Figures of church

Bede ( Bede: On the Temple (Liverpool University Press – Translated Texts for Historians) ) knows that the temple is a type of Christ, and a type of the church. But he doesn’t stop with that generic identification. Specific details of the temple construction foreshadow specific features of the future church:

“The point in Solomon’s seeking help from Hiram in the work of the temple was that when the Lord came in the flesh and arranged to build a favourite home for himself, namely, the Church, eh chose helpers for the work not from the Jews alone but also from the gentiles. For he picked ministers of the word from both peoples. Hiram sent Solomon cedar and pine-wood hewn in Lebanon to put in the house of the Lord because the converted gentiles sent to the Lord men once famous in the eyes of the world but now cast down and humbled from the mountain of their pride by the axe of the Lord’s reproof, to be trained according to the norm of evangelical truth and given their place in the building of the Church, each according to his merits of age. He also sent craftsmen because the gentiles who offered to the Lord philosophers converted to true wisdom, people who because of their learning might deservedly be put in charge of people to govern them . . . . . He also sent gold which can be taken in the same sense, namely, that it symbolizes men renowned for wisdom and ability. For all these offerings the gentiles expect the gifts of heavenly grace from the Lord, namely, the wheat of the word of God and the oil of charity and of the unction and enlightenment of the Holy Spirit” (1.2.3).

In short, “every kind of person by whom the Church was to be built had already gone before in the building of the temple. For the Jews and proselytes and gentiles converted to the truth of the Gospel build one and the same Church of Christ whether by upright living or by teaching as well” (1.3.5).