Paul Mayers: Trinity module Essay 4

This essay follows the flow of God’s loving revelation from himself, into the world through the Farther sending his Son and on into the life of the church, which is shaped by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. It is in this tri-une revelation of God that the metaphor of temple finds its fulfilment to represent the presence of God dwelling in, with and for the people who bear his image, for the purpose of restoring his image and making his face known across the earth. It is through the sacred life of the fully man and fully God, Jesus, that “sacred space is overtaken by sacred person(s)”[1]whose lives are lived out wherever and whenever they are found as “living sacrifices”[2].

This essay will explore the continuity and discontinuity between the revelation of God in the Old Testament through the metaphor of Temple and how Jesus becomes the embodiment of that but also transforms and transcends it. I will then look at the image bearing nature of the Church and explore some ways in which the narrative of Jesus cruciform life is retold by the body that gathers together and bears the imago dei as it lives out the missio dei.

Jesus as Temple: Tradition, transformation and Transcendence

In this section I will explore how the Jewish understanding of the temple as God’s unique ‘dwelling place’– the ‘union’ of heaven and earth – is recapitulated and reinterpreted in the context of YHWH’s Trinitarian self-revelation in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. In order to do so it is important to understand the cultural significance of the temple to the Jewish people as God’s unique people, the temple was a unique reminder of their special relationship. I will then go on to look at how Jesus brings both continuity and discontinuity to this metaphor of temple as he restores and reconstitutes YHWH’s image bearing people.

The idea of the temple in Jerusalem is significant as it a microcosm of the image of the God who dwells in his temple-palace[3] of creation, as YHWH himself declares, “Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house you would build for me?”[4] As Watts comments “where else does one find a throne and a footstool if not in a palace? And if the palace is the deity’s, does it not mean that the whole of creation, the heavens and the earth, are Yahweh’s temple?”[5] God therefore not only creates but rules over all of creation, not at a distant or removed but from within, with creation itself bearing a living testimony as a reflection of its creator.

It is within this context that humans are created in the image of God and the implications of imago dei are something we will explore later in this essay. Suffice for now is to say that God created a people in his image and when Adam and Eve rebelled in the garden God faithfully continued to recreate a people in his image with his covenant with Abraham[6] and his family that grew to become the Israelite nation. It is God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who therefore exists in eternal communion and creates and calls a people to himself to reflect his presence and image. God therefore is communal nature and to signify the distinguishing mark of his people[7] it is God who delivers them out of Egypt and then dwells with them in first the tabernacle and then the temple. The temple therefore acts as this microcosm, as Fletcher-Louis remarks “tabernacle and temple are organised to reflect Israel’s understanding of the cosmos, and the worship and rituals of cult actualise and guarantee the God-intended order and stability of creation.”[8]

If the temple is seen as God’s dwelling palace on earth, where he is relationally present by his Spirit with the people who he has called to bear his image, then the temple metaphor can in some ways be extended to Jesus. Jesus is both fully man and fully God, he is the eternal Son made flesh and as John says, he dwelt amongst us[9]. Just as the presence of God filled the temple, so that the people could see his glory and testify to God’s love,[10] so John recounts that Jesus, who was filled with the Spirit, showed the glory of God. Indeed, it is if Jesus was a living temple, he embodied both the creator nature of God by being God but also as human he reflected the creation, humanity in all the fullness imagined by the creator, that the Jewish nation was called to have been.

However where there is clear discontinuity is that the dedication of Jesus at his baptism is a tri-une event rather than the manifest presence of the one God. In the same way as the presence of God came down and filled the temple in a tangible way the people that were present at the baptism of Jesus could something of God’s presence. However, Jesus baptism is clearly initiating a tri-une commissioning, marked by the voice of God, proclaiming his love and delight in his son and the presence of the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus in the form of a dove[11]. God is revealing himself but this time his revelation is more than filling cold walls of stones of a temple for his people but transforming cold hearts and cold lives of his people, through his tri-une nature.[12]

Whereas before the temple was the centre of the Jewish faith now there was a redefining of its importance, such that Jesus could say that the physical location of worship was not important but instead the attitude in which it was done, that now it is through the Spirit’s infused truthful recognition can humanity worship God.[13] In other words continuity is maintained as God’s presence continues to dwell with his people but now rather than residing within a building the Spirit now resides with people. Jesus was able to live a perfect life as a human not because he could access his God, in some way he emptied himself, therefore he could only live in this way because he was one hundred percent dependent on the Holy Spirit[14]. As Fee-Nordling comments “it is only in the human-divine being of Jesus Christ, the true imago Dei who lived his human life in obedience to the Father by the power of the Spirit, that we live and move and have our human being.”[15]

The discontinuity of the temple system is established however as Jesus becomes both the high priest[16] and the sacrifice that is offered[17], worship now becomes centred on Christ and the new creation and Kingdom that he ushers is established through his life, death and resurrection. Although Jesus comes as the chosen people of God, a Jew, his breaking of the temple system from a fixed geographic location will see the inauguration of God’s wish for his people to come from every tribe, tongue and nation[18] [as Jesus commissions the gospel to go out from Jerusalem the centre of the temple to Samaria and then the ends of the earth]. Indeed, Jesus prophesies the destruction of the temple, his own body which will be destroyed and rebuilt in 3 days [referring to his death and resurrection][19] and the literal temple[20] that will eventually be destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. For writers like Paul[21] and Peter[22] Jesus is the cornerstone on which the new temple of the church is being built and this is what we will look at next.

As the temple is the microcosm of God’s creation temple-palace so Jesus is a microcosm of God’s creative rule and kingdom [after all a king reigns relationally with his people from his palace]. In that respect Jesus demonstrates his God present credentials by healing the sick, feeding the hungry and otherwise going about God’s work of restoring humanity[23]. It is clear that God is dwelling with him through the Holy Spirit and working through him and Jesus explains that this is because he is being obedient to his Father.[24] In this next part of this essay I want to look further at how the imago Dei of Jesus and the metaphor of Temple come together to express something of what it means for us to be the church or body of Christ[25] – the corporate imago dei in the world.

God‘s ‘idols’ –finding our true humanity centred in the image of the Trinity

To understand the metaphor of humanity being God’s ‘idols’ we need to explore how we, as humanity, have been created in the image of the tri-une God, particularlyreturning to Near East Temple-Palace imagery.

For within Near East cultures the creation of temples was to install the image of the gods of that people; so as Watts notes with the Jewish context “if the climatic event was the installation of the image if the deity in its temple, and if we allow the creation-as-temple-palace metaphor, it is surely significant that on the last day of creation, the crowning moment occurs when Yahweh declares ‘let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness…’”[26] To use the phraseology of Fletcher-Louis, humanity is therefore ‘God’s ‘idols.’ This does not mean that God worships us rather instead “it is humanity who is to be the eyes, ears, mouth, being and action of the creator God within his creation. Humanity is given both the freedom of the cosmos, is entitled to be fed from its produce, is to fill it with God’s presence and is to exercise the creator’s own divine rule over his creation (Gen 1:28-29).”[27] Just as God who exists in tri-une community is for the other he has created us also in the community of humanity, shaped as male and female, to be for the other, to care and to tend for each other and creation, in relationship with him.

It is in and through Jesus as God’s living temple that we are reconnected first back to the tri-une God and then back to God’s plan for us to be about the ongoing serving of creation. Jesus life demonstrates what it is to live out the fullness of being created in God’s image, a life of cruciform servanthood, a life of obedience to the Father, lived out through the power of the Spirit. This means that we are not called to live out Christian lives as separate individuals for as Fee-Nordling comments “because God in his own being is one God in three Persons, there is no possibility of relating to God as divine, solitary Other. Relationship with God is always and forever participation in the pre-existing koinonia of the divine Persons.”[28] Jesus is sent by the Father to call a people who will bear once again the image of the creator, who will submit their lives to God, who will exchange their own kingdoms and cracked images for his Kingdom and his image. It is then through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit that we are conformed to be like him.

God has revealed himself to be a relational creator, who seeks us as his image bearers to be in relationship with him. Hence we see Jesus not just content to tour the countryside as a walking talking living embodiment of the temple but in relationship, seen in his interactions with the trinity, the people and in his calling of disciples as Fee-Nordling remarks “as and from God, Jesus does not exist first for himself, nor for a cause or an idea, but for others – for God and for his fellow human beings.”[29] Jesus comes not only to save humanity but to call us back into right relationships as image bearers which is shown in his teaching, training and commissioning of them in the tri-une name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to take all that he has taught them and to pass it on to others[30]. How are the disciples to do this, in the same way that Jesus has, to be image bearers who will be like him, who will follow him and through him in obedience to the Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

God therefore in the same way he dwelt in Jesus now dwells in the people who have chosen Christ as the way, the truth and the life.[31]Jesus by his cruciform life is now thereconnection point between humanity and the divine and is the hope for the restoration of our humanity in relationship with the tri-une God, marked with the divine presence dwelling within us[32]. This then becomes the ultimate discontinuity with the temple but the ultimate recontinuity between humanity as God’s ‘idols’ and the tri-une God who’s image we bear, as Watts remarks “whereas the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple was the original locus of the presence, we are now collectively and individually, the temple of the Holy Spirit”[33] and Fee “God now dwells not in temples made by human hands, but in temples constructed by his own hands.”[34]

It is this image bearing people who are the body of Christ in the world, as Gorman highlights “the ekklesia is what God is up to in the world: recreating a people whose corporate life tells the world what the death and resurrection of the Messiah is all about. The people, the “Church” lives the story, embodies the story, tells the story. It is the living exegesis of God’s master story of faith, love, power and hope.”[35] In other words our story as Christians is a retelling of the cruciform story of Jesus, in the same way he was for the other we should be for the other, in the same way he came to serve we are called to serve[36], to take up our crosses as his community and follow him.[37] For Fee-Nordling there can be no other way but for us to live out the cruciform life of Christ, “as the new creation, we too are to live lives of Spirit-led obedience, and the shape of this new life together is, very simply cruciform. Crucified with Christ, we also live with Christ. What is the norm of this life? To be for the other, to ‘carry each other’s burdens’ and so ‘fulfil the law of Christ,’ which is to say, the pattern of Christ’s own selfless life of obedience manifest in love for the other.”[38]

Cruciformity: not only what it will cost but what price we are willing to pay

For the last part of this essay I want to briefly explore two aspects of what this cruciform life means for us today, particularly with reference to our western culture of individuality and to what it looks like to be living for the rather than taking a position over the other.

Our current western context attaches the greatest significance to the individual ahead of the needs of any other agency[39]. This is contrast to the Global South and the Far East where the cultural values very much focus around the priorities of the needs of the many rather than the needs of the one. We live particularly in a culture today where it is firmly seen as this is “my life to live how I want too and be accountable to know one else apart from myself for the decisions I make”. Both our western context and the global south and Far East context reflect broken elements of the trinity in whose image we are created.

In our western context we focus on our individuality and own unique identity, which in many ways is reflected in the collapse of our spiritual reality such that we talk about or pray to just ‘God.’ We tend therefore to speak of God as a singularity, or only ever pray to our own favourite member of the trinity, or the one who we think can best help us with whatever particular problem we face, for example, Ineed some power in my life, well that’s the Holy Spirit’s department. We are in danger in becoming consumers of either a monotheism or tri-theism which supports our own private agency and allows us to remain comfortable in the ghetto of our individually ownedprivate spaces and preferences.

Individuality is of course important as we are created in our diversity as a rich example of the generous creator God, who’s image we bear. Indeed as soon as we refer to God as tri-une we are invoking the individual narratives of relationship and agency that allows us to identify the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as having their own particular identity and stories. As Fee-Nordling notes[40] this tri-une God seems to delight in seeking us out individually in the same way that in the stories Jesus told[41]of the Shepard who leaves his flock to find the missing sheep, the woman who searches her house for the lost coin and the father who rushes out to embrace his errant son. However, that is not the end of the story as the sheep is reunited with the rest of the flock, the coin gets put back in the purse and the son resumes his place in family life. In other words we are created, called and loved individually by the trinity but it isonce we are found and reconnected to the body of Christ that in our other centred communal service is where we find our true identity, home and purpose.

In this way as image bearers we reflect not only the other centred nature of our tri-une God but also echo the covenant of our God with Abraham, we are blessed by him with our own individual identities, gifts, talents and treasures so that we in turn can be a blessing to others[42]. It is as we do the good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do , in a relational context, that we bless and help others and in doing so find our own particular place and calling within the body of Christ[43].