Saturday, October 14, 2023

Richard Lloyd Anderson on "Temple" (ναος) in 2 Thessalonians 2:4

  

Paul's central symbol of the apostasy is the man of sin or lawlessness sitting "in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (2 Thes. 2:4). Pounds of pages have been written about this being the Jerusalem temple, but that would be destroyed within two decades and would have no one sitting in it. And what did that temple mean to the Greek Gentiles or even to apostles in terms of their own religion without Mosaic sacrifices? The real question is how Paul used the word temple in his writing Almost always he used it figuratively - occasionally the body is a temple for God's Spirit, but usually the Church is the temple of God. The members ("ye," older plural English for the plural Greek) are "God's building" (1 Cor. 3:9), with Christ its foundation (1 Cor 3:11), or, in summary, "the temple of God" (1 Cor. 3:16). Elsewhere Paul teaches about Christ as cornerstone, apostles as foundation, and members fitting into their places as a "holy temple in the Lord" (Eph. 2:21). And in one of his last letters, Paul still spoke of "the house of God, which is the church of the living God" (1 Tim. 3:15). Paul must define Paul, and his own words show that he was here referring to the Church. (Richard Lloyd Anderson, Understanding Paul [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1983], 8)