moroccan rabbi Chaim bin Attar, whose great commentary is called the “Ohr Hachayim” (Light of Life), notes on Exodus 25:8 that the text very specifically says “that I might dwell in them,” not “that I might in it”: That is persuasive to me and suggests that a non-corporeal version has more purchase.
In other words, the standard maxim applies i.e. Two Jews, Three Opinions. Or more precisely, Israelite theology was fluid. Earlier, Israelite faith was more anthropomorphized and really henotheistic (my favorite on this is Psalm 82, where God speaks to the rest of the gods in the “divine assembly” and says He’s bigger and tougher than the rest of them. The rabbis had to pull a lot of tricks to interpret their way out of that one.). Later on, it became monotheistic and abstract. But not fully: the rabbis (around 50-500 C.E.) discussed God fleeing the Earth after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.
But now –
Many modern Jews use “Temple” simply as a way of discussing the Jewish House of Worship. There is no comparison at all to the ancient Temples. It is precisely for that reason that I don’t like the use of “Temple” to describe what is more accurately called a “synagogue.” I like “shul,” which is Yiddish literally for “school” but has the connotation of “synagogue. In modern Hebrew a synagogue is not called Beit Ha-mikdash, but rather Beit Knesset, literally the “House of Assembly,” which is sort of a direct translation of “synagogue.”
