Yet the Most High
does not dwell in houses made with human hands . . .(Acts 7:48 NRSV)
While some critics of LDS theology argue that this passage means that,
in the New Covenant era, God does not dwell in physical temples and/or has
sanctioned temple worship, in reality, what the phrase “not made with human
hands” and like-locutions mean is that God will not dwell in idolatrous or false worship centres. Commenting
on this passage, The Jewish Annotated
Study Bible notes that:
. . . made with human
hands implies that the building of the Temple was an idolatrous act (Isa 2.8; 37.19; Mic 5.13 [MT 5.12]; Ps 115.4;
135.15). (Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Annotated New Testament [New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011], 213; emphasis added)
And also that:
After some Jews
accuse Stephen of blasphemy (though his offense was apparently to characterize
the Temple as “made with hands,” that is, a
merely human construction), (Ibid., 211), emphasis added
In other words, Stephen in Acts 7 is not condemning temples and temple
worship per se but only worship that
is not sanctioned by God.
