Who's Temple Is It Really?

Many contemporary Christians have a love affair with brick and mortar. The edifice complex is so ingrained in our thinking that if a group of believers begins to meet together, their first thoughts are towards securing a building. The church building is so connected with the idea of church that we unconsciously equate the two. Just listen to the vocabulary of the average Christian today: "Wow, honey, did you see that beautiful church we just passed?" "My goodness! That is the largest church I have ever seen! I wonder what the electric costs to keep it going?" Or how about the vocabulary of the average pastor: "Isn't it wonderful to be in the house of God today?" "We must show reverence when we come into the sanctuary of the Lord."        To put it bluntly, none of these thoughts have anything to do with New Testament Christianity. Rather they reflect the thinking of other religions primarily Judaism and paganism. Ancient Judaism was centered on three elements: the Temple, the priesthood, and the sacrifice. When Jesus came, he ended all three, fulfilling them in Himself. He is the temple who embodies a new and living house made of living stones. He is the priest who has established the new priesthood. And he is the perfect and finished sacrifice. Consequently, the Temple, the professional priesthood, and the sacrifice of Judaism all passed away with the coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the fulfillment and the reality of it all.        In Greco-Roman paganism, these three elements were also present: pagans had their temples, their priests, and their sacrifices. It was only the Christians who did away with all of these elements. It can be rightfully said that Christianity was the first non-temple-based religion ever to emerge. In the minds of the early Christians, the people, not the architecture constituted a sacred space. The early Christians understood that they themselves, corporately, were the temple of God and the house of God.        Strikingly, nowhere in the New Testament do we find the term church, temple, or house of God used to refer to a building. To the ears of the first-century Christian, calling an ekklesia (church) a building would have been like calling your wife a condominium or your mother a skyscraper!   The first recorded use of the word ekklesia to refer to a Christian meeting place was pinned around AD 190 by Clement of Alexandria (150-215). Clement was also the first person to use the phrase" go to church" which would have been a foreign thought to the first century believers. Ekklesia, in every one of its 114 appearances in the New Testament, refers to an assembly of people. Christian's did not erect special buildings for worship until the Constantinian era in the fourth century.  When Roman Catholicism evolved in the fourth to the sixth centuries, it absorbed many of the religious practices of both paganism and Judaism. It's set up a professional priesthood. It erected sacred buildings. And it turned the Lord's Supper into mysterious sacrifice.        While the emperor Constantine (285-337) is often lauded for granting Christians freedom of worship and expanding their privileges, his story fills a dark page in the history of Christianity. Church buildings began with him. The story is astonishing.        By the time Constantine emerged on the scene, the atmosphere was right for Christians to escape their despised, minority status. The temptation to be accepted was just too great to resist, and Constantine's influence begin in earnest. In AD 320, Constantine became caesar of the Western Empire. By 324, he became emperor of the entire Roman Empire. Shortly afterward, he began ordering the construction of church buildings. He did so to promote the popularity and acceptance of Christianity. If the Christians had their own sacred buildings, as did the Jews and the pagans, their faith would be regarded as legitimate.        It is important to understand Constantine's and mindset, for it explains why he was so enthusiastic about the establishment of church buildings. Constantine's thinking was dominated by supertition and pagan magic. Even after he became emperor, he allowed the old pagan institutions to remain as they were.  Following his conversion to Christianity, Constantine never abandon sun worship. He kept the sun on his coins. And he set up a statue of the sun god that bore his own image in the Forum of Constantinople. Constantine also build a statue of the mother goddess, Cybele. Historians continue to debate whether or not Constantine was a genuine Christian. The fact that he is reported to have had his eldest son, his nephew and, his brother-in-law executed does not strengthen the case for his conversion. But we will not probe that nerve to deeply.        In AD 321, Constantine decreed that Sunday would be a day of rest, a legal holiday. It appears that Constantine's intention in doing this was to honor the god, Mithras, the Unconquered Sun. Further demonstrating Constantine's affinity with sun worship, excavations of St. Peter's in Rome uncovered a mosaic of Christ as the Unconquered Sun.        Almost to his dying day, Constantine still functioned as the "high priest of paganism". In fact, he retained the pagan title "Pontifex Maximus", which means "chief of the pagan priests". In the fifteenth century, the same title became the honorific title for the Roman Catholic pope.  Constantine dedicated Constantinople as his new capital on May 11th, 330. He adorned it with treasures taken from heathen temples. And he used pagan magic formulas to protect crops and heal diseases.        Furthermore, all historical evidence indicates that Constantine was an egomaniac. When he built the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople, he included monuments to the twelve apostles. The twelve monuments surrounded a large tomb, which lay at the center. That tomb was reserved for Constantine himself, making himself the thirteenth and chief apostle. Thus, Constantine not only continued the pagan practice of honoring the dead, he also sought to be included as one of the significant dead.        Constantine also strengthened the pagan notion of the sacredness of objects in places. Largely due to his influence, relic mongering became common in the church. By the fourth century, obsession with relics got so bad that some Christian leader spoke out against it, calling it "a heathen observance introduced in the churches under the cloak of religion...the work of idolaters".         Constantine is also noted for bringing to the Christian faith the idea of the Holy Site, which was based on the model of the pagan shrine. Because of the aura of sacredness the fourth century Christians attached to Palestine, it had become known as "The Holy Land" by the sixth century.  After Constantine's death, he was declared to be divine. This was the custom for all pagan emperor's who died before him. It was the Senate who declared him to be a pagan god at his death. And no one stopped them from doing so.        At this point, a word should be said about Constantine's mother, Helena. This woman was most noted for her obsession with relics. In AD 326, Helena made a pilgrimage to Palestine. In AD 327 in Jerusalem, she reportedly found the cross and nails that were used to crucify Jesus. It is reported that Constantine promoted the idea that the bits of wood that came from Christ's cross possessed spiritual powers. Truly, a pagan magical mind was at work in Emperor Constantine, the father of the church building.

       We have become victims of our past. We have been fathered by Constantine who gave us the prestigious status of owning a building. We have been blinded by the Romans and Greeks who forced upon us their hierarchical structured basilica's. We have been taken by the Goths who imposed upon us their platonic architecture. We have been hijacked by the Egyptians and Babylonians who gave us our sacred steeples.        Somehow, we have been taught to feel holier than we are in the house of God and have inherited a pathological dependence upon an edifice to carry out our worship to God. At bottom, the church building has taught us badly about what church is and what it does. The building is an architectural denial of the priesthood of all believers. It is a contradiction of the very nature of the ekklesia, which is a countercultural community. The church building impedes our understanding and experience of the church Christ functioning body that lives and breathes under His direct headship.        It is high time we Christians wake up to the fact that we are being neither biblical nor spiritual by supporting church buildings. And we are doing great damage to the message of the New Testament by calling man-made buildings churches. If every Christian on the planet would never call a building a church again, this alone would create a revolution in our faith.        John Newton Riley said rightly, "Let not him who worships under a steeple condemn him who worships under a chimney". With that in mind, what biblical, spiritual, or historical authority does any Christian have to gather under a steeple in the first place?  

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