[Published in The Greek Australian Vema, February 2010, 6]

Glimpses of a Symbolic Anthropology

Part Six: The Temple of the Body
Revd Dr Doru Costache

The intention of this series is to prove from within the ecclesial tradition that
Orthodoxy has no share in what secular people today designate as the Christian
aversion to the body; furthermore, that from the viewpoint of our tradition there is
more to be said about the body than any secular mind can conceive.

Our journey continues with the exploration of another symbolic facet of the
ecclesial anthropology: the body as a temple. After a brief consideration of the
occurrence of this theme in Christ’s sayings, further attention will be given to the
Pauline teaching. These references bring us to the very core of what I elsewhere
termed as the anthropology of holiness.

The theme of the body as a temple is closely connected to that which was
explored in my previous article, namely the body as a metaphor for the Church
(see The Greek Australian Vema, January 2010, 6). One might say literally
connected – since in the same Letter to the Ephesians (2:21), discussed last time,
St Paul employs as an alternate approach the imagery of the temple: “In him [i.e.
Christ] the whole building [of God’s people, the Church] is joined together and
rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.” For the Apostle, Christians participate
in a sacred reality mystically represented by the temple that further
metaphorically signifies the ultimate perfection to which we are called. Let us see
where from this analogy.

This analogy could be traced back to the paradigmatic events of the

consecration of the holy tent in the days of Moses (Exodus 40:28/34) and the
temple in Jerusalem under Solomon (3 Kings 8:10-11). In both cases, the divine
presence was signalled through the indwelling of the cloud of glory, an imagery
that in turn reiterates the Sabbath/presence of God in creation (cf. Genesis 2:2).
Later interpreted as suggesting the incarnation, with the Logos inhabiting the
human nature he has taken on (cf. John 1:14) from the Theotokos, the theme of
the tent/temple as place of the divine presence has been further elaborated upon
by other New Testament authors. Thus, for them the temple becomes either a
metaphor for God’s people, the Church (see Ephesians 2:21; 1 Peter 2:5) or for
the body of each human being renewed in the Church. There are, indeed, the
sermon of St Paul in Athens arguing that God “does not live in temples built by
hands” (Acts 17:24) and the prophecy concerning the eschatological
disappearance of the temple (Revelation 21:22), that seem to question the
temple as a place of the divine presence. Nevertheless, these references by no
means annul the metaphorical representations of the Church and more so the
body as temple or place of the presence.

The context where Christ uses the metaphor of the temple in relation to his
own body is, I presume, well known. John 2:19-21 renders a dialog between him
and some Jews. Jesus is depicted as answering their queries by saying: “Destroy
this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” Whereas, thinking of the
building of the temple, the Jews wondered how that would be possible, the
evangelist comments: “the temple he had spoken of was his body.” In light of this
account, it becomes clear that by the end of the first Christian century (when the
Gospel according to St John is thought to have been composed) the temple as a
metaphorical image of Christ’s deified body has been generalised. Interestingly,
the above dialogue is altogether absent from the accounts of Mark and Matthew,
although references to the words of Christ are quoted by both evangelists in the
narratives of the judgment (cf. Matthew 26:61; Mark 14:58) and crucifixion
(Matthew 27:40; Mark 15:29) of the Lord. For some reason, which is not of interest
here, in the Gospel according to St Luke there is no reference or allusion to this
topic.

What matters, however, is the fact that in the mind of the Church, the body –
either hypostatically (i.e. personally) indwelled by the Son of God through the
incarnation or deified within the context of the Christians’ communion with Christ
– is represented as a temple. The body is no longer seen as an obstacle to the
spiritual life, the inferior side of the human nature or worse a prison of the soul.
Instead, it is venerated as a worthy vessel of the divine presence and taken as
sacred topography or the central part of our mystical anthropology. Nothing of the
supposed Christian aversion to the body here… This comprehension has further
led the Church to the canonisation of the icons, with their definite anthropological
dimension, as objects of the presence and channels of the divine grace.

This new understanding of the body as a privileged – and deified – place of the
divine presence appears to have been articulated from the outset within a
rigorous ascetic framework. It is worth noting that in this context asceticism does
not imply the castigation of the body and in fact refers to finding the right use of
it. This framework is thoroughly discussed in connection to the body/temple
imagery in the apostolic reading for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (1 Corinthians
6:12-20).

The text opens with a tremendous statement referring to Christian freedom:

“Everything is permitted to me but not everything is beneficial; everything is
permitted to me but I will not be dominated by anything” (v.12). For St Paul, the
relationships between God and humanity are never about us being prohibited
from doing this or that. God has created everything and as such everything is a
gift for us; therefore, we can taste everything and we can enjoy all that is. The
echoes from the paradise narrative in Genesis 2-3 are obvious… So the problem is
not with what we taste; it is with how we do that.

In a brief comment on the paradise narrative, St Maximus the Confessor (To

Thalassius, introduction, second definition of evil) argues that the divine
command to Adam was not about not eating. Instead, it was about waiting until
he would have been capable of approaching the fruit – whatever it may be – in a
Godlike manner. Or, since God is free, Adam and we (created to live in the Image
of God) are all called to be free of any earthly necessity and addiction. What St
Paul says in v.12 points to the same conclusion: we are given everything but we
cannot allow ourselves to be dominated by the sweetness and beauty of the
world/body. We can taste and see the world/body, but we ought to know better for
we cannot enjoy it as if it were the ultimate reality. In itself, indeed, the
world/body is a way of participating in God but definitely not God himself;
partaking of it cannot constitute therefore the highest joy.

Only by freeing ourselves from the passionate attachment to the beauty and
sweetness of the world/body (a Lenten topic par excellence), can we truly enjoy
the gift. But more so we can thus become what we are – true temples of the
divine presence. The climax of the paragraph is clearly reached in v. 19: “your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from
God.” The affirmation seems to point to the day of the baptismal rebirth when
Christians receive the Spirit of God. Here, the Apostle reiterates the line of his
thought in 1 Corinthians 3:16-7: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s
temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? […] God’s temple is sacred, and you are
that temple” (see also 2 Corinthians 6:16). Through this interrogation, the
ecclesial community is reminded of a teaching to which Christians were supposed
to be familiarised. Inhabited by God, Christians should learn time and again how
to make use of their bodies in order to appropriate the gift.

All things considered, it is obvious that the metaphor of the body as a temple
was already articulated and spelt out with clarity in some of the earliest apostolic
writings. This indicates that for traditional Christianity to be human and to live
truly requires the exploration of the mystical dimensions of this earthly body.
Through right use – surprisingly and paradoxically – the body can indeed be
sanctified, becoming a receptacle of the divine presence. Whether or not this
anthropology of holiness offers to many contemporary people glimpses into what
is for them unknown, it nevertheless depicts a dignified icon of the body.