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I’ve been listening to Richard Rohr’s Sermon on the Mount. I would recommend it. The idea that comes across again and again with almost all the New Testament scholarship I’ve encountered is this: Jesus was radical and was set on disrupting the political and religious power structures of the time. The temple was a symbol of the religious power structure, the purity system and temple rites were designed to keep people in their social classes and keep power in the hands of the priestly class. Jesus’ interactions with the temple were mostly disruptive, turning over the tables, saying it would be destroyed, etc. The image of the veil being rent at his death is highly symbolic of his defeat of that system. It seems like many modern Christians feel that because of Jesus, there is no need for a temple. Our idea of temples seems to be pretty contrary to what Jesus taught in the New Testament. We build huge, expensive structures for legalistic rituals and have a strict purity system which dictates who may and may not come in. Richard Rohr points out that why John the Baptist was so radical was that he was offering salvation in a rural river through baptism instead of in the legalistic temple ritual in Jerusalem. This was a direct challenge to the temple/priestly system of the time. Jesus was baptized to show God is everywhere, salvation is as common as water and does not need to come through the temple. This was so threatening to the priestly class that both John and Jesus were put to death.
I have not been to the temple for a while, but have had some good experiences there in the past. Has anyone else thought through this dilemma?
I’ve thought similarly. I’ll quote myself a little 
Quote:Some days I’m absolutely convinced that temple worship was one of the things that Jesus purposely came to put an end to and that including them as a part of the restoration was a huge mistake. Other days I compare old world temple symbology with latter-day temple symbology and the new symbols seem to resonate with elements of my nuanced faith in Christ. Right now I lean towards both. Go figure.
Quote:I vacillate on the temple.
At times I’m convinced that one of the missions of Jesus was to do away with the traditional temple and that the temple was a thing that was not meant to be restored. When Jesus died the veil in the temple was rent, the barrier between man and god had been removed. Access to god was no longer limited to a small select group of priests. Sometimes I feel like we undid some of that effort in our restoration of the temple. I can also see how modern day temples fit in perfectly with some of the symbolism that I feel pertains to the restoration.
I guess it comes down to the temples serving different functions in society at different times in human history and thus carrying a different set of symbols.
Great thoughts, thanks. Well, John was beheaded for a completely unrelated reason. However, even the most secular scholarship regarding the life of Jesus, the type that looks with a raised eyebrow at almost everything written in the gospels, has come to the conclusion that the immediate cause of the arrest and execution of Jesus was a controversy/demonstration of some sort at the Temple in Jerusalem. Both Jesus and John were trying to bring God more to the people and wrest access to God away from the professionals (after all, they were both outsiders, as were their followers).
In the context of the Temple today, I don’t see any sort of dilemma. I get what you are saying, based on the above, but the Temple today is open to all its members (who desire it enough to make basic concessions). Yes, you have to be baptized and yes you have to pay tithing. But everyone on earth is (now) welcome to do those things and participate in the Temple. When I was a temple-goer, I used to really appreciate that the high point of the endowment session was the celestial room, where I was completely alone with my own thought and could “commune with God” all I wanted and with no one interfering. In other words, the crowning achievement was to have my own personal interaction with the divine.
In addition to the Temple being attainable by all, I think it’s fine to point out within the walls of this forum that if we don’t believe the Church holds a position between us and God, then its Temples can’t either. If we use them as a tool to get closer to God, great, if we don’t want to, then we are at liberty to find some other way to accomplish the same.
Jesus never objected to the temple; he objected to making the temple a marketplace – to what he saw as the corruption of the ideal. He even was quoted as calling it the house of God. He was a devout Jew in most ways – with his objections being related to what we would call “the incorrect traditions of their fathers” that corrupted the foundational law and doctrines of his religious heritage. He absolutely was a radical reformer – but he was a reformer, not a founder. He focused on ministering to those who were ostracized and shunned by the religious leadership of his day, and he focused his teachings on breaking down the ideological barriers that had been erected – by emphasizing the previous teachings about ALL people of the House of Israel being valuable and worthy of equal treatment. Christianity was “founded” by Paul, in practical terms. Without his vision and Peter’s approval, the movement would have remained a sect of Judaism. I agree we have issues with how the temple is used in our day, but having and using them (and spending plenty of money to make them special and holy) isn’t inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus. Perhaps the requirement to pay tithing could be seen as at odds by some (and I would love to see that changed), but Jesus never attacked tithing. He condemned things that impacted the poor disproportionately – like the requirements to purchase animals that were a fixed cost, the usury associated with monetary exchange rates, etc. If participation would have been strictly proportionate financially, like payment of tithes alone, there is nothing in the Gospels that indicates he would have opposed it. He might have, but there is no proof of that.
“Jesus before Christianity” (Albert Nolan) is a fascinating book about reading the Gospels from the context of Judaism at that time. I recommend it highly. nibbler wrote:
I’ve thought similarly. I’ll quote myself a littleQuote:Some days I’m absolutely convinced that temple worship was one of the things that Jesus purposely came to put an end to and that including them as a part of the restoration was a huge mistake. Other days I compare old world temple symbology with latter-day temple symbology and the new symbols seem to resonate with elements of my nuanced faith in Christ. Right now I lean towards both. Go figure.
Quote:I vacillate on the temple.
At times I’m convinced that one of the missions of Jesus was to do away with the traditional temple and that the temple was a thing that was not meant to be restored. When Jesus died the veil in the temple was rent, the barrier between man and god had been removed. Access to god was no longer limited to a small select group of priests. Sometimes I feel like we undid some of that effort in our restoration of the temple. I can also see how modern day temples fit in perfectly with some of the symbolism that I feel pertains to the restoration.
I guess it comes down to the temples serving different functions in society at different times in human history and thus carrying a different set of symbols.
I agree with these ideas – but I will add that each “symbol” will have different meanings to different people AND that the “symbol” can and probably will have different meanings for the same person throughout their life.
Currently, I feel that the purpose of temples is to create a sacred space that surpasses time (in the sense that families are united with ties that are not contingent on time, the time that is taken out for a person to stop and attend the temple, and the desire for something that is above worldly cares). I know this is not the standard answer – and I am fine with that.
Well, Jesus did call the temple his “Father’s House”, and did spend plenty of time at the temple. I’d say he was very in favor of the purposes of temples, as a special place you could retreat from the world and commune with God. I think what Jesus really had an issue with, was how the temple was used. Would Jesus have a problem with LDS temples? It’s hard to say; most people, intentionally or not, tend to interpret Jesus to support whatever the already believe, rather than change what they believe to conform with Jesus. Do I think Jesus would be a Mormon, were He to live in our day? Absolutely not. I’m quite sure he’d change a lot of things, and start an “apostate movement”. But I still think he’d see the value in temples, properly done.
Sort of. There is a big difference. Anyone in theory can get into the Mormon temple if they hold a TR. The Jewish temple had an inner area most people could never get into – no women, and no men who weren’t from a handful of priests (their priesthood was based on lineage)… so strangely enough the Mormon temple is comparitively open in some senses. I suppose you could say women and non-professional priests could only ever get into the baptistry and not the celestial room in Jesus’ day. And I think women had to stay well away from the old temple if they were menstruating.
Oh and no animal sacrifices either.
dande48 wrote:
Would Jesus have a problem with LDS temples? It’s hard to say; most people, intentionally or not, tend to interpret Jesus to support whatever the already believe, rather than change what they believe to conform with Jesus.
Adding to this thought.
The people that wrote all we know about Jesus were in the position to write about Jesus to support whatever it was they wanted people to believe.
Jesus never objected to the law of Moses but we didn’t restore the law of Moses, Jesus “fulfilled” that law. Plus I sometimes find myself wondering whether Jesus fulfilled the law or whether someone at some point in history thought, “It sure is hard to win converts among the gentiles. They aren’t big fans of circumcision, animal sacrifice, or our thick rule book.”
“Good think Jesus fulfilled the law.” I’m not saying it happened that way, but we write our own stories, so did the people that wrote the stories we consume.
Jesus obeyed the law of Moses. Jesus fulfilled the law of Moses. Jesus worked under the construct of the temple. Jesus fulfilled the purpose of the temple; symbolized by the tearing of the veil, the thing that divided man from god’s presence.
We write our own stories.
Quote:Jesus obeyed the law of Moses. Jesus fulfilled the law of Moses. Jesus worked under the construct of the temple. Jesus fulfilled the purpose of the temple; symbolized by the tearing of the veil, the thing that divided man from god’s presence.
We write our own stories.
I absolutely agree. I think that the authors of the New Testament definitely Christianized the Old Testament, meaning that they read the OT narrative as being all about preparing for Christ. Looking at the actual historical context and the text of the OT, it does not read it that way. We have a similar problem, where we have read a restoration narrative into the New Testament and with Jesus. He established the true church (including temple ordinances), ordained apostles and talked about the restoration and second coming. A big part of my faith journey has been discovering that this narrative does not necessarily fit with what the text says and the historical context.
IMO, Jesus was not opposed to the Temple in any way. My perception of the Temple in Jerusalem is that it represented God’s presence among his Chosen People. Jesus famously said, “The Kingdom of God is within you”. Exactly what he meant by this is open to interpretation, but ‘you’ here is plural. In English, ‘you’ is either singular or plural, but in Greek, it is definitely plural. Modern vernacular: “The Kingdom of God is within you guys.” Or in Southern, “The Kindgom of God is within y’all”. Or in Texan: “The Kindgom of God is within all y’all”.
This can be interpreted as meaning “The Kingdom of God is among you” (NRSV), or that “The Kingdom of God has already come unto you” (JST) or that collectively those who follow God have His Kingdom within them as a group.
There’s another famous, but clearly misinterpreted passage by Paul, in which he says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”
In LDS culture, we have usually (universally?) taken this as a tie-in with the WoW and tattooing. [buzzer sound, and groans from the audience].
Paul has just explained to the Saints in Corinth that their divisiveness works against the idea of a community of believers. They are not yet mature. Their quarreling shows that they are still in the flesh, not yet in the spirit. Some claim to belong to Paul’s Group, others to Apollos’ Group. He uses two metaphors. One is the planting and growing of a field: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
Then he bridges to another metaphor: “For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
The building metaphor is aiming toward something greater. Spoiler: The Temple. For now, Paul talks about a generic building project. He laid the foundation, Apollos built upon it. And then he says that “you are God’s temple” and that just like the Temple in Jerusalem, “God’s Spirit dwells in you”. Only, just as the Kingdom of God passage by Jesus, ‘you’ here is plural. In other words, this community of believers is God’s Temple, complete with His Spirit, so don’t destroy it by division.
I bring up these two statements (Jesus and Paul) to illustrate the concept that part of the movement in Christianity was about taking God out of the Temple and giving Him to the people. In our own often black & white interpretation of history and literature, we naturally think that that means that the Temple was now nothing to Jesus or Paul. But, I just don’t buy it. The author of Luke-Acts tells us that early Christians “spent much time together in the Temple.” He/she also relates that one day Peter and John were “going up to the temple at the hour of prayer” and that as they passed through the “Beautiful Gate” that there was a crippled beggar there. Peter healed him and the man jumped to his feet and walked, and then leaping and praising God, “he entered the Temple with them.”
On Own Now wrote:
The building metaphor is aiming toward something greater. Spoiler: The Temple. For now, Paul talks about a generic building project. He laid the foundation, Apollos built upon it. And then he says that “you are God’s temple” and that just like the Temple in Jerusalem, “God’s Spirit dwells in you”. Only, just as the Kingdom of God passage by Jesus, ‘you’ here is plural. In other words, this community of believers is God’s Temple, complete with His Spirit, so don’t destroy it by division.
:clap: :clap: :clap: If Jesus was around in the flesh he would spot all of our hypocrisies. Yes, he would – but he still probably would / might attend the temple. Of course, as nibbler said so well, we write our own narratives, so take that for whatever it is worth to you.
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