In an article on Constantine’s church-building, Gregory Alexander repeats a commonplace about the difference between pagan and Christian places of worship: “The temple is a house for the god; the church is a gathering place for communal worship.”
Yes, but: Jesus says He’ll be there in our gathering, so the church-temple is still a house for God.
Perhaps, though, the point is more radical. Perhaps the church is a temple in the ancient sense, a house not only for God but for the refurbished images of God that constitute the body of Christ. Perhaps the church is, precisely, a house of gods.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…
