Paul and the Faithfulness of God: Re-imagining the Symbols of the Jewish Worldview (Introduction; the Temple)

We are considering N. T. Wright’s newly released Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God) — a massive and masterful consideration of Paul’s theology.

I’m skipping lots and lots of pages ahead. Wright takes quite a bit of text to relate the nature of the Roman worldview, especially as it relates to the emperor cult (emperor worship). This will become important later, I’m sure, but a discussion at this point doesn’t suit the blogging format well.

I’m actually quite the history buff, and I found the entire presentation fascinating. We’ll return to it, I’m sure.

For now, I want to summarize, all too briefly, some points Wright makes regarding the symbolic universe of Judaism at the time of Paul — largely defined by scripture, of course, but also by the understanding of scripture that had evolved over the centuries since the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

I’ll, of course, attempt to interpret some of this into the “Church of Christ” vernacular, that is, how this high theology impacts how we do church.

It’s important to know that we have access to quite a lot of material from between the testaments — it’s just that none of this material is canonical. We have the Apocryphal writings, the Pseudepigrapha, the writings of Philo and, from just after Paul’s time, the writings of Josephus, which largely speak of earlier times. We now also have the Dead Sea  Scrolls.

From centuries later, we also have the Mishnah, Talmud, and other written portions of the Jewish “oral” law, which was indeed entirely oral at the time of Paul, but written down centuries later when persecution of the Jews threatened the loss of this material. This material is more difficult to read back to Paul’s time, because so much happened between Paul and the actual writing of these documents. It’s just hard to know whether a given statement reflects the time before the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD or the very changed circumstances of the Jewish people afterwards.

Nonetheless, Wright and other scholars have been able to establish a great deal about the Jewish worldview (not a completely singular thing) during Paul’s time. Of course, the New Testament itself weighs heavily in this discussion.

A people’s “worldview” is made up of many things, but one of the most important parts of any worldview is the symbolism associated with it. For modern Americans, the American flag, pledge of allegiance, and national anthem are essential elements of American nationalism. For Christians, the cross, the baptistery, communion, the Bible, and the neighborhood church are the sorts of things that people will fight and die for — because these symbols are so closely associated with who we are and what we believe. Of course, these things are not just symbols; they are much more.

For Jews of Paul’s day, the key symbols (and much more!) were the Temple, Torah, Prayer, Land, Family, Battle, and Scripture. It’s helpful to see how Paul redefined each of these through Jesus.

The Temple

As we’ve considered before, Paul saw Jesus himself as replacing the Temple. This is far from obvious to most Western readers. We more easily recognize that the church replaces the Temple, because the church is a temple of the Holy Spirit and is filled with the Spirit. Peter says the church is built of living stones — like a temple.

But the Temple is where people went to obtain forgiveness. For Jesus to offer forgiveness in 30 AD was akin to you or me offering to issue driver’s licenses from our garage. I mean, everyone knew that forgiveness was received at the Temple, not from some itinerant rabbi! For Jesus to claim the power to forgive was to claim to replace the Temple — and it was perceived as just as outrageous as if you or I attempted to replace the Department of Motor Vehicles.

(Mat 12:5-6 ESV) 5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?  6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.

(Joh 2:18-19 ESV) 18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”  19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Just so, the Temple is where people went to pray to God. Daniel famously prayed toward Jerusalem. Even synagogues across the Empire were constructed so that the prayers of those present would be directed toward the Temple. Thus, when Jesus became our mediator, the one through whom we pray to God, Jesus is stepping into the place served by the Temple.

Hence, the church is, of course, often pictured as a temple by Paul, but this is because the church is the body of Christ, his physical presence here on earth, in a sense, and thus the church, as a part of Christ, takes on his role as Temple.

Finally, of course, the Temple is where the Jews went to worship. They did not think of synagogue as “worship.” Worship was uniquely a Temple event. And therefore, when the church enters the presence of Jesus in assembly, to “worship by the Spirit,” as Paul says, we can only worship because the assembled church and the presence of Jesus create the new temple.

We cannot pass by “worship” without noting that the Jews of Paul’s day worshipped by sacrificing an animal. They did not sing or listen to sermons. They brought a lamb or other offering to God, to be slain by the priest and given to God.

Therefore, when Paul speaks of our offering ourselves as “living sacrifices” in Rom 12:1, he is speaking of worship, even though he is not speaking of the assembly particularly. Every time a Christian gives of himself for God, in the name of Jesus, that is a sacrifice in the new temple, the Christ and his body, and it’s worship of the most true kind.

This is not to dismiss the Sunday assembly as not in some sense “worship,” but it’s only worship to the extent it involves sacrifice — the giving of oneself to God. Merely going through five acts that we choose to call “worship” does not constitute worship at all. Worship to the First Century Jew was always and only sacrifice.

Thus, to worship “in Spirit and in truth” takes on new meaning, as we see worship as necessarily in the new temple, Jesus, and through the truth of the gospel, as empowered by the Spirit. It’s not worship because it’s a song or a prayer. It’s worship because it’s a giving of oneself to Jesus, as we are moved by the Spirit, in response to the good news that is Jesus.

Only this interpretation fits the pattern of Jesus becoming the new temple, replacing the Temple in Jerusalem. No longer is worship about rules and rubric, the niceties of nettlesome details; it’s about a slain heart and a surrendered body.