I recently removed an older post entitled "Churches are Not Temples", which was an article written by Old Calendar "Archbishop" Chrysostomos II of Etna. Though appearing at first to be conservative, he actually embraced heresy (Cyprianism) before is death, and was thus outside the Orthodox Church. With closer inspection, his article was both inconsistent and erroneous. First, he stated his reasons against the term "temple" and the use of "church". Then, he went on to complain of the irreverence associated with modern "Orthodox" churches. He wrote:
The Greek word for Temple, "Naos," actually means house.
The Jewish Temple was transformed, in Christianity, into something quite different than the fearsome place where the Jews encountered God.
The Temple became, as it should properly be, the "House" of God, wherein the family of man has been reconciled to the Father through the Sacrifice of the Son, comforted by the Holy Spirit.
It seems to me, as well, wholly inappropriate that, in English, we should call our Churches "Temples." This gives the impression that we have something to do with the Jewish religion or with certain cults...
Ekklesia, while it does describe the Body of Christ and the "gathering of Christians," also applies to the building in which they worship. The House of God is a Church, not a Temple.
When we look at the definitions (Webster's 1828 Dictionary), however, we see that they are somewhat misrepresented in the article:
temple:
1. A public edifice erected in honor of some deity. Among pagans, a building erected to some pretended deity, and in which the people assembled to worship...The most celebrated and magnificent temple erected to the true God, was that built by Solomon in Jerusalem. In Scripture, the tabernacle is sometimes called by this name. 1 Samuel 1:9-3.
3. A place in which the divine presence specially resides; the church as a collective body. Ephesians 2:21.
We read that God desired the building of Solomon's Temple, in which His Presence would be found in types, foreshadowing the True Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist:
1 Para. (Chron.) 28 King David rose to his feet and said, “Hear me, my brethren and my people: I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God, and had made preparations to build it. ...Now He said to me, ‘It is your son Solomon who shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be My son, and I will be his Father.
Though there are many references to "temple" in the New Testament, we read that Christians themselves form "a holy temple...an habitation of God":
Eph. 2:19-22 Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners; but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God, 20 Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone: 21 In whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord. 22 In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit.
church:
1. A house consecrated to the worship of God, among Christians; the Lords house. This seems to be the original meaning of the word. The Greek, to call out or call together, denotes an assembly or collection.
And here are definitions Strong's Greek Lexicon:
ekklésia:
Meaning: an assembly, congregation, church; the Church, the whole body of Christian believers.
Word Origin: Derived from the Greek preposition ἐκ (ek, "out of") and the verb καλέω (kaleō, "to call"), meaning "called out."
Corresponding Greek / Hebrew Entries: The concept of "ekklēsia" is somewhat paralleled by the Hebrew word קָהָל (qahal, Strong's H6951), which means assembly or congregation, often used in the Old Testament to describe the gathering of the Israelites.
Usage: In the New Testament, "ekklēsia" primarily refers to a gathering or assembly of people, often used to denote the community of believers in Jesus Christ. It is translated as "church" in most English Bibles. The term emphasizes the collective nature of believers who are "called out" from the world to follow Christ. It can refer to both local congregations and the universal body of Christ.
Cultural and Historical Background: In ancient Greek culture, "ekklēsia" referred to a civic assembly of citizens called out for a specific purpose, such as decision-making or governance. In the context of the New Testament, the term was adopted to describe the community of Christians who gathered for worship, teaching, fellowship, and the observance of the sacraments. The early church was distinct from Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, forming a new identity centered on faith in Jesus as the Messiah.
naos:
Definition: temple, sanctuary
Meaning: a temple, a shrine, that part of the temple where God Himself resides.
Word Origin: Derived from the primary verb "ναίω" (naió), meaning "to dwell."
Corresponding Greek / Hebrew Entries:
- H1964: הֵיכָל (hekal) - temple, palace
- H6944: קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh) - holy, sanctuary
Usage: In the New Testament, "ναός" (naos) refers specifically to the inner sanctuary or the most sacred part of the temple where God's presence dwells. It is distinct from the broader temple complex, which includes the outer courts. The term is used both literally, to describe the physical temple in Jerusalem, and metaphorically, to describe the body of Christ and the body of believers as the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
Cultural and Historical Background: In Jewish culture, the temple in Jerusalem was the center of religious life, serving as the place where sacrifices were offered and where God's presence was believed to dwell. The "ναός" was the innermost part of the temple, the Holy of Holies, which only the high priest could enter once a year on the Day of Atonement...
So, we see that the ekklesia/church properly refers to Christians called out of the world. While, it is temple/naos that most specifically refers to the Old Testament Temple's Holy of Holies, and the New Testament's physical dwelling-place of Jesus Christ, God-with-us.
Christ calls His own body "this temple", and also refers to His Apostles as living stones in His Church. In Acts 17, we read, "...He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands...as though He needed any thing." By this we understand that God is with Christians whether there is a building or not; His divine Presence in the Eucharist does not require a physical structure like the old Temple of Jerusalem. Yet, it is of course proper and fitting that we have physical structures dedicated to God!
So, which is more correct? Is the physical structure a church or a temple? Well, both. But I would suggest that it is a Protestant idea that churches are only meeting houses of men. In that sense, it is not only wrong, but heretical to reject the term temple. Perhaps this rejection, due to the Protestant influence in America, that was the true cause of "Archbishop" Chrysostomos' complaint of laxity and a lack of due honor among modern "Orthodox" concerning their churches:
...we must be very careful not to misunderstand what the House of God is. I once heard a very pious Abbess, a Romanian here in America, say: "We think of our Churches as our homes."
This...can be misleading...The Church is our spiritual home...however, it is not a house in the normal sense of that word...there is a great temptation to retreat into the coy primitive notions of the Church that so mutilated Roman Catholicism in the '60s, when the notion of primitive house Churches and primitive liturgical practices was thought to embody a return to "authentic" Christianity. This thinking is so aberrant as to flirt with heresy...
As soon as Christianity was free, when it blossomed in the fourth century, contrary to the mistaken notion that its piety was diminished, its piety was in fact given full expression. Beautiful Churches, magnificent services, vestments...became indispensable parts of true Christianity... Christians felt the need to capture the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, to make manifest, through the Icon of the Church, the Grace and the glory which have even now, by virtue of the transforming power of the Resurrection, been made available to us in the fallen world... The Church became royal, the dwelling-place of the King and the repository of all of the whole royal heritage that has been promised to us as Christians.
The Church is built not for our physical comfort, but as a place of asceticism: dark, isolated from worldly comforts and things, a place in which we stand and struggle with the flesh. It is primarily a place for spiritual comfort, a place where the Divine Paraclete dwells and in which our hearts take wings. It contains that glory for which our flesh suffers and groans.
A Church, then, should contain nothing of the world....Churches are often decorated, and here in America, as though we were living in the smallest village in the remote mountains of Eastern Europe, with junk, left-overs from believers' houses, and "homey" things have no place in the Church...living the fantasy of being Greek or Russian peasants and making of Orthodoxy some romantic "return to the soil." This is NOT the Faith of our Fathers.
When the "House of God" becomes our "home," and when we fill it with what is familiar, with what we find in everyday life, we lose our sense of awe. We forget that the things of the Church lift us up, like Icons, to spiritual archetypes...in the beauty of our Churches, [we leave] an external token of the restoration of fallen man that is contained within the very structure of the buildings in which we worship.
"Archbishop" Chrysostomos unwittingly disproves his own premise by insisting that Orthodox church structures should represent the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, and the restoration of fallen man. They are icons that lift us up out of our earthly homes, and more than this, they are the actual dwelling places of the one, true God. Yes, they are called churches, but they are also temples in the truest sense of the word. A final quote from the "Archbishop" epitomizes this truth:
It should be strange and different to what is worldly and should provoke fear and awe, in the love of Christ, from the inner world of the soul. Indeed, we see in the Church itself an image of the universe, divided as it is between the Holy Place and the rest of the Church, the Saints peering out at us with spiritual eyes through the Templon (Iconostasion), as we see through their Icons, with our worldly eyes, into the Kingdom of Heaven, which we thus understand in a glimpse and which we come to know, however imperfectly, as our ultimate goal.
Note that the Byzantine Iconostasis is called a "Templon"!
"Templon", Wikipedia: A templon (from Greek τέμπλον meaning "temple", plural templa) is a feature of Byzantine churches consisting of a barrier separating the nave from the sanctuary near the altar.
The solid templon first appeared in Christian churches around the 5th century and is still found in many Eastern Christian churches. Initially it was a low barrier probably not much different from the altar rails of many Western churches. It eventually evolved into the modern iconostasis, still found in Orthodox churches today.
It is usually composed of carved wood or marble colonnettes supporting an architrave (a beam resting on top of columns). Three doors, a large central one and two smaller flanking ones, lead into the sanctuary. The templon did not originally obscure the view of the altar, but as time passed, icons were hung from the beams, curtains were placed in between the colonnettes, and the templon became more opaque. In modern Orthodox churches, it is common for the openings of the templa to be constructed specifically to contain icons.
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Apoc. 21:3 And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and He will dwell with them. And they shall be His people; and God Himself with them shall be their God.