The Cardston Alberta Temple, which was dedicated in 1923, was the first temple built in Canada and the first constructed outside of the United States of America. (LDS.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been reading N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography<\/em> (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018). \u00a0The two passages below remind me of the Latter-day Saint conception of the temple, linking this world and the next, heaven and earth, those who have gone before with those living now and beyond. \u00a0I think of family history, and sealing, and the binding of generations together, and of the idea of the streets of a temple-centered city being numbered outward, to the north and the south and the east and the west of the temple:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
All this . . . is many a mile from what we today mean by \u201creligion.\u201d \u00a0That is why I often put that word in quotation marks, to signal the danger of imagining that Saul of Tarsus, either as a young man or as a mature apostle, was \u201cteaching a religion\u201d in some modern sense. \u00a0Today, \u201creligion\u201d for most Westerners designates a detached area of life, a kind of private hobby for those who like that sort of thing, separated by definition (and in some countries by law) from politics and public life, from science and technology. \u00a0In Paul\u2019s day, \u201creligion\u201d meant almost exactly the opposite. \u00a0The Latin word religio<\/em>\u00a0has to do with \u201cbinding\u201d things together. \u00a0Worship, prayer, sacrifice, and other public rituals were designed to hold the unseen inhabitants of a city (the gods and perhaps the ancestors) together with the visible ones, the living humans, thus providing a vital framework for ordinary life, for business, marriage, travel, and home life. \u00a0(A distinction was made between religio<\/em>, official and authorized observance, and superstitio<\/em>, unauthorized and perhaps subversive practice.)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nThe Jewish equivalent of this was clear. \u00a0For Saul of Tarsus, the place where the invisible world (\u201cheaven\u201d) and the visibile world (\u201cearth\u201d) were joined together was the Temple. \u00a0If you couldn\u2019t get to the Temple, you could and should study and practice the Torah, and it would have the same effect. \u00a0Temple and Torah, the two great symbols of Jewish life, pointed to the story in which devout Jews like Saul and his family believed themselves to be living: the great story of Israel and the world, which, they hoped, was at last reaching the point where God would reveal his glory in a fresh way. \u00a0The One God would come back at last to set up his kingdom, to make the whole world one vast glory-filled Temple, and to enable all people \u2014 or at least his chosen people \u2014 to keep the Torah perfectly. \u00a0Any who prayed or sang the Psalms regularly would find themselves thinking this, hoping this, praying this, day after day, month after month. \u00a0(22-23)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
All this meant that the symbolism at the heart of all ancient temples would come true at last. \u00a0Temples were built to hold together the divine realm (\u201cheaven\u201d) and the human realm (\u201cearth\u201d). \u00a0Jerusalem\u2019s Temple, like the wilderness Tabernacle before it, was designed as a small working model of the entire cosmos. \u00a0This was where the One God of Creation would live, dwelling in the midst of his people. \u00a0(48)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019ve been reading N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018). \u00a0The two passages below remind me of the Latter-day Saint conception of the temple, linking this world and the next, heaven and earth, those who have gone before with those living now and beyond. \u00a0I think of family history, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Canada's](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/11\/cardston-alberta-temple-exterior-1126230-gallery.jpg\")
<\/a>